On to the second month of life as a graduate student! I was hoping to get blog updates a little more frequently than once a month, but also to reach certain benchmarks when various projects and papers were completed so that I could condense the publications/updates. It has also occured to me that no where in this blog is there a link to the previous blog which proceeded it. Now is as good a time as ever, so here is the link to my previous Philosophy/Psychology blog "Lies of Lions." At any rate, here is what I have been up to as of late...
Foundations of Humanistic Psychology
This was my first major project and presentation of graduate school. The topic for the course session on the day I was presenting was Romanticism and Early Existentialism. The specfic focus of my presentation was Shakespeare's relationship to Romanticism, Existentialism, and Psychology. In particular I used the play "Hamlet: Prince of Denmark" as a model but also discussed Shakespeare himself. The essay was about six pages long and the presentation lasted about 20 minutes excluding questions asked afterwords. In general the project focused on Shakespeare's expressions of human nature and interaction which inspired the Romanticism Era. The Romanticism then provided a fertile proving group for Existential questions to arise. These questions then were sought to be answered or dealt with by philosophers and psychologist of the coming centuries, in particular Carl Rogers and Rollo May.
The class reception was very positive. I was a little concerned that the material would not have been bridged well enough and the presentation would not make sense to some people. However, I'm relieved and very excited that my colleagues enjoyed the presentation and thought it was useful.
I put a plug in the end of the presentation to promote this blog, promising my classmates downloads of the presentation and paper. So I will follow up and that and provide the download links.
Presentation Download
Essay Download
Psychology of Exceptional Experiences
As part of a self-experiment for this course I have started keeping a dream journal not necessarily to log or analyze the content of my dreams, but to see if the record keeping has any impact on my cognitive ability to remember the dreams.
Also as part of this class I have been doing a few other self-experiements including experimenting with binaural beats and a sort of pseudo-ganzfeld experiement. I have provided links to those topics if you are not familiar with them.
I am also working on a research proposal / final paper for this course. I do not have a specific topic yet, but I am looking into a couple different things. I make it no secret that I am a adamant supporter of what Kirk Schneider calls "Awe-based Psychology." I may write the research proposal from a phenomenological standpoint with ties to Schneider. While implementing a notion of awe may not be the strongest connection; another possibility would be to just explore the phenomenology of our exceptional experiences. For those not in the field, these experiences include essentially anything that is not considered "typical" or is different from your "ordinary" consciousness. Some examples include paranormal beliefs, apparitions, ESP, telekinesis, telepathy, altered states of consciousness, out of body experiences, and many other "supernatural" phenomena. Thus my research would specifically entail an inquiry as to why we bother to pursue, research, and are interested in these topics.
Intro to Counseling
I am thouroughly enjoying this class. In recent weeks our practice counseling sessions have inceresed from 2 to 4 to 6 to 8 minutes in hopes of working up to the required 10 minute session to be filmed and reviewd for our midterm. I find that the increasing session length is actually more beneificial for gaining experience as a therapist and therapeutic for the client being counsoled. In the early stages of these practice session the conversations were rather touge-and-cheek, consisting of what I commonly refer to as "elevator speeches." The longer session times give us a chance to get at some more depth and meaningful conversations. This makes the therapist experience more realistic and also provides a greater benefit when you are the acting (or maybe not "acting") as the client. We are starting to deal with real issues that our colleagues are dealing with as well as expressing our own musings; both of which are a good thing.
Part of this course requires us to provide an analysis of the critical feedback given to us from our colleagues and group supervisor. I have taken this opportunity to start a professional journal to log my expereinces as a (to-be) therapist. Its a rather simple yet innovative process that is really just a long text document, but I include dates and tags so that at any point in my career I can easily seach through them by date or subject.
Lifespan and Human Development
I did a short research analysis for this class that was a review of a research experiment done on the relationship between perfectionism and depression. The results were a little mixed, illustrating that there certainly is a correlation between the two but that their causality reverts to a "chicken-or-the-egg" type lineage.
