Tag: Psycho

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Holocaust Remembrance

The 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau marks a very special kind of remembrance. As the number of survivors of Nazi-terror and genocide is shrinking the testimony of survivors is becoming more rare and more precious. According to the “Jerusalem Post” on 2025-1-28 (p. 9) the number of survivors that came back to the site of horrific crime has shrunk from 300 ten years ago to 50 in 2025. The strength and courage to continue to testify amidst having reached 90+ or even 100+ years of age is a “living memorial” of its own kind.
Many television stations across Europe have followed the example set by this special Holocaust remembrance day and focused equally on recorded testimonies or additional live interviews of survivors. Please keep repeating these testimonies to confront people with the outcome of Nazi-terror in Europe. The choice this year was a courageous one. Instead of speeches of sorrow and lip service to fight antisemitism by acting politicians, the focus on the testimony of survivors in public, on TV and to large audiences will encourage others to continue to give testimonial of these horrors.
(Image: extract of Pressreader newspaper titles 2025-1-27)

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Science and Fiction

We associate with science and fiction the extrapolation of scientific trends into some futuristic settings. The most striking examples of science fiction in novels or video use some scientific findings (dinosaurs, genetic engineering) and project this knowledge into another fictional setting. The usual personal relationships follow rather predictable plots of romance, deception, violence or war.
The novel “Wellness” (Hill 2024) is also a kind of science fiction as it is based on social science evidence and builds its fictional plot firmly embedded into the social and psychological research. The attachment of references (and defending the print of those in translation) underlines the commitment to write a new type of “social science fiction”.
In this innovative style the scientific basis of psychology and sociology is then extrapolated into a fictional arrangement. Research on subjective well-being with the U-shaped form over the life course and the extrapolation of the placebo effect, which is instrumentalized for a business, derive from key topics in the social sciences. In fact, the novel and the background scientific literature in the bibliography could well figure in a social science course at university entry level. These readings constitute a 360-degree-view on personal development and social structures. Of course, social sciences move on and add new evidence on an almost daily basis, but the selection and arrangement of the characters create an innovative social science fiction, without some unrealistic technological extrapolation.
It strangely feels like we are already part of this social science fiction (compare “Klara and the sun” by Ishiguro) as politicians advocate and campaign with placebo topics in elections and project us into some more happy past or future.
The social science fiction of Nathan Hill resembles for me the great utopian novel by George Orwell “1984” published in 1948. A title “2032” instead of “Wellness” could have worked quite well, as the first edition of Nathan Hill’s social science fiction was published already in 2023. (Image: Extract of: Lo Spagnolo, 1665-1747, Hecuba makes Polymnestor blind, MRBAB).

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Wellness Sickness

There appears to be some kind of a relationship between the 2 conepts of wellness and sickness. Some would argue that the more sick you are, the more you seek wellness. Sickness seems to be the precursor of wellness for many people. Wellbeing or happiness are even higher order concepts which are only indirectly related to wellness. In an almost 600 pages science and fiction novel, Nathan Hill (Link) constructs his plot based on the psychological research on the placebo effect. With a sufficient aura around a pseudo-medication administered in a wellness clinic, the clients or some figure near the 50% random positive effects are treated with at least no negative side effects. On page 152 we find the more explicit description of how to induce a placebo effect in participants. Context, expectations, faith, symbols, metaphors and story are all ingredients for a placebo effect to work. Sometmes without knowing we receive a treatment in our childhood or throughout the life course that we work on using placebo effects to overcome them. The novel by Hill (2024) is a well researched psychological as well as sociological fiction including a bibliography, which reminds us „If you cling too hard to what you want to see, you miss what’s really there.“ (p. 496).

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On Resilience

There are at least 2 definitions of resilience: (1) a material definition points at the “ability to return to an original form or position after being compressed, extended or curved, and (2) a immaterial or psychological definition. The latter one describes the ability to recover, be happy or successful anew having overcome a bad or challenging experience. The American psychological literature defines resilience in the shortest form as “positive adaptation despite adversity”. The psychological construct is linked to a positive life span perspective of personal development. Other areas of application range from “resilient investments”, “resilient industries” to single resilient societies or intergovernmental organizations like the European Union or NATO.
The challenges to resilience increase with complexity of societies and social as well as technical systems. As supply chains have become longer in time and travelling longer distances as well, the improvement of resilience has become a steep challenge for globalization. Reorganizing supply chains with “own sourcing” as in countries which are cut-off from international trade will have huge consequences on sending and receiving countries.
Last, but not least, countries like Ukraine demonstrate the fact and virtue of resilience after more than 1000 days of the massive Russian invasion of its country, which threatened its survival. Resilience works best in networks of organizations and countries. Solidarity is a fundamental building block of resilience as well. Donations and funds support activities that foster resilience.

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On ambiguity

Ambiguity is defines as something which can have more than precisely defined meaning. In legal affairs or other domains this may cause confusion and invites discussions or clarification. It has become even a personality trait and a competence to endure ambiguity. If a manager distributes tasks, ambiguity creates a potential for misunderstanding. However, ambiguity may also leave room for self-organization that people might like or be afraid of. Hence. handling of ambiguity is something of a skill that you are able to operate in less well or even undefined situations or circumstances. In such cases you have make decisions yourself and take responsibility later on for your decision. Creating ambiguity or ambiguous situations is a technique in art as well. To throw into doubt what previously was the received wisdom challenges people and institutions. The ways to handle ambiguity become a challenge to the performance of individuals or institutions. In dialectic thinking you think of something as well as the opposite. The result is an ambiguity which you might want to resolve. Quantum physics created a similar challenge to classical physics as more than one kind of behavior of particles is possible. Ambiguity might be more the rule than the exception despite our continuous efforts to disentangle ambiguity.

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Bi-directional Sleep

For most of us bi-directional sleep is a question of sleeping on the left or right side, or on our back or front, head left or right. In immunology bi-directionality of sleep has another meaning. The immune system is linked to sleep in a bi-directional manner. Good sleep enhances the immune response of cells (direction 1) and infected blood cells for example send a signal to the brain to extend sleep. The study by Huynh et al. (2024) in Nature has demonstrated this bi-directional mechanism. It allowed mice who slept well after an imposed heart attack to recover in a better way than those whose sleep got interrupted during the experiment. The most natural response to a heart attack or acute coronary syndrome is more sleep. This is induced by an inflammatory reaction in the brain, which « orders » your body to increase deep sleep. 😴 Sleep is more than just rest, it may be part of healing. ❤️‍🩹 (people looking at Caspar David Friedrich „Infinite Landscapes“, exhibition Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin 2024)

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Theatre Artists

Performances in the theatre are called pieces. The artists performing are actors of a play. The « Théâtre de la Madelaine », which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2024 puts on a new production in celebration of the biography of the famous painter Claude Monet.
«Dans les Yeux de Monet » is the inspirational title of the play written by Cyril Gely and scenario by Tristan Petitgirard. Looking through the eyes of Monet puts you into the sometimes tormented head of the great artist. The challenge Monet faces is his very own perspective on a new vision for painting. In order to capture the impression of the cathedral of Rouen on him, he experiments with colours and lighting to capture just the right moment in time. Interesting to remember, there is not just one single moment he paints, but many versions of it with each realization offering a special insight or impression. Just on the sideline we learn about the importance of plurality rather than the one and only unique moment in time.
His own personal difficulties of sufficient funding for his art work and the depression he struggled with are well represented in the script and by the actors.
Galerists as well as donors (Mäzene) encourage artists, but somehow may also contribute to the pressure on artists to produce more creative work. Precariousness of living and living conditions are often a corollary of creativity or the creative process. This is a usually forgotten part of the biography of many past and present artists. Artists have and still contribute so much to humanity, but in most countries the public or private support for artists is sketchy. This remains a societal challenge particularly during times of employment and skill shortages in OECD countries.

 

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Happy Employee

The research on happiness, subjective well-being or overall satisfaction with your life is also an empirical question. Analyses of being happy donot only focus of overall happiness, but look much more into the details of happiness. Beyond the tricky longitudinal observations of happiness it is common scientific practice to deal with subdomains of happiness like satisfaction of employees with their job, satisfaction with one’s job beyond the honeymoon and hangover effect, best known from family studies.
Each of those subdomains has a significant effect on overall happiness. The novel “Happy Life” by David Foenkinos is an interesting example which focuses mainly on the subdomains of job satisfaction, satisfaction with private and romantic partners as the major domains of a happy life. As developed in the novel, people make job changes to re-orientate professional careers or reset their private life. A low point on the happiness scale in one domain might be compensated by higher levels in another domain. These impact from one domaine to another might have substantial time lags involved as well. More drastic resets (à la Foenkinos) can be avoided through focus on other subdomains of overall happiness as well.
How happy are you with your housing situation, neighborhood, your pet, your physical health? There a multiple +/-spill-over effects to overall happiness. Reading a novel might be one as well, just take time reserved to yourself.(Image BnF expo “women in sport”, 20024)

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Burden of Disease

For the planning of health and care systems it is important to measure the so-called burden of disease within societies or related to specific diseases or social groups. A large-scale analysis of several longitudinal data bases of the populations 50 years of age and older shows that we have underestimated the burden of disease to societies of psychiatric disorders, like depression, in most societies.
A meta-study and overview of previous studies showed already that depression (age 60+) is more common in lower-income countries (between 25 and 33% of 60+population age group). High income countries, studied by Wang et al. 2024 in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, have rates of depression well below these levels, but a link to socioeconomic status, inactivity and loneliness is still evidenced. A five-year follow-up of persons aged 50+ years shows that the probability to develop a depression (hazard rate) is twice as high for persons with low socioeconomic status, who were socially
inactive and lonely than for socially active, high socioeconomic status and did not feel lonely at the beginning of measurement. The conclusion of the research highlights the need to develop and implement integrated and simultaneous initiatives to addressed the growing burden of disease related to depression in older persons. (Image, Jules Desbois, “Misery” 1887-89, Musée Rodin, Paris)

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Less is better

There is an interesting psychological phenomenon which is called the less-is-better effect. First research on this phenomenon dates back to marketing research more than 25 years ago. The Olympic games have even a mention on the English Wikipedia page on this less-is-better effect. The winner of a bronze medal at the Olympics might feel more happy than the winner of a silver medal. Why? Viewed as separate events winning a bronze medal makes can make you so much happier, because you are among the famous group of medallists in your discipline or with your team, whereas as a silver medallist you might be so disappointed that you did not reach the gold medal that this overrides the joy to come 2nd instead of 3rd. Several interviews of athletes during the Paris 2024 Games gave evidence of the pertinence of this less-is-better effect.
There are other forms of application of this rationale as well. A more sociological perspective highlights the potential change of category from less is more to the less-is-better rationale. One variable assessed in less and more frequency or value maybe better or worse in another category. Less pollution leads to better health. It is like a shift from a quantitative variable to a qualitative assessment of the same situation. Olympic Games are full of useful lessons from a social science point of view. Although, more can be worse.