Welcome to Mental Health Awareness Month 2015! I have o lot planned for this month, and the focus is, if you haven’t already figured it out, on mental health, not mental illness. Here’s how the month will look, from blog post to blog post:

Welcome and Pschoanalysis

The Cognitive Shift

Positive Psychology

Birth Order

Neuroplasticity

The Bystander Effect

Follow The Leader

The Lake Wobegon Effect

Ericsson’s 10,000-Hour Rule

Consciousness

Rosenhan’s Insane Places

The Principles Of Cognitive Therapy One & Two

Three & Four

Five & Six

Seven & Eight

Nine & Ten

This should prove to be a very interesting and entertaining month, if I do say so myself. I welcome all comments and questions, honestly. Anything I don’t know I’m always willing to look up or find out for you. I’m awfully good about that.

Which brings us to our first topic, fascinating as it is, psychoanalysis. I did an incredibly short stint (he was retiring) at real psychoanalysis with the most gently sweet older gentleman I’d ever met. And, though I didn’t lie down on a couch, I knew I was part of something very old and respected. Now, when I watch episodes of “Mad Men,” when I see Don’s wife enter therapy and it’s during the late 50’s, early 60’s, and seemed automatically psychoanalytical, couch and everything, it just makes me smile. Such a parody, you know?

Sigmund Freud founded psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries as a way to understand behavior. Freud, most of us know, believed the personality is made of three parts: the id, ego, and superego. The id looks only for pleasure and wants immediate gratification. The ego is pulled back and forth by the id and superego, which causes something like personality conflicts. The superego sort of punishes the ego with guilt when the ego gets overwhelmed by the id’s demands, becomes neurotic, and  gives in to them.

As a side note, Freud has been accused of distorting evidence to support his theories. Things that make you go hmmm. 🙂

Have a great day!

Ciao, Bella.