One of his patient's with breast cancer who throughout adolescence had been locked in a long, bitter struggle with her naysaying father. Looking forward to some form of reconciliation, she looked forward to her father driving her to college; a time she would be alone with him for several hours. The trip turned out to be a disaster. Her father behaved true to form by grousing at length about the ugly, garbage littered creek by the side of the road. She on the other hand saw no litter whatsoever in the beautiful, rustic, unspoiled stream. She found no way to respond and eventually, lapsing into silence, they spent the remainder of the trip looking away from each other.
Later, she made the same trip alone and was astounded to note that there were two streams - one each side of the road. ''This time I was the driver'', she said sadly, and the stream I saw was as ugly and polluted as her father had described it. But by the time she had learned to look out her father' window, it was too late - her father was dead and buried.
Yalom remarks that the story remained with him, and on many occasions he has reminded himself and his patients, 'Look out the other's window'. Try to see the world from another's perspective.
It's so relevant to many things in life such as empathy and honing our compassion for others. I think it's just awesome, and makes me want to delve into more of Yalom's writings.
Does social networking already function like a game?
Twitter is a massively multiplayer online game in which you choose an interesting avatar and then role play a persona loosely based on your own - attempting to accrue followers by repeatedly pressing lettered buttons to form interesting sentences.
It could be viewed as a game; as it's about small achievements adding up to bigger ones.
''Gameification'' means applying the mechanics of videogames to real life. Now often this boils down to incentivising people to perform the same action over and over again. Each time Mario head-butts a block, he gets a coin; when he gets one hundred coins he gets an extra life.
And these perpetual little pats on the head compel you to bash those blocks for hours!
@Koopa is now following you
Celebrities goad one another by enquiring about how many followers the other has on Twitter, adding substance to their self-worth bank account. And yet this isn't too dissimilar to when we were kids and enquired with our mates about how many 'points' you got or what their high scores on a certain game was.
By supplying a constant stream of fun-sized rewards, social networking has by accident ''gameified'' whole aspects of our lives. Every second another little gold coin (or follower) for you to collect; more followers, more retweets, compelling you to interact over and over again.
These are basically games we don't even realise we're playing.
I pretty much feel that this reading material today may be slightly taxing for being hung-the f**k-over (When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Harold Kushner); but sometimes you can't but help get roped into a few pages of thought provoking material.
''Laws of nature treat everyone alike. They do not make exceptions for good people or for useful people ... If Lee Harvey Oswald fires a bullet at President John F. Kennedy, laws of nature take over from the moment that bullet is fired. Neither the course of the bullet nor the seriousness of the wound will be affected by questions of whether or not President Kennedy was a good person, or whether the world would be better off with him alive or dead. Laws of nature do not make exceptions for nice people. A bullet has no conscience; neither does a malignant tumour or an automobile gone out of control ... '' (p. 67, 1978).
While the laws of nature have no consideration for my hangover right now; the sh*t load of burgers and absolute junk I've been throwing down my flavour shnout are putting up a fight.
This is an unobtrusive measure of attitudes in which stamped addressed envelopes are scattered in public places, as if left by accident, the proportion being posted by members of the public and turning up at the addresses on the envelopes providing a crude index of attitudes in the community.
For example, if half the envelopes are addressed to a pro-same-sex marriage organisation and half to an anti-same-sex marriage organisation, and if equal numbers of pro-same-sex marriage and anti-same-sex marriage envelopes are distributed but significantly more of the pro-same-sex marriage envelopes are returned; then it may be concluded that members of the community are more favourably disposed towards the pro-marriage than the anti-marriage cause.
The technique was introduced by the US psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933-84) and colleagues in an article in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly in 1965. Milgram's classic use of the Lost Letter Technique as a behavioural measure of attitudes showed that return rates can be influenced by the addressee written on the letter, particularly when the addressee represents a controversial organization (Milgram, 1969; 1977; Milgram et al., 1965).
Every 4 seconds someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease; a slow fatal disease of the brain affecting 1 in 10 people over the age of 65. It's the most common cause of dementia affecting over 40 million people worldwide, and yet finding a cure is something that still eludes its researchers today.
Doctor Aloysius Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist first described the symptoms in 1901, when he noticed that a particular hospital patient (Auguste Deter) had some peculiar problems; including difficulty sleeping, disturbed memory, drastic mood changes, and increasing confusion. When the patient passed away, Dr Alzheimer was able to do an autopsy and test his idea that perhaps the symptoms were caused by irregularities in the brain's structure. What he found beneath the microscope were visible differences in brain tissue; in the form of mis-folded proteins called plaques; and neurofibrillary tangles. Those plaques and tangles worked together to break down the brain's structure.
Plaques arise when another protein in the fatty membrane's surrounding nerve cells get sliced up by a particular enzyme, resulting in beta-amyloid proteins, which are 'sticky', and have a tendency to clump together. That clumping is what forms the things we know as plaques. These clumps block signalling and therefore communication between cells; and also seem to trigger immune reactions that cause the destruction of disabled nerve cells.
In Alzheimer's Disease (AD), neurofibrillary tangles are built from a protein known as tau. The brain's nerve cells contain a network of tubes that act like a highway for food molecules - among other substances. Usually, the tau-protein ensures that these tubes are straight, allowing molecules to pass through freely. But in AD, the protein collapses into twisted strands or tangles, making the tubes disintegrate - obstructing nutrients from reaching the nerve cell, and leading to cell death.
The destructive pairing of plaques and tangles starts in a region called the hippocampus - which is responsible for forming memories. This is why short-term memory loss is usually the first symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease. The proteins then progressively invade other parts of the brain, creating unique changes that signal various changes of the disease.
Pronounced neural atrophy in the AD brain
At the front of the brain, the proteins destroy the ability to process logical thoughts. Next, they shift to the region that controls emotions - resulting in erratic mood changes. At the top of the brain, they cause paranoia and hallucinations; and once they reach the brain's rear, the plaques and tangles work together to erase the mind's deepest memories. Eventually, the control centres governing heart rate and breathing are overpowered aswell, resulting in death.
The immensely destructive nature of this disease has inspired many researchers to look for a cure, but currently they're focused on slowing its progression. One temporary treatment helps reduce the breakdown of acetylcholine (ACh) - an important chemical messenger in the brain; which is decreased in Alzheimer's patients due to the death of the nerve cells that make it. Another possible solution is a vaccine that trains the bodies immune system to attack beta-amyloid plaques before they can form clumps.
My own personal interest around Alzheimer's Disease is a mixture of both fascination and abhorrence. It can afflict anyone, and does indeed become the most unwelcome of visitors to many. Alzheimer's disease has been termed ''a demographic time bomb'' (Shenk). Over 35 million people worldwide struggle with Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, according to the World Health Organization. Alzheimer's Disease was discovered more than a century ago, and yet it is still not well understood.
The progression from mild forgetting to death is slow and steady, and takes place over an average of 8 to 10 years. No one is immune. It is relentless, devastating for the sufferers and carers; and, for now, incurable.
Suffering is always hard to quantify - especially when the pain is caused by as cruel a disease as Alzheimer's. Most illnesses attack the body; Alzheimer's destroys the mind - and in the process, annihilates the very self ~ Jeffrey Kluger
Later, she made the same trip alone and was astounded to note that there were two streams - one each side of the road. ''This time I was the driver'', she said sadly, and the stream I saw was as ugly and polluted as her father had described it. But by the time she had learned to look out her father' window, it was too late - her father was dead and buried.
