Research Paper

Simor, P., Ko Koteles, F., Sa ́ndor, P., Petke, Z. & Bo ́dizs, R. (2011). Mindfulness and dream quality: The inverse relationship between mindfulness and negative dream affect. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 369–375.

“Their results indicated that mindfulness was related to positive sleep quality, and these benign effects on sleep mediated higher levels of well-being.” (2011)

            This quote could possibly correlate to dreams but may not help much because I am now thinking about researching the differences between male and female’s dreams and interpretation. This article/quote could possibly help me in the conclusion of my paper, but it would not have a major part or effect on my paper overall. When I make a final decision on my actual research question then I can decipher if this quote will be useful to me. If I decide to do my paper on a broader aspect of dreams then this article to turn out to be extremely useful.

Blume-Marcovici, A. (2010). Gender differences in dreams: Applications to dream work with male clients. Dreaming Vol. 20, Issue 3. 199-210

“One hypothesis is that having an interest in dreams affects one’s ability to recall dreams…[Do] men express less interest in dreams because they recall fewer dreams or [do] they recall fewer dreams because of a lack of interest?” (2010)

            I knew I wanted to write my research paper about dreams, but I just didn’t know exactly what I wanted to write about them. Now after a broad search on dreams on line at the UW-Madison library website I’ve decided that I am going to do the differences between male and female’s dreams. This article is perfect for this because it addresses dream work, specifically with males. This question it is asking could possibly even become a thesis for me. This article really made me more interested in the topic and seems like a better research question because it is less broad. 

JR - Chapter 10 Summary(with respond to 10 and 11)

Chapter 10 is about the DSM-III, which was made by Robert Spitzer, and how,much like Hare's checklist, was being used to diagnose people incorrectly of diseases -- mainly children who were thought to have bipolar disorder. Ronson looks at a much larger checklist, the DSM's, and realizes the awful consequences that can come from misdiagnosing a person. He expresses to us the HUGE variety of mental disorders and gives instances of real life people when their misdiagnosing has gone terribly wrong. In trying to prove that the world of psychoanalysts were useless, David Rosenhan sent a group of men each to a different mental hospital where they all said they heard voices that only said 3 words, the men then acted completely normal. The men were kept there for some as long as 2 months, all diagnosed with different diseases. This exposed the negatives of psychiatric work to the world. Also Ronson wrote about how children all over are being misdiagnosed with bipolar disease and it has resulted in children becoming overmedicated and in some cases dieing.

Overall I think the book was pretty good; it kept my attention but I felt somethings just didn't really fit together. Bob Hare is probably psychopathic but I think everyone is slightly psychopathic. Well maybe not psychopathic but I am 100% positive that if I looked at the DSM something would be wrong with me. Well something would probably be wrong with everyone, but that's what makes life interesting. I like strange people, they keep the world entertaining. If everyone was normal the world would be a ridiculously boring place to live, and I would rather live with aliens. I am not surprised to learn about the misdiagnostics that come from the DSM. But really you can't blame the psychiatrists, I think the DSM and the people who taught them how to do their jobs and how to diagnose should be to blame.

Chapter 8 Summary with chapter 9 and 8 response

Chapter 8 is about Jon Ronson trying to understand and come to a conclusion of what the perfect type of madness is for the media. He talks to two main people in this chapter: Rachel North and David Shayler. Rachel North was a victim of a car bombing in which David Shayler believed was a government conspiracy. David Shayler was all sorts of crazy and believed in multiple government conspiracies as well as he being the Messiah. From Ronson's encounters with Shayler, Ronson came to the conclusion almost everyone is worried about becoming mad and that the perfect type of media crazy are people who are just just enough crazier than the normal person. Also from this conclusion he came to the decision that everyone was trying so hard to be normal that it was making them crazy, and by "serving up the crazy" journalists and media people were showing normal people how not to act.

Finally! Ronson understands that he should not have access to the Hare Checklist! Who looks themselves up on google? I Love the paragraph on page 192. You really get a sense of how paranoid and slightly crazy he is. He's trying to convince us he's not crazy, but at the same time making himself sound crazier. I wonder how people become as crazy as Shayler, and how they can truly think that they are the Messiah. I don't really like how Ronson just sort of throws stories at you and then ties them together at the end of the chapter, it's kind of frustrating and also makes it somewhat difficult to understand what his point is and where he is going with it.