Category: Journal

Blogging as a Method for Democratic Therapy
Blogs are a great way to express your voice. Even if your experiences have made you feel silent, oppressed, and unfairly treated at an intergroup relational context; you can still assert your thoughts, feelings and opinions in the online community. This way, blogging can be a method for cognitive-emotional democratic healing at both individual and collective levels.

Why is expressing your voice important?

Actions and reactions happen at inter and intra group levels for many reasons. Sometimes communicating our perspective helps elucidate a particular situation. So for instance, if you feel that some members of your social milieu have displayed hostility towards you as a result of the hostility that they themselves have been subjected to, you might be correct in assuming that such a hostility might have become hypernormalised at the group’s cultural level, and that such members are experiencing reactive-formative symptoms of trauma. For the minority individual, the experience of being let down, or rejected by a group, culture, system, or apparatus can be debilitating (i.e. it can feel like mob behaviour), and when this happens for a prolonged period of time; it can create feelings of marginalised frustration. Blogging is a good way to use your freedom of speech in a way that directly addresses the public audience, whilst simultaneously being an interpersonal method for expression.

The risk is to stay silent.

Setting up a blog

There are different ways in which you can begin your blog. The most common problem I hear when I speak with people about blogging is ‘I do not not what to say. I would not know where to start’. My answer is that such is precisely the way to start a blog. You do not need to know what to write about in order to express that you do not know what to write about. Sometimes it could be sharing your professional work. Other times it could just be about sharing an experience you went through. I tend to shift between these modes. Most of the time, I share some of my thoughts, feelings, and add something interesting that I have been researching about. Regardless of what your needs for expression are, blogging is an effective method for online communication and an interdisciplinary style for socialisation. But, what blog to use?

Choosing a blogging platform

Different people will prefer different types of blogs for their journalism depending on how much time or effort they wish to invest in the endeavour. Here are a few options:
- Blogger: A very simple and generic user experience design for expressing thoughts. It has an archive of dates which store your thoughts across time. The interface is easy to learn, and it is free of charge. It is ideal for those only getting started in cybercultural activities.
- Google Sites: This platform truly is flexible in terms of allowing the user to experience freedom in how to structure their pages. It is useful for creative projects and for getting started with digital design. It lacks an automatic blogging archive, so if what you are looking for is a place to log your thoughts, Blogger is a better option. All you need is a Google account.
- WordPress: This blog (as you can see at the bottom of the page) is powered by WordPress. The reason why I personally prefer this platform is because it gives me a wide margin of flexibility when it comes to design, as well as simultaneously having an archive for blog posts which permits organization.
- Medium: For those who do not wish to either hassle neither with the design nor with the other technicalities, Medium allows people to register and write. It is a community project, meaning that people from all walks of life contribute to the discussion.
7 Oct 2020
Investigating the Neuropsychopathology of Tyranny

Lately I have slept better. Taking Zopiclone has helped me sleep through any kind of disturbance. Consequently, my mental health feels more in balance, and I have been able to once again concentrate on my research. I still feel a deep sense of injustice, but the things I research about give me hope for a better future.

As usual, I have been studying a lot. The books I am currently reading are really interesting. One of the chapters I am currently working on (Dixon, 2015) for university speaks about the neuropsychopathology of social cognition, and how prejudice can result from an institutionalised (i.e. culturally conditioned) context, becoming predetermined emotional responses. One of the excerpts that has mostly sounded relevant to my independent research on cultural narcissism is the following:

‘In a series of studies, using similar kinds of photographic stimuli and fMRI technology, Harris and Fiske (e.g. 2006) found that certain social groups do not produce the neurological signature of person perception. Instead, these groups are processed mainly by areas of the brain more associated with the perception of non-human objects; i.e. they are literally treated, neurologically, as though they were not, fully, fellow human beings. This reaction is worrying because the ‘dehumanisation’ of others has been associated with extreme expressions of prejudice (e.g. the willingness to torture, rape or murder other people)’ .
John Dixon (2015, p. 150)

Now, this object-relational evidence of prejudice and how it leads to the neurologically-based, inherent dehumanisation of those who are considered as out-groups (e.g. Here in the UK, those who are protected by the Equality Act 2010) is consistent with the narcissistic approach to relationships. The idea that simply categorising an individual as an outgroup is enough to attribute characteristics to them that are not humane is truly concerning. Now, combining this with the corporate-narcissistic agenda is essential for social change. It links up to the book I am currently reading about corporate psychopathy:

“While individual lapses in judgement may garner attention in many cases, the ability of psychopaths to cover or explain away their individual decisions makes evidence of these lapses difficult to obtain. Rather, it is the long-term impact of their behaviours in a variety of situations and their dealings with a variety of people that shed more light on who they really are”.
Robert Hare and Paul Babiak (2006, p. 248).

Based on the above, I begin wondering just how deep the neuropsychopathology of tyranny is. That is, what are the common excuses the general corporate narcissist uses to justify violations of human rights? Has the corporate narcissist been made through institutionalised behavioural conditioning which is partially reinforced by unconscious dogmatic-authoritarian beliefs? I suppose this is where forensic psychology as a science collaborates with occupational psychology, social psychology, and educational psychology to uncover these answers.

References

Dixon, J. (2015) ‘Why don’t we like one another? The psychology of prejudice and intergroup relations’, in Capdevila, R., Dixon, J., and Briggs, G. (eds) Investigating Psychology 2: From Social to Cognitive, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 133-178.

Hare, D. R. and Babiak, P. (2006) Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, New York, HarperCollins.

6 Oct 2020
Good News: My Blog is Back

What a day. Today my blog was saved (thank you, Juan!) after it was hacked and taken down following two articles I wrote which now I am nervous to publish after that. I’m currently reading several books at once and sometimes feel so devastated to realise some barbarities about the world around me. But having my blog back is so comforting, and so I have another reason to continue surviving all these difficult situations, yay!

In the meantime, I started a channel on Medium where I might journal now and then. You can read my post Thriving Against Oppression Now there where I speak about what it has felt like lately for me to go through a lot of problems. I will be reviewing and republishing the commentary articles I had published prior to the hack attack within the next few days. I am currently so busy with my studies that I have to spend more time inputting than outputting information. But I will try to retake a more informal and more frequent blogging style, because I feel it is certainly therapeutic to blog.

Also, in response to some commentary as to whether I have conditioned myself into these situational factors, the answer is that there are some unconditional, natural elements when it comes to the good side (writing, blogging, studying); and some conditioned elements that have been institutionalised (e.g. verbiage and time-keeping). It is difficult with psychology, you know. Specially when there are incentives, rewards, and negative reinforcement schemes in many of the contexts of practice. But there are factors of situations which are outside my locus of control, yet I get through, thriving on the roller-coaster life.

So tired of being oppressed.

Thank you to anyone reading!

27 Sep 2020