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Thinking with the Fingers

It is misleading then to talk of thinking as of a ‘mental activity.’ We may say that thinking is essentially the activity of operating with signs. This activity is performed by the hand, when we think by writing; by the mouth and larynx, when we think by speaking; and if we think by imagining signs or pictures, I can give you no agent that thinks.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, p. 6

I found this passage interesting because it ties into Polanyi’s idea of ‘indwelling.’

There is an odd dualism that runs through much of the modern ‘scientific’ thought I’ve encountered that portrays the brain and body as strangely at odds. For example, the idea that one must have a ‘fully functioning’ brain in order to have a meaningful existence. The oddness of such a view is particularly striking because this viewpoint is held by the very same people who would maintain that thinking itself is really only a physical process. I will go no farther with that line of thought.

I do not see how anyone can dispute the fact that we think with more than the brain. Philosophers will continue their debates over the nature of the mind as an entity, wholly the same as, or different from, the brain; but at least this much is clear: we think with our fingers and mouths as much as we silently contemplate conundrums in the ‘pure mind.’

Just this past Lord’s Day, as I was preaching on Judges 9, I found myself learning new things about the text as I preached. I was not deliberately engaged in a silent chain of reasoning. I was thinking with my mouth. As I spoke, so I learned. This happens fairly regularly. And now, as I type, it is debatable whether the words form in my mind or in my fingertips, as I do not consciously decide to write before the words appear before me and I become a spectator of them.

Perhaps the modern thinkers do not emphasize the physicality of the mind too much; Perhaps they emphasize it to little. The Word becoming flesh matters.

The Computer as a Psychological Metaphor

The decade of the 1950s is generally recognized as the beginning of the cognitive revolution -a shift in psychology from the behaviorist’s stimulus-response relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the mind. Chomsky’s critique of Skinner was only one of many events in the 1950s that reintroduced the mind to psychology. These events provided a new way to study the mind, called the information-processing approach – an approach that traces the sequence of mental operations involved in cognition. One of the vents that inspired psychologists to think of the mind in terms of information processing was a newly introduced device called the digital computer.

-E. Bruce Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience, p. 12

I came across this quote early on in my Cognitive Psychology class this summer. It’s a good illustration of the principles of media ecology: technology changes the way we see ourselves – like Narcissus looking into the water. As early as the 50s, folks were already starting to see their brains (I will not say minds) as computers. It’s no longer about wisdom my friends; it’s all about the pentiums.

Shocking: “Humans prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their thoughts”

The headline of an article on The Verge reads, “Humans prefer an electric shock to being left alone with their thoughts.” The potential for puns is shockingly high. I can feel the electricity as I type…

Anyhow, the article points to a study in which people were given a choice: sit alone in uninterrupted silence and solitude for 15 minutes, or amuse yourself (or whatever) by pressing a button that will shock you. The majority chose the shock, and some chose to repeat the shock quite a bit. My first thought was that this doesn’t really prove anything. I probably would have been curious enough to push the button at least once just to see what it felt like. But it is the repeat offenders that confound me. The first time is just curiosity, the 20th time must be done out of sheer boredom.

Regardless of the cause, it is an interesting anecdote for what we have been coming to realize for some time now: modern people struggle with solitude and silence. This is something I have pointed to quite a bit on this blog, and something that continues to trouble me. I believe it is one of the great pastoral issues of our day. It is a logical progression for a culture in which we are constantly surrounded by bells and whistles – even books. I wonder if any of the trial-subjects spent the 15 minutes in silent meditation and prayer. Perhaps we should all take this as a cue to do so.

Read the article HERE.

Side Effects: She Swallowed the Spider to Catch the Fly

This nursery rhyme, ‘There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly,’ was quoted in the PBS Frontline documentary entitled Medicating Kids. As someone who has children, is a student of psychology, and works in the pharmacy business, it resonated. Medication can do wonderful things, but it can also do harmful things; and those harmful things, which we call side effects, need to be treated with another medication, and another: swallowing the spider to catch the fly. I’d recommend the documentary for anyone interested in ADHD and other psychological disorders diagnosed in children. You can watch it for free HERE. Note that I am not making a personal statement here; I am only recommending the documentary, which is quite intriguing.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I dunno why she swallowed that fly,
Perhaps she’ll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly –
Perhaps she’ll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd, to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly –
Perhaps she’ll die

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat.
Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she’ll die

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog.
What a hog! To swallow a dog!
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat…
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she’ll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a goat.
Just opened her throat and swallowed a goat!
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog …
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she’ll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat…
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog…
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat…
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she’ll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a horse –
She’s dead, of course.

Recent Reading: The Cure of Melancholy and Overmuch Sorrow, By Faith, by Richard Baxter

I have said before that a single sermon by a given Puritan may contain more than many of the fluffy books of our day. The Puritans were such that a single sermon could be turned into a book. Case in point: Richard Baxter’s The Cure of Melancholy and Overmuch Sorrow, By Faith. I ordered this book from Amazon after hearing a hearty recommendation by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in a talk available HERE (note, I am only linking the second part of the talk).

UPDATE: I also found Lloyd-Jones’ treatment of Baxter in book form. I have written about it HERE.

In the sermon, which is available as a book, Baxter expounds upon the words of 2 Corinthians 2:7: ‘…so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.’ Baxter’s term ‘melancholy’ would be better understood by modern ears as ‘depression’ – being ‘overwhelmed with excessive sorrow.’ What do you do when your sadness is overwhelming?

Baxter is concerned first to show us that there is such a condition, that the condition could be physical in nature (due to biological issues or temperament), or that it could be the result of demonic activity, that it could be something easily treated, or it could be something very difficult to treat. Since the condition varies so greatly, he is concerned that we be able to diagnose it and treat it properly according to the diagnosis.

I will not review the book, but I want to make a few statements about it. First, this book, along with the Doctor’s talk on it, are extremely helpful in regards to pastoral counseling. The nuances of the book are tremendous. Baxter wants us to be careful not to lump all cases of sadness into the same mould. So, let’s say for instance, you have two women come to talk to you on the same day. Both are depressed. But their depressions are very different. The tendency, I think, is for the pastor to tell them to read their Bibles and pray. Baxter counters such thinking by saying that could be the worst thing this person could do. It all depends on the situation.

If you tell a severely depressed person to pray, and that is your primary counsel, then what if they find that they can’t pray? Or what if they do pray, but find that their prayers only serve as a further opportunity to brood over their problems, thus making them worse? What if you tell them to read their Bible and they find that they can’t? What if the do read and decide to turn to the imprecatory psalms? It is to the benefit of the one being counseled that we refrain from blanket answers. We must have a better understanding of the situation. We must have some understanding of the myriad of ways in which the effects of sin, and weak bodies, show up.

Baxter’s approach is also a great relief to pastors, or at least I found it to be so. I have dealt with individuals over the years who always want to talk about the same thing. And it can go on for months, even years. They cannot get over a certain, single issue. What do you do? Baxter’s answer is that this is a psychological problem (that’s certainly how MLJ understood Baxter). It is a spiritual problem to be sure, but it is not a problem that can be solved with pastoral counseling. I can recite John 3:16 100 times in 100 days to someone, but I do not have the power to make that word come to a person with force. There is a time for the pastor to realize that he cannot go on counseling someone who cannot be counseled ‘lest he himself become ensnared.’ That alone, from this book, made it worth it for me. Because I’ve been there. I’ve had to accept that I can’t fix all problems. Jesus can fix problems, but Jesus does not fix the problems of those who are not trusting in him.

To give a couple of examples of Baxter’s words: First, on the fact that not all such depression is within the power of a pastor to counsel or solve, he notes that problems can be medical – that medicine, in some cases, can do more than a pastor. He goes so far as to say that in some sense the right medicine can repel Satan himself:

If it were, as some of them fancy, a possession of the devil, it is possible that physic [i.e. medical treatment] might cast him out, for if you cure the melancholy, his [that is, Satan’s] bed is taken away, and the advantage is gone by which he worketh. Cure the choler, and the choleric operations of the devil cease. It is by means and humours that he worketh.

I rail on the overuse of antidepressants regularly, but to say that they have no purpose is just plain wrong. They can be the very tool God uses to make someone teachable.

Another quote: We often say that those who are in pain need to talk about their troubles, but this is not always the case. Baxter writes,

Let not all men know that you are in your troubles: complaining doth but feed them.

Here we can distinguish between talking about problems and complaining about problems. Be careful when you talk that you are not complaining. Talking may help, but complaining likely won’t.

Don’t even let your prayers, Baxter says, focus on the problems:

Especially, when you pray, resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God. If you cannot do it with the joy that you should, yet do it as you can.

We tell people to think through things. Baxter counsels:

Avoid your musings, and exercise not your thoughts now too deeply, nor too much. Long meditation is a duty to some, but not to you, no more than it is a man’s duty to go to church that hath his leg broken, or his foot out of joint: he must rest and ease it till it be set again, and strengthened.

He tells people, when they can’t pray in a helpful way, to sing psalms and hymns. He tells overwhelmed minds to take a rest.

The quotes are a bit of a hodgepodge here. But they serve to show how different his counsel is from what often passes as pastoral counseling these days. I cannot recommend this book too highly. But I warn you that it will probably take several readings to begin to digest the content. You can read it for free HERE. And, all the more, I recommend Lloyd-Jones’ talks HERE and HERE.

Early on in my Christian life I was introduced to that hymn that says, ‘Sunshine, blessed sunshine, when the peaceful happy moments roll. When Jesus shows his smiling face, there is sunshine in my soul.’ There is not always sunshine in the soul. We need to be weathermen who can see the storms and act according to the situation.

You are what you Eat? In the Beginning was the Belly

The German materialist Karl Vogt lectured across Euorpe on Darwin and scientific materialism, propagating a harsh anti-religious and atheistic philosophy. One of his most famous sayings was quoted over and over again: ‘Thoughts come out of the brain as gall from the liver, or urine from the kidneys.’ Feurbach asserted that ‘Man is what he eats,’ and commented dismally that ‘It used to be said “In the beginning God.” Now it is said, “In the beginning the belly.”

-Michael Aeschliman, The Restitution of Man, p. 33

I am currently studying for a degree with an emphasis in psychology. It happens that the bent of our psychology classes is evolutionary/behavioral. This is psychology built on the rock of B.F. Skinner, and it focuses on externals and scientific data, leaving no room for the existence of a soul. In a psychology class I took recently, the author of our textbook made the case that, scientifically speaking, ‘memory’ and/or ‘memories’ do not exist. His reasoning was that scientists have been unable to locate the whereabouts of memory and memories in the brain. Shortly after reading the argument of the textbook, I wrote this:

My psychology textbook virtually denies the existence of the memory (pp. 342-343). ‘Memory’ is not quantifiable. We have yet to scientifically locate it in the brain despite various efforts and theories. Therefore it cannot scientifically be said to have real existence. What we call memory, the textbook contends, is best expressed as behavior adaptation based on experience.

The only question is, How am I supposed to remember all that?

Some scientists (who are really philosophers impersonating scientists) have exalted the physical world to the point that nothing outside of it can exist. In addition to this, anything that cannot be explained in terms of physicality is nothing. It is written off. And so, thoughts simply become secretions of enzymes and the firing of synapses in the brain. Memories become the adaptation of physical behavior to past experiences (as if that makes any sense).

The fact of the matter is that Jesus Christ calls himself ‘the bread of life’:

John 6:48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

This must mean, at least, that as the body is meant to live on bread, so the soul is meant to live on Christ. Without food, the body becomes malnourished, weakens, and dies of starvation. Without Christ, this same process takes place in the soul.

We, I am speaking as an American, live in a culture that exalts externals. Among those externals, food is a monster. How many diet books are being written each year? How many people are worried about eating the right sort of foods (gluten free, low-carb, organic, etc)? ‘You are what you eat,’ we are told.

This idolatrous nature of this type of physical obsession leads Aeschliman to share the above quote, which I post again here:

Feurbach asserted that ‘Man is what he eats,’ and commented dismally that ‘It used to be said “In the beginning God.” Now it is said, “In the beginning the belly.”

‘You are what you eat’ may be a true statement. But if it is, it may be extremely bad news for many. For it is not only the body that is capable of eating, but the soul as well. ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which comes from the mouth of God.’ It is not, ‘in the beginning was the belly,’ but ‘in the beginning was the Word.’

The modern scientistic (not scientific, but scientistic) denial of God, Christ, and the soul is nothing more than a pseudo-sophisticated, grown up version of a child refusing to eat his veggies. And so he starves, and in his hunger-induced delusion, denies that there was ever such a thing as food to begin with – and we who go on eating are the crazy ones.

  • John 6:54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.