Doll Work and what with the brain

The latest of Shrinkrapradio features an interview with Geri Olson from Sonoma State University. She has integrated into her approach of psychology the making of dolls. She makes them herself and she organizes workshops to have her students make dolls. She has found that the making of a doll has a significant effect on people. It allows them to express and mold into an image what effects them most deeply.

While on the subject of Shrinkrapradio, I would like to point you to two other shows that I find particularly valuable. I usually comment only on the latest shows and so, these issues, that were published way before I started a blog, are constantly overlooked. The first show is the interview with Daniel Amen. Amen is a psychiatrist and a neuro-scientist, and his approach to the psychology of man is first ad for all, through the brain. He actually gets quite angry psychologist and some psychiatrists know so little of the brain. He claims to have found many 'mechanical' brain relations to all sorts of symptoms in psycho-pathology and hence proposes to deal with them with medication and/or surgery in stead of wasting time on psychotherapy.

This brings me to the interview with David Sinclair who, after a life time of study in Finland, has found a medication that can effectively (up to 90%) treat addiction. He has analyzed how the brain learns as it were to be addicted and his medication, proven with alcohol and heroine abuse, basically helps UNlearn the addiction. The medication needs to be taken throughout life. Its effectiveness to generally unlearn, leads Sinclair to investigate on other fields where it could be applies, for example with eating disorders.

I have listened to the last two issues in conjunction and it has often made me wonder, what will be our fate. Once we know everything about the brain and we can chemically learn and unlearn whatever we like, what does that mean for our human condition?

More Shrinkrapradio on this blog:
Confronting Death (and more),
Process Work,
Authoritarianism,
Leadership and AI,
Dysfunctional personalities in the workplace,
Adventure Therapy