Franz Kafka Agonized, Too, Over Writer’s Block: “Tried to Write, Virtually Useless;” “Complete Standstill. Unending Torments” (1915)

No one sings as pure­ly as those who inhab­it the deep­est hell—what we take to be the song of angels is their song.

- Franz Kaf­ka, 1920

Poor Kaf­ka, born too ear­ly to blame his writer’s block on 21st-cen­tu­ry dig­i­tal excus­es:  social media addic­tion, cell phone addic­tion, stream­ing video… 

Would The Meta­mor­pho­sis have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly had its author had access to a machine that would have allowed him to self-pub­lish, com­mu­ni­cate face­less­ly, and dis­pense entire­ly with typ­ists, pens and paper? 

Had Kaf­ka had his way, his friend and fel­low writer, Max Brod, would have car­ried out instruc­tions to burn his unpub­lished work—including let­ters and jour­nal entries—upon his death

Instead Brod pub­lished them.

How hor­ri­fied would their author be to read The New Yorker’s opin­ion that his jour­nals should be regard­ed as one of his major lit­er­ary achieve­ments? A Kaf­ka-esque response might be the mildest reac­tion war­rant­ed by the sit­u­a­tion:

His life and per­son­al­i­ty were per­fect­ly suit­ed to the diary form, and in these pages he reveals what he cus­tom­ar­i­ly hid from the world.

These once-pri­vate pages (avail­able in book for­mat here) reveal a not-unfa­mil­iar writer­ly ten­den­cy to ago­nize over a per­ceived lack of out­put:

JANUARY 20, 1915: The end of writ­ing. When will it take me up again?

JANUARY 29, 1915: Again tried to write, vir­tu­al­ly use­less.

JANUARY 30, 1915: The old inca­pac­i­ty. Inter­rupt­ed my writ­ing for bare­ly ten days and already cast out. Once again prodi­gious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapid­ly than that which sinks in advance of you.

FEBRUARY 7, 1915: Com­plete stand­still. Unend­ing tor­ments.

MARCH 11, 1915: How time flies; anoth­er ten days and I have achieved noth­ing. It doesn’t come off. A page now and then is suc­cess­ful, but I can’t keep it up, the next day I am pow­er­less.

MARCH 13, 1915: Lack of appetite, fear of get­ting back late in the evening; but above all the thought that I wrote noth­ing yes­ter­day, that I keep get­ting far­ther and far­ther from it, and am in dan­ger of los­ing every­thing I have labo­ri­ous­ly achieved these past six months. Pro­vid­ed proof of this by writ­ing one and a half wretched pages of a new sto­ry that I have already decid­ed to dis­card…. Occa­sion­al­ly I feel an unhap­pi­ness that almost dis­mem­bers me, and at the same time am con­vinced of its neces­si­ty and of the exis­tence of a goal to which one makes one’s way by under­go­ing every kind of unhap­pi­ness.

Psy­chol­o­gy Today iden­ti­fies five pos­si­ble under­ly­ing caus­es for such inac­tiv­i­ty, and tips for sur­mount­ing them. It seems like­ly the fas­tid­i­ous, self-absorbed Kaf­ka would have reject­ed them on their breezy tone alone, but per­haps oth­er less per­snick­ety indi­vid­u­als will find some­thing of use: 

1. You’ve Lost Your Way

If you’re stalled because you lost your way, try the oppo­site of what you usu­al­ly do—if you’re a plot­ter, give your imag­i­na­tion free rein for a day; if you’re a freewriter or a pantser, spend a day cre­at­ing a list of the next 10 scenes that need to hap­pen. This gives your brain a chal­lenge, and for this rea­son you can take heart, because your bil­lions of neu­rons love a chal­lenge and are in search of synaps­es they can form.

2. Your Pas­sion Has Waned

Remem­ber, your writ­ing brain looks for and responds to pat­terns, so be care­ful that you don’t make suc­cumb­ing to bore­dom or sur­ren­der­ing projects with­out a fight into a habit. Do your best to work through the rea­sons you got stalled and to fin­ish what you start­ed. This will lay down a neu­ronal path­way that your writ­ing brain will mer­ri­ly trav­el along in future work.

3. Your Expec­ta­tions Are Too High

Instead of set­ting your sights too high, give your­self per­mis­sion to write any­thing, on top­ic or off top­ic, mean­ing­ful or trite, use­ful or fol­ly. The point is that by attach­ing so much impor­tance to the work you’re about to do, you make it hard­er to get into the flow. Also, if your inner crit­ic sticks her nose in (which often hap­pens), tell her that her role is very impor­tant to you (and it is!) and that you will sum­mon her when you have some­thing wor­thy of her atten­tion.

4. You Are Burned Out

You aren’t blocked; you’re exhaust­ed. Give your­self a few days to real­ly rest. Lie on a sofa and watch movies, take long walks in the hour just before dusk, go out to din­ner with friends, or take a mini-vaca­tion some­where rest­ful. Do so with the inten­tion to give yourself—and your brain—a rest. No think­ing about your nov­el for a week! In fact, no heavy think­ing for a week. Lie back, have a mar­gari­ta, and chill.

5. You’re Too Dis­tract­ed

Take note that, unless you’re just one of those rare birds who always write no mat­ter what, you will expe­ri­ence times in your life when it’s impos­si­ble to keep to a writ­ing sched­ule. Peo­ple get sick, peo­ple have to take a sec­ond job, chil­dren need extra atten­tion, par­ents need extra atten­tion, and so on. If you’re in one of those emer­gency sit­u­a­tions (rais­ing small chil­dren counts), by all means, don’t berate your­self. Some­times it’s sim­ply nec­es­sary to put the actu­al writ­ing on hold. It is good, how­ev­er, to keep your hands in the water. For instance, in lieu of writ­ing your nov­el:

Read works sim­i­lar to what you hope to write.

Read books relat­ed to the sub­ject you’re writ­ing about.

Keep a des­ig­nat­ed jour­nal where you jot down ideas for the book (and oth­er works).

Write small vignettes or sketch­es relat­ed to the book

When­ev­er you find time to med­i­tate, envi­sion your­self writ­ing the book, bring­ing it to full com­ple­tion.

Make writ­ing the book a pri­or­i­ty.

Addi­tion­al­ly, you may find some mer­it in enlist­ing a friend to pub­lish, I mean, burn the above-men­tioned jour­nals posthu­mous­ly. Just don’t write any­thing you would­n’t want the pub­lic to see.

Read author Susan Reynolds’ com­plete Psy­chol­o­gy Today advice for blocked writ­ers here.

Have a peek at Kafka’s Diaries: 1910–1923 here.

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kafka’s Kafkaesque Love Let­ters

Franz Kaf­ka: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to His Lit­er­ary Genius

Meta­mor­fo­s­is: Franz Kafka’s Best-Known Short Sto­ry Gets Adapt­ed Into a Tim Bur­tonesque Span­ish Short Film

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, cur­rent­ly appear­ing onstage in New York City in Paul David Young’s Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Going to Concerts and Experiencing Live Music Can Make Us Healthier & Happier, a New Psychology Study Confirms

Image by Niels Ept­ing, via Flickr Com­mons

It can some­times seem like so much qual­i­ta­tive sci­ence con­firms what we already know through expe­ri­ence and folk wis­dom. But that does not make such research redun­dant. Instead, it sets the stage for more detailed inves­ti­ga­tions into spe­cif­ic caus­es and effects, and can lead to more refined under­stand­ing of gen­er­al phe­nom­e­na. For exam­ple, “a new study out of Aus­tralia,” reports CNN, “con­firms what we prob­a­bly already knew,” by con­clud­ing that if you want to be hap­pi­er, you should get out more.

Specif­i­cal­ly, you should get out to con­certs and music fes­ti­vals and dance your you-know-what off. The Aus­tralian researchers found that “peo­ple who active­ly engaged with music through danc­ing and attend­ing events like con­certs and musi­cals report­ed a high­er lev­el of sub­jec­tive well­be­ing.” The March, 2017 study, cheek­i­ly titled “If You’re Hap­py and You Know It: Music Engage­ment and Sub­jec­tive Well­be­ing,” defines the lat­ter phrase as “the sci­en­tif­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal term for gen­er­al mood ‘hap­pi­ness,’ which is pos­i­tive, sta­ble, and con­sis­tent over time.”

Sub­jec­tive well­be­ing (SWB), although a self-report­ed mea­sure, helps psy­chol­o­gists iden­ti­fy effec­tive ther­a­pies for depres­sion and mood dis­or­ders. Engag­ing mean­ing­ful­ly with music is one of them, and one needn’t be a musi­cian to reap the ben­e­fits. While “pro­duc­ing music and per­form­ing encour­age self-explo­ration, emo­tion­al expres­sion, self-esteem and con­fi­dence,” the study’s authors write, inter­act­ing with music as a fan is also “asso­ci­at­ed with high­er mood when con­sid­ered in terms of acti­va­tion and valence.”

Sim­ply con­sum­ing record­ed music, how­ev­er, will not have the same ben­e­fits. While “recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances” and stream­ing ser­vices have “increased the avail­abil­i­ty of and acces­si­bil­i­ty to music… engag­ing with music extends beyond just pas­sive lis­ten­ing.” In large part, the active par­tic­i­pa­tion in a music scene—as part of a fan com­mu­ni­ty or fes­ti­val audi­ence, for example—shows pos­i­tive out­comes because of the “social com­po­nent of music engage­ment.” Lis­ten­ing by one­self “may improve phys­i­cal health and emo­tion­al well­be­ing.” Lis­ten­ing “in the com­pa­ny of oth­ers is asso­ci­at­ed with stronger pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences.”

As the site Live for Live Music puts it, “live music uni­ver­sal­ly low­ers stress lev­elsincreas­es social bonds while decreas­ing lev­els of pain, and can even phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly cause peo­ple to get “skin-gasms.” And if that’s not rea­son enough to get tick­ets to see your favs, I don’t know what is. One would also hope the study makes a con­vinc­ing case for fund­ing live music as a men­tal health ini­tia­tive. Unless you live in a city with lots of free con­certs, the expense of such events can be pro­hib­i­tive. At least in Aus­tralia, the researchers note, “attend­ing musi­cal events is cost­ly, and may be a priv­i­lege afford­ed to those who earn a high­er income.”

Susan Per­ry at Min­npost sums up a few oth­er lim­i­ta­tions of the study, such as its lack of data on fre­quen­cy of atten­dance, and that it does not “dif­fer­en­ti­ate between peo­ple who are musi­cal­ly tal­ent­ed and those who aren’t.” Nonethe­less, one par­tic­u­lar find­ing should have you shed­ding inhi­bi­tions to increase your SWB. “Dancers,” Per­ry sum­ma­rizes, were “more like­ly than non-dancers to be hap­py,” as were those who sing along.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Punk & Heavy Met­al Music Makes Lis­ten­ers Hap­py and Calm, Not Aggres­sive, Accord­ing to New Aus­tralian Study

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

Music in the Brain: Sci­en­tists Final­ly Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Ded­i­cat­ed to Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Rare Footage Shows US and British Soldiers Getting Dosed with LSD in Government-Sponsored Tests (1958 + 1964)

We’re usu­al­ly right to reserve judge­ment when it comes to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. But the rea­son they often sound plau­si­ble is a com­pelling one: What we do know about the secret activ­i­ties of agen­cies like the CIA, FBI, KGB, NSA, etc. often points to a sur­re­al, nefar­i­ous, extra-legal dimen­sion full of plots Kurt Von­negut or Philip K. Dick might have writ­ten. In such a dimen­sion was born Project MK-ULTRA, the mind con­trol pro­gram devel­oped by the CIA in the ear­ly fifties and only offi­cial­ly stopped in 1973.

Most famous for intro­duc­ing a young hos­pi­tal order­ly named Ken Kesey to LSD when he vol­un­teered for an experiment—and thus act­ing as a pri­ma­ry cause of the Acid-fueled Haight-Ash­bury move­ment to come—MK-ULTRA test­ed drugs, hyp­no­sis, sen­so­ry depri­va­tion, and psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture as a means of manip­u­lat­ing inter­ro­ga­tion sub­jects. At the same time as the CIA drugged will­ing and unwill­ing par­tic­i­pants, Army intel­li­gence con­duct­ed research into using LSD as a mind con­trol agent.

Raf­fi Khatch­adouri­an tells the sto­ry in The New York­er of Dr. Van Mur­ray Sim, founder of the Army’s Edge­wood Arse­nal pro­gram of clin­i­cal research on psy­cho­chem­i­cals. To his col­leagues, Sim “was like Dr. Strangelove; he was a leader; he was the ‘Men­gele of Edge­wood’… manip­u­la­tive and venge­ful, eth­i­cal­ly short­sight­ed, inco­her­ent­ly ram­bling… and devot­ed to chem­i­cal-war­fare research.” He vol­un­teered him­self as a test sub­ject for VX, a lethal nerve agent, for Red Oil, a “high­ly potent syn­thet­ic ver­sion of mar­i­jua­na,” and for oth­er hal­lu­cino­gens designed for “psy­cho­chem­i­cal war­fare.”

Sim dosed him­self sev­er­al times with LSD and in 1957 pro­posed a series of “prac­ti­cal exper­i­ments” with the drug at Edge­wood. “It was deemed impor­tant,” writes Khatch­adodouri­an, “to con­duct LSD tests on peo­ple who were pro­vid­ed no infor­ma­tion about what the drug would do.” You can see film of one of those tests above, con­duct­ed in 1958 on Army vol­un­teers who, the nar­ra­tor tells us, “respond­ed like well-trained sol­diers to the request: imme­di­ate­ly and with­out ques­tion.”

The sol­diers are put through a series of drills. Then they are dosed and drilled again. There is much laugh­ter among the squad, but one man suc­cumbed to such severe depres­sion that five min­utes after they begin, the med­ical offi­cers “end his par­tic­i­pa­tion.” After a few more min­utes, “the men found it dif­fi­cult to obey orders. And soon the results were chaos,” the nar­ra­tor says. In real­i­ty, as we can see, the sol­diers seemed hap­py and relaxed, not in a “chaot­ic” state, though their unwill­ing­ness to obey would cer­tain­ly seem so to the brass.

British intel­li­gence also test­ed LSD on its troops. In the film above from 1964, sev­er­al armed British Marines are giv­en a dose and sent out into the field exer­cis­es. The results are strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar. Imme­di­ate­ly after tak­ing the field the drugged marines begin to gig­gle, laugh, and relax. But one man “is more severe­ly affect­ed than the oth­ers, los­ing all con­tact with real­i­ty, drop­ping his rifle, and becom­ing unable to take part in the oper­a­tion. In fact, he has to be with­drawn from the exer­cise a few min­utes lat­er.” The remain­der of the test sub­jects col­lapse in fits of hilar­i­ty.

“In the end,” writes Rich Rems­berg at NPR, the U.S. Army decid­ed that LSD “was too expen­sive” and “unsta­ble once air­borne,” though it did lead to some­thing called Agent BZ, “which was weaponized but nev­er used in com­bat.” But at the peak of its test­ing pro­grams, Army intel­li­gence, the CIA, and even Oper­a­tion Paperclip—the secre­tive pro­gram that recruit­ed for­mer Nazi sci­en­tists into its ranks—showed an obses­sion with the drug, amass­ing huge sup­plies of it, and test­ing it on wit­ting and unwit­ting sub­jects alike.

In one oper­a­tion, called “Mid­night Cli­max,” unsus­pect­ing clients “at CIA broth­els in New York and San Fran­cis­co were slipped LSD and then mon­i­tored through one-way mir­rors to see how they react­ed,” writes David Ham­bling at Wired. “Col­leagues were also con­sid­ered fair game for secret test­ing, to the point where a memo was issued instruct­ing that the punch bowls at office Christ­mas par­ties were not to be spiked” with acid.

While the CIA pulled pranks—and inspired Kesey’s Mer­ry Pranksters—the Army took its pro­gram over­seas to Europe under the aegis of “Oper­a­tion Spe­cial Pur­pose.” Even today, Khatch­adouri­an writes, “the non-Amer­i­cans who were test­ed have still not been iden­ti­fied.” Oper­a­tion Spe­cial Purpose’s exper­i­ments “were dis­as­trous, offer­ing lit­tle or no use­ful intel­li­gence, and risk­ing untold psy­cho­log­i­cal dam­age to the sub­jects.” The Cold War­riors in charge thought of the drug as a weapon, and threw ethics and sci­en­tif­ic cau­tion to the wind. In cer­tain tests, inter­roga­tors intend­ed “to cause max­i­mum anx­i­ety and fear.” They degrad­ed and threat­ened sub­jects “as long as the drug was effec­tive: eight hours, or pos­si­bly more.”

In recent years, LSD research has made a promis­ing return, and has shown that, when used for pur­pos­es oth­er than mind con­trol, tor­ture, and manip­u­la­tion, the hal­lu­cino­genic com­pound might actu­al­ly have ben­e­fi­cial effects on men­tal health and well-being. Today’s research builds on exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by psy­chi­a­trists at the same time as MK-ULTRA and Oper­a­tion Spe­cial Pur­pose. “From the 1950s through the ear­ly 1970s,” writes the Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies (MAPS), “psy­chi­a­trists, ther­a­pists, and researchers admin­is­tered LSD to thou­sands of peo­ple for alco­holism, as well as for anx­i­ety and depres­sion” in ter­mi­nal patients.

As in the tests in the films above, they found that—with notable exceptions—the drug made peo­ple hap­pi­er, more relaxed, and less afraid of death. “When used by peo­ple with­out a fam­i­ly his­to­ry or risk of psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems,” report­ed The Wash­ing­ton Post in a sto­ry last year on new research, “psy­che­delics can make us kinder, calmer and bet­ter at our jobs. They can help us solve prob­lems more cre­ative­ly and make us more open-mind­ed and gen­er­ous.” Per­haps part of the gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cy to use hal­lu­cino­genic drugs for ill involved sup­press­ing all of the ways they could be used for good.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hofmann’s Potion: 2002 Doc­u­men­tary Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

Ken Kesey Talks About the Mean­ing of the Acid Tests

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

A Short Anti-LSD Hor­ror Film Made by the Lock­heed Cor­po­ra­tion (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Why Catchy Songs Get Stuck in Our Brains: New Study Explains the Science of Earworms

What’s your cur­rent ear­worm?

For obvi­ous yet sad rea­sons, “Rasp­ber­ry Beret” and “Ash­es to Ash­es” have tun­neled into my brain in the past year. Can’t seem to shake ‘em loose, though it cer­tain­ly could be worse. Wan­der through a shop­ping mall (while they still exist), go to a chain restau­rant or gro­cery store. You may pick up an unwant­ed passenger—the tune of a song you loathe, yet can­not for the life of you for­get.

But can the Prince/Bowie sound­track in my mind prop­er­ly be called an “ear­worm”? Accord­ing to researchers at Durham Uni­ver­si­ty, Gold­smiths, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tub­in­gen, this is a sci­en­tif­ic ques­tion. Music psy­chol­o­gist Kel­ly Jakubows­ki of Durham Uni­ver­si­ty and her col­leagues pub­lished a study last year titled “Dis­sect­ing an Ear­worm: Melod­ic Fea­tures of Song Pop­u­lar­i­ty Pre­dict Invol­un­tary Musi­cal Imagery.” In it, they define the prop­er­ties of songs that pro­duce “invol­un­tary” recall.

You can read the study your­self here. It begins with a sum­ma­ry of the pre­vi­ous research on “the con­cepts of musi­cal ‘catch­i­ness’ and song ‘hooks,’” as well as the advice suc­cess­ful musi­cians often give for writ­ing “hooks” that will stick with lis­ten­ers for life. It’s not as easy as it looks, though one of the hall­marks of a suc­cess­ful ear­worm is sim­plic­i­ty. As Joan­na Klein writes at the New York Times, Jakubows­ki and her col­leagues “found that ear­worm songs tend­ed to be fast, with a com­mon, sim­ple melod­ic struc­ture that gen­er­al­ly went up and down and repeat­ed, like ‘Twin­kle Twin­kle Lit­tle Star.’”

How­ev­er, ear­worms also unset­tle our expec­ta­tions of sim­ple melodies, with “sur­pris­ing, unusu­al inter­vals,” as in the cho­rus of Lady Gaga’s insid­i­ous “Bad Romance” or, bane of every gui­tar store employ­ee, Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.” Research on ear­worms began, notes Klein, in 2001, “when James Kel­laris, a mar­ket­ing researcher and com­pos­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati trans­lat­ed the Ger­man word for ear­wig, Ohrwürmer, into that ‘cog­ni­tive itch’ he called an ‘ear­worm.’”

Kel­laris esti­mat­ed that around “98 per­cent of peo­ple expe­ri­ence this phe­nom­e­non at some point in time.” In order to ana­lyze the ear­worm, Jakubows­ki and her team col­lect­ed lists of songs from 3,000 study par­tic­i­pants. They attempt­ed to iso­late vari­ables such as “pop­u­lar­i­ty and recen­cy” that “could affect the like­li­hood of the song becom­ing stuck in the mind.” Before con­trol­ling for these fac­tors, “Bad Romance” appeared at the top of a list of “Songs Most Fre­quent­ly Named as Invol­un­tary Musi­cal Imagery (INMI).”

It’s a tune that might—under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, be used as a weapon—along with two oth­er Gaga songs at num­bers 8 and 9. See the full list below:

1. “Bad Romance,” Lady Gaga
2. “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” Kylie Minogue
3. “Don’t Stop Believ­ing,” Jour­ney
4. “Some­body That I Used to Know,” Gotye
5. “Moves Like Jag­ger,” Maroon 5
6. “Cal­i­for­nia Gurls,” Katy Per­ry
7. “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” Queen
8. “Ale­jan­dro,” Lady Gaga
9. “Pok­er Face,” Lady Gaga

The study goes on, in some tech­ni­cal detail, to account for chart posi­tion, length of time on the charts, etc. Unless you’re famil­iar with the meth­ods and jar­gon of this par­tic­u­lar kind of psy­cho­log­i­cal research, it’s a bit dif­fi­cult to fol­low. But Klein sum­ma­rizes some of the upshot: “While it may feel like ear­worms exist only to annoy you, researchers say they may actu­al­ly serve a pur­pose.… ear­worms could be rem­nants of how we learned before writ­ten lan­guage, when infor­ma­tion was more often passed through song.”

The sur­vival of this mech­a­nism can be used for good or ill—as was so humor­ous­ly illus­trat­ed in my favorite scene from Pixar’s psy­cho-dram­e­dy for kids, Inside Out. Adver­tis­ing jin­gles, annoy­ing pop songs that we mind­less­ly buy and stream because we can’t stop singing them, and—not least—perhaps the most effec­tive ear­worms of all time, TV sit­com theme songs.

The hey­day of unfor­get­table theme songs, the 80s, left us with some real gems: Klein names Grow­ing Pains (“show me that smile again!”). But I’m guess­ing we could get togeth­er in the thou­sands for an impromp­tu cho­rus of Cheers, Charles in Charge, Fam­i­ly Ties, Fam­i­ly Mat­ters, Step by Step, or my new ear­worm Sil­ver Spoons (thanks YouTube). As these examples—and so many hun­dreds more—prove, musi­cal ear­worms have been used by clever hacks to hack into our brains for quite some time now. When song­writ­ers we like do it, we can at least enjoy the invol­un­tary intru­sions.

Feel free to share your own unshake­able ear­worms in the com­ments sec­tion below.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear “Weight­less,” the Most Relax­ing Song Ever Made, Accord­ing to Researchers (You’ll Need It Today)

Music That Helps You Sleep: Min­i­mal­ist Com­pos­er Max Richter, Pop Phe­nom Ed Sheer­an & Your Favorites

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Stanford Researchers Discover a Smarter Way to Prepare for Exams: Introducing MetaCognition, the Art of Thinking About Your Thinking

Ear­ly in the sec­ond sea­son of Noah Hawley’s excel­lent Far­go series, one of the gruff, lacon­ic Ger­hardt broth­ers shakes his head dur­ing a tense crime fam­i­ly moment and mut­ters sage­ly, “know thy­self.” Chal­lenged to pro­duce the quotation’s source, he says, with irri­tat­ed self-assur­ance, “It’s in the Bible.” The quote does have an ancient origin—maybe the tem­ple of Apol­lo at Del­phi, maybe the tem­ple court at Luxor—and it’s an idea that reap­pears in every philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem from age to age. Even if the self doesn’t real­ly exist, some thinkers have rea­soned, we should still study it.

These days, psy­chol­o­gists call a cer­tain kind of self-knowl­edge “metacog­ni­tion,” a new word for what they rec­og­nize, Jen­nifer Liv­ingston notes, as a con­cept that has been around “for as long as humans have been able to reflect on their cog­ni­tive expe­ri­ences.” Devel­op­men­tal psy­chol­o­gist John Flavell used the term in 1979 to refer specif­i­cal­ly to “how human beings learn and process infor­ma­tion, as well as indi­vid­ual knowl­edge of one’s own learn­ing process­es.” Often defined as “think­ing about think­ing,” megacog­ni­tion involves know­ing what con­di­tions best enable con­cen­tra­tion and mem­o­ry reten­tion, for exam­ple, and prac­tic­ing it can immense­ly improve study skills and aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment.

A new study pub­lished in Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence by Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy researchers has val­i­dat­ed the idea with exper­i­men­tal data. In two dif­fer­ent exper­i­ments, stu­dents in a con­trol group stud­ied for exams in their ordi­nary way. Those in anoth­er group received an exer­cise called “Strate­gic Resource Use.” “They were asked,” Stan­ford News reports, to think about what might be on the exam, “and then strate­gize what kinds of resources they would use to study most effec­tive­ly.” Then they reflect­ed on “why each resource they chose would be use­ful” and how they planned on using them. It may seem like seri­ous­ly front-load­ing a study ses­sion, but the inter­ven­tion paid off. Stu­dents who got it scored on aver­age a third of a let­ter grade high­er than those who didn’t.

Post­doc­tor­al fel­low Patri­cia Chen, the study’s main author, under­took the exper­i­ment when she noticed that many of her own stu­dents gen­uine­ly worked hard but felt frus­trat­ed by the results. “Describe to me how you stud­ied for the exam,” she began ask­ing them. After con­duct­ing the metacog­ni­tion stud­ies, Chen con­clud­ed that “active­ly self-reflect­ing on the approach­es that you are tak­ing fos­ters a strate­gic stance that is real­ly impor­tant in life. Strate­gic think­ing dis­tin­guish­es between peo­ple of com­pa­ra­ble abil­i­ty and effort. This can make the dif­fer­ence between peo­ple who achieve and peo­ple who have the poten­tial to achieve, but don’t.”

Think­ing about your think­ing can’t make all the dif­fer­ence, of course, but the effect is dra­mat­ic among groups in rel­a­tive­ly sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. An Aus­tralian study of 2000 Ph.D. stu­dents dis­cov­ered a close cor­re­la­tion between “how they thought about the learn­ing process,” notes Big Think, and “their suc­cess­es and fail­ures in achiev­ing their degrees.” A broad­er study in Britain that account­ed for class dif­fer­ences eval­u­at­ed Year 6 and 7 stu­dents in 23 pri­ma­ry schools. In eleven of these schools, stu­dents were instruct­ed in some­thing called “Self-Reg­u­lat­ed Strat­e­gy Development”—a means of con­scious­ly mon­i­tor­ing the writ­ing tech­niques they used in assign­ments: “Over­all,” the authors write, “the project appeared to have a large pos­i­tive impact on writ­ing out­comes,” espe­cial­ly among “pupils eli­gi­ble for free school meals.”

Each of these stud­ies neces­si­tat­ed meth­ods of teach­ing self-reg­u­la­tion and metacog­ni­tion, and each one for­mu­lat­ed its own ped­a­gogy. The British study spe­cial­ly trained a group of Year 6 teach­ers. “Part of the appeal of Chen’s approach,” writes Jen­ny Ander­son at Quartz, “is its sim­plic­i­ty: any stu­dent, teacher or even par­ent could use it.” And one might rea­son­ably assume that any­one could teach it to them­selves. For par­ents and teach­ers of strug­gling stu­dents, Chen offers some straight­for­ward advice. Rather than sug­gest­ing more study time and resources, first “Look at the way they are doing things. Do you think they could have gone about it in a bet­ter way?” As near­ly every ancient philoso­pher would affirm, we bet­ter our­selves not by acquir­ing more, but by under­stand­ing and using wise­ly what we already have to work with.

via Stan­ford News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Game The­o­ry & Strate­gic Think­ing: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

32 Ani­mat­ed Videos by Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy Teach You the Essen­tials of Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Sigmund Freud, Father of Psychoanalysis, Introduced in a Monty Python-Style Animation

Pity the hedge­hog. The freez­ing tem­per­a­tures of win­ter com­pel them to cozy up to oth­ers of its kind, but the prick­ly spines cov­er­ing their bod­ies pre­vent them from sus­tain­ing the easy, ongo­ing inti­ma­cy they so crave.

It’s a hell of a metaphor for human rela­tion­ships, com­pli­ments of 19th-cen­tu­ry philoso­pher Arthur Schopen­hauer. It cer­tain­ly spoke to Sig­mund Freud, who devot­ed his life try­ing to fig­ure out why so many of us resort to pet­ty behav­iors, spurn­ing those we love, and sab­o­tag­ing our­selves at every turn.

Pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions would have us believe that the father of psy­cho­analy­sis was a detached sort of know-it-all, emo­tion­al­ly supe­ri­or to the bas­ket cas­es snivel­ing on his couch. Not so. As he not­ed in 1897:

I have been through some kind of neu­rot­ic expe­ri­ence, curi­ous states… twi­light thoughts, veiled doubts… The chief patient I am pre­oc­cu­pied with is myself… my lit­tle hys­te­ria… the analy­sis is more dif­fi­cult than any oth­er. Some­thing from the deep­est depths of my own neu­ro­sis sets itself against any advance in under­stand­ing neu­roses…

We feel ya’, doc, and so does The School of Life, the Lon­don-based orga­ni­za­tion for devel­op­ing emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, co-found­ed by philo­soph­i­cal essay­ist, Alain de Bot­ton:

… con­sult­ing a psy­chother­a­pist should be as acces­si­ble and as nor­mal as devel­op­ing your career, get­ting help for a phys­i­cal prob­lem, or going to the gym to get healthy. Just as we take care of our bod­ies and phys­i­cal health, a vital ele­ment of self-care is devot­ing focused time and ener­gy to explor­ing and under­stand­ing our thoughts and feel­ings.

The school puts your mon­ey where its mouth is by retain­ing a ros­ter of licensed psy­chother­a­pists who can be booked for in-per­son or Skype ses­sions.

It’s not for every­one. There are those who are deter­mined to pur­sue the path to con­tent­ment and self-knowl­edge solo, imper­vi­ous to Freud’s belief that “No one who dis­dains the key will ever be able to unlock the door.”

The ther­a­py-averse can still learn some­thing from the video above. Nar­ra­tor de Bot­ton charms his way through an eas­i­ly digest­ed overview of Freud’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life, and the result­ing tenets of psy­cho­analy­sis.

And film­mak­er Mad Adam ensures that this brief trip through the infant phases—oral, anal, phallic—will be a jol­ly one, replete with droll, most­ly vin­tage images.

Release more mon­sters of the id with the School of Life’s psy­chother­a­py playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20,000 Let­ters, Man­u­scripts & Arti­facts From Sig­mund Freud Get Dig­i­tized and Made Avail­able Online

Down­load Sig­mund Freud’s Great Works as Free eBooks & Free Audio Books: A Dig­i­tal Cel­e­bra­tion on His 160th Birth­day

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Baking, Cooking & Other Daily Activities Help Promote Happiness and Alleviate Depression and Anxiety

Image by Beth MacKen­zie, via Flickr Com­mons

Most healthy peo­ple prac­tice at least some form of what we call these days “self-care,” whether it be yoga, med­i­ta­tion, run­ning, writ­ing, art, music, ther­a­py, col­or­ing books, or what-have-you. And if you’re func­tion­ing tol­er­a­bly well in the mad­ness of our times, you’re prob­a­bly dip­ping reg­u­lar­ly into the well of at least one restora­tive dis­ci­pline, in addi­tion to what­ev­er larg­er beliefs you may hold.

But per­haps you feel at loose ends—unable to find the time or mon­ey for yoga class­es or paint­ing, feel­ing too rest­less to sit motion­less for half an hour or more a day.… The activ­i­ties that sus­tain our psy­ches should not feel unat­tain­able. One need not be a yogi, Zen monk, marathon­er, or Impres­sion­ist to find reg­u­lar ful­fil­ment in life. Per­haps reg­u­lar, ordi­nary activ­i­ties have the pow­er to make us just as hap­py.

Recent research sug­gests that tasks such as “knit­ting, cro­chet­ing and jam-mak­ing” can “work won­ders for well­be­ing,” writes Tom Ough at The Tele­graph, as can oth­er cre­ative prac­tices like “cook­ing, bak­ing, per­form­ing music, paint­ing, draw­ing, sketch­ing, dig­i­tal design and cre­ative writ­ing.” All may have pro­found effects on emo­tion­al health. This list might expand indef­i­nite­ly to include any hands-on activ­i­ty with mea­sur­able results, from wood­work­ing to bee­keep­ing.

A 2016 study of 658 stu­dents at New Zealand’s Ota­go Uni­ver­si­ty found that engag­ing in small cre­ative pur­suits on a dai­ly basis pro­duces enthu­si­asm and feel­ings of “flourishing”—“a men­tal health term describ­ing hap­pi­ness and mean­ing.” The results of, say, mak­ing a loaf of bread or a scarf, don’t sim­ply ben­e­fit us in the moment, but car­ry over into the future. As the study’s lead author Tam­lin Con­nor notes, “engag­ing in cre­ative behav­iour leads to increas­es in well-being the next day, and this increased well-being is like­ly to facil­i­tate cre­ative activ­i­ty on the same day.”

The more we bake, the more we’ll want to bake, the hap­pi­er we’ll feel.

Does focus­ing our atten­tion on small, achiev­able dai­ly tasks lead to the kind of meta­phys­i­cal ful­fil­ment most peo­ple seem to crave—what Vik­tor Fran­kl called “man’s search for mean­ing”? Not nec­es­sar­i­ly, no. “Recent research sug­gests,” notes Daisy Gre­w­al at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, “that while hap­pi­ness and a sense of mean­ing often over­lap, they also diverge in impor­tant and sur­pris­ing ways.” Fran­kl may not be wrong about the need for mean­ing, but even he admit­ted that seek­ing it out is not iden­ti­cal to the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.

In a 2013 study pub­lished in The Jour­nal of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy, Roy Baumeis­ter, Kath­leen Vohs, Jen­nifer Aak­er, and Emi­ly Garbin­sky found that hap­pi­ness, “flour­ish­ing,” or emo­tion­al well-being cor­re­late strong­ly with “sat­is­fy­ing one’s needs and wants” as well as with “being a giv­er rather than a tak­er.” Phi­los­o­phy, pol­i­tics, reli­gion, and art may seek truth or coher­ence, but while “con­cerns with per­son­al iden­ti­ty and express­ing the self con­tributed to mean­ing,” they have lit­tle last­ing effect on hap­pi­ness, as many a philoso­pher, priest, or poet may tell you. On the oth­er hand, while hav­ing com­fort­able eco­nom­ic means does mea­sur­ably improve hap­pi­ness, it does not con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to a sense of larg­er pur­pose (that which, Fran­kl argued stren­u­ous­ly, can save our lives in times of cri­sis).

Baumeis­ter and his col­leagues obtained their find­ings by sur­vey­ing around 400 Amer­i­can adults over a peri­od of three weeks, dur­ing which time the par­tic­i­pants mon­i­tored a vari­ety of dai­ly activ­i­ties. In one read­ing of the Ota­go Uni­ver­si­ty study, Daisy Mea­ger at Vice focus­es spe­cial­ly on bak­ing as a means to ward off a “shit­ty mood.” It may be a mat­ter of taste—some may pre­fer mak­ing sauces to cakes. The effects are the same, “a com­mon cure,” writes Dan­ny Lewis at Smith­son­ian, “for stress or feel­ing down.”

Mea­ger points to work done by Julie Ohana, a “culi­nary ther­a­pist” who uses the kitchen to help patients com­bat “depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and oth­er men­tal health issues.” Vice’s Jack­son Con­nor describes his per­son­al expe­ri­ence of how cook­ing “alle­vi­ates symp­toms of stress and anx­i­ety almost imme­di­ate­ly,” as well as over time. And no less an author­i­ty than food the­o­rist Michael Pol­lan makes the per­sua­sive case for “how cook­ing can change your life” in the short ani­mat­ed video below (see his full talk at the RSA here).

Fur­ther argu­ing, how­ev­er, for bak­ing as a spe­cial form of “flour­ish­ing,” Julie Thom­son at Huff­Po describes the act as “a pro­duc­tive form of self-expres­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion” and con­sults with experts like Ohana and Don­na Pin­cus, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of psy­cho­log­i­cal and brain sci­ences at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, who told Thom­son, “Bak­ing has the ben­e­fit of allow­ing peo­ple cre­ative expres­sion.” Peo­ple who may not be nat­ur­al artists, writ­ers, or musi­cians. Yet bak­ing is also a kind of prob­lem-solv­ing as well as a cre­ative act, and “actu­al­ly requires a lot of full atten­tion.”

You have to mea­sure, focus phys­i­cal­ly on rolling out dough. If you’re focus­ing on smell and taste, on being present with what you’re cre­at­ing, that act of mind­ful­ness in that present moment can also have a result in stress reduc­tion.

The ref­er­ence to mind­ful­ness is apt. (Go ahead and read about a course on “Brea­d­i­ta­tion,” make fun of it, then try it at home.) I know not a few peo­ple who swear they can­not med­i­tate to save their lives, but who will hap­pi­ly spend a cou­ple hours on a Sat­ur­day evening bak­ing brioche or plates of cook­ies. But there’s more to it than the med­i­ta­tive absorp­tion that comes from mind­ful activ­i­ty. Bak­ing, says Pincus—and cook­ing in general—is a form of altru­ism. “The nice thing about bak­ing,” she ways, “is that you have such a tan­gi­ble reward at the end and that can feel very ben­e­fi­cial to oth­ers.”

So the research sug­gests that—whatever activ­i­ties one grav­i­tates toward—finding hap­pi­ness on a dai­ly basis involves more than using Pin­ter­est boards and mag­a­zines to craft a cozy, styl­ish new life. Though any sus­tained cre­ative activ­i­ty may do the trick, we approach clos­er to last­ing hap­pi­ness as well as greater fulfillment—to meaning—when we direct activ­i­ty to a “con­nec­tion with oth­er peo­ple” through gen­eros­i­ty.

via Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

How to Get Start­ed with Yoga: Free Yoga Lessons on YouTube

Stream 18 Hours of Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The Met, New York Pub­lic Library, Smith­son­ian & More

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Holocaust Survivor Viktor Frankl Explains Why If We Have True Meaning in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Darkest of Times

In one school of pop­u­lar rea­son­ing, peo­ple judge his­tor­i­cal out­comes that they think are favor­able as wor­thy trade­offs for his­tor­i­cal atroc­i­ties. The argu­ment appears in some of the most inap­pro­pri­ate con­texts, such as dis­cus­sions of slav­ery or the Holo­caust. Or in indi­vid­ual thought exper­i­ments, such as that of a famous inven­tor whose birth was the result of a bru­tal assault. There are a great many peo­ple who con­sid­er this think­ing repul­sive, moral­ly cor­ro­sive, and astound­ing­ly pre­sump­tu­ous. Not only does it assume that every ter­ri­ble thing that hap­pens is part of a benev­o­lent design, but it pre­tends to know which cir­cum­stances count as unqual­i­fied goods, and which can be blithe­ly ignored. It deter­mines future actions from a tidy and con­ve­nient sto­ry of the past.

We might con­trast this atti­tude with a more Zen stance, for exam­ple, a rad­i­cal­ly agnos­tic “wait and see” approach to every­thing that hap­pens. Not-know­ing seems to give med­i­tat­ing monks a great deal of seren­i­ty in prac­tice. But the the­o­ry ter­ri­fies most of us. Effects must have caus­es, we think, caus­es must have effects, and in order to pre­dict what’s going to hap­pen next (and there­by save our skins), we must know why we’re doing what we’re doing. The deep impulse is what psy­chol­o­gist and psy­chother­a­pist Vik­tor Fran­kl iden­ti­fies, in his pre-gen­der-neu­tral­ly titled book, as Man’s Search for Mean­ing. Despite the mis­use of this fac­ul­ty to cre­ate neu­rot­ic or dehu­man­iz­ing myths, “man’s search for mean­ing,” writes Fran­kl, “is the pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion in his life and not a ‘sec­ondary ratio­nal­iza­tion’ of instinc­tu­al dri­ves.”

Fran­kl under­stood per­fect­ly well how the con­struc­tion of meaning—through nar­ra­tive, art, rela­tion­ships, social fic­tions, etc.—might be per­vert­ed for mur­der­ous ends. He was a sur­vivor of four con­cen­tra­tion camps, which took the lives of his par­ents, broth­er, and wife. The first part of his book, “Expe­ri­ences in a Con­cen­tra­tion Camp,” recounts the hor­ror in detail, spar­ing no one account­abil­i­ty for their actions. From these expe­ri­ences, Fran­kl draws a con­clu­sion, one he explains in the inter­view above in two parts from 1977. “The les­son one could learn from Auschwitz,” he says, “and in oth­er con­cen­tra­tion camps, in the final analy­sis was, those who were ori­ent­ed toward a meaning—toward a mean­ing to be ful­filled by them in the future—were most like­ly to sur­vive” beyond the expe­ri­ence. “The ques­tion,” Fran­kl says, “was sur­vival for what?” (See a short ani­mat­ed sum­ma­ry of Fran­kl’s book below.)

Fran­kl does not excuse the deaths of his fam­i­ly, friends, and mil­lions of oth­ers in his psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ry, which he calls logother­a­py. He cer­tain­ly does not triv­i­al­ize the most unimag­in­able of in-human expe­ri­ences. “We all said to each oth­er in camp,” he writes, “that there could be no earth­ly hap­pi­ness which could com­pen­sate for all we had suf­fered.” But it was not the hope of hap­pi­ness that “gave us courage,” he writes. It was the “will to mean­ing” that looked to the future, not to the past. In Frankl’s exis­ten­tial­ist view, we our­selves cre­ate that mean­ing, for our­selves, and not for oth­ers. Logother­a­py, Fran­kl writes, “defo­cus­es all the vicious-cir­cle for­ma­tions and feed­back mech­a­nisms which play such a great role in the devel­op­ment of neu­roses.” We must acknowl­edge the need to make sense of our lives and fill what Fran­kl called the “exis­ten­tial vac­u­um.” And we alone are respon­si­ble for writ­ing bet­ter sto­ries for our­selves.

To dig deep­er in Fran­kl’s phi­los­o­phy, you can read not only Man’s Search for Mean­ing but also The Will to Mean­ing: Foun­da­tions and Appli­ca­tions of Logother­a­py.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exis­ten­tial­ist Psy­chol­o­gist Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains How to Find Mean­ing in Life, No Mat­ter What Chal­lenges You Face

A Crash Course in Exis­ten­tial­ism: A Short Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Paul Sartre & Find­ing Mean­ing in a Mean­ing­less World

Albert Camus’ His­toric Lec­ture, “The Human Cri­sis,” Per­formed by Actor Vig­go Mortensen

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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