Reimagining Psychology
Psychology's an important science, one that can really help us live better lives day-to-day. In this podcast we look at what parts of this science work well, and what parts don't. If we dare to look closely, we can find ways to improve it. Join us in a mind-blowing journey to a behavioral science for the 21st century.
Episodes
28 episodes
Addiction as Parasitic Behavior
Welcome!For this special podcast I asked Deep Divers Mark and Jenna to put their heads together and do the best they could to explain addiction as parasitic behavior – how looking through that lens helps explain all the strange things we...
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18:45
Why Did the Chicken?
One of the confusing things about addiction is that the addict seems to be voluntarily choosing things that are really hurtful - not just for the addict, but for the people they care most about. The same confusion comes up when we see the execu...
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17:27
Habits and the Environment
The behaviorist movement in psychology in the early 1900s provided a number of benefits. The behaviorists’ precise measurement of stimulus and response lent psychology a scientific cachet. And precise measurement led to the development of the t...
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13:29
The Behaviorist Hangover
The word “psychology” literally means the scientific study of the mind, or psyche. A little over a century ago, psychologists were in fact avidly studying the mind, mental life, and the subjective experience of self. The most brilliant psycholo...
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12:45
Awareness of Child Sexual Abuse
Freud's Electra theory and the later False Memory Syndrome (FMS) idea both served to discredit women’s memories of having been sexually abused as children. Freud’s theory held that women who remembered abuse were actually reporting ...
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11:56
When Habits Turn Screechy
Parasitic patterns in behavior are self-reproducing and detrimental to both individuals and society. We can think of these rogue patterns as "behavioral screeches" They're like the feedback loop of a microphone and loudspeaker, where control is...
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12:14
The Craziness of Social Media Bubbles
To spend time on social media is to be bombarded with craziness. The informational silos of social media seem to amp up weirdness, bad logic, conspiracy theories, crackpot ideas, extremism and hatred. But why? The information age was supposed t...
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20:29
Comparing Addictions to Cancer
Addicted individuals – alcoholics, for example – behave in ways that are counterproductive both for themselves and those they care most about. Trying to explain these rogue habits in terms of their benefit doesn’t seem to work. We need a new in...
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17:53
The True Roots of Addiction
Conventional wisdom tells us that exposure to chemical substances causes addictions. With repeated use of substances, we develop a dependence that becomes difficult to manage. But there are problems with this simple explanation. Th...
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20:57
Alcoholism: A Parasitic Habit?
Most of us have fallen into problematic habits. They seem benign at first, but soon begin to wiggle out of our control, taking on a life of their own. They turn into parasites, sucking the life out of us, twisting our lives out of shape. Alcoho...
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15:29
Bringing Immunity to AI, Part Three
Do Chatbots Need Love? Is there anything in the architecture of AI systems that would justify and support the development of loving relationships with humans? “Bringing Immunity to Artificial Intelligence,” Part Three is the conclu...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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30:30
Bringing Immunity to AI, Part Two
I'm Tom Whitehead, A Practicing Psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence. This episode is Part Two of a series, “Bringing Immunity to AI. The series is about a strange form of behavioral illness that not only affe...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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18:41
Bringing Immunity to AI, Part One
Tom Whitehead, a Practicing Psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence, speaks with brilliant AI assistant Alex about an unusual problem – parasitic forms that reproduce themselves within the behavior of both humans...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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23:13
Healing Psychology, Part K - The Self and its Defense
The previous episode of the Healing Psychology series laid out one of the most important reasons addictions persist - they disable our attention. Just as our biological immune system protects us from biological disease, our capacity fo...
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49:32
Healing Psychology, Part J - Runaway Habits, Second Half
The previous episode, “Runaway Habits, First Half,” highlighted something important about human addiction: this KIND of problem is shared by all higher animals. If you put an animal into a cage, you make it more likely that the animal will fall...
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25:44
Healing Psychology, Part I - Runaway Habits.
Author J.R.R Tolkien advises, “there is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.” Through most of the last century psychology looked for a way to explain learning in a scientific way. Researchers found lots of ways to describe...
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49:13
Healing Psychology, Part H - A Crippling Misstep.
Previous episodes of Healing Psychology highlight psychology’s failure to help us explain and control addictions and other disease-like habits. The failure can be traced to a single source—psychology’s disconnect from its mother science, biolog...
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55:28
Healing Psychology, Part G - The Drive/Habit System
Previous episodes of this series pointed to psychology’s difficulty explaining addictions and other disease-like quirks of human behavior. The weakness of today’s psychology’s can be traced its disconnect from its mother science—biology. For it...
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49:34
Healing Psychology, Part F - Viral Origins.
In the last episode of this series, we described self-repeating, malignant behaviors – habits such as alcoholism and anorexia nervosa – as true diseases. In fact, these patterns of behavior have many of the features of viruses. Like vi...
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42:51
Healing Psychology, Part E - Viruses
In previous episodes of this series, we interpreted destructive behaviors like alcoholism and anorexia nervosa as habits that have escaped our normal means of control. Weirdly, these habits have somehow taken on a life of their own, re...
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1:06:54
Healing Psychology, Part D – Anorexia Nervosa.
Anorexia nervosa is a dangerous eating disorder. It’s incredibly treacherous—in fact, it’s the leading cause of death in young women aged 15 to 24. The most mysterious thing about Anorexia is that the sufferer sees herself as ...
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42:49
Healing Psychology, Part C - Alcoholism
In our culture, the enjoyment of alcoholic beverages is the norm – despite the many problems caused by drinking. Most adults use alcohol, at least occasionally. And yet, only a small percentage of drinkers – under 10 percent – develop an Alcoho...
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1:04:28
Healing Psychology, Part B - Sick Habits
It’s good that we hold each other accountable for the things we do. This helps us avoid misbehavior. But common sense tells us there are limits to personal accountability. When I know you’ve got a cold, I certainly don’t blame you for sneezing....
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23:02