Psychablog

SXSW: What's the Matter With Batman?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:51:00 +0000

Here's the link to my talk at South by Southwest about What’s the Matter With Batman? An Unauthorized Clinical Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader

https://soundcloud.com/officialsxsw/whats-the-matter-with-batman

Superhero for children with cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:17:00 +0000

Superheroes inspire some of us to be “heroes” in our everyday lives. For others of us, simply surviving can be a heroic effort on a daily basis. People who are depressed or otherwise suffer from debilitating forms of mental illness “fight to survive” on a daily basis. People with certain medical illnesses or conditions similarly “fight” heroically each day.

Nistar is a comic book story about the heroic fight against cancer—specifically pediatric cancer. The protagonist is a superhero who fights the good fight against cancer. Shira Frimer, the author of Nistar, is trying to raise enough money to publish the book and give free copies to children with cancer throughout the world. Click here to find out more about Nistar and how you can help.

Superheroes To The Rescue--For Real

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:23:00 +0000

Flying like Superman in virtual reality can make you more helpful in real life. That's what my colleagues and I found in a recent study. At Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Shawnee Baugman, Jeremy Bailenson, and I had participants enter a virtual environment and they were either given the power of flight or rode as passengers in a helicopter. They were then assigned one of two tasks: help find a missing diabetic child or tour a virtual city. Regardless of which task they performed, people who had the power of flight were significantly more likely to help a researcher pick up spilled pens in real life than the helicopter passengers were.

Embodying a superpower in virtual reality may prime players to ‘think like superheroes’ and thus facilitate subsequent helpful behavior in the real world. Alternately, participants who could fly in the game may have felt like more active participants than those who passively sat in the helicopter while performing tasks, and this more active involvement may have induced their subsequent behavior.

To read the paper in the journal PLOS ONE, click here. To see a short video clip about the study, click here.

And for more about superheroes, take a gander at my new book:

Superhero Origins: What Makes Superheroes Tick and Why We Care

This is a book about seven superhero origins stories, what they reveal about the superheroes' personality, how they reflect the findings of psychological research, why we're interested in their origin stories, and what their stories can teach us about ourselves.

[photo credit: Cody Karutz]

Another Cosplay Survey: The Psychology of Cosplay 2

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 02:16:00 +0000

Hello to all you folks who cosplay. Here’s the link to a survey on cosplay that my colleague, Andrea Letamendi, and I are conducting.

http://tinyurl.com/cosplaysurvey

We want to know more about the psychology of cosplay and hope you can help us. We’ll post the results this summer.

Thanks!

The Psychology Behind Superhero Origin Stories

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 06:04:00 +0000

From my article in Smithsonian Magazine:

“Why is every superhero movie an origin story?” complained Entertainment Weekly film critic Adam Markovitz after seeing a trailer for this summer’s Man of Steel—yet another version of the 75-year-old Superman saga. Perhaps we love origin stories, Markovitz suggested, because they “show the exact moment when a normal guy goes from being Just Like Us to being somehow better, faster, stronger.”

I’m inclined to disagree. As a clinical psychologist who has written books about the psychology of superheroes, I think origin stories show us not how to become super but how to be heroes, choosing altruism over the pursuit of wealth and power. I’ve learned this through hundreds of conversations at comic book conventions, where fans have been remarkably candid about their lives and the inspiration they draw from superhero stories.

Holy Wonder Woman! A Review of Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 01:12:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to see documentary Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines recently. The film provides a history of superheroines, beginning with Wonder Woman, overlaid with a history of women in American culture and women’s rights during the same decades. It was interesting to see Gloria Steinem talking about feminism, Ms. Magazine, and Wonder Woman in the same breath, and to see many women (and men)—some famous, some not—talk about the ways in which Wonder Woman has been an icon of female power and inspiration.

The film also includes what the director or interviewees see as the descendants of Wonder Woman in popular culture:The Bionic Woman, Ripley in the Alien films, Sara Conner ofTerminator, Xena, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and evenCharlie’s Angels. Charlie’s Angels seems like a bit of a stretch, but the film makes a case for it.

More interesting psychologically are the parts of the film that talk about how icons in general, and superheroines in particular, inform us about what we should aspire to be. How they create templates to which we gravitate and fuel our imaginations, our self-images, and who we might want to become. Some of us may resonate with (or aspire to) Sara Conner’s tough, capable, and single-minded way of being strong. Others of us may resonate with Wonder Woman’s model of compassion, bravery, and strength. Or Buffy’s sense of humor in the face of adversity. There is something for everyone in the pantheon of superheroines.

I wish the film had spent more time on the sexualization of superheroines. We all know that superheroines in comic books are drawn with marvelous figures in skimpy costumes, and film and TV superheroines as similarly endowed and attired. The film touched on the issue of superheroines always being sexy, and sexy being equated with power, but a longer discussion of the implications of this for the audience would have been welcome. For instance, what does it mean that superheroines sometimes use their attractive physical appearance to achieve their goals? (Though Wonder Woman rarely does this, other superheroines do.) And what are the effects on females in the audience who see that superheroines only come in a certain size “package,” adorned a particular way. (For interesting research related to this in computer games, see Lissa Behm-Morawitz’s research). What does it mean for women and men that superheroines are, by and large, also seen as sex objects in our world? (Click here for research aboutobjectification, in which the experience of being treated as an object results in coming to see oneself that way. Objectification theory was originally conceived of as primarily pertaining to females. The original article by Barbara Frederickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts in 1997.)

I suppose that’s the subject for another documentary.

All rights reserved.  Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. Her website is DrRobinRosenberg.com. Her most recent book is What’s the Matter with Batman? An Unauthorized Clinical Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader.

Cosplay Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 04:31:00 +0000

To those of you cosplayers who heard--or heard about--the Psychology of Cosplay panel at New York Comic Convention and would like to take the Cosplay survey, click here to go to the survey or go to the URL below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dG5UWHk0VU94TW5XQ2ZJWmRQekd3YVE6MQ

I plan to publish the results and will link to them.

How Could She Do That? Compliance, the film—what's going on

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 22:05:00 +0000

Remember a bunch of horrible phone scams to fast food restaurants? The caller posed as a police officer and induced managers to strip search young female employees by saying the young women have stolen from customers? (If not, you can read about it here.) A docudrama film, Compliance, has been made of the worst incident, in which a young employee was detained, strip searched, and perform sexual acts. The story is a true one, and a disturbing one, and the film is similarly disturbing. Disturbing enough that at a screening that I attended yesterday, some people walked out. (This has been true in other cities as well.)

In the nutshell, the police officer ratchets up his requests of the restaurant manager; in turn she is swamped at work and with the approval of the caller (who is posing as a police officer) delegates to others the task of “watching over” the young employee who the police officer has said has stolen money. It starts out having her empty her pockets, then search her pocket, then disrobe to have her clothes searched. It goes on from there. The process resembles that of the participant in Stanley Milgram’s famous obedience study, in which participants were asked to give increasingly larger shocks to another person (unbeknownst to the participants, no actual shocks were administered. Click here for more information about the Milgram experiment.)

Given this incident really happened (in other locales as well—this wasn’t the only place the perpetrator called), how could this happen? We hear about this case, shake our heads and say that if we were the manager, we wouldn’t do anything like that. We’d know enough to say “no.” But would we?

There are several factors that explain how this could happen:

· At least in the film, the manager was portrayed as clearly identifying with “authority”—the (supposed) police officer. The caller played this up, explicitly joking that she was his eyes on the ground. She was more focused on being a good “assistant” to him, rather than a good, thoughtful person viz her employee. (When the manager’s boyfriend was enlisted to watch the young employee, the manager very much wanted her boyfriend also to be a good assistant to the caller.)
· The restaurant was very busy that night, and the store was already short-staffed, and earlier in the day had a problem with food refrigeration and so were running out of some foods. The manager was very stressed, and had a heavy “cognitive load”—had many things she was juggling in her head. This would make her likely pay less attention to challenging the police officer or thinking critically about what he was asking her to do.
· The young employee did not overtly “fight back” (though she did ask to be allowed to leave the room in which she was being detained); it seems clear in the film that she was experiencing some degree of learned helplessness—a situation in which no matter what she did, she couldn’t “escape” from the situation. At the start of her detainment, she had been told that if she cooperated with the strip search it would all be over soon. But it wasn’t over then, and it just kept getting more intense and outrageous. At some point, she likely felt that no matter what she did or how much she protested, it wouldn’t make a difference.

I won’t give too much more away, but if you have the stomach for an intense film with no happy ending, I suggest you see it.

BATMAN’S MENTAL HEALTH, PART 2

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 04:26:00 +0000

This blog post is adapted from the book What’s the Matter with Batman? An Unauthorized Clinical Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader, by Robin. S. Rosenberg.

In my last post, I discussed Batman’s mental health and wanted to “get out of the way” some obvious “issues” that Batman seems to have. I brought up Batman’s lapse in judgment in taking a minor, Dick Grayson, as a ward and sidekick. I begin this post by continuing the discussion of Batman’s lapses in judgment in taking on additional minors as sidekicks.

Further lapses in judgment came with his taking on each subsequent Robin. In Jason Todd’s case, Wayne struggled against the lesser of two evils; Todd had been trying to steal the Batmobile’s hubcaps and Wayne felt that if Todd weren’t taken in hand and shaped to use his talents for good then Todd would end up on the wrong side of the law.

Other Robins (Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown) have had that role because they asked Batman to allow them to be Robin. (They were young and the idea of being Robin is exciting and cool, as well as providing a great purpose to their lives.) It’s up to the adult—to Batman—to exercise good judgment, which he didn’t. It may have been bad judgment for him to accede to their wish and continue to allow them to be in the role, but that doesn’t mean Batman has a mental disorder: Bad judgment does not necessarily indicate a psychiatric disorder.

Batman didn’t have anything to do with the most recent Robin—Damian Wayne—assuming that role. Wayne didn’t even know that he had a son until presented with his pre-teen son Damian.[1] Damian’s ascension to the role of Robin occurred during a period of Wayne’s extended absence from Gotham City[2], when the adult Dick Grayson stepped into the role of Batman; it was Grayson who allowed Damian to become Robin. Once Bruce Wayne returned, however, he allowed his son to continue in that role.[3] Given that Damian Wayne had been trained at a young age to kill—by the nefarious League of Assassins—it is (somewhat) understandable that Wayne would want to try to remold Damian to use his talents for good, just as Wayne attempted to do with Jason Todd.

Substance Abuse: Pain Relief

Batman’s crime-fighting activities can leave his body battered, bruised, or broken. Alfred not only acts as butler to Bruce Wayne and concierge to Batman, he also acts as doctor and nurse to the Caped Crusader—stitching wounds, setting broken bones, even performing some surgical procedures. Batman’s body suffers.

Does Batman take pain medication to help him keep going, and if so, is he “addicted”—does he have a substance abuse problem? Stories don’t often indicate that Batman takes anything to dull his pain, probably because if he did he’d be slowed down and his senses dulled—and make him more likely to get really hurt by a criminal. So it’s not likely that he self-medicates. Most of the time that he’s had a significant injury he seems to do what some people with chronic pain have learned to do: accept the pain, compartmentalize it, and live life anyway.

All That Money

Wayne is an incredibly smart man who has found a way to make his money grow, and then to divert money to fund his activities as Batman. I don’t see anything about his spending habits that indicates signs of a mental illness. It would be a warning sign if he went on spending sprees and he often purchased unneeded items—this could possibly indicate manic episodes of bipolar disorder.[4] Or if Bruce spent large sums of money to protect himself against an unknown enemy that no one else had reason to believe posed a threat—this could indicate that Wayne might be suffering from paranoia. But that’s not the case. The money he spends to support his activities as Batman, phenomenal though they may be, is well spent to prepare him to fight Gotham City’s criminals.

What Personal Life?

Bruce Wayne doesn’t have much of a personal life. When he’s not busy as Batman (in or out of the cowl), he’s overseeing the Wayne Foundation (his philanthropic organization) or Wayne Enterprises (formerly called WayneCorp, the company he owns and from which his wealth derives). Moreover, he must devote some time to the parties of the rich and famous (including his own) to keep up his billionaire-playboy façade. He’s juggling multiple full-time jobs. Yes, he tends not to have relationships with people outside of his work life, but the same can be said for many of us—particularly if we spend many hours at work, side by side with our colleagues. Plus, given the secret of the Batman part of his life, it’s hard to let other people in. If and when he does tell a woman he’s romantically involved with about his secret life, she’s likely to get twisted up when he goes to work each night.

This is what happened with Silver St. Cloud; she is a wealthy and sharp woman in Bruce’s circle who deduced that Bruce Wayne is also Batman. Although they love each other, after she witnessed the Caped Crusader fight the Joker she realized that she couldn’t be in a romantic relationship because of the stress of worrying whether he’ll come home each night.[5] One appeal of Catwoman as a romantic partner is that there’s less that Wayne has to keep from her (except his Wayne identity in some stories), and she truly understands who he is as Batman. He is fully known.

Bruce is also fully known by his butler/sidekick Alfred. Ditto with any of the five Robins. Alfred and each Robin know about Bruce’s dual identities, about his history and vulnerabilities, and about his mission. Wayne is thus truly and fully known and accepted by more people than most of us can claim.[6]

For more about Batman’s mental health, read What’s the Matter with Batman? An Unauthorized Clinical Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader.

[1] In Grant Morrison’s story arc Batman and Son (1996).

[2] During the Final Crisis storyline in the comics (2008).

[3] In Batman & Robin #2 (2011).

[4] One could argue that among the wealthy, most purchases are “unneeded”: another house or apartment, another sports car, another work of art, clothes for a makeover. Such spending sprees might indicate mania if they were different from the person’s usual behavior, and occurred along with other symptoms of mania.

[5] The seminal story of Silver and Bruce, written by Steve Englehart in 1977-1978, is in Detective Comics #469-476, 478, 479, and also collected in the bound volume Batman: Strange Apparitions.

[6] As I have noted in other writings, one element of his personal life that I find potentially psychologically interesting is his relationship with Alfred Pennyworth, his butler. In Wayne’s youth, Alfred functioned as a de facto guardian, yet during Wayne’s adulthood, Alfred’s role is that of assistant: he takes orders from Wayne, but their familiarity and long history allows Alfred to “reprimand” Wayne occasionally. The closest analogies I can think of is the relationship between an adult and his or her nanny from childhood, or an executive and his or her coach.

Batman’s Mental Health, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 01:09:00 +0000

This blog post is an excerpt from the book What’s the Matter with Batman? An Unauthorized Clinical Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader, by Robin. S. Rosenberg.

What’s the matter with Batman? There must be something wrong with him, right? After all, he does things most of us wouldn’t do in a million years: He dresses up in a bat costume and puts his life on the line night after night, without any official status. He’s a billionaire, yet he dedicates a significant portion of his personal wealth to fund his “hobby” of being a crime fighter. He has no real personal life to speak of—at least not one that isn’t directly connected to his work as Batman. (Note, though, that the same can be said of many of us!) He broods, he can be obsessive in his preparations to tangle with criminals, and the fact that he witnessed the murder of his parents must have left a scar. These facets of his life are certainly unusual, but the question I investigate in this book is whether these issues—along with various problems and “symptoms”—place Batman in the “abnormal” range from a mental health perspective. If so, just how bad is his problem (or problems)?

In fact, a fair number of people in our world and in Batman’s world have wondered whether something is wrong with him. I sometimes speak at comic conventions and people are fascinated by the question of whether there is something clinically wrong with Batman. Batman is “different” from other people in the world he inhabits, and people wonder about where the line is that separates “different-normal” from “different-abnormal.” Although people in our world may not be different in the ways that Batman is (for instance, very, very few of them dress up as a giant bat except at Halloween or comic conventions), his stories can lead us to think about what it takes to be considered “abnormal”—whether he is more than simply different, but rather has a mental illness.

After all, at first glance dressing up like a bat in public (or even in private) would seem to suggest a significant problem. Dr. Chase Meridian, the psychologist in the film Batman Forever (1995), is one such person. She remarks “Well, let's just say that I could write a hell of a paper on a grown man who dresses like a flying rodent.”

The book What’s the Matter With Batman? An Unauthorized Clinical Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader (from which this post is an excerpt), in a way, is the fulfillment of Dr. Meridian’s aspiration. It is intended to explore Batman’s issues from a psychological perspective—to determine whether his actions, thoughts, and feelings indicate a mental illness.

Evaluating Batman

Let me state clearly at the outset that I’m going to talk about Batman as if he were a real person. You and I both know that he’s a fictitious character, but part of what makes him such a compelling character is thinking about what it would be like if he did exist, if he were real. So in my discussions about him I’m not generally going to talk about why writers might have written particular stories, added specific characters, or how the Comics Code Authority guidelines might have affected his character, other characters, or the stories. I’m going to take him as he is and try to understand him, contradictions and all.

Part of my goal is to determine whether Batman’s actions and problems reach the level necessary to be diagnosed with any of the disorders in the “psychiatric diagnostic bible” at the time of this writing: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition-Text Revision, abbreviated as DSM-IV-TR.[1] The specific disorders that seem to be the most likely candidates include:

Dissociative Identity Disorder
Depression
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Antisocial Personality Disorder

My evaluation of Batman is intended both to entertain and to educate. People familiar with Batman stories may find my views on the Caped Crusader’s mental state interesting and illuminating. My hope is that you will also learn something about psychology in the process—something that can be of use to you as you think about yourself or other people.

Clinical Evaluation: A Continual Process

When mental health clinicians are asked to make a clinical evaluation of someone, they do so by talking to the person being evaluated, observing that person and, in some cases, obtaining information from others—family members, referring doctors, the court, or law enforcement agencies if they are involved. In some cases, psychological or medical testing is done to help clarify a question about the person’s functioning, such as whether he or she has delusions (entrenched beliefs that are not based on reality) or whether the person’s cognitive functioning is impaired in some way.

I couldn’t interview Batman directly (folks dressed as Batman at comic conventions don’t count), so how did I evaluate him? My clinical impressions and assessment of Batman are based on the stories that I’ve read or seen. Just like any mental health clinician, then, my conclusions are based on what I observe and what has been reported to me of the person.

Making my task even more challenging is the sheer number of stories about him: In his many decades of existence, Batman has been featured in an almost countless number of stories in comic books, films, television shows (including cartoon shows), novels, and graphic novels. He’s been featured working solo, with various members of his bat-family (e.g., Robin, Nightwing,[2] Batgirl), and in team-ups with other superheroes, such as Superman. I have not read or seen every story that features Batman. Not even close. So when you read this book, you might find that you disagree with me, based on Batman stories that you know but I've not encountered. Just as mental health clinicians sometimes revise their diagnoses and understanding of a patient when additional information points to symptoms or strengths of which they were previously unaware, I might well revise my conclusions if I knew all of the salient stories.

If you disagree with my conclusions because you know of specific stories that support different conclusions than the ones I reach, please let me know; please send to me the name of the specific story, a brief summary of it, and if possible, the relevant dialogue, narration, or artwork. You can send that information to me at WhatsTheMatterWithBatman@gmail.com. If and when there is enough information to warrant changing my diagnoses and overall evaluation, I’ll revise this book in a second edition, credit you in the revised acknowledgement section, and keep you posted.

Let’s Get Some Issues Out Of the Way

There are a few aspects of Batman’s life that I’d like to address right off the bat (no pun intended): that he dresses up like a bat, that he takes teenage boys as his wards and sidekicks, whether he has a substance abuse problem, that he devotes so much money to his life as Batman, and that he has no real personal life. Let’s see whether any of these things indicate that something is really wrong with Batman.

Dressing Up

He dresses up like a bat. I grant that it is weird, but the issue at hand is whether it’s more than that—whether it’s a sign of mental illness. My answer is that in Batman’s case it is not, for several reasons. First, Bruce Wayne didn’t decide to walk—or swoop—around the streets of Gotham in a bat costume because he actually thought he was a bat. Wayne started dressing as Batman because he had a specific purpose in mind: to disguise his identity when he fought criminals. Sounds like a good idea to me, and one that is used by military personnel when necessary (though not the bat part). Wayne also wanted his disguise to serve another function: to evoke fear in criminals. As Wayne noted to himself in Batman’s origin story in 1939: “Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot… so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible..."[3] Thus, Wayne intentionally set out to wear a disguise that did more than hide his identity. In this sense, his choice of disguise—of costume—was effective because it met his objectives. Yes, we can argue whether a snake costume would have been more effective, but that would have been harder to squeeze into.

Additionally, Batman’s use of his attire is analogous to police officers wearing their uniform, or butlers wearing their uniform, when on duty. Uniforms (of which his costume is one) signal what the wearer’s role is. If you see someone in a police uniform, you expect certain kinds of behavior: If the officer pulls a gun and points it at someone running, it will likely mean something different to you then if the gun-holder wasn’t wearing that uniform. The uniform immediately conveys context to understand the wearer’s behavior.

In a sense, dressing as a bat is akin to dressing as a Ninja or a Navy Seal: the color—black—enables him to hide in the shadows until he wants to emerge, the bats’ wings enable him to glide short distances, and the overall appearance achieves its ends. It’s scary. His willingness to wear this unusual costume (for most of Batman’s existence, he wore tights on his legs with “underwear” on the outside, which most people find weird) speaks to his dedication to his mission and how important he thinks the costume is. And, as we see, it is.

In what cases might Wayne’s costume be considered a possible indication of mental illness? If Wayne actually believed that he was a bat (that is, if he had delusions), it would certainly suggest a mental illness such as schizophrenia or delusional disorder. If Wayne wore his batsuit for sexual excitement, it might indicate a sexual fetish. Another red flag would arise if Wayne thought he was a different person—a different identity—when he dressed as Batman; if he did, he might be suffering from dissociative identity disorder, discussed in the next chapter. (On a related note, in the book I refer to “Batman” and “Bruce Wayne” somewhat interchangeably, but I typically I refer to him as “Batman” when he’s fighting crime or in other ways functioning in his role as the Caped Crusader. I’m more likely to refer to him was “Wayne” when discussing his pre-Batman days or his life as a “regular man” rather than a crime-fighter.)

Why Wards: Taking Youngsters Under His Bat-Wing

Batman has taken five youngsters under his wing to become Robin: Dick Grayson (the original Robin, who as an adult went on to become Nightwing), Jason Todd (who later took the name the Red Hood), Tim Drake (who as an adult went on to become Red Robin), Stephanie Brown (who later became the fifth Batgirl), and Damian Wayne (Bruce’s previously unknown son, whose mother is Talia al Ghul—she is the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul). It’s a curious thing for a romantically unattached man with a dangerous lifestyle to assume legal responsibility for a young teen—as he did with Dick Grayson. Also curious is why he trains and accepts minors as sidekicks in a dangerous profession. Might this be an indication of mental illness on Wayne’s part?

To answer that question, we need to understand Wayne’s motives. I think his motives were generative.[4] In this context, the term generative comes from Erik Erikson’s term generativity, which refers to a desire to guide and nurture the next generation.[5] People can be generative in a variety of ways: through formal or informal mentoring at work, creating objects for others to use, or helping to rear children. When Wayne first took in Dick Grayson, I believe he was acting on generative impulses. Grayson’s family was part of a circus act and Dick had witnessed his parents’ murders, mirroring Bruce Wayne’s witnessing his own parents’ murders. Wayne took in Grayson to help someone in pain from growing up alone and isolated. He gave Grayson the gift of a mentor that he himself did not have.

Okay so far, but why put a child in danger by taking him to skirmishes with criminals? That’s a harder question to answer. Initially when Robin first appeared on the scene in 1940,[6] the world was a more innocent place and criminals were much less willing to harm law enforcement officers and children. Nonetheless, exposing Dick to danger was a clear lapse in judgment on Wayne’s part. A very clear lapse. Wayne might have wanted to help buffer Grayson’s loss, but there were many ways he could have done that without putting the youngster directly in harm’s way as they battled criminals. For instance, he could have used Grayson as an assistant who stayed in the Batcave, much as Alfred does, and as does the character Oracle, who helps Batman through her work at her command center.[7]

Look for Part 2 about Batman’s mental health next week.

[1] For brevity’s sake, in the rest of the book I’ll refer to it simply as DSM-IV. It was published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2000.

[2] Nightwing is the codename for adult crimefighter Dick Grayson; when Dick was younger, he was the first Robin, Batman’s sidekick. Nightwing is primarily based in Blüdhaven but comes back to Gotham City from time to time to help Batman.

[3] The story, written by Bill Finger, is in Detective Comics #33.

[4] Although some people have read sexual motives into Wayne’s relationship with Dick Grayson (notably Fredric Wertham in the 1950s), I don’t think their relationship had sexual overtones and writers of Batman stories have stated that they wrote Wayne as a heterosexual character without a sexual attraction to Grayson. Their relationship was and is more like that of father and son.

[5] According to Erik Erickson, generativity is a key challenge to the seventh stage of development and stands in contrast to its opposing tendency of stagnation, a self-centeredness in which the individual doesn’t better society in some way. His book on development is Erikson, Erik H. (1959). Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: International Universities Press.

[6] In Detective Comics #38; Robin was created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and artist Jerry Robinson.

[7] Oracle is Barbara Gordon’s codename; Barbara Gordon had originally been Batgirl, but after the Joker shot her at her home she was left without the use of her legs and is wheelchair bound. (Note: The relaunch of the DC Universe in 2011 had Barbara Gordon with full use of her legs and in the role of Batgirl.)

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:04:00 +0000

If you're going to the San Diego Comic Convention, please stop by for my panel:

Thursday, July 12

2:30-3:30

The Dark Knight Rises: Is Batman Broken?

He’s strong, smart, and heroic. He's the Dark Knight we want on our side, but is Batman also out of his mind? As Christopher Nolan’s Batman movie trilogy comes to its end, psychologists Travis Langley (Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight) and Robin Rosenberg (What’s the Matter with Batman?, The Psychology of Superheroes,) discuss Bruce Wayne's relationships, strengths and weaknesses, and potential diagnoses, and ask Bat-Films executive producer Michael Uslan and some of the comic book writers who know Batman best, Len Wein and Steve Englehart, exactly how healthy it is for an orphaned billionaire to spend his nights fighting crime while dressed like a bat. Does the Dark Knight have bats in his belfry?

Assembling the Avengers

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:37:00 +0000

The idea of an Avengers film was daring: to put together A-list actors who have played Marvel superheroes recently, give them a good plot, script, and director (Joss Whedon). As opening weekend box office sales indicate, the risk paid off and the film was a success.

What about the psychological aspects of the film? (After all, I’m a psychologist, so that’s what I look for in films.) I anticipated that the film would focus on team-building: taking superheroes who are, for the most part, alpha males and female who are used to acting autonomously, and who comes from diverse backgrounds and have diverse experiences. They are:

one rich incredibly smart industrialist (Tony Stark/Iron Man),
one Norse God (Thor),
one supersoldier out of his era, and who grew up a small weakling (Steve Rogers/Captain America); he probably still has at least a partial view of himself as a weakling (just was someone who was “fat” as a kid but slim as an adult still feels “fat,” and someone who grew up poor but becomes rich never quite feels he or she has enough wealth),
one emotionally scarred spy who can lie flawlessly and take down multiple guys simultaneously (Natasha Romanov/Black Widow),
one humble scientist who prefers to be alone and who has been working to master anger management techniques (Bruce Banner/The Hulk), and
one guy who’s a fantastic archer (Clint Barton/Hawkeye).

(Plus a one-eyed “leader,” Nick Fury, who sets the goals and parameters for the team—or who tries to do so.)

The task laid out for these heroes (aside for saving the planet from the bad guys) is to figure out how to function as a team. To cooperate. To subordinate their own ideas to a designated leader. To be part of an ensemble.

In other words, the film is an origin story—about the origins of the Avengers. How they collectively came to be. With this many A-list superheroes, each superhero doesn’t get that much screen time, unfortunately. (Unless a longer director’s cut is in the works for a DVD.) So the film doesn’t have time to delve into a lot of character development for an individual character. It’s about group process.

Psychologically, the origin story wasn’t as rich as I’d hoped it would be because a significant chunk of time was spent on the requisite action scenes and the who-can-piss-higher-up-the-tree scenes in the first half of the film: Iron Man versus Thor, Tony Stark versus Bruce Banner, Hulk versus Thor. Black Widow versus Hawkeye. And the who-is-more-of-a-real-hero scenes (which Captain America wins hands down). I was hoping more time would be spent focusing on a topic to which most of us can relate from our work experiences: How do people from disparate backgrounds and experiences come together to work as a team?

The film did address this point, though I would have liked to see more depth to it. Like all origin stories, there is a transformational moment in which their dynamic shifts for the better. [spoiler alert] That moment occurs after a “sidekick” dies (Agent Coulson), they have gotten creamed by the bad guy (Loki, Thor’s adoptive brother), and Nick Fury gives them a talking to about being a team. In fact, it becomes clear that more of the same bickering while fighting Loki and his minions will be ineffective. They need one leader, and the rest of them need to be willing to be led. It works. [end of spoiler alert] Instead of trying to piss higher, they cooperate, they support each other, they praise each other’s efforts. They become more than the sum of their parts. They become a team and figure out how to each member’s strength’s to their collective advantage.

The transformational moment rests on a staple used in science fiction: a common enemy or threat brings people together to work as a team. (In some science fiction stories, for instance, Earth’s nations put aside their differences and join forces to protect Earth from a hostile alien force.) This dynamic is explored in a classic psychological study by Muzafer Sherif, in which 11-year-old boys in an overnight camp were initially divided into two groups and the groups competed in various contests for prizes. Tensions between the two groups ran high, with name-calling and vandalism. As part of the study, the boys were then told that the camp’s water supply was cut off, and all boys needed to cooperate as a group to help restore the water supply. After uniting and working together against the threat (lack of water), their previous opposing-team tension decreased. This is what happened to the superheroes in the Avengers: They had to cooperate to defeat Loki and his enemy army, and their previous in-fighting and tensions dissolved as they focused on the common and important task at hand. Good job, Avengers!

Reference:

Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. W. (1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The robber’s cave experiment. Norman, OK: The University Book Exchange.

When the Avengers Assemble?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:06:00 +0000

Click the link below to hear my radio interview with the Canadian Broadcast Company about psychological issues I'd love to see played out in the upcoming Avengers film:

http://www.cbc.ca/day6

Robin on Batman

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:56:00 +0000

Comic Con on the Couch: Psychoanalyzing Superheroes

Robin Rosenberg explores the inner lives of masked crime-fighters and the civilians who dress like them.

(Illustration by Norm Breyfogle)

April 23, 2012 • By Spencer Ackerman • No Comments and 12 Reactions

The shrink wants to know how Batman is feeling.

In this case, Batman is a husky mid-40s native of uptown Manhattan’s working-class Washington Heights neighborhood, his own personal Gotham. Under his thick black rubber mask, he grunts in his best Christian Bale, “The person that’s under the mask doesn’t exist.”

But the woman he’s talking to wants to get deep under that mask. She’sRobin Rosenberg, a middle-aged Palo Alto psychologist in private practice who specializes in an unusual clinical cohort: superheroes. Rosenberg, a columnist for Psychology Today and the author and editor of several books, including the anthology The Psychology of Superheroes, wants to know what motivates Batman. Yes, Robin is questioning Batman.

For more of this article in Pacific Standard Magazine, go to...

http://www.psmag.com/culture/comic-con-on-the-couch-psychoanalyzing-superheroes-40550/#disqus_thread

Limitless--NOT!

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:45:00 +0000

I previously wrote a post about one of the themes from the film Limitless: the idea that some pills can make us smarter. That they can enhance our cognitive abilities, such as our ability to pay attention, to learn, to remember, to be creative or think "out of the box." In essence, such pills-cognitive enhancers-hold out the promise of intellectual superpowers, at least for some of us. The film (and the book, The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn, on which it is based) portrays a glimpse of what it would be like to have such seemingly limitless enhanced powers.

In a recent article, psychologists Thomas Hills and Ralph Hertwig suggest that there may well be limits on how enhanced our cognitive abilities can become, or how enhanced they can become without some significant cost or "side effect." As an example they hold up caffeine intake, which can help us focus and stay alert (and so makes caffeine a cognitive enhancer), but too much caffeine can make us anxious or impair our fine motor coordination. In this case, more isn't necessarily better.

Even when a more enhanced ability might be even better, Hill and Hertwig suggest that humans haven't evolved to be more enhanced without a cost. They point to "S," the man with a famous memory. S could remember lists of words or numbers of astounding length, and could recite them from memory backwards as easily as forwards. Once reading or hearing something, S never forgot it. However, S couldn't remember faces very well. He also couldn't shut out the associations and memories that were triggered by things he read and heard. His extraordinary memory came at the cost of other "normal" abilities. (You can read more about S in The Mind of a Mnemonist: A Little Book About a Vast Memory by Aleksandr Luria.)

This seemingly built-in compensation for extraordinary abilities is highlighted in an article by Allan Snyder in which he discusses people who are savants-who have extraordinary pockets of knowledge or skills that contrast sharply with the rest of their abilities. Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Rain Man is an example of a savant. Because of how the brains of savants work, they can access information that most of us can't, but in turn they are less likely to understand the information. Metaphorically, they can see the trees in detail but don't understand that together they create a forest. Snyder proposes that it is the lack of the ability to see the whole-to process that many trees indicate a forest-that gives rise to their being able to see the trees in such detail.

Researchers have temporarily been able to induce savant-like skills in "normal" participants through transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a procedure in which a coil placed on the scalp emits magnetic pulses into selected areas of the brain, briefly inhibiting those brain areas, and allowing other brain areas to become more active. Using TMS in this way, researchers have found that "normal" non-artist participants can temporarily draw better (and are able to pay more attention to detail), become better proofreaders, and become better at guessing the number of elements in a container (e.g., akin to the number of marbles in a jar), among other abilities. The specific ability that improves depends on the exact position of the TMS coil.

The fact that TMS can temporarily enhance a specific ability by briefly disabling another ability is part of the point Hill and Hertwig make: A given ability is only a plus in certain contexts, and the "side effects" or costs of that ability can, in other contexts, create deficits. Being able to remember everything you read is great for law school and being a lawyer, but it creates problems if you can't recognize the presiding judge from last year's case (but she recognizes you!).

It appears that our ability to be enhanced may not be limitless after all.

Copyright 2012 by Robin S. Rosenberg. All rights reserved. Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. Her website is DrRobinRosenberg.com and she also blogs on Huffington Post.Her most recent book is The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

References:

Hills, T., & Hertwig, R. (2011). Why aren't we smarter already: Evolutionary trade-offs and cognitive enhancements. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 373-377.

Snyder, A. (2009). Explaining and inducing savant skills: Privileged access to lower level, less-processed information. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. 364, 1399-1405.

Radio Interview about Real Life Superheroes

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:06:00 +0000

Click here to listen to an interview with NPR affiliate WFAE's Mike Collins about real life superheroes.

Salander/Secret Lives of Men

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:33:00 +0000

For those of you interested in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, here are links to my interview with Dr. Chris Blazina for his radio show The Secret Life of Men. We discuss the psychology of the character of Lisbeth Salander and raise some of the issues addressed in the book The Psychology of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

To download and/or share the show, please visit http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thesecretlivesofmen. In addition, each show is also available at Apple Store, available for free download as an iTune. This link is http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-secret-lives-men-blog/id321004067.

Salander as Superhero

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:55:00 +0000

This blog post is an excerpt from a chapter in the anthology titled The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, published by BenBella Books.

Lisbeth Salander is a captivating protagonist. Her appearance and demeanor lead us-and the characters in her world-to make assumptions about her, to pigeonhole her as a goth, a slacker, a rebel. Over the course of the first novel and the trilogy, Stieg Larsson upends our analysis of her character as he reveals her inner life, her outward behavior, and the choices she's made. We can't help but admire her grit and persistence, her inner strength and commitment, her strong moral code, and her adherence to it.

There's a sense in which Salander is an action hero, even though the action isn't generally hitting, punching, or kicking (though she engages in some of those actions, too). Rather, she engages in hacking, researching, and other uses of her substantial intellect and emotional strengths. Her heroism is demonstrated mentally as well as physically. I'll go one step further: I think that Salander is a superhero. She has the three most important characteristics typical of a superhero: a mission, (super)powers, and a superheroidentity. The fact that she's not explicitly labeled as a superhero-and that we only subliminally come to understand her as one-adds to her appeal. Let's explore her mission in more detail.

The Mission

Every superhero has a mission. Batman seeks to avenge his parents' deaths by "spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals.". Spider-Man's mission is to use his spider-like powers to help others. Superman fights for truth, justice, and-until recently-the American way. Most superheroes don't begin with those missions, though. Their missions arise as a response to events in their lives-most frequently traumatic events. These events steer the protagonist to dedicate him or herself to a (superheroic) cause. The murders of Bruce Wayne's parents steer him to train and study for years and then don the Batsuit in order to reduce crime in Gotham City. The murder of Peter Parker's Uncle Ben leads the newly spider-powered adolescent to dedicate his life and powers to protecting others rather than pursuing fame and glory as an enhanced being. Clark Kent's questions about his place in the world steer him toward his mission as Superman.

Salander, too, has life events that steer her toward a mission. At the beginning of Larsson's trilogy, Salander's work as a private investigator is a job: she does the work she's hired to do and doesn't get involved in her investigations beyond what is required. She doesn't yet have a mission in the heroic sense, but when investigating Mikael Blomkvist for Dirch Frode (Henrik Vanger's attorney), the pieces don't all add up and she's intrigued. Mikael Blomkvist plans to go willingly go to jail without disclosing the sources for his inaccurate reporting on Wennerström. Salander welcomes the opportunity to be paid to find out more about Blomkvist.

During this same general time period that Blomkvist begins looking to Harriet's disappearance, Salander undergoes a new traumatic experience of her own that involves secrets, surviving injustice, and being disempowered: She is coerced into performing oral sex on her new guardian, Nils Bjurman-a man in a position to destroy her life and autonomy. Salander is not willing to remain subjected to Bjurman's torture, so she sets out to entrap him by filming him when he next demands oral sex. He demands more than that, though, and he brutally rapes her.

After being taunted by others and witnessing abuse in her home as a child, as an adult Lisbeth places a high value on being in control of her life-and Bjurman's brutal assault made her feel out of control. Although she gains a hold over him by filming the rape and thereby securing evidence of his crime, this hold came at a great personal cost. Salander is not someone who likes feeling powerless. (As we learn in the second novel, when she was strapped down in the seclusion room as a child, she'd calm herself by imagining being in control-by being able to act on her own behalf.)

It is in the aftermath of her experience with Bjurman that she discovers Blomkvist's new project: to find out what happened to a young woman, Harriet Vanger, who went missing decades ago. When Blomkvist asks Salander to research the case and track down old murders that might correspond to selected biblical passages, Salander is intrigued.

It is while hunting for the details of that first murder case-in which the woman was bound and tortured-that Salander seems to develop the stirring of purpose that Blomkvist already possesses. For her, the investigation shifts from an interesting puzzle that slakes her intellectual curiosity to one of a mission-to uncover the truth and see justice done. Blomkvist's mission becomes her mission, though they have different ideas of what justice might ultimately mean. Salander turns up additional murders that were not on Harriet's list. And when the job for which she was hired is over (but the killer not yet discovered), she wants to continue. Blomkvist says he'll pay her but she would have done so for free.

As she and Blomkvist find and put together the pieces, she also sees Blomkvist's burning passion to discover the person who sadistically murdered young women. Based on her own experience with Bjurman (and as we find out in the subsequent stories, her experiences with child psychiatrist, Teleborian), she can identify with these dead women-these victims-and no doubt views Blomkvist's goal and efforts to solve their murders as heroic. She is transformed by watching him and by taking part in the cause for truth and justice, just as sidekicks are transformed by their mentors (as Robin was by Batman, for instance). We see her channel her sense of agency and self-efficacy (her belief that she can do what she sets out to do), into a desire to fight for justice as she interprets it.

Transformation can also arise in response to trauma. In my formulation, Salander's experience of being raped was the turning point that steered her to her mission. Like other survivors of trauma, Salander found a way to make personal meaning of her traumatic experience. Salander's transformation as a result of her traumatic experience is consistent with the findings of an area of psychological research referred to as posttraumatic growth, in which the stress of trauma challenges people's beliefs-about themselves, the world, and their place in it-and induces them to grow in positive, meaningful ways. (A minority-about 20 percent--of people who experience a trauma go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]; they may not experience posttraumatic growth while their PTSD symptoms are prominent and chronic.) Trauma can leave the survivor wondering "why did this happen?" and when the trauma has a personal element, such as with rape and assault, the survivor may wonder "why did this happen to me?"

As survivors struggle to answer that question, over time most report feeling stronger for having come through their traumatic experience. They make sense of their (senseless) traumatic experience and newly discovered strength by committing themselves to helping others. Sometimes survivors work to prevent what happened to them from happening to others. Candy Lightner and Sue LeBrun-Green, who lit the fire of awareness about drunk driving when they started Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), are perfect examples of this. The seeds of MADD were planted in 1980 after Lightner's thirteen-year-old daughter, Cari, who was walking to a church carnival, was hit and killed by a drunk driver. Another person who made meaning of family trauma is William Minniefield, an African-American man whose brother died waiting for a kidney transplant and whose other brother is waiting for one still. Organ donation by minorities is less common among and leads to even longer wait times for organs that are the best match for African-Americans. Minniefield founded the Minority Organ Donation Education Program to educate minority populations about organ donation, and to try to prevent what happened in his family from happening to others.

Other survivors may develop missions to help people like themselves-survivors after the fact. After David Schury's recovery from the burns that covered over 30 percent of his body, he and his wife Michele started the From Tragedy to Triumph Foundation, which provides support to burn victims and their families.

In a sense, Salander develops a mission after her experience with Bjurman: to use her talents and abilities to figure out who abused, tortured, and murdered young women. Her answer: Gottfried and then Martin Vanger. Like other trauma survivors, Salander acts to prevent further victims. She prevents Blomkvist from being another of Martin's victims, then injures Martin and chases him on her motorcycle at which point Vanger decides to kill himself, steering his car directly into an oncoming truck. Martin Vanger isn't able to harm any more women because of her intervention.

It is during the period of Blomkvist's helplessness-when Martin Vanger holds Blomkvist hostage in the basement room and is about to kill him-that Salander transforms from Blomkvist's sidekick to a (super)hero in her own right. Like any superhero, she saves him at risk to her own life. She's dedicated. Her sense of purpose is so great, in fact, that she becomes a moral leader with a clear vision of the correct path ahead. When she later explains to Henrik Vanger's attorney, Dirch Frode, what was really going on with Martin Vanger, Frode-temporarily unable to decide among untenable moral choices about what to do about Martin's basement torture chamber, how much to tell the police, and what to reveal about Martin's misdeeds-realizes that "here he was taking orders from a child [Lisbeth]."

Salander even espouses to Blomkvist the superhero's credo-that people have a choice in how to behave, even if they had a bad childhood. She challenges him by stating, "So you're assuming that Martin had no will of his own and that people become whatever they've been brought up to be" and "Gottfried isn't the only kid who was ever mistreated. That doesn't give him the right to murder women. He made that choice himself. And the same is true of Martin" (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

As with other superheroes, part of Salander's mission is to see that justice is served for others-in this case, the dead women-at least as much as it can be. She wants Frode and Henrik Vanger to do their best to identify the victims and provide their families with "suitable compensation." She also wants them to donate two million kroner each year, in perpetuity, to the National Organization for Women's Crisis Centres and Girls' Crisis Centres in Sweden. Her transformation to hero/moral arbiter is complete. She has made meaning of her own traumatic history and seeks to prevent what happened to her from happening to others.

The first novel is Lisbeth's "origin story," a story that explains who she was "before" (before the events that began her transformation) and who she becomes; superhero origin stories document transformations of personal growth, typically in response to some type of trauma or crisis. This transformation, reflected in her attire and behavior, is clear at the beginning of the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire. She no longer dresses to give off an angry attitude, and during the beginning of the Caribbean hurricane she put her own life at significant risk to find her young lover George Bland and bring him to safety. On their way back to the hotel, Salander again puts herself at risk to prevent Richard Forbes from killing his wife. Deviating from her normal snarky or defensive attitude, she is polite to the local police investigating Richard Forbes' disappearance, answering their questions without malice. She even allows strangers to touch her without giving them a look or biting their heads off! This is a different Salander than we are introduced to at the start of the first book. She is no longer someone who wants to be left alone and who interferes in other people's lives only through her computer, and only when paid or for her own personal ends. She has become a protector and avenger.

Her most recent book is the edited anthology, The Psychology of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Limitless: Some Thoughts About the Film

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:02:00 +0000

I didn't get a chance to see to see the film Limitless when it was in theatres, but I recently saw it on the small screen. Before I talk about it, though if you haven't seen it, here's an overview, from IMDB:

An action-thriller about a writer who takes an experimental drug that allows him to use 100 percent of his mind. As one man evolves into the perfect version of himself, forces more corrupt than he can imagine mark him for assassination. Out-of-work writer Eddie Morra's (Cooper) rejection by girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) confirms his belief that he has zero future. That all vanishes the day an old friend introduces Eddie to NZT, a designer pharmaceutical that makes him laser focused and more confident than any man alive. Now on an NZT-fueled odyssey, everything Eddie's read, heard or seen is instantly organized and available to him. As the former nobody rises to the top of the financial world, he draws the attention of business mogul Carl Van Loon (De Niro), who sees this enhanced version of Eddie as the tool to make billions. But brutal side effects jeopardize his meteoric ascent... Written by Relativity Media

Note that the concept that we normally only "use a small percentage of our brains" isn't accurate, so a drug that enables us to use "100%" doesn't make sense. Below is thissummary from Wikipedia about this myth and its inaccuracy (and yes, I know that Wikipedia isn't always correct, but in this case it's close enough. Here's a link to a Scientific Americanarticle about the topic):

Scientific accuracy
At the start of the film a marijuana dealer says that we can only access 20% of our brain (and that NZT lets a person access all of it), referring to a common myth. The mechanism of how the drug actually works is never scientifically explained in the film. Neurologist Barry Gordona describes the myth as laughably false, adding, "we use virtually every part of the brain, and that [most of] the brain is active almost all the time",[9] and neuroscientist Barry Beyerstein has set out seven kinds of evidence refuting the ten percent myth.[10]
Physics professor James Kakalios said it was plausible that medical science could improve intelligence, but that neurochemistry is not advanced enough for it to be achieved currently. Kakalios also said the notion used in the film that human beings can only access 10% of their brains is a myth: 100% of it is used at different times. Kakalios said if such a pill existed, a person running out of the supply could actually experience a rebound effect.[11] This is alluded to in the movie, as the protagonist's ex-wife explains that she can't concentrate for more than 10 minutes at a time after coming off the drug.

But that's not what I want to address. I was fascinated by several aspects of the film, particularly the idea of being able to obtain enhanced mental abilities-in essence, a superpower-and its consequences. Medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are sometimes referred to as cognitive enhancers or neuroenhancers because of their ability to help people focus their attention. To "enhance" their baseline level of attention.

If each person could have his or her mental abilities enhanced with medication, what might that mean for society? If all of us could obtain the same superpower, would it be a superpower? To paraphrase Dash from the film The Incredibles, if everyone is special, then in a way, no one is. Of course if such an enhancement pill or procedure were available, the likely reality is that it wouldn't be available to all of us.

If it's only available to some of us, though, then it's not playing "fair" for those special recipients to use it for an advantage. Yet if it were possible to do mental exercises to enhance mental ability (such as reading, attending classes, doing special logic puzzles), that would probably seem fair to most people, as long as these mental exercises were available to all who wanted them (and cost wasn't a barrier-there could be scholarships). Doing such exercises means earning the enhanced abilities. Putting in time and effort. It's analogous to the practice involved to play an instrument at a high level or to be an elite athlete. Such folks may start out with a certain level of talent, but they earn their way into high level so achievement.

What can rankle about the enhanced ability of the protagonist in Limitless is that he didn't earn the ability. He took a mental "steroid" to boost his performance and took advantage of it. He played dirty.

Copyright 2011 by Robin S. Rosenberg. All rights reserved. Robin S. Rosenberg is a clinical psychologist. Her website is DrRobinRosenberg.com and she also blogs on Huffington Post. Her most recent book is The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Flea Market Smarts

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:30:00 +0000

Recently, I went to the monthly Treasure Island Flea Market for the first time. I was amazed at the ingenuity and creativity behind some of the items for sale there, some of which were made by the people selling the items. For instance, one woman was selling recycled decorated wine bottles that she heated and reformed as small cheese plates or as bowls for dip, complete with spreader. At another stall the vender sold purses in the shape and appearance of the body of an electric guitar. Still another vender sold pendants in the shape of mah-jong and Scrabble tiles, but each pendant had different artwork on it. I was struck by how clever some of the items were, how they seemed to fill a niche that most of us didn't even realize existed.

For the rest of the post, click here at Huffington Post (or cut and paste the URL below).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-s-rosenberg-phd/lowering-anxiety_b_869477.html

A Discussion about Eating Disorders

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:39:00 +0000

Here's some information about eating disorders (the beginning of an interview with Psychotherapy.net). Click here for the full interview about eating disorders.

Rebecca Aponte:	When you think about eating disorders, do you think of both anorexia and bulimia? Is there a lot of overlap in people who engage in these behaviors?
Robin Rosenberg:	There are people who engage in both types of behaviors. In DSM-IV, individuals who exhibit all the criteria for anorexia but who also binge and purge would be diagnosed as anorexia nervosa binge/purge type. So diagnostically, anorexia trumps bulimia, if you will. But that is just the DSM-IV; who knows what will happen in DSM-V?
RA:	Are they related?
RR:	They appear to be, at least for a significant subset of people. So in terms of the research, when you look at people who have bulimia versus people who have anorexia, that is not necessarily a helpful distinction. Anorexia has, in DSM-IV, two subtypes. There is the traditional restricting type, which is the people who eat minimally, and then there is the form of anorexia where people are significantly underweight and may be amenorrheic [they have stopped menstruating], but they may also binge or eat without restricting, but then purge in some way, or use other compensatory behaviors. Those people are classified as anorexia binge/purge type, but in studies, those people have more in common with people who have bulimia than they do with anorexia restrictive type. Some of this is a bit of a diagnostic artifact, because it's the way that it has been defined in DSM-IV. The most interesting thing about eating disorders in terms of classification issues is that it is not uncommon for people to move from one eating disorder to another over time. ... Continue Reading Interview >>

Forging Steel, Part 2: Soldiers, Superheroes, and Resilience

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:50:00 +0000

In a previous post, I talked about military training, the ways that it "forges" soldiers, and what might be relevant to superheroes. Part of what the training does is it causes reappraisal--the (re)interpretation of stimuli. For instance, boot camp causes the cadet to reappraise what he or she can withstand, and what he or she is capable of. Similarly, the intense physical and psychological challenges that are built in to the Special Forces courses lead the soldiers to re-evaluate how they see themselves, and thus how they see what would otherwise be over-the-top experiences in adversity.

The training process also provides an opportunity for soldiers to do what elite athletes do: direct their attention away from pain (Ochsner & Gross, 2005; Troy & Mauss, 2011). You’ve probably had this experience: You can feel a headache coming on. If you pay attention to the pain, the headache will feel worse. If you try to ignore the headache, it doesn’t seem quite so bad. Athletes learn to direct their attention away from pain and so do soldiers (and superheroes). As former Army officer Craig Mullaney recounts in his memoir The Unforgiving Minute, he learned from his instructors at West Point that pain “is just weakness leaving the body.”

Pain can be emotional as well as physical. For instance, for a moment, think about some life event that upsets you. A breakup, a loss, an experience with failure. If you continue to direct your attention to that upsetting experience, you’ll likely get upset. Of course thinking about an upsetting experience can be an opportunity for learning, but you have to think about it in a specific way, asking yourself “what lessons are there to be learned form this situation?” Just dwelling on the experience, letting it rattle around and around in your mind, fills up the mental space with emotional turmoil. It does the opposite of regulate your emotions—it makes them more likely to feel out of control.

So soldiers, particularly elite soldiers, must learn to control their attention and direct it accordingly—to what is relevant for survival (Abele & Gendolla, 2007; Aspinwall & Brunhart, 1996). If they’re preoccupied with thoughts of missing family, they may not notice that tripwire or mine in the road. It’s the same with superheroes. They are amazingly able to focus their attention to the problem at hand, regardless of what is happening in their personal lives. Mullaney notes that if you aren’t paying attention to the relevant details, people under your command can die.

Controlling your attention also allows you to direct your attention to stimuli that may be less likely to induce counterproductive emotions. In a scary movie, if you find yourself being too scared, you may start to notice the actor’s makeup onscreen, or the temperature of the room, or in some other way direct your attention so that you can be less frightened. That’s adaptive. Soldiers must do this too, since being very scared on a mission isn’t adaptive. Their intensive training can become an anchor point to calm emotions that might get out of control; they might direct their attention to aspects of the current situation that are similar to ones during their training, thus providing a sense of mastery (“I handled a similar situation then, so I can now”) and momentarily diminishing the threat of the situation so that negative emotions don’t spiral out of control and interfere with the mission.

Batman’s years of training likely gave him the experience he needs both to direct his attention and to reappraise threatening situations as less threatening. For instance, when yet again facing off against the Joker, Batman can say to himself “this is just another in the Joker’s long string of plots, and in the end he always loses. That’ll happen again in this situation, one way or another.” Saying something like this makes the situation less scary.

Soldiers, police officers, fire fighters (and yes, superheroes) need either to have the ability to distract themselves from “negative” stimuli and thoughts—things that could induce too much fear, anxiety, or sadness—or develop it very quickly. Psychologists are studying ways to train these abilities associated with resilience in people who don’t naturally come by them. One type of training is called cognitive control training, and occurs as part of mindfulness training as well as cognitive therapy. (Click here for an article about this.)

Resilience doesn’t mean that folks should never focus on negative stimuli, or should never feel afraid. Au contraire! Resilience involves the ability to figure out relevant from irrelevant negative stimuli. If you hear whistling that might be coming from a grenade, you want to pay attention to that sound, not distract yourself from it—even if you get scared in the process. Being scared isn’t a bad thing because it can give you an adrenaline rush that in turn enables you to fight the enemy or flee the scene. Too much anxiety, fear, sadness, though, can paralyze. (Click here for an article that reviews this literature; Troy & Mauss, 2011.)

And with experience, soldiers, and superheroes can develop their own kind of “spider-sense”—a mental tingling sensation when a military situation isn’t quite right. That something is off. You may not know what that something is right away, but time and experience lead you to trust it. (Note, though, that the spider-sense isn’t right 100% of the time, and sometimes relying on previous experience can give way to overconfidence in the spider-sense.)

References:

Abele , A. E. & Gendolla , G. H. E. ( 2007 ). Individual differences in optimism predict the recall of personally relevant information . Personality and Individual Differences, 43 , 1125 –1135.

Aspinwall, L. G. & Brunhart , S. M. (1996). Distinguishing optimism from denial: Optimistic beliefs predict attention to health threats . Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 22 , 993 –1003.

Ochsner , K. N. Ray , R. D. Cooper , J. C. , et al. ( 2004 ). For better or for worse: Neural systems supporting the cognitive down and up-regulation of negative emotion. Neuroimage , 23 , 483 –499.

Troy, A. S., & Mauss, I. B. (2011). Resilience in the face of stress: Emotion regulation as a protective factor. In S. Southwick, D. Charney, M. Friedman, & B. Litz (Eds.), Resilience in psychiatric clinical practice. Cambridge University Press.

Can You Stay Off Fat Talk--For a Week?

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:16:00 +0000

It's not uncommon for women (or even men) to bond with each other over the travails of their appearance: their hair, their clothes, their weight, their fat. Sound familiar? If so, take note. The week of Oct. 16-22 isFat Talk Free Week. It's a week in which people are encouraged to stop their "fat talk." What is fat talk? It's comments like" I feel so fat in these clothes," or "do I look fat?" It can also be saying to someone else, "You look great, did you lose weight?" This implies that lost weight is the metric of looking good.

Although some women say that such talk makes them feel better, research suggests that in fact the opposite is true. Do you engage in fat talk? If so, here's a challenge: Try not doing it -- for a day, then for a string of days, then for a week. And what better time then during Fat Talk Free week.

If you partake in fat talk, it's in part because our culture encourages it. Through various media (including TV, film, magazine ads and articles), we're all encouraged to think that our bodies should approximate a thin "ideal." And if we don't have that type of body (which the vast majority of us don't), then we shouldn't feel okay about our bodies. Unfortunately, most of us go along with this premise and we dislike our bodies. Fight back against this premise and the way it makes you feel. To help you in this endeavor, Oct. 19 is Love Your Body Day.

Do you love what you see when you look in the mirror? Hollywood and the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries work hard to make each of us believe that our bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement. Print ads and television commercials reduce us to body parts -- lips, legs, breasts -- airbrushed and touched up to meet impossible standards. TV shows tell women and teenage girls that cosmetic surgery is good for self-esteem. Is it any wonder that 80 percent of U.S. women are dissatisfied with their appearance?

Women and girls spend billions of dollars every year on cosmetics, fashion, magazines and diet aids. These industries can't use negative images to sell their products without our assistance. Together, we can fight back.

While we're on the subject of fat, here's one more thought. Too often in our culture, fat is equated with bad, with being out of shape. But people who are average weight or less aren't necessarily in shape, and people who are heavier aren't necessarily out of shape. For the group Heath at Every Size, the goal is for each person to be healthy and fit, regardless of weight, and to accept their bodies. (Click here to see one overweight woman who is both fit and graceful.)

In fact, a recent study found that overweight adolescent girls who were content with their bodies were less likely to go on to develop binge eating disorder. They were also less likely to gain weight over the 11 years of the followup period. Take home message: Become cynical about the "ideal" body size and shape promoted in our culture and stop your fat talk.

Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D., ABPP is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Stanford, Calif. Rosenberg specializes in treating people with eating disorders, depression and anxiety. She often writes about the psychology of superheroes and has co-authored several psychology textbooks, including "Abnormal Psychology" and "Introducing Psychology: Brain, Person, Group." To find out more about Dr. Rosenberg and her work, read her Psychology Today blog and visit her on Red Room. For Dr. Rosenberg's brief, easy-to-read guide Improving Your Relationships with Your Body, click here.

Forging Steel, Part 1: Forging Superheroes Versus Forging Soldiers

noreply@blogger.com (Robin S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:35:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to speak with some former and current Special Forces soldiers about their training and experience; these are real-life heroes (though they wouldn't necessarily use that term to describe themselves). Their missions and actions rival those of fully human superheroes such as Batman, Black Canary, Batgirl, Oracle, Robin/Nightwing, and Avengers Iron Man, Hawkey, some versions of Black Widow, and Nick Fury, among others. But unlike these characters, our real-life military folks are mortal and may not survive a given battle. When killed in action they, and police officers and fire fighters, can't be brought back to life, unlike human superheroes. (One of the soldiers I spoke with, Fernando Lujan, noted that it doesn't take the same type of courage to go into battle if you know that you can't die, as is the case for relatively invulnerable superheroes such as Superman and Wolverine. For more about Special Forces Officer Lujan, click here.)

The soldiers that I spoke with shared some (nonclassified) information about their training. To get a sense of what a soldier must undergo to be picked to be in elite units, click here for an overview; for more detailed information, watch this video (it is the first of six parts; if you are at all interested, I highly recommend that you watch all six parts). In addition to the grueling physical demands of the training, psychological training is a big part of what the soldiers experience.

For instance, the military psychologists who are part of the evaluatingteam help identify each soldier's psychological vulnerabilities. Not as a rationale to send the soldiers home, but to increase each soldier's self-awareness. So that they can know when they are nearing the limit (of pain tolerance, hopelessness, fear, shame, cockiness, to name several dimensions) of being able to maintain and function adequately. In learning where the limit is, they can then learn how to push through that barrier or mentally regroup to be able to go forward and complete the mission. How to withstand interrogation. Not just the physical aspects of interrogation. The mental aspects. How to become stronger and moreresilient. How to regulate their emotions when their buttons get pushed.

Most superheroes do not undergo this type of training. (There is a sense of which it seems ridiculous to compare soldiers and superheroes. I do so here to emphasize the ways in which superheroes are different and arefictional. Nonetheless, we can learn from those differences.) Christopher Nolan's brilliant film, Batman Begins, showed us the ways that Bruce Wayne received some military-like training from Henri Ducard (Ra's al Ghul) and the League of Shadows. It is through this training that Wayne becomes a master at self-control and emotional self-regulation. By self-control, I mean the ability to control one's actions. To act in planned, intentional ways, not impulsively. By emotional self-regulation, I mean the ability to shift one's emotional states. (For more on the definition of self-regulation in general, click here.

From descriptions of the first step of any military training, the discipline and control for some soldiers may come from-and are enforced by-external forces, such as the challenging training schedule imposed on the soldiers, the rigid rules they must follow, the drill sergeant's enforcement of those rules.

Over time and with field experience, the discipline and control of behavior become internal, to a degree that wasn't true before. Self-discipline. Self-control. Moreover, soldiers don't want to put their team members' lives at risk. Self-discipline benefits not just the individual soldier, but the entire unit. They must all depend on one another.As part of the training process, soldiers face their fears, learn to put aside their grief when they need to, to bite their tongue when angry (because it is counterproductive to the mission). Like Batman, then, soldiers acquire the "superpower" of emotional regulation.

More about emotional regulation and resilience in the next post.