The goal was to examine a real or fictional person from two competing personality perspectives of the eight that we covered in our coursework and reading.  I chose to look at Bateman in three ways.  The first is to describe his personality more fully from an abnormal point of view using schizotypal and borderline personality disorders. I then did a more detailed theoretical analysis using general psychoanalytic theory and then using a novel application of self-actualization from humanistic psychology.

I just reformatted the paper to appear in a more journal like format, and is hopefully a bit easier to read using two columns and with single spacing.

Read it here: BatemanReformatted.pdf

This paper is my first major work for my PhD program in Clinical Psychology through Walden University.  I have written plenty of other papers, but this is the first that really let me dive into theory and produce work that was an original synthesis of other research.  Overall, because it was a paper for a class with some specific requirements, it straddles the line between giving extra description of theories to demonstrate understanding and also in using jargon from both the psychology and literary fields.  So it might seem to drag in some areas and then plow through others.  But, hopefully it will be a decent read overall.

Related posts

• The Joy of Citation (5)
• Writing Again (0)
• Using BlogDesk to Make Posting Painless (4)

You are not here to receive this letter.  Some days that makes me very angry.  Other days very sad.  Still two years after you left this life I fight a struggle with emotions, healing, and understanding.  I have had the great fortune to have excellent friends help me at every stage of this process.

Your last wishes to me were that we hold no memorial for your passing.  You wished to fade away from memory.  We soundly ignored that.  You are worth being remembered by each of us who are left behind.  At that memorial I read an abbreviated version of this observation about life from Bill Hicks:

The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while.

Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don’t worry; don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we…kill those people.

"Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real."

It’s just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok… But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And we can change it any time we want.

It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money.

 Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.

The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off.

The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.

Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

That passage means as much to me today as it did two years ago.  Life is a ride, and we can change the ride for the better.

We had our won roller coaster of ups and downs as a family.  Few times were easy.  It was real, it was fun, and sometimes not real fun.  And I am thankful for every moment of it we had.

Thank you for everything you gave me, I love you, I miss you.

Related posts

• Telling Others About Loss (2)
• Response to “The Plague” (6)
• What I Need to Say (2)

I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology through Walden University. Right now I am in my first course, which is an introduction to graduate studies in psychology. The course is mostly put in to warm students up to graduate studies. This is probably rather important since the majority of students at Walden have not been students for awhile. However, for someone like me, who has not been out of school very long, it ends up mostly being touchy feely time wasting that has gems of information scattered throughout.

Now as I just said, there are a number of important bits of information scattered in this course. There is a lot of practice in APA style (which I need badly) and a number of development exercises that force us to make a plan for our courses, professional development, and steps to licensure. In between those gems though are thins that are mostly fluff.

Some of the fluff is worthwhile too.

For example, right now we are covering the aspects of scholarly writing. This is includes a couple of video segments that a fifth grader could understand. The best part so far has been the warm up statement which compares/contrasts scholarly writing to things the everyday person has probably written. One thing the speaker in the video brings up is that, “you may have written a note to your child’s teacher…”

Being that I have a mind that thinks in a rather different way from yours, I may be the only person to find a good bit of humor in writing a note to a teacher. I now want to combine the scholarly writing style with all types of usually casual writing. Why simply tell a teacher that your student will be absent on Friday when you can inform them the of the exact reason and a number of important studies that relate to the condition relating to the absence. This is not to poke fun at scholarly writing, but more to make life more enjoyable for people forced to read what I hand them. As such:

Regular Note:

Johnny will be absent Friday.

-Chris

Enhanced Note:

Johnny will be absent Friday. This absence is due to a required visit to the doctor to be inoculated for infectious diseases identified as harmful by the school board (CDC, 2005; SHS, 2009). Any missed work may be forwarded to my home so that negative consequences due to this absence may be mitigated…

Why would anyone use the enhanced note? Because it is fun to use skills you have worked on for years to get quizzical looks from others. Besides, the first sentence is the same, thus within the first two seconds the vital information has been given. Everything after that will give the poor soul on the receiving end a chance to learn and a proper works cited list in order to find your primary source documents.

On a more serious note. Many business documents get far too casual. If you need to write a document for software or policy revisions it will, in reality, benefit your reader to cite source documents and be overly specific. After all, the person reading your recommendations probably does not do your job every day and being very specific will help them understand why the document you have sent to their desk matters rather than just being a vague of a problem you seem to have.

So, for now I am back off to learn to properly cite study notes, video segments, and student forum posts. It may seem inane now, but it will be handy to be in the practice of proper citation once it really matters.

Related posts

• The Bateman File (2)
• Writing Again (0)
• Using BlogDesk to Make Posting Painless (4)

First, the home TV is busted.  It has been that way for a couple of weeks now, and it will persist in such a state for most likely another week while we wait for the repair company to receive the proper parts.  Along with that I recently attempted to upgrade some RAM in my PC, this resulted in a coincidental death of a memory slot on the motherboard. 

I have since ordered a new motherboard (A nice Gigabyte) and have subsequently RMA’d it.  Yep, an RMA on the new board.  It was simply a bad one (the first non-working item i have received from NewEgg).  From the get go it never once posted to BIOS.  The old motherboard does work – minus  some memory – but the effort to get everything back together just to take it apart again is beyond my patience, especially when i have a laptop.

How does this create professional reading?  Because with no TV and no PC games of any sort, I have a great deal of time on my hands.  I also have the motivation of starting a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program next week, so quite a bit of refresher work is being done.  It would have been hard for me to imagine a couple of years ago that it was possible to forget some of the basics of classical conditioning, but when you travel abroad and across the country for a couple of years doing anything and everything that does not involve your degree, things have a way of slipping out of mind.

Luckily, relearning is much easier.  I have found the amazing ability to get through one hundred of more pages of text books in a day with almost total comprehension.  This should encourage all of you to start rereading things you learned in the past, the feeling of brilliance is a nice perk!

Who knows… I may even get some real updates ready for Sustainable Democracy…  Reading “Stranger in a Strange Land” has certainly given me ample material to think broadly about.  That and the complete lack of news I get is rather refreshing.

So kids, do like Uncle Chris, read more, watch less, make your friends suspect communism may be rearing its ugly head again.

Related posts

• The Face of the Future (0)
• Synthetic Life Now Real (0)
• You Must Prepare (0)

Perhaps instead of “hope” and “change” we should have had the motto of simply “Despair.”  If nothing else it would have been accurate advertising in politics.  But then, we don’t vote for accuracy, we vote for the most appealing lie.  In fact, things have gotten so bad that even CNBC is slowing down on their predictions that sunshine and puppies are in the near future.  This is supplemented by the fact that the majority of their outside experts are looking more grim each day and have been recommending more short sells rather than investments.

However, the Hitchhiker’s Guide may still have the best advice.

Don’t Panic

Things have to get better right?  Less a question, and more a fact.  Things at some point will get better.  We just need to hope that the place of improvement is somewhere before the absolute bottom.

Related posts

• The Deception (1)
• Surreality (2)
• Spore: A Lesson in Piracy (1)

While I was browsing some of my photos of the Pilgrim Monument (Province Town, MA) I came across a perfect example of a stone sin I took two pictures of.  One picture the flash happened to go off, and the second I made sure it was off.

The flash washed out all the detail.  The text of the sign was almost entirely unreadable.  With no flash, it took a little more time, and I had to be steady, but the picture is clear and has great color.

Sure, a flash has a plethora of uses.  They are used with staggering frequency in portrait photography, or really any art photography that involves people.  Also, professional Ebay auctions have items captured using either a flash.  However, almost none of these are using direct camera mounted flashes.  If people are using camera mount flashes they are probably A) with the press and need to guarantee light for each shot, or B) doing some sort of sports photography which may require additional light for very fast shutter speeds.

This probably glosses over details that should probably be filled in about flashes and their uses, but it gets the point across.  Besides, you can check out these links for more details:

Short Courses – Using a Flash/Studio Lighting

Dan Heller Photography

Related posts

• You Could Save! (0)
• The Beauty of Shirotori Garden (4)
• Monday Music: Ray Pizzi (0)

I am back at Deviant Art and posting some of my photography from the last couple of years.  You can find me there as Doc-Shadow.  I took a hiatus of about 2 years from the site.  Partially it had to do with the rather underhanded way they got rid of Scott Jarkoff, one of the founders, and partially a general apathy.

With enough encouragement I may even start playing with space art again… Ok, I don’t really need encouragement, I just need to collect some textures and brushes again so that when I pull out my tablet there is something to work with.  Back in the day when I had an abundance of such things it was rather easy to just sit down and start on a project.  It would only take me a couple of hours to put a decent starting point back together, but inertia is evil. 

Luckily, posting from photos is slowly getting the ball rolling so that the inertia will eventually be on my side rather than against me. 

Related posts

• What I Need to Say (2)
• Uncle Chris – Reading is Fun (0)
• Tuning Out For a Bit (0)

Memorial Day weekend was the Ferris/Schaffer Family Reunion.  It happens every year at the same time, though I was absent for the past two reunions (moving frequently never helps), in the exciting township of Wheeler, Texas.  Ok, not the most exciting place, but if you get lost you can walk the whole town and find where you need to be in a short time.

This year the head count was sixty-three (63) for the potluck lunch.  If I remember the count from last year was 67.  Yes, we have big family gatherings.

Some pictures will be posted once I get my hands on them.

Related posts

• Cape Cod – Province Town (6)
• What I Need to Say (2)
• Uncle Chris – Reading is Fun (0)

However, after that I watched Seven Pounds.  Another excellent movie.  A great uplifting story that makes you consider the merits of bridges and rocks.  I would say more about the lessons learned from the movie, but other than “doing good deeds is good” anything else would tell more of the story than I would like.

More to the point.  Those two particular movies in combination should require the use of anti-depressants.  They did; however, get me thinking.

We need more random good deeds in the world.  At the very least we need more education about kindness and mindfulness.  One of my professors was recently teaching a course on Mindfulness which I crashed a couple of times (the perks of being a graduate are great).  The concept is excellent, help people develop mindfulness – a largely Taoist/Buddhist concept – and lead generally happier lives through reflection and metacognition.

There really aren’t enough courses, seminars, discussions about this in education.  It got me thinking, being that I have no job and a lot of time, I may start pitching a similar idea around the school district and college as a free seminar.

Just a thought, and movies tend to get my wheels moving.

Related posts

• What I Need to Say (2)
• Uncle Chris – Reading is Fun (0)
• Tuning Out For a Bit (0)

Yeah… Look at the cute owls… they are painfully cute.

Today I leave on my way back to Massachusetts for a bit of a stay to see the girlfriend.  How long will I be there?  Good question!  Luckily I have posts actually scheduled – mostly images and random commentary – rather than simply going silent for a long period of time like usual.

So, while you stare at the cute owls, I’ll be getting on a train and praying that my car is either empty or filled with very quiet people who have no screaming children that I may have to throw off the train.

Related posts

• Tuning Out For a Bit (0)
• The Worker’s Plea (12)
• Planning Only Gets You So Far (2)