psychology dector

A few years ago, I took a group of senior high school students to the Getty Center perched on a hilltop here in Los Angeles. I suspect many of them had been to a museum before, but I am also sure a few had not. In a room filled with priceless statues from antiquity, several girls moved within inches of the statues and mimicked the poses captured in the marbles. This involved balancing on a single leg, arms outstretched while craning their necks to see the statue they were emulating. The security guards did not hesitate. They quickly moved in to prevent a costly disaster. Later in the cafeteria, the girls questioned me about their stern reprimand from the security staff. They felt the museum personnel overreacted and embarrassed them. I tried to explain. “Those statues are thousands of years old. Can you imagine what would be lost if you fell against one and knocked it over?” “It’s not a big deal,” one replied. “They have stuff like that all over Caesar’s Palace in Vegas and you can t...

Due to technical difficulties, this Sunday post was delayed to Monday. How long have we known that Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi is a nutcase? We recently heard from Libya’s ex-Minister of Justice Mustafa Mohamed Abud Al Jeleil that Quaddafi himself ordered the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. He has been a thorn in our side for decades. However, can we really dedicate our dwindling resources on yet another front? Now we find ourselves policing a no-fly zone over Libya while mired in a budget crisis here at home. According to Glenn Thrush, senior White House reporter for Politico.com , speaking on National Public Radio’s Madeleine Brand Show this week, the cost of our efforts in Libya amounts to $100 million per week. The Tomahawk missiles we lob into Qaddafi’s command and control installations run a half-million dollars a piece. Times that by the more than two hundred missiles fired so far, and the cost of this latest action becomes clear. What...

Bread and Chocolate (Italy, 1974) Dir. Franco Brusati Hen’s Tooth Video; $24.95, DVD This feature film, directed by Franco Brusati and released in 1974, tells the story of an Italian immigrant in Switzerland and the discrimination he faces as he tries to survive. The film represents the “ commedia all’italiana ” genre, meaning Italian-style comedy. The central character is Nino Garofalo, played by Nino Manfredi , a guest worker from Naples who works as a waiter in a Swiss café. From the moment, Manfredi appears on screen eating a sandwich in the park while watching various Swiss people enjoying their holiday, he reminds one of American actor Jack Lemmon . He has the comic facial expressions of Lemmon, and the ability to portray a range of emotions—humor, fear, confusion, regret, et cetera—with a simple look into the camera. Director Brusati uses the actor’s face throughout to convey the bewildering misfortunes, trials, and tribulations of the poor immigrant character, a man whose hair...

The Conformist By Alberto Moravia ; Trans. by Tami Calliope Zoland Books , $17.00 paper ISBN: 978-1-883642-65-5 What drives someone to cruelty? Were the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity in the Second World War psychopaths from childhood? Did some event occur to turn them against their fellow human beings? The answers to these questions become clearer through the lens of history. Alberto Moravia attempts to analyze what makes a fascist by using a fictive narrative. His main character, Marcello Clarici in the novel, The Conformist , displays many of the traits of a psychopath from early in his childhood. Moravia also gives us some suggestions on how a person’s experiences and genetic history might push him toward anti-social, murderous behavior. Marcello cannot locate his emotional center from the start of the novel. He studies others to see their emotional reactions and then apes them in order to manipulate. As the novel opens, Marcello is a child torturing and killing lizar...

I am caught in one of those periods where I cannot focus or concentrate for longer than a few minutes. There are piles of books and articles to be read, pieces to write, work to get done, but I find myself watching endless tape loops of the devastating earthquake in Japan , or the people of Libya rising up against that odd looking tyrant . It does not help matters that I am struggling to breathe. For the last few weeks, what started as a chest infection blossomed into a pneumonia-like conflagration. I have completed my cycle of antibiotics and still, the hacking cough lingers. It is one of those coughs where you pull muscles trying to clear the airway. So I cannot breathe, I am sore, and the fatigue is overwhelming. Writing the last sentence requires a rest. Outside, we are experiencing perfect spring weather here in Los Angeles. No doldrums between winter and the first buds here. We have jumped right in with both feet: eighty degree temperatures, bright sunshine, and beautiful blue sk...

Many people think of a study in the humanities as light-weight work. Cancer will not be cured by a humanities student. Neither the tallest skyscraper, nor the spacecraft that carries the first humans to Mars will be built by a humanities student. However, if we seek to understand the glory and the dream of being alive, the power of human intuition, the beauty of art and poetry, we will find answers to many of life’s questions. The sciences will come from our understanding of the world and the laws of nature; wisdom comes from understanding ourselves. We need both, but our other pursuits will be vastly enriched if we begin our study with the humanities. To study humanities, one must be ready for critical self reflection. The path begins with a question, not a thesis, another difference from sciences. What does it mean to be human and humane? Rational and reasoned? Cultured and moral? Learned and worldly? How do we envision ourselves as human beings bound to other human beings? What rol...

I have spent some time in the last weeks rereading Hamlet , and that brings me around to contemplating Ophelia again. To me, she is one of the most captivating characters in English literature. Why? Because she is caught in the mechanizations that are not of her own creation. Because she is a lost soul who can find no other way to fight back in her world but to sink into madness. Because, in the end, Hamlet loves her, and the result is tragedy of the deepest kind. I love literary critic Elaine Showalter’s essay , “Representing Ophelia: Woman, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism,” if only because she gets it right when she writes about Ophelia that she brings forward “the issues in an ongoing theoretical debate about the cultural links between femininity, female sexuality, insanity, and representation.” Ophelia suffers in the play, caught in the pedantic spying of her father, Polonius, the treacherous actions of Claudius, the savvy escapism of Gertrude, and Hamlet’s...