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Archive for January, 2004

Jan 29

Meaningful Coincidences

We’ve all experienced it – a friend calls just as we are thinking of him, or a romantic partner has the same birthday we do. Some coincidences are small, and seemingly inconsequential, but others have the potential to change lives. What causes a coincidence to happen, and what does it mean? Is every coincidence meaningful? And what are the odds of a particular coincidence happening? This week we explore the nature of coincidence with scientists, psychotherapists, mathematicians, and people like you.

Guests include: Jungian analyst and psychotherapist Robert Hopcke, who has authored books on coincidence and the related theory of synchronicity (“Coincidences are meaningful for what they tell us about ourselves”); cognitive scientist Josh Tenenbaum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who studies how coincidences work in the brain (“They seem to be the source of some of our greatest irrationalities”); and statistician Karl Sigman at Columbia University, who computes the odds that coincidences will happen.

Read more …

Jan 29

Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce

One of the incidents that launched Joseph Campbell down the path of his life’s work was wandering into Shakespeare & Co. in Paris and picking up James Joyce’s newly published Ulysses. Now, just in time for the dual centennials of Campbell’s birth (March 26, 1904) and Bloomsday (June 16, 1904–the day in which most of Ulysses takes place), New World Library has reissued Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce, a wonderful examination of Joyce’s novels through Campbell’s mythic lens. In our downloadable media section, we have posted the “Introduction” from Mythic Worlds, which begins to look at Joyce’s work from mythological and psychological points of view.

Download the Introduction now and enjoy reading insights regarding one of the 20′th century’s greatest writers by one of its most esteemed teachers.

Jan 29

Jungian Analysis and Biology

Is analytical psychology built upon non-rational or even mystical assumptions? It seems inaccessible to many people, including many psychoanalysts, for just this reason. Noll (1994; 1997) attacked analytical psychology on the grounds that it is based in mysticism. Pietikainen (1998a) said that Jungians defend the theory of archetypes. Stevens (1997a) refuted many of Noll’s points. I address both Noll’s and Pietikainen’s critique by arguing that analytical psychology does not depend upon non-rational assumptions.

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Jan 21

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Rule 4: Never Question Anything

A friend of mine recently recounted a story at her work that sums up Unspoken Business Rule #4 very well: never question anything.

She works at a large format printing company. They do things like bus banners and big signs for trade shows. Stuff like that. So, their biggest expenses are paper and ink. Her company received a file from one of their biggest clients. The client wanted them to run 500 large format prints. However, the client accidentally sent them the wrong file – it was a much lower resolution than you would use for a large format print. My friend walked by the high-tech machine that spits these things out and noticed that the prints were extremely pixilated and didn’t look high quality at all. She asked the manager if he was sure the client had given them the correct file. Read more

Jan 13

Dollars funnel.

Rule 1: Use It Or Lose It

In the middle of just about every conference room where budget decisions are made sits a big, fat elephant. People sometimes glance at it or whisper to their peers about it but it gets little airtime. The elephant is named, “Use It Or Lose It.” This is an unspoken business law that drives more business decisions than the grandest of strategies. What is it that everyone knows but no one talks about? If you don’t spend all of your budget this year, it will be cut next year.
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Jan 11

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Rule 3: Advantage Business

One of the reasons that the corporation is generally opposed to collective bargaining is because it empowers workers and balances the power equation. Unspoken Business Rule #3 maintains that the business must maintain power over its workers.

Employee Salary – A great illustration is the fact that though the company knows what each employee’s salary is, employees must never know this information. In fact, there is a kind of established taboo against this because of the havoc it would create. This taboo serves to keep the power equation balanced in favor of the corporation. If employees began speaking to one another about their salaries and this knowledge became transparent, there would be considerable discontent over the fact that the guy sitting next to you is making more money that you for doing the same job. This would also quickly illuminate any racial or sexual discrimination in the workplace. Business has a great interest in keeping these discussions taboo.
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Jan 11

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Rule 2: Mediocrity Is Rewarded

It’s been eight years since I began my life as a professional in the American workplace. Most of my time (95%) has been spent as a management consultant. Management consulting just means providing advice to those in charge of running a business. So, that’s what I do. As a consultant, it is usually my job to deliver difficult messages and provide advice on how to improve business processes. The obesity epidemic in America serves as an excellent metaphor for American business – where business has gotten fat, lazy, and soft. I grew up in the 80′s and remember my Dad telling me horror stories about what happened to the unproductive and inefficient – they were canned without a second thought. Boy, have things changed. What happened to survival of the fittest and the great American meritocracy? Meritocracy has become mediocrity. Read more

Jan 2

The of Meaning Dreams

Throughout history, human beings have sought to understand the meaning of dreams. The ancient Egyptians believed dreams possessed oracular power in the Bible, for example, Joseph`s elucidation of Pharaoh`s dream averted seven years of famine. Other cultures have interpreted dreams as inspirational, curative or alternative reality.

During the past century, scientists have offered conflicting psychological and neuroscientific explanations for dreams. In 1900, with the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams were the royal road to the unconscious, that they revealed in disguised form the deepest elements of an individual`s inner life. More recently, in contrast, dreams have been characterized as meaningless, the result of random nerve cell activity. Dreaming has also been viewed as the means by which the brain rids itself of unnecessary information a process of reverse learning, or unlearning.

Based on recent findings in my own and other neuroscientific laboratories, I propose that dreams are indeed meaningful. Studies of the hippocampus (a brain structure crucial to memory), of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and of a brain wave called theta rhythm suggest that dreaming reflects a pivotal aspect of the processing of memory. In particular, studies of theta rhythm in subprimate animals have provided an evolutionary clue to the meaning of dreams. They appear to be the nightly record of a basic mammalian memory process: the means by which animals form strategies for survival and evaluate current experience in light of those strategies. The existence of this process may explain the meaning of dreams in human beings.

Full text [PDF] of the Scientific American article, here.