INTERESTING TIMES

Last night while at a Sierra Club meeting involving the effort to hasten decommission of the Columbia Generating Station (nuke at Hanford), I started having all manner of thoughts about my book on homeopathy. I brainstormed my intro and some chapter ideas on the same page where I'd taken a few notes about newly understood seismic activity in the Tri-Cities area, the power needed to make fuel rods, the types of nuclear waste storage currently in use, and such. Part of what brought homeopathy to mind was the groupthink in evidence among the meeting attendees. The anti-nuke information being conveyed was at times not even faintly believable, but the group assumed that all present were on board with the effort to eliminate nuclear power from our bevy of power sources.

This morning in my inbox I find an interesting article by Art Markman on the question of what kind of creativity we display while our conscious minds are occupied with something else. It appears that for simple decisions, it's better to think about consciously it, however for complex issues it may be good to be distracted from the direct question. Dijksterhuis and Nordgren presented Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) in this paper. Another paper by Haiyang Yang et al shows that the duration of unconscious thought has an inverted-U shaped relationship with creativity, suggesting that unconscious thought may outperform conscious for moderate-length deliberations.

So for quick decisions tis best to focus on the matter at hand. For very long and complex deliberations, there might be time for both conscious and unconscious contemplation. And to harness the power of unconscious synthesis thinking, one needs a moderate amount of time in which to do it.

I've heard of UTT before but not by name. I generally have my best ideas while walking, which suggests to me that cross-crawl integration of walking may bring the two brain halves to apply their knowledge to whatever problem is at hand. I've seen the process modeled extensively by television character Dr House. House plays ball, drives bumper cars, or does pranks on his coworkers to distract himself from the burning questions, and allow his unconscious mind to sort out the myriad details of a medical case and arrive at a diagnosis and treatment. People may think that he is goofing off, but in fact it is physical play that brings his most astounding ideas to the fore. He starts with the conscious brainstorming with the help of his team, then goes off to do whatever activity life presents, then returns to the conscious cogitation. The science is beginning to support the use of this technique for creative decisionmaking.

Lately I keep hearing people talk about what they "resonate with". It is how people choose their spiritual paths. "The Lakota (path) is the one I find I resonate best with." And it is how many in complementary medicine decide which modalities to practice. An intelligent and lovely young woman "resonates" with UNDA numbers and believes that homeopathic "drainage" is how she should practice medicine. She would take a patient off a proven medicine to give them what she resonates with. A charismatic professor "resonates" with muscle testing and so uses it to decide what medicines to give.

I take issue with this. If we rely on psychological resonance to help us make decisions, what are they really based on? The attractiveness of the proposition to our subconscious mind? The degree to which it fits with what we already believe? This method for making decisions about important matters is unscientific and terribly dangerous. It might be appropriate for chosing a metaphysical practice, but is it really suitable for making decisions about how to practice medicine? I think NOT. Intuition has its place, but it cannot and should not completely replace rational thought. Unconscious competence comes only after years of conscious education.

These notes are more from the conference that I attended on transforming the mind.
( random notes )

Freud is just an old Santa Clause.
-Margaret Mead

"'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through each kid
Not an Ego was stirring, not even an Id.
The hang ups were hung by the chimney with care
In the hopes that St. Sigmung Freud soon would be there.
The children in scream class had knocked off their screams,
Letting Jungian archetypes dance through their dreams,
And Mama with her bra off and I on her lap
Had just settled down when a vast thunderclap
Boomed and from my unconscious rose such a chatter
As Baptist John's teeth made on Solomon's platter.
Away from my darling I flew with a flash,
Tore strait to the bathroom and threw up, and - smash!
Through the windowpane hurtled and bounced on the floor
A big brick - holy smoke, it was hard to ignore.
As I heard further thunderclaps- lo and behold-
Came a little psychiatrist eighty years old.
He drove a wheeled couch pulled by five fat psychoses
And the gleam in his eye might induce hypnosis.
Like subliminal meanings his coursers they came
And consulting his notebook, he called them by name:
"Now Schizo, now Fetish, now Fear of Castration!
On Paranoia! on Penis-Fixation!
Ach, yes, that big brick through your glass I should mention:
Just a simple device to compel your attention.
You need, boy, to be in an analyst's power:
You talk, I take notes - fifty shillings an hour."
A bag full of symbols he'd slung on his back;
He looked smug as a junk-peddler laden with smack
Or a shrewd politician soliciting votes
And his chinbeard was stiff as a starched billygoat's
Then laying one finger aside of his nose,
He chortled, "What means this? Mein Gott, I suppose
There's a meaning in fingers, in candles und wicks,
In mouseholes und doughnut holes, steeples und sticks.
You see, it's the imminent prospect of sex
That makes all us humans run round till we're wrecks,
Und each innocent infant since people began
Wants to bed with his mama und kill his old man;
So never you fear that you're sick as a swine-
Your hangups are every sane person's und mine.
Even hamlet was hot for his mom - there's the rub;
Even Oedipus Clubfoot was one of the club.
Hmmm, that's humor unconscious." He gave me rib-pokes
And for almost two hours explained phallic jokes.
Then he sprang to his couch, to his crew gave a nod,
And away they all flew like the concept of God.
In the worst of my dreams I can hear him shout still,
"Merry Christmas to all! In the mail comes my bill."
-X. J. Kennedy