Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.2013-05-24T05:05:34-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=jane-g-goldberg-phdCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.Good old fashioned elbow grease.My Rape; My Illegal Abortion; My Almost Dying: Reflections from 1968tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20230952012-10-31T16:04:29-04:002012-12-31T05:12:01-05:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
I waited a long time after he left to start screaming again. Finally, one of my roommates heard my desperate pleas. She called the police; I went into shock, and was brought to the hospital. My neck was stitched up from the razor blade slice, which was way too scarily close to my jugular. The hospital took their version of a rape kit -- including determining whether or not I had ovulated.
I returned to the hospital three days later, and was told that, indeed, I had ovulated, and that there was a possibility that I had become pregnant. They informed me that abortion was illegal, even in case of rape. They were sorry.
I arranged an illegal abortion. The abortionist was an M.D., and that felt safe to me. I went to my regular gynecologist, and informed him that I was having an illegal abortion the next day, and asked if I could come to him if there were any problems.
After the abortion, I was staying with a friend. (I never went back to the rape apartment -- not even to get my belongings.) Three days later, I was still feeling a great deal of pain, still bleeding and I had a fever. And then I went a little mad. I thought I heard the door of the apartment open - and yelled out for my friend. He didn't answer. I imagined that the rapist had found me again, and was coming back. When my friend finally arrived home, I begged him not to take me to a mental hospital. I was ranting like a crazy person that I was not crazy. My friend took me to my gynecologist instead.
I had a raging infection. A "foot" had been left in my womb. My doc performed a DNC; I was given blood transfusions and rather massive amounts of antibiotics. I was in the hospital for two weeks. Some of my visitors were the police (again) asking for the name of the abortionist (which they did not get).
The infection caused scar tissue in my fallopian tubes. I was unable to have children of my own. I adopted my beautiful baby many years later.
I don't want a single other woman to have to endure what I went through -- both physically and emotionally. My fear and sense of danger lurking outside my bedroom window lasted for ten years. My story is only one of so many/too many of those days when abortion was illegal, and women lost their lives and their fertility. Let this not happen to our country again.]]>In Defense of Slow and Tedious: Quick-Fix Therapy or the Kind That Takes 'Forever'?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15554352012-05-31T15:05:24-04:002012-07-31T05:12:17-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/New York Times published an article by psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert, "In Therapy Forever? Enough Already" (April 21, 2012), there has been lively debate within the psychotherapeutic community about the benefits of short-term, goal-oriented, advice-driven therapy vs. the longer, open-ended, free-associative linguistic wandering brand espoused and practiced by psychoanalysts. The lengthiness of treatment is a question that Freud, the originator of the notion "interminable" analysis, himself asked. He experimented for a time with what we might call today, "speed therapy" (comparable to "speed dating" -- first impressions count for all). Ultimately, he wasn't particularly impressed with the results. But Freud's goal (in this seemingly "goalless" endeavor) was radically different from the goal of today's popular short-term -- often with adjunctive psychotropic drugs -- therapies. Perhaps the best way of describing the difference is that the goal of short-term therapy is to feel "better," which can translate into feeling "less." On the other hand, the goal of psychoanalysis is to feel both "deeper" and more "outward" which, at least in the beginning of the process, might translate into feeling "more" and "worse."
Psychoanalysis is different from all other forms of psychotherapy in that most treatments of the psyche support the ego (that part of the self that we identify as "me"). Psychoanalysis both expands the ego and gives it deeper roots. Support builds upward; expansion goes outward, which then allows for steadier building upward. You get more support if you build a 10-story building that has a ground floor support area of 10,000 square feet than a 20-story building that has only 5,000 square feet supporting it. You've got the same square footage in both buildings, but a strong wind might topple the taller building. So, too, with the ego. It is supported by the drives, impulses, feelings and desires -- by all the stuff that we often try to squash down, the stuff that we generally think of as "crazy" or irrational. Unless we give sufficient strength to all the materials constituting the foundational support, the ego built on top will be weak and fragile.
For Freud, the discovery of the unconscious (wherein resides the stuff that is under the building) changed his game plan. He noticed that when the unconscious comes into play, things are not necessarily as they seem. The unconscious can twist things; it can reshape and redefine reality -- make us see things that are not there, or not see things that are there. It can be our best friend, leading us to magnificent insights and creative discoveries, or it can be our worst enemy, torturing us with repetitions of the past that we would rather disown as parts of ourselves. Long before the scientific discoveries in quantum physics of nonlinear processes, unstable states of atoms, hybrid molecular structures, Freud developed a method of inquiry for a science of the invisible -- for the uncanny, the surprise, the accidents of language, the inexplicable thoughts, feelings and behaviors, for dreams, and more.
In "Analysis Terminable and Interminable," Freud quotes Goethe's Faust: "So muss denn doch die Hexe dran!" ("We must call the Witch to our help after all!"). Throughout the ages, skilled men and women have known the art of enchantment. Perhaps it can be said that the skilled analyst knows, like the magi or shamans of other cultures, how to understand magical and baffling effects. This is, of course, because we know how to work with the unconscious. In the world of the psyche, all magic and mystery derives from the unknown arena of the unconscious -- that which we can't see, hear, taste, smell or touch.
In analysis, we learn how to capture the energy of the unconscious, and to transform it into a force for healing. In stories of magic, the hero, who is usually in the beginning of the tale unwise and powerless, must learn to absorb the powers of the sorcerer. Too, the patient can be, at the beginning of the analysis, quite unwise and powerless. During the analysis, patient and analyst explore, through a unique form of dialogue, how the patient has created his psychic universe, and he is then enabled to grasp onto the power of being his own master. As Benjamin Wong has said of the radical conversation that is psychoanalysis, though at times it may look pointless to an outsider, it is a first step toward the introduction of new lines of communication between affect and reason.
Psychoanalysis is a method of time-travel, a journey back to our individual pasts. Freud likened the work to archeology. It is an archeological dig into the soil of the psyche. It is hard labor, tedious, time-consuming and delicate. But at the end, we are able to reconstruct the lost civilizations of our minds. Our own lost memories, like ancient civilizations, are buried under the heavy sands of repression, or they are like the civilizations of fragmented personalities lying on top of the original construction. Yet, the old self, the original self, lies underneath, waiting to be excavated. The past, which is still defining for each of us our unique present, is put together piece by piece, leading then to a better future.
What is at question, then, in the debate about short-term vs. long-term therapy is not how long the treatment takes. It is, rather, the existence, and the desirability (or not) of working with the unconscious. And yes, Alpert is correct: Not all patients want the longer, deeper archeological excavation, some want the short-version fix -- which can, at times, give faster symptom relief results.
I remember fondly one young man, Sam, who came to me with a specific question. He wanted to know whether he loved his girlfriend enough to marry her. He explained that she told him that she missed him when they weren't together; she said that she looked forward to being with him and was eager to share with him her experiences since the last time they were together. He, on the other hand, never missed her when they weren't together, never had any real excitement about the prospect of seeing her, and never thought about what he would want to talk to her about when they got together. He questioned whether he really loved her.
During the course of the 10 sessions that we had (surely a number that Alpert would heartily endorse), Sam seemingly parenthetically (he didn't see it as particularly relevant to the task at hand) revealed that his mother suffered from quite a serious case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He explained that in the beginning of her disease, she would take a half-hour to leave the house, needing to check on locks, on the stove, on anything that came to her mind that she might be leaving unfinished. The half-hour quickly morphed into an hour. By the time my patient had reached 14, his mother's pathology had become a four-hour ritual. At that point, the father decided it would simply be more efficient to move into the car, thus shortening the ordeal of the time consumption of leaving the house. And thus, from 14-18 years of age, ending only when Sam went away to college, he lived much of his life in a car. When I asked him where he slept, he said, with only a whiff of irony: "I had the DE-LUXE backseat as my bed."
Such a case would be a field-day for any analyst. But my patient wasn't interested in any of the questions that came to my mind. Sam spent his 10 sessions speaking philosophically and neutrally about the meaning of love, and exploring what he felt he could bring to this relationship in a loving way. Sam used his "speed therapy" effectively to his specific emotional
needs at that time, and left in a satisfied state.
A longer therapeutic experience might have led Sam to ask questions like what did he want from a relationship, why is he so disconnected from his feelings, might there be a relationship between his mother's pathology and his emotional disconnection, what is the origin of his uncertainty of his ability to love, would he like to be more connected to his feelings.
The choice of what to want to know and what to not want to know lies with the patient. To a great extent, a larger extent than most of us realize, the choice of what to know, and what to not know, lies with the unconscious and our interest in coming to be friendly and familiar with it. As my mentor Hyman Spotnitz used to say: "An analyst can't be more ambitious for the patient than the patient is for himself."
If you would like to see all letters written to the New York Times in response to Jonathan Alpert's article, as well as other interesting tidbits from analysts, go to http://www.freudianachachacha.wordpress.com.
For more on mental health, click here.]]>The Joy (And Benefits) Of Skippingtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9785572011-09-23T17:59:52-04:002011-11-23T05:12:02-05:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
Skipping and running are close cousins to each other. But if running generates from our fight/flight reflex in the brain, skipping originates more from our pleasure center. Running is akin to an animal intentionally moving away or toward an object; skipping is more akin to an animal frolicking in a field with unparalleled freedom and joy. Think about it -- do you ever see
runners laughing? Usually they are grimacing. Skipping is exercise, but it is also play. The National Institute for Play believes that it is essential for play to be woven into the fabric of our social interactions, and that doing so transforms our personal health, our relationships, the education we provide for our children, as well as the capacity of our corporations to innovate in
creative ways.
There's virtually no learning curve for skipping. As a child, you learned it simply by observing someone else doing it. As an adult, you still remember how to do it, even though you may not have done it for 40 years.
Skipping burns about twice as many calories as walking and is aerobic like running with none of the disadvantages. It has less impact on joints, as it's all done on your toes and the front of your feet, and this area has great natural padding. This cushioning protects all the bones and joints in your legs as well as your back. Skippers do not generally get injured to the extent that
runners do.
The health benefits of skipping are as good as rebounding -- which is generally considered to be the number one premier form of exercise for over-all health benefits. In both skipping and rebounding, there is the flight up to the top of your journey: all fluids in your body are moving downward as your body leaps upward. Then, there is the instant of glory, the moment that you're in the air, suspended, defying gravity, countering the law that keeps us bound to earth's surface as well as defying (if only for that instantaneous moment) the major force that ages us. And then you begin your descent downward and suddenly, all fluids in your body are moving
as your body was the instant before -- upward. Your fluids and your body contradict each other -- one moves up as the other moves down, and vice versa.
Skipping is versatile: it can be done in large outdoor areas, or indoors in your cramped-size kitchen.
Skipping is a serious form of exercise training in Eastern Europe. Skipping, as a training technique for superior athletic performance, started in the 1970s when the Eastern bloc countries began to produce competitive athletes in track and field and gymnastics. American trainers began to study the training techniques of these athletes, and discovered the secret of their success: plyometrics.
What distinguishes plyometrics from other training techniques is that it links strength with speed of movement to produce power. Plyometric exercises enable a muscle to reach maximum strength is as short a time as possible. The coupling of speed with strength results in an increase in power. Many plyometric exercises involve jumping. All forms of jumping are included: jumping after running; jumping while standing still; jumping straight up in the air; jumping laterally; jumping over boxes. Skipping is a low-impact variation of plyometric jumping, and is included in most conditioning programs in Eastern European countries.
Beginning skippers usually try to put a lot of bounce into their skips. They quickly discover that a long or high skip takes a lot of energy. An alternative to a big skip is one that is slower and lower to the ground. Skippers can make up creative skipping variations: you can try ones that I have created: the "butterfly skip" (flap your arms while skipping); the "airplane skip" (arms go straight out); or, try the backwards skip or the sideways skip. Another cousin of skipping is galloping -- another fun activity. Galloping (I call it the "horse skip") involves not switching back and forth from leg to leg.
Skipping can be combined with other exercise programs. It works especially well as an adjunct to walking and running. Skipping should be an essential part of play with children, but unlike other children's sports, the adults shouldn't be watching from the sidelines. It's a participatory sport, and when you skip with children, you will immediately enter into their child-like mood
of feeling care-free.
The best shoes to skip in are running shoes in which the fronts of the shoes angle up. Some of the more expensive running shoes don't have this feature. You need maximum flexibility for the front half of the shoe, and the upward tilt at the front will give you that.
Skipping is as a form of exercise and means of movement is as old as the Bible. It is mentioned in several places: for instance, Songs of Solomon says, "Behold he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills". The book of Malachi says, "But for you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with healing in his wings; and you will gambol like calves out of the stall." (Webster's defines "gambol" as "skipping or leaping about in play: a frolicking movement.")
Recently, there has been a vigorous interest in adult skipping. Skipping advocates declared July 31, 2011 to be the official Skipping Up and Down the Street Day, and there was a Skip-Fest in Toronto in celebration. Ashrita Furman is the fastest skipper in the world. He holds more Guinness World Records than anyone and two of the recoords are skipping related. In August
of 2003, he set the record for skipping the fastest marathon (26.2 miles) in 5 hours 55 min 13 sec in Canada. In February 2007, Ashrita set the world record for skipping the fastest 5K in 35 minutes and 19 seconds. This skip was a bit unusual, as Ashrita ran the race in Thailand at a monastery while holding a tiger on a leash. The beast and man did fine up to the end of the
race, when Ashrita did his usual end-of-race spurt; the tiger misunderstood, and thought Ashrita was running away from him and went into attack mode; it took four handlers to restrain the animal.
Don't get discouraged -- even if skipping with a tiger is not your particular challenge. Skipping is so aerobic, and uses muscles that are not used to being used so strenuously that you'll only be able to do a little at a time. But that's another one of its beauties. It's so magnificently efficient.
"The opposite of play is not work, it is depression."
Brian Sutton-Smith
Dr. Goldberg is the founder of three holistic spas and wellness centers: La Casa Resort Spa in the Puerto Rican rainforest, La Casa Day Spa in NYC and Insparations, the day spa at the 92nd Street Y, also in NYC. She is a prolific writer in the fields of psychoanalysis and holistic health, having published numerous scholarly articles and authored 11 books, including the acclaimed book on relationships, The Dark Side of Love.
Check out Dr. Goldberg on Twitter @JaneGoldbergNY, and sign up for her musings here.]]>Psychoanalysis: A Treatment of the Soultag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9041392011-08-26T12:33:00-04:002011-10-26T05:12:01-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
When Freud began his study of the human psyche more than 100 years ago, he was expanding on a long history of words as healers. In pre-modern cultures, the verb "to name" and "to be" are the same. Naming a thing with a word gives it existence. The Greeks, too, recognized the immense healing power of words. Revered even more than the physician, who could heal the body, was the person who could bring "cheering speech" to the soul. The Judeo-Christian culture tells us that first there was light, but after that the whole rest of the world was created through God's speech. "In the beginning was the word." Words are divine; words give birth to life. Freud was also drawing on the ancient tradition of storytelling. People had been singing, telling and acting out stories for thousands of years. Before the 1800s, the vast majority of people couldn't read. Folk tales and ballads were a primary means of addressing the fears, frustrations and horrors of life. Perhaps we could even say that the minstrels were the first "psychotherapists."
Freud was interested in the unspoken word even before he discovered the unconscious and psychoanalysis. His first interest was in aphasia, a breakdown in the accessibility of words because of a lesion in the brain. When he later utilized the method of free association, he discovered another kind of unspoken word. He found that if we silence the normal operations of our everyday conversational speech, when we temporarily cast aside reason and logic and our almost instinctual inclination to judge our thoughts and feelings, another language presents itself to us. This is the language of the unconscious. The unconscious is our inner speech. The unconscious connects us to our soul.
Freud had deep respect not only for storytelling, but also for the spiritual notion of "soul," as well. Freud made no secret of his disdain for religion and religious doctrine, interpreting them as unnecessary and immature crutches that men sometimes need, and comparing religion to neurosis (the "universal obsessional neurosis of humanity"), psychosis and infantilism. There is ample evidence, though, that Freud did maintain a deep sense of spirituality related to the precepts of Jewish mysticism, and that his spirituality led him to conceptualize psychoanalysis as a treatment for the soul. In outlining his vision for the future of psychoanalysis, he said: "I want to entrust [psychoanalysis] to a profession that doesn't yet exist, a profession of secular ministers of souls ... " Later, he said: "Psychoanalysis is a part of psychology which is dedicated to the science of the soul," and he continued by stating that his life's work had been devoted to understanding as fully as possible "the world of man's soul."
Freud's conceptualization of his discipline as soul-work is evidenced by his choice of the very term of the endeavor: "psychoanalysis." When he decided on this rather complicated German word to describe his new technique, he thought carefully about the meaning of the term, the hidden meanings as well as the overt ones, for his science was a study of hidden meanings. Freud had a dichotomy in mind when he combined the two Greek root words psyche and analysis. He knew that the words contrasted strongly to one another. Analysis connotes reason and logic. It suggests a kind of mindfulness, a scientific taking-apart in order to see and understand component parts. The etymological definition of the word psyche, on the other hand, is "soul." It suggests just the opposite: It refers to a kind of etherealness, a softer essence with the connotations of beauty, fragility and insubstantiality that connect with the soul. There is the suggestion inherent in the word psyche that great respect, care and consideration should be rendered in this technique.
Psychoanalysis, then, is a fusion: It is a study and an experience. It is both eminently rational/scientific and completely irrational/spiritual. It is heavy, weighty and grounded, as well as light, airy and spacious.
Too, Freud would have known that there was an earlier meaning to the root word psyche, and this earlier meaning gave his new science added depth. As well as meaning "soul," psyche also meant "butterfly." The soul is a liberated being. It flies. It is not bound by earthly restraints, not by the weight of the body or by gravity. Psychoanalysis, the understanding of the soul, leads us to the freedom of flight.
Yet butterflies, every school-age child knows, begin as ugly, wormy larvae. One would never predict that a thing of such beauty could emerge from a thing of such ugliness. When Freud chose the term "psychoanalysis," he was sensitive not only to the meanings of the root word psyche as "soul" and as "butterfly," but he must have had in mind, as well, the transformative connotation of the word. Beyond infancy, after the point at which we can begin to disconnect from our selves, soul flight is still possible. But in order to be released from our own weightiness, in order to be free as a butterfly, to see the world from an overview, we must first make the journey inward, to our own underground. We must pupate.
Most of us today are not aware that psychoanalysis was a treatment that was originally designed to return people to their souls. When Freud's work was imported into this country and taken hold of by the medical profession, the translation of his words changed his meaning. Wherever Freud used the word psyche, referring to soul, it was translated into "mind." (The German word for mind is "geistig" and bears no relation to the word "psyche" that Freud chose.) The translations, then, rather than instilling a deep feeling for what is most human in all of us, attempt to lure the reader into developing a strictly scientific attitude toward men and his actions. What Freud had intended as a spiritual quest became, instead, a medical methodology, and psychoanalysis lost its connection to its original concept of searching for one's soul.
One of my first psychoanalytic teachers confessed that the main change in her since her (she claims) successful analysis was that she took up knitting. If you have a theory that addresses the "mind," then becoming able to take up knitting doesn't sound very impressive. But if the theory posits that it is the soul, too, that is touched in this process, then freeing your fingers to knit, or to play Chopsticks at a party because the spirit moves you to be silly (as one of my patients, a concert pianist who had spent his life being serious, reported that he had done recently), or freeing your voice to begin singing lessons after a lifetime of believing that you were incapable of carrying a tune (as I did at the age of 45) -- these are all sea changes. These are mind-changes, but they are brain-changes as well.
We now have documented evidence from research conducted by Jeffrey Schwartz, wherein he took PET scans of brains of individuals both before and after psychotherapy, that the "talking cure" changes and normalizes brain activity. When you make these changes on the levels of the mind, the psyche and the brain, you have created a different world that the soul is able to inhabit. The soul longs for that kind of freedom. The soul can thrive only in that kind of freedom.
It is easy to understand how the early 20th century physicians made the mistake of inserting "mind" instead of "soul" as the object of study in psychoanalysis. In our modern world, most of us have been raised to value mind, to diminish the importance of feelings and to doubt altogether the concept of a soul that is organic and living within us. As a result of these dismissive views of the various aspects of self, mind and body are split off from soul, and the self becomes divided within itself. The soul becomes separated from the rest of the self.
When I observe in my work that my patients' souls are out of sync, or are separated from the rest of who they are, I think of a visual metaphor, a series of concentric circles of ever-increasing sizes, each lying on top of the others, each representing a different aspect of self-being. These various selves normally develop with conflicts and contradictions, yet with an essential integration, into the complex personalities that give definition to a whole self. However, when my patients experience a kind of psychic disequilibrium, the concentric circles of their various selves no longer lie on top of one another. Rather, they have become askew. The innermost concentric circle, representing the innermost self, or the soul, no longer supports all the rest of the various selves that should have developed outward from that center. There is no convergence of meaning between the center and the rest.]]>Just Wordstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9041382011-08-06T11:45:00-04:002011-10-06T05:12:01-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/'Just words' is how he engages the country," Sorensen said in a moment of peevedness.
"Just words" is also what it is that we humans do best, and what represents us at the pinnacle of what it means to be human. Words are not just what creates coherence (or divisiveness) in a country, but words create the foundation of us all -- the self. Words are what give us definition. And usually, the first words we hear as newborns are the words of our mother. It is primarily through language that the journey into a mature and separate self takes place. When we are fused, when there is only symbiotic oneness, only one "us" and no separation in this "us-ness," there is no need for words. At first the language is all coos and goos, the language of pre-words. Then the sounds become words, and the words become attached to meaning. The mother gives voice to her own thoughts and feelings in order to enable the child to understand and give complex expression of his own thoughts and feelings.
The relationship between mother and child is an ever-evolving dialogue. It is the basic dialogue of human love, beginning with the unconditional love of their state of oneness and then maturing into separation. Language is the sine qua non of emotional maturation. Language is what enables the self to have a solid foundation. Language is what allows us to digest feelings throughout the psyche. Language integrates body, mind and soul. Language can bring us together, but it is also what separates us. Language defines an "I" and a "you." Language is what gives us the rich medley of expression of our various feeling and thought processes. Language both grounds us in our bodies, holding us back by its very limitations, and frees us as our words take flight, escaping from us in their airborne journey to the ears of another.
Language is powerful because it helps us to more effectively get what we want. "No Mommy, not the chocolate cookie, the vanilla one." It enables us to communicate what we feel and think -- "Mommy, I hate you" or, "Mommy, I love you."
Language also allows us to deceive. Once you have language, you can think and feel one thing and say another. Language is what gets con-men millions of unfairly extracted dollars. It's what gets married men to seduce unsuspecting women into being their mistresses for years based on false, promised hope. It's what gets adolescent boys to convince their all-too-willing-to-believe mothers that they're not doing drugs. Language may represent the best of us, the thing that separates us from the animals, but it is also the thing that allows us to be utterly false.
When Freud was developing his comprehensive theory of psychic/mental functionality (and dysfunctionality), he emphasized words. Words became both the treatment and the cure for psychic disorders.
In developing his theory and technique of psychoanalysis, Freud often referred back to the Greeks. The Greeks saw the close relationship of the gods of love (Eros), sleep (Hypnos) and death (Thanatos). It was because of the Greeks' belief in the soul that these gods were so paramount in their mythology. These three gods shared the quality of limb-relaxation. The soul remains encased in the body, and it is only when we are supine, when the muscles of our body are relaxed enough, that the soul is set free. In telling his patients to lie on the couch, Freud evoked the limb-relaxing quality of Hypnos. The state of the analytic patient is like sleep. The patient is in a relaxed position, lying on the couch, arms at the sides and legs uncrossed. But in spite of this bodily relaxation, the mind remains awake and alert.
Freud discovered that when his patients were in this limb-relaxed state, they would say unordinary things, things that had formerly been unsayable. The edict the analyst gives to the patient after he has taken the couch is to talk (in silent hope that the patient will come to feel free enough in the session to say the unsayable). Talking -- placing all thoughts and feelings into words -- was Freud's method of cure for the disease of our being perched precariously between life and death, the never-ending conflict between our contradictory drives. Through the act of talking, the destructive aspects of the power of Thanatos are tamed, the constructive energy behind aspects of Eros is liberated and the two drives can co-exist without undue pain or disharmony.
The analyst instructs the patient to take the couch and say what comes to his mind, to talk about whatever he wants the analyst to know about him, to tell his life story, beginning wherever he wants and ending wherever he wants. The patient is both biographer and protagonist of the story he chooses to tell. In giving the instruction to talk, the analyst is challenging the patient to remain free and childlike in thought and feeling, yet mature in his ability to utilize language as his vehicle of self-exploration.
The emphasis on pure talking with no other addendums -- no eye contact, no bodily gestures -- is what uniquely defines psychoanalysis, separates it from all other therapeutic methods. All methods of psychotherapy aid the patient in coming to know his thoughts and feelings, but psychoanalysis uniquely makes the articulation of thoughts and feelings the very definition of cure. And, ironically, the supreme emphasis on words means that they come to have very little meaning. I think of the language of analysis as "throw-away words." Once the words have been said, the mission has succeeded. Once the thought or feeling has been spoken, it is released and can then disappear into the stratosphere. Those words that seem particularly precious can be re-captured at any time. The others can remain as throw-aways.
The process between patient and analyst is, if nothing else, a conversation. Patient and analyst engage in the exchange of words. This is essentially all they do: talk. It doesn't matter whether you want to call this method of talk science (as some psychoanalysts claim), art (as most psychoanalysts claim) or hogwash (as critics of psychoanalysis claim). The one thing that is indisputable is that the patient comes to tell a story about himself. In fact, the patient has decided to be in this process of self-examination largely because the story that he has been telling himself has either stopped or become too painful. The analyst listens to the story and talks back, and they continue doing this specific kind of dialoguing as long as the conversation is either useful, interesting, pleasurable or even painful but ultimately gratifying in some way. The dialogue continues in a successful analysis until the story begins to move again. One might even develop a clear beginning and end of the story line, a cogent story that comes to have rational meaning. For a while it doesn't even matter whether the story has the authenticity of truth. The analyst suspends disbelief (as Freud originally did when his patients told him that they were being sexually abused by fathers, uncles, friends of the family) in order to enter the emotional reality of the patient. It is only later that the analyst must take on the difficult job of aiding the patient to move toward reality, into an accurate rendering of his life story. The maturing adult, then, is a storyteller who is continually in the process of reliving and revising his memories, continually re-finding his identity, continually re-forging the shape of his very selfhood.]]>From Symbiosis to Separation: Seeing and Touching, Part 2tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8995112011-08-01T08:25:00-04:002011-10-01T05:12:01-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
In the 1950s, British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott described the process of the mother gazing at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazing back at the mother's face and "finding himself therein" (an often repeated phrase in psychoanalytic circles). We know from more recent research, however, that the kind of intense gazing that these theories of bonding were developed to explain is limited to mother/daughter interaction. A 1-day-old girl baby will look at her mother's face. A 1-day-old boy baby, however, prefers to find a mobile in his field of vision. Within the next three months, mutual face gazing between mother and daughter will increase by over 400 percent 1. A daughter will use her mother's face as a visual mirror in the same way she uses her mother's voice as an acoustic mirror. The boys, however, in the same three months, will still prefer staring at the mobile 2. This difference is simply a hard-wired fact.
Previously, infant researchers understood the difference to signify that girls were more "needy" of symbiosis than boys. We know now, however, that face-gazing arises not out of greater "neediness" in females, but rather from a skill, interest and motivation for personal contact that is stronger in girls than in boys. Girls look for and want emotional communication. They want it at the age of 1-day-old, and they want it still at the age of 80.
Infants, as well as seeking out their mothers through sight, want to be touched. They are actually born already used to being touched. It is one of the aspects of continuity from pre- to post-natal life. The fetus' skin is constantly caressed and stroked by the mother's heartbeat and digestive sounds as well as by the vibrations of her voice. The intense labor contractions that the uterus makes in child-birth give tactile stimulation to the baby's internal organs, preparing the baby for independent life.
It is documented that parents touch their daughters more frequently than their sons. As well as the female brain being hard-wired from birth for more contact, it seems that mothers and fathers stimulate the brains of their daughters to be receptive to more tactile contact. The female brain, then, becomes wired -- from exposure to early stimulation as well as from genetic birthright -- to be more relational, more interested in inter-personal connection.
The skin and the brain both develop from the same embryonic tissue. We should think of the skin as an external brain, exquisitely sensitive to stimulation. When we stimulate the skin through touch, we stimulate brain development. In the infant, touch serves the same function as a mother bear's licking of her cub: it enhances immune function, it enlivens the bodily systems into action. Antibody production is increased, a life-long advantage conferred onto the baby. Too, touching increases the production of the growth hormone, the master hormone that regulates all endocrine functions of the body.
If a mother is separated from her infant for too long, immune system depression occurs 3. When production of the growth hormone is insufficient, all the organs in the body are affected. The infant suffers from a syndrome known as "failure to thrive." These immune system depressions, and the other accompanying changes, can last throughout a lifetime. Not touching an infant sufficiently is like not feeding the infant enough nourishment: touching is true brain food.
In the 13th century, Roman Emperor Frederich II conducted an experiment 4. He removed babies from their families and gave them over to nurses, who were instructed to take care of their basic needs: feeding them without holding them, bathing them without hugging them. He wanted to learn to learn what language children would speak if not exposed to a native tongue. These children in the experiment never heard speech, never heard a song or lullaby. What Emperor Frederich learned, however, had nothing to do with language. All the babies died.
We saw these same dire consequences in the orphanages of England following World War II. In 1945, while the world was still reeling from the global hate that had been expressed in the massive destruction of two world wars, the charter of the United Nations was signed. In 1950, a group of psychoanalysts was commissioned by the United Nations to study the importance of the symbiotic phase of maternal love. As a result of the research conducted by psychoanalysts John Bowlby and Rene Spitz, we have precise information on the disastrous effects of the total absence of a symbiotic relationship. Their research informed us of a disease that had not yet been given a diagnostic label. The disease -- now called marasmus -- seemed to be a kind of love sickness, a withering away of the spirit and then the body due to a deprivation of maternal attention.
As a result of this research, we have filmed documentation of the effects of extreme deprivation of mothering. Spitz observed and filmed 34 infants in an orphanage. Although their physical needs were adequately attended to, the children were rarely caressed, played with or exposed to any of the other kinds of mothering attention that loving mothers bestow on their infants. Within three months, the babies had difficulty sleeping, had shrunk and were whimpering and trembling. With a year, 27 of the 34 infants had died.
It is only through this initial symbiosis between mother and infant, through their shared togetherness, that the infant can come to develop a separate self. The mother mirrors auditorially, visually and tactilely for the baby who she is. We know from research that this mirroring takes place in the brain itself -- "mirror neurons," according to researchers Valeria Gazzola and Christian Keysers. On the level of electrical and chemical activity in the brain, we are all mirrors to each other, copying each other. Between mother and infant, this mirroring (both conscious and deliberate as well as unconscious and chemical) aids the baby in the long procession of psychological events that culminate in the formation of a stable self-identity.
1. Baron-Cohen, Simon. "The Essential Difference: The Truth About The Male And Female Brain"
2. Brizendine, Louann. "The Female Brain"
3. Bowlby, John. "A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development"
4. Haislip, Melody. "The Importance of Touch"]]>The First Sounds of Separation, Part 1tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8995142011-07-18T08:26:00-04:002011-09-17T05:12:01-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
From conception, every biological mother's ultimate challenge is to open her body and mind to this foreign being that has implanted itself within her womb -- sometimes unexpectedly and uninvited (60 percent of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended) -- and then to embrace this tiny, living being as part of herself.
Next, after a period of time in which the two, under the best of circumstances, have gotten used to each other and enjoyed their synchronized duet of togetherness, the process of birth demands that the mother must allow her body to let go of this biological sameness. She must annihilate the very union that she has so preciously guarded for those previous nine months.
And similarly, as children -- infants, toddlers and throughout the phases of psycho-social development -- how do we move away from our mother, the person who was initially our very link to life? How do we then create for ourselves a symbolic umbilical cord to fetter us to our own sense of self? How do we perform this terrifying act of separation from our mothers while simultaneously marching toward the unknown of individuality?
I have come to believe that separation is a primary conflict that we experience as we begin our path toward emotional maturity. The way mothers and children answer this core question -- how can we negotiate successfully the perilous waters of separation, not just cognitively but emotionally as well? -- is crucial to the psychic health of each.
The meaning of the challenge of separation from our mothers is the meaning of the birth of the ego, the coming into existence of an "I," a self, an identity. The part of the self that is capable of mature love hinges on this mastery. It is only by coming to know separateness, by honoring the differences between a child and a mother while still wishing to reunite, that mature love can be created. If the cut between mother and child is not made cleanly, the individual suffers greatly.
Inadequate separation can result in a variety of difficulties throughout one's life. Children who do not master separation may falter in developing the independence that is necessary for the creation of an alert, curious intelligence. As young adults, they may have difficulty in loving others; they may find themselves unable to attach meaningfully to another, or they may cling to their beloved as though they were not of two, but of one body, one mind, one soul. Later, as parents, they may find themselves inadequate to the task of nurturing their children; they may fail in taming both their own and their children's negative feelings.
Although birth is the most obvious demarcation signifier of the separation process, it is not the first step toward this inevitable progression. Long before birth, the fetus -- the bourgeoning baby -- begins his march toward his own individuality. Through sound, which he hears even through the intra-uterine wall, he becomes dimly aware of an existence apart from his own being.
The intra-uterine environment is a cauldron of sounds. The fetus hears a constant pounding that is the mother's heartbeat; he hears gurgling that is her digestive sounds; he hears swooshing that is her circulatory system. But more than these sounds of her autonomic functions that are keeping both mother and fetus alive, it is her voice that comes to have special meaning to the developing baby. Research shows the mother's voice is able to profoundly affect the still-developing fetus. Her soothing voice calms the fetus' heart rate; her excited voice activates the fetus. Because her voice travels from her throat, down her spine, through her pelvic arch and into the amniotic fluid, it is probable that the fetus experiences its mother's voice as both sound and as tactile vibration. The vibrations on the fetus' eardrums and skin are felt as well as heard. When mothers talk, then, they are giving their fetus not just localized auditory stimulation, but a whole body-to-body experience of togetherness.
The placenta is the biological representation, an imprint, of all that will come later: the dependence and connection, and the simultaneous separation. The placenta ties mother and fetus together, the very life of the fetus depending on this nutrient connection. The placenta, too, serves as a biochemical tie between mother and fetus, linking her emotional states to his. The molecules of the mother's emotions cross the placental barrier and affect the fetus. Each fetus "feels" its mother's fears and her joys.
But, as well as tying the two together, the placenta also serves, as physician and author Christiane Northrup has described it, as a "living, responsive physical boundary," separating mother and child for the first nine months of the child's life.
The mother's voice surely gives the fetus an early experience of separation. Her voice ebbs and flows; it's present and absent, and these sounds and non-sounds are all unpredictable and uncontrollable. It is perhaps in the absence of mother's voice that the fetus first comes to experience unresponsiveness that can lead to the psychological states of post-birth that we call anxiety, fear, frustration and a sense of loss. Perhaps it is in the very stopping and starting of the intrauterine sounds of mother's voice that painful and frightening separation begins.
After birth, newborns -- as young as two hours old -- prefer the human voice above all other sounds. They can distinguish and favor their own mother's voice over any other female voice, and this recognition holds true even if they have spent most of their time in a hospital nursery and have been barely exposed to their mother's voice ex-utero. A 4-day-old infant can distinguish one language from another: French babies will suck more vigorously when they hear French spoken; similarly, Russian babies are more activated by Russian than by French. The mother's voice is probably the strongest aspect of continuity between prenatal and postnatal life, a "sonic version of amniotic fluid," as author Anne Karpf has referred to it. Unlike her visual presence, which is detected through directional looking and can thus be blocked out either by will or accident, the mother's voice is more like surround sound from acoustical equipment, a 360-degree sound bath for the infant.
Psychoanalyst Kaja Silverman describes the maternal voice as "the acoustic mirror in which the child first hears itself." The mother's voice, even without language, helps the infant to feel secure, to establish strong emotional ties, to develop empathy as well as a host of other social skills. Through the mother's voice, the infant receives information about itself that begins the formation of its own sense of self.
After the first birth wail, infants' cries will be mostly cries of desperate discharge, signaling discomfort. Newborns haven't yet learned that crying is their most effective tool, and weapon, for communication. But after six to eight weeks, the infant will become interested in exploring the use of crying as interactive. He will go silent after a bout of crying, waiting to see if there is going to be a response. He will wait for Mother's appearance, and even before he sees her, his ears will be on alert, listening for her voice. Her voice can reassure the infant of her presence even when he can't find his mother visually. Mother's voice seemingly floats in the air, perhaps the most miraculous of all communications from her.
The audiovocal communication between mother and infant cannot be underestimated -- not only in terms of the particular relationship that is forged between specific mother and child, but also in terms of its evolutionary significance. Brain researcher and theoretician Paul MacLean has postulated that the separation cry of the infant has served as the driving force in the evolution of the neo-cortex, the part of the brain that is distinctly human, the place from which language derives. We are the smartest species on the planet, in part, because babies don't like to be separated from their mothers, and they cry to tell us it is so.]]>More Than A Scent: Essential Oils Aid The Immune Systemtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8683032011-06-09T13:40:38-04:002011-08-09T05:12:01-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
Their secret had to do with the oils they rubbed on their bodies. Because their family was from a long lineage of apothecaries, they had knowledge about how to use oils medicinally and prophylactically against disease. The King got the exact formulation they were using against Black Plague and this saved his entire family from the disease.
Today we think of essential oils as mere pleasant additions to a relaxing massage. But in olden days, some cultures valued oils even more than gold because their powerful healing properties were known.
Essential oils have the same function in the plant as blood has to the human. When you cut yourself, blood comes out of the cut. The blood cleanses the wound and kills bacteria so that regeneration of the tissue can begin. Similarly, when you cut a plant, resin, or the oil of the plant, is released.
Blood is a transporter. It carries nutrients to the cells. Oxygen is the constituent of blood that delivers the blood through the cell walls. When oxygen is taken out of the blood, the cells mutate and give off a toxic gas. This, then, creates a host condition that will breed disease. So, too, with plants. Oils serve as the defense system in plants. These oils oxygenate the plant and carry nutrients, vital elements and chemical constituents to every cell in the plant. They contain each of the plant's healing nutrients including trace minerals, vitamins, hormones, amino acid precursors and other components. They give the plant the ability to destroy infections, stave off infestations, initiate and maintain growth and repair structural damage. The essential oil of the plant is literally the life force of the plant.
When essential oils are applied to human skin, they carry the same healing force as they do to the plant. Because they themselves carry such a high concentration of oxygen, they also produce in the human system the highest level of oxygenating molecules of any substance on Earth. Because the oils are so highly concentrated, they are at least 50 times more therapeutically potent than the plant itself or herbs made from the plant.
Essential oils detoxify the body. Oxygen pushes unwanted chemicals out of the cell. Normal cell function and balance is established only when there is sufficient oxygen.
The absorbability of essential oils into the human system is unsurpassed. If you are deficient in oxygen, your cell membranes will begin to thicken. When this happens, oxygen is not able to get its nutrients through this thick wall. You may have been eating all the nutritional food in the world, but if the blood can't get the nutrients into the cell, you may have well-nourished blood but you won't have well-nourished cells. Essential oils are soluble with the lipids in the cell membrane and thus go through the cellular wall.
In addition, essential oils have the capacity to change the electrical frequency of the body. Our bodies are electrical. So is everything around us, including our television, our lights and our microwave. The difference between us and our electrical appliances is that we have a harmonic, coherent frequency whereas appliances operate at incoherent, chaotic frequencies. Our appliances have the ability to fracture the frequency at which we operate.
We know that the body awake averages a frequency of 62-72 Hz. Disease sets in when the frequency drops. The frequency of the body drops when the body comes into contact with substances that have lower frequencies: junk food, canned or otherwise denatured food, drugs and even synthetic vitamins. Research has shown that merely holding a cup of coffee in your hand can drop your frequency (probably through the aroma which, as we will see, has a more powerful effect on us than any of us would imagine).
The electrical frequency of essential oils ranges between 52 and 320 Hz. They have the highest frequency of any substance known to man. Because they are living substances, their frequency is harmonic with the human frequency. When essential oils come into contact with our bodies, the frequency of our bodies becomes raised to a degree so that we become inhospitable hosts to pathogenic organisms.
The Prescription:
Essential oils can be applied directly to the skin. Within 21 minutes of being placed anywhere on the human body, essential oil will penetrate every cell within the body. We rub our bodies with oils as specific medicines.
Merely breathing in the fragrance of essential oils is a powerful healer. The healing begins in the brain. There are 800 million nerve endings in the nose that detect odors. The nerve from the olfactory bulb extends back toward the mid-brain and then on to the pituitary and pineal glands and finally to the amygdala. At La Casa, each day we pick fresh ylang ylang flowers, eucalyptus, orange, mint, lemongrass or lemon leaves and whatever herbs meet our health needs at the moment. We crush these plants in our hands and just breathe in. We are breathing in the fragrance of the essential oil as it oozes from the plant, just as blood oozes from our skin when we are cut.
Essential oils can also be diffused in the air. Research has shown that oils can kill most air-born microorganisms. A French study colonized 210 various microbes; within 30 minutes of misting the air with a mixture of oils, only four colonies remained alive. You can mist your air with the fragrance of an essential oil by simply placing a few drops of oil -- 10 to 15 -- in a regular plant water mister diluted with some water.
Enough research has been done that we now have a lot of information on what conditions are affected by which essential oils.
Possible therapeutic properties of essential oils:
Rose and lavender work well to treat insomnia. Rub the oil up and down the spine just before bedtime.
Peppermint relieves nausea, vomiting and fever and soothes indigestion.
Ylang ylang may reduce hypertension and high blood pressure. Bergamot is thought to be effective for insect bites, cold sores, sore throat and thrush.
Clove is one of three essential oils in which no bacteria, virus or fungi can live. It is used regularly in European hospitals.
Bitter fennel, dill and coriander have all been shown to aid diabetics in getting off insulin.
We also believe that the therapeutic effect of food supplements and herbs is greatly enhanced when essential oils are part of the formula. When herbs and food supplements are prepared for sale, they are dehydrated. This dehydration releases 90 percent of the essential oil of the plant. Without the oil, most of the life force of the plant has been evaporated out. We feel that this is one reason why herbs used today are less effective than when our ancestors used to just go to the fields and pick what they needed. When the essential oil is reintroduced into the supplement, you are guaranteed that the nutrients will reach the cellular level in your body.]]>
The Innate Genius Of Baby Brainstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8248572011-02-20T11:19:24-05:002011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
Why is this? Why do these simple activities and these seemingly trivial accomplishments prove
our children to be geniuses? The answer has to do with the way the brain is organized at birth, and the momentous leaps it has to take in a preposterously short period of time for that child to grow naturally and normally.
All of the cells in a newborn's brain operate separately from one another. As the brain develops, these cells connect to one another forming actual neurological bridges. These connections are the pathways that determine how we process in-coming information and how we discharge out-going information. The period when these brain cells learn to make these connections most rapidly is the period between birth and three years of age. In the first six months after birth, the brain capacity has reached 50 percent of its adult potential; by the age of three, it has reached 80 percent. Of course much learning still takes place after the age of three, but if the neurological foundation for learning to learn has been laid, learning will always, for the rest of that individual's life, be easier and more satisfying. We humans generally use only a small fraction of our actual brain potential. Think what we could accomplish if we were to increase our ratio of potential use to actual use.
Researchers now know that it is during these critical first few years of life when life-long
patterns for both emotional and physical health are laid down. We know, for instance, that physical health is as much a question of lifestyle as it is genetic or constitutional, and that with proper nutrition and exercise, most physical problems and diseases can be avoided. The patterns for most of our physical, emotional and cognitive traits -- good eating habits, the love of movement of the body, the ability to either experience or repress feelings -- these are all patterns that are largely formed by the time a child is four years old.
All of these patterns will develop normally and healthily in children as long as their natural
inclinations are not subverted. For instance, children are not born with a love for junk food or sugar. Left to their own devices, children will intuitively select foods that meet all their nutritional requirements. Dr. Clara Davis, a researcher at the Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, did a study some years back. She observed infants from six months to 11 months who had never been given any food other than their mothers' breast-milk. Each child was offered a wide variety of foods. All foods were unprocessed, natural foods, of both animal and vegetable origin. Davis' experiment lasted for four years. The results were astonishing in terms of the documentation of children's innate wisdom in their self-care. All children ate well-balanced meals. Although some children went on food "binges" and ate unorthodox combinations of foods at various meals, the over-all pattern of eating met high nutritional standards. Children who drank little milk had excellent bone growth, a finding which undermines the prevailing notion that bone growth depends upon the substantial calcium intake of milk. Two children who began the study showing signs of rickets continuously chose high calcium foods, and actually "cured" themselves through their own, independent choice of foods.
Davis' experiment certainly documents the innate life-preserving and intelligent inclinations of
babies. Yet, it is clear that healthy choices can only be made when the options available are healthy. The wisdom of self-selection in nutritional requirements can produce healthy babies only if the available choices of foods are healthy and nutritionally sound. The same is true for any other array of choices, whether the alternatives are for selection of music or selection of physical activities. In another study, infants given a choice of music to listen to selected a Beethoven symphony over all other music forms, including nursery rhymes. It is clear that the wisdom of the appetite of a child, for either food for the body or food for the mind, is a mechanism that is exquisitely perfect, even fool-proof, as long as it isn't baffled, misled or seduced.
On the level of the psyche, we know, too, that the foundation for the formation of personality
is already virtually completed by the age of four. At the end of the second year, the baby is already half-way home in terms of how he will respond, for the rest of his life, to frustration and gratification, how he emotionally and cognitively structures his experience of the world, and for the expectations he develops of human relations. With stimulus-enriched environments, we see children learning to swim before they can walk; we see children at the age of two learning five languages simultaneously; we see children at the age of three playing the violin. One of my friend's children knew 30 different varieties of birds before she was four. Why? Simply because her father is a bird-watcher and they live in the country. These precocious babies are not any different from any normal baby, or from your baby. They are simply being raised in a way that allows for the full expression of their brilliance which is, at birth, all potential, but can be nourished in their first years to skill, ability and accomplishment.
Making our babies happy and healthy in these critical first years of life will give them life-long
protection against unhappiness and ill health. This is the real job of motherhood. To borrow the analogy of gardening, a gardener can water the plant to nurture it and sustain it at any point during the plant's life. But the planting of the seed has to have been completed within a certain time-frame, or the plant will not grow at all. Children who are not exposed to language during the first two years of life will never learn language. Similarly, children not allowed to walk during their first two years will never be able to walk fully erect. We know these facts from the several cases where children have been raised in the wild with animals, and then captured by humans. In none of these cases were these half-human, half-animal creatures ever able to learn the basic human skills of walking and talking.
Even just a period of a year's difference in teaching is critical in these early years of accelerated learning. Dr. Myrtle McGraw, an American psychologist, taught twin brothers how to roller skate, one at the age of eleven months, the other at twenty-two months. The difference in skill was marked. The child taught at the younger age continued for years to be the more athletic brother. This example confirms a fact that other researchers have found, as well. In order for the full potential for excellence in physical coordination and balance to be reached, skills need to be developed already by the age of four.
I do not mean to suggest that happiness and health are synonymous with brilliance or genius, or excelling in athletics, music or any other single activity. There are, of course, innate differences among us. Some of us are more mathematically inclined; some of us could never run a five-minute mile no matter how much training we did. I do mean to suggest, however, that a healthy, happy human being is one who is living from his unique and particular talents and preferences. It is our responsibility as parents to help our children discover their talents and their desires, and to nourish the development of both. To borrow again the analogy of gardening, an oak tree can't be made into a maple tree. But children are more malleable than trees. A child who wants to be an athlete, not a scholar, can be coerced, manipulated or persuaded to become what he doesn't want to become, but the damage from the trade-off may be severe. Such a child will grow up without living from his soul, his inner being that represents who he wants to be and who his natural inclinations would have led him to be. It is the responsibility of a parent to help her child who wants to be an oak to become a fully mature oak, not the maple that she wants him to be.]]>Brain Cells: How to Preserve Themtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8068562011-01-15T08:38:01-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
Unlike animals, we humans sleep with our heads elevated on pillows, making the workload to feed the brain -- its essential blood -- even harder. (We could say this is a true uphill struggle, as the blood must go up and against the ever-present force of gravity to get to the tops of our bodies, the residences of our brains.) If you hold an animal up by its front feet for long enough, the animal will die because its heart and arteries cannot pump enough blood into its brain to keep it alive. Think of what we do to our own brains by insisting that our blood always travel uphill to our brains. It is an unrecognized disease by traditional medicine, but perhaps we all suffer from "brain anemia;" perhaps we're all losing brain cells and brain functioning unnecessarily from having undernourished brains.
Our brains, like the other parts of our bodies, need to be continuously used -- even challenged. If you were to take your right arm and strap it up to your shoulder so you could not use it, the circulation would decrease to that arm. When there is an insufficient blood supply, needed nutrients can't travel to the area: the oxygen supply to these cells would decrease, and the arm would begin to atrophy. If you kept your arm up there long enough, eventually it would die altogether.
The human brain is no different than the animal brain and no different than an unused arm. If we nourish the brain properly, if we use it consistently and correctly, then circulation to it is good, nutrition to the cells is good, oxygenation of those cells is good, and we have a healthy brain. However, an unused brain is the same as an unused arm; when we stop using it, it will atrophy and die.
We see the phenomenon of brain-anemia frequently in individuals who take retirement. You have probably known a person who falls into this category. You knew him as an active, involved person who then went into a sedentary lifestyle. In such people, it is not unusual to see rapid physical and mental deterioration. When the person stopped using their brain, the supply of nutrients and oxygen to the brain dropped, and the brain began to die at an accelerated rate. We also have seen this happen with the death of a loved one. One family I know was a couple well into their late 80s. The wife died suddenly, and at the time of her death, this stately, elderly man, who had been her husband for almost 70 years, was the picture of health. He had a mind that was as sharp as a tack, and a body that could rival much younger men who do frequent and vigorous workouts. He had been in the habit of walking over three hilly miles a day, and doing The New York Times crossword puzzle. Yet, within three months of his wife's death, his mind had deteriorated to the point where he no longer recognized his children. The deterioration was that rapid. A month later, he was dead.
Stress kills brain cells. Mental health professionals are now accepting the strong link between stress and depression: When one is typically present, often the other isn't too far behind. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the actual neurological damage caused by a combination of the two can be extensive. Developments in brain imaging and neurology have shown how stress works to "rewire" the brain's emotional circuitry, altering its connections in such a way that it affects the way the brain functions.
Stress specifically triggers a "fear center" in the amygdala sector of the brain that takes over emotions and affects thinking. Normally, when a stressful event occurs, our body's response to it fades away. When stress is combined with depression, however, the chemical imbalance in the brain holds onto the stress, keeping the feelings active.
Brain imaging scans have shown, as well, that those who suffer from long-term stress may fail to feel any positive feelings in the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that maintains and originates emotions. When that depressed brain is "rewired," dread and fear can flow unimpeded from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex.
When we're under stress, we can see our memory evaporate almost instantly. Memory and learning are first cousins in the brain. Learning can't happen without a good, intact memory system.
There are many antidotes to stress, and many ways of exercising the brain to keep it healthy and young. As a psychoanalyst, I am partial to the "talking cure" as a method of harmonizing thoughts and feelings, as well as for finding emotional balance. A sense of stress (manifested through either anxiety or depression) is, of course, a mere symptom; once the full range of underlying thoughts and feelings that are creating the symptom are allowed into consciousness -- experienced, observed and understood -- the symptoms are no longer necessary.
The new system of brain exercises I have developed, called Brainercize, helps to both restore and maintain brain vigor. Psychoanalysis and Brainercize, soon to be offered at my spa, La Casa Day Spa are complimentary systems for full brain functionality.]]>How Increasing Your Brain's 'Digit Span' Can Improve Overall Functiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.8011192011-01-04T08:50:23-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
A research study conducted by Doman in 2002 used exercises to help school children in Louisiana to increase their digit span. Within an eight-month time period, test scores (as measured by state mandated tests) increased at a level of approximately 2.9 years in reading recognition, 3.0 years in reading comprehension and 1.67 years in math computation. Make note: These children got no extra remedial work in reading or math, yet their test scores showed improvement far beyond a normal expectation of advancement from typical classroom learning. The finding suggests that when you increase digit span, you increase brain functionality on many other levels.
Doman has been training individuals to have greater digit-span capability for over 30 years. He has worked with over 30,000 people running the whole gamut of classifications -- from the severely brain injured, to normal and gifted as well. Not to overstate Doman's success, but in thousands of cases, he has changed cognitive functioning from severe dysfunctionality to normal and superior functioning. One client he worked with was born with severe brain damage and with an Apgar rating of 1 (the lowest rating of health that a newborn can have). The parents contacted Bob when their infant was only a month old. Through a series of assessment tests, Bob was able to understand precisely how this infant's mind worked (and didn't work), and specifically how to best impart information to it. Through diligence and hard work by the parents putting the infant, and then child she became, through the paces of targeted exercises, the child's brain was able to build new neuronal pathways that compensated for the extreme damage. Sequential processing exercises was a major tool in Doman's efforts toward the activation and normalization of this damaged brain, as it is in all of the programs he gives to his clients. At 14, this girl's neurological functioning had developed to the point that she was able to attend a local community college, and at 16, a four-year college. Last seen, she was working on a Ph.D. at Columbia University in biological mathematics.
Doman laughs when he talks about his clients who have been able to raise their performance to a level 13 -- repeating back 13 items. He explains that they can take an advanced course in astrophysics, or molecular biology, or whatever and say, "Wow. That was fun."
It may be difficult, at first, to understand how remembering strings of meaningless numbers can have such a profound effect on the brain's overall functioning -- and on so many aspects of our lives that we don't even normally associate with intelligence. Yet, when we grasp the importance of sequential processing -- the foundation of practically every intellectual, cognitive and psychological function in the brain -- we understand that we use it in practically everything we do, in all of our everyday activities. As children, we needed sequential processing to learn the various steps of tying our own shoelaces. Without sequential processing, we cannot construct or comprehend complex sentences; we can't remember baseball scores from the beginning to the end of the game; we can't remember the plot of a novel, nor recipes; we can't tell jokes (or if we do, we forget the punchline), nor sing a song or play a musical instrument. Without sequential processing we are unable to draw a map from memory of the United States; we are unable to visualize our home when we are in a store intending to buy home furnishings. We can't make change with money -- or be able to think through any other math problem -- unless we can sequentially process. (A powerful enactment of the experience and debilitating effects of having no short-term memory was depicted in one of my favorite movies, the powerful and poignant film, "Memento.")
If you practice sequential processing every day for three months, you will notice substantial changes in your cognitive abilities. If you want to augment your children's brain power, do the exercises with them on a daily basis. I did this with my daughter after I had been told that she needed to go to a special school for learning disability. Instead of finding such a school, I took her to Bob Doman, and we embarked on a series of exercises to normalize her brain functioning. She, indeed, entered a new school the next fall, but it was a traditional school, and she made Honor Role, and has continued to excel academically since. Exercising the sequentially processing ability takes only about 10 minutes. With children, you can substitute animals, or colors, or any fun list of things to make it a more joyful exercise. Making it fun with children is crucial. Otherwise, they will lose interest.
We can think about the brain as operating like a computer. The computer has storage space in the form of RAM. If our ability to do sequential processing is limited, it's a little like not having enough RAM on your computer. Some things work just fine, others work, but they work only s-l-o-w-l-y or more crudely, and certain things become impossible altogether, resulting in frustration. However, when a computer has more RAM that you need for any single operation, it can store information, thus enabling it to work more quickly and efficiently. The same idea applies to having more processing space in human short-term memory. The more information you are able to take in sequentially, the more efficiently you can store information in long-term memory and retrieve this information when it is needed. And, the easier many aspects of life will become.
The operations of the brain can be broken down into "higher order" and "lower order," depending on where in the brain the activity originates. Skillful communication, for instance, requires higher-order skills such as the ability to synthesize diverse pieces of information into a meaningful whole, or self-awareness, empathy and capacity for self-discipline, and a whole set of other skills that comprise our "emotional intelligence." Comprehension of reading material is a higher-order skill, as is writing a letter, or balancing your checkbook. On the other hand, lower-order skills are the fundamental, building block skills that form the foundation for those higher-order skills, much as a building requires a structural foundation for stability. Sequential processing is a lower-order skill. It may be surprising that such a mechanical ability can be related to so many processes that are more sophisticated, but the truth is: the more complexity there is, the more we are dependent on basic, foundational skills.
Because low and high digit spans correlate with over-all cognitive functioning, the variability also often coincides with low and high abilities in the following areas: for children - academic function, decision making abilities, self confidence, attention span, behavior, and global maturity; for adults - productivity, functional competence, interpersonal skills, social maturity and leadership abilities.
Increasing digit span is one of the exercises conducted in the series of classes that I have created called Brainercize. Visit the website to find out more information about this innovative method of improving cognitive functioning. For a recent write-up of the programs offered at La Casa Day Spa, go to http://www.dayspamagazine.com/blogeditors/?p=1003
]]>How Much Information Can The Brain Hold? Test Your Memorytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.8011022010-12-29T08:38:20-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
This cognitive process is called digit span, or alternatively, sequential processing. It measures how many digits can be taken in through the eyes or ears and repeated in correct order. The test offers insight into attention span and organization of information. On its most fundamental level, it is a memory test, asking the performer to utilize a specific memory system in the brain that we call short-term memory. It is performed most simply in the form of a tester saying three to seven numbers at one-second intervals, and asking the applicant to repeat back the numbers.
As well as being a memory test, it is also an ordering technique. If we don't remember the order of information, processing the information would be a cognitively chaotic experience. We might be able to remember all the numbers in a telephone number, for instance, but if we don't know the order of the numbers, we won't be able to reach the person we want to call.
Sequential processing takes place almost every time you attend to a new source of information. In fact, it happens right now as you are reading these lines. Think about the complexity of the task of reading. First you have to recognize the words (receiving the information); then, you have to hold each word in memory long enough to link one word to the next (holding the information); next, you have to ascribe meaning to the linked words (processing the information); finally, you use the meaning you have ascribed to the words to make a decision about how you want to use the information -- do you want to use it to further the progression of civilization, or do you want to throw it in the garbage can -- (utilizing the information)?
It is not mere coincidence that phone numbers have been seven digits since 1959, when AT&T changed over from place-name plus digits to all-digit dialing. So, instead of University 7-8634 (and yes, I am old enough to remember those days -- that number was my Cousin Carol's phone number), the number became 867-8634. When phone numbers included a word, they were easier to remember than they are now. (The newest addition of needing to dial area codes, even when you are calling a number within the same area code, is not an additional memory burden however; the three digits that comprise the area code are already familiar to us; they have been cycled into long-term memory storage, and their familiarity means that they are "chunked" not as three separate items, but as one item of information.)
Traditionally, researchers have thought that as the brain grows, from birth onward, the child can increase his digit span by one item per year. A one-year-old can repeat back one number; a two-year-old can repeat back two numbers; a five-year-old can repeat back five numbers. It has been thought that the ability to retain sequential items in short-term auditory memory ends at seven years of age; thus, prevailing intellectual wisdom (and Miller's research) has been that most people can repeat back about seven sequential items -- plus or minus two, referred to as "7 + or - 2"; yet, as in all things, some people do a little better, and some do a little worse -- but the magic number seven is the average, and describes the ability of most of us.
Or does it? Perhaps in 1956, when George Miller wrote his paper, the average digit span memory was seven; but it is likely that average number is lower in today's population. With external electronic devices replacing our internal memory systems, we are asking our brains to do less memory-work, and thus, it is likely that our brains have become less efficient or skilled at memory-work. Probably more of us function on the low end of the seven plus or minus two scale than the high end. In giving a number of people a digit span test, I have found that for many, memories are taxed in trying to repeat back seven full digits.
Since Miller's publication, there has been a wealth of research on digit span, and the correlation of sequential processing ability with intelligence and over-all cognitive functioning. Digit span is taught and used as a standard diagnostic tool in all IQ testing as well as in comprehensive cognitive evaluations. It has been shown that digit span has a high correlation with IQ. A 1996 study compared digit spans and standardized test scores for grades K through 12, and showed that there is, on average, a 3.1 year grade-level-difference in achievement between an auditory digit span of five and an auditory digit span of six. (This would be enough, for example, to bring seventh-grade work up to tenth-grade level.)
It is fair to say that any individual with an auditory or visual digit span under seven digits is functioning with a handicap. Low auditory and visual sequential processing ability is a major contributing factor in almost all learning disabilities.
You can assess your own sequencing ability by simply having someone say a random assortment of numbers to you, one digit a second. Then you repeat the numbers. Start with four digits, and with each success, build up to the next level. When you top off at whatever number you achieve, then continue with the experiment, but now repeat the digits fed to you backwards. It's much harder, but challenges your brain to not just remember, but to actually manipulate items in short-term memory, to re-position them.
In my next blog, you will read how one man, Bob Doman (Director of the National Association for Child Development), has made a game-change for sequential processing by challenging one major assumption that all researchers and clinicians had previously made -- that the digit span capability of an individual is a fixed ability (like over-all IQ).
Until Doman, psychologists assumed that digit span capability -- once it topped off at the level achieved around age seven -- would not vary from year to year, or even from circumstance to circumstance. Yet, Doman has demonstrated with tens of thousands of people that digit span capability can be improved, and when it is, global changes in functioning are witnessed.
If you scored under seven on your little digit span assessment, you will want to know how to improve your score. If you scored seven, you could move from normal cognitive functioning to superior cognitive functioning. This one simple little exercise can change your entire cognitive functioning, not only making you smarter, but more efficient, more focused, more creative, more integrated, with more functional competence, as well as being a better communicator. Sequential processing is one of the exercises that is performed in the Brainercize series of classes developed through the coordinated efforts of myself with leading cognitive psychologists, offered at my NYC spa, La Casa Day Spa. For a recent write-up of the program, go to http://www.dayspamagazine.com/blogeditors/?p=1003 ]]>Brain Health: Is the Virtual World Creating a Virtual Brain?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7888352010-12-03T08:14:02-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
matter how much time I take to attend to the task. I won't figure it out. And my daughter will.
Does my daughter text on her cell phone? All the time. Does she play video games? Every day. Does she read? Only when she has to (for school) and never for pleasure. Has she changed the structure of her brain by growing up being essentially a non-reader, and by spending hours a day living electronically and remotely? I think so. Is it for better or worse? Is she improving civilization or moving it toward its logical end? The jury is still out on those questions.
One of the signs of verbal fluency in a literate society is the degree to which people are interested in reading complex, thoughtful material. It takes exposition, which itself takes time, to think about and discuss complex issues. According to a report by the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of Americans over 18 read novels, short stories, plays or poetry. Even a cursory look at any newsstand in the country will reveal what people are reading: magazines that are more like television than reading material; reading material is flipped through much as one surfs through television channels or the Internet. This generation of my daughter's does not know, as I do, the pleasure of opening a book in eager anticipation precisely because it is long, and because I know I am going to be lost in its world for weeks to come.
As any elementary textbook in brain physiology tells us, the brain consists of two hemispheres that perform different functions. The right side is the visual and emotional side; the left side is the verbal and logical side. Largely because of television first, then the computer, and now cell phones (as mini-computers), we have become a society that functions primarily from the right side. No one seems to mind. There was even a bestselling book a few years back, "Drawing from the Right Side of Your Brain," extolling the virtues of accessing the visual hemisphere (as though we don't already do enough of that).As James Glick says in "Faster: the Acceleration of Just About Everything": "We have learned a visual language made up of images and movements instead of words and syllables."
The virtual world may be creating a virtual brain. In the virtual world, we see spoon-fed menu options as opposed to free-ranging inquiry. Contracted text messaging lacks the verbs and conditional structures that are essential for complex thinking. Our children have not learned to think linearly or conceptually nor in a layered way. They are right-brain geniuses; but they are akin to idiot savants in the limited capacity of their left brain operations for the "fine grained analysis," as Richard Restak says, that is important for thinking logically and conceptually.
Nine-tenths of the writing today takes place in the business world, and it is done on a computer. The computer, like television, consists of a mosaic of images, back lit screens and near instantaneous speed. These attributes engage the right hemisphere. Yet, when we are reading or writing printed material, we are employing language, which engages the left hemisphere. Restak posits that when we use words on the computer -- reading or writing -- both hemispheres are stimulated, but not in an integrated way. Rather, the hemispheres are conflicting -- even competing -- with one another. To the brain, reading and writing on a
computer is an entirely different activity -- neurologically disorganizing -- than reading and writing using paper, which is a neurologically organizing activity. (And, in spite of my being no good at reprogramming television glitches, my brain has apparently re-framed itself into 21st century capability sufficiently such that I am writing these words, thinking about them, organizing my thoughts, as I am looking at my computer screen. It took a while for me to retrain my brain to think in this way since I acquired my first computer 30 years ago, but I have thankfully succeeded.)
It is possible that the trade-off for the brain's adaptability may be severe. Research conducted by David Snowdon, in the study that has come to be known as the "Nun Study," shows us the relationship between Alzheimer's and thinking capability. With 90 percent accuracy, Snowdon was able to predict which nuns would suffer from Alzheimer's. He looked at the nuns' writings from when they were young women, and found that those with the simplest sentence structure, and with the fewest ideas, were the ones who were most likely to develop Alzheimer's later in life. David Snowdon was not looking at what had been learned over the course of the educational experiences of these nuns. He was looking at the very organization of the brain. He was looking at the linguistic expression of the nuns' sequencing ability. The ability to think, to draw connections, to extend memory from the beginning to the end of a complicated sentence or paragraph, to develop a complex idea: these are all aspects of good left-brain sequencing and functioning.
Still to come: home exercises that will stimulate and re-balance the brain, and announcements about Brainercize classes I have created and will be offering at my holistic day spa, La Casa Spa.]]>Brain Development From Birth to Old Age: An Overview (PHOTOS)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7841642010-11-17T08:46:31-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Jane G. Goldberg, Ph.D.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-g-goldberg-phd/
Most of us over 50 see our memories scarily fading away. We wonder: Are we relegated inevitably to blathering, blubbering about -- returning to our pre-speech days?
Not necessarily. In fact, recent research into the brain leads to the conclusion -- not at all.
Research into the brain is one of the fastest growing fields of study in contemporary science. What we know about the brain today is vastly different than what we thought we knew just 10 years ago. And 10 years from now, it is likely that most of what we think about the brain today will have been overturned, and replaced by new knowledge. One indication of the infancy of the field is the amount of attention that is given to studying the brain (and its accompanying nervous system) in medical schools. It accounts for a mere 20 percent; the remaining 80 percent is devoted to human anatomy, physiology and the systems of respiration, circulation and digestion. At least in medical school the brain seems relatively unimportant.
Thanks to new imaging techniques, we can now actually look inside a living brain. We know that when the brain is active, it demonstrates the attributes that we generally call intelligence. As well as having the capacity to learn, to recall, to express feelings and to conjure up thoughts and ideas, an active brain also dreams, argues beliefs, formulates discernment, makes decisions, creates behavior. We usually think about these qualities as belonging to the mind. But without the brain, the mind does not exist. The mind is, in essence, the brain in an animated state. For intelligence to grow, for emotional balance to be created, for understanding and experiencing the meaning of our individual lives -- for all of what we value and cherish about what it means to be human, we need an animated brain.
You can do exercises -- with all brains, all ages -- that are fun and will grow your brain. I call the exercises Brainercize. My next blog will give some of these exercises.