The Triffle World of Knowledge

All you ever wanted to know, and lots of other stuff as well!

8th March 2008

Serial Killers

Countess Erszebet Bathory was a breathtakingly beautiful, unusually well-educated woman, married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame.
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4th March 2008
2nd March 2008

On Empathy

The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1999 edition) defines empathy as:

“The ability to imagine oneself in anther’s place and understand the other’s feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. It is a term coined in the early 20th century, equivalent to the German Einfühlung and modelled on “sympathy.” The term is used with special (but not exclusive) reference to aesthetic experience. The most obvious example, perhaps, is that of the actor or singer who genuinely feels the part he is performing. With other works of art, a spectator may, by a kind of introjection, feel himself involved in what he observes or contemplates. The use of empathy is an important part of the counselling technique developed by the American psychologist Carl Rogers.”

Empathy is predicated upon and must, therefore, incorporate the following elements:
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18th February 2008

The Habit of Identity

In a famous experiment, students were asked to take a lemon home and to get used to it. Three days later, they were able to single out "their" lemon from a pile of rather similar ones. They seemed to have bonded. Is this the true meaning of love, bonding, coupling? Do we simply get used to other human beings, pets, or objects?
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13th February 2008

How To Tell If Someone Is Lying

How to tell if someone is lying? There are ways. Use them with caution, though, as all lie detecting methods fail at times.
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12th February 2008

The Pathology of Love

Recent studies buttress the unpalatable truth that falling in love is, in some ways, indistinguishable from a severe pathology. Behavior changes are reminiscent of psychosis and, biochemically speaking, passionate love closely imitates substance abuse.
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7th February 2008

The Intermittent Explosive Narcissist

Narcissists invariably react with narcissistic rage to narcissistic injury.
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2nd February 2008

The Narcissist as Eternal Child

"Puer Aeternus" the eternal adolescent, the semipternal Peter pan is a phenomenon often associated with pathological narcissism. People who refuse to grow up strike others as self-centred and aloof, petulant and brattish, haughty and demanding in short: as childish or infantile.
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20th January 2008

The Psychology of Torture

There is one place in which one’s privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed one’s body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine.
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12th January 2008

Is Psychology a Science?

All theories - scientific or not - start with a problem. They aim to solve it by proving that what appears to be "problematic" is not. They re-state the conundrum, or introduce new data, new variables, a new classification, or new organizing principles.
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