Tuesday 30 September 2014

M&M: Patch Adams

Dear reader,

August, 11 this year was a strange day for me and certainly also for a friend of mine (you know who you are). On the previous evening we chatted about comedies and actors. We found that we both like Adam Sandler and also Robin Williams. I thought to myself that I wasn't aware of what he had been up to the past couple of years, didn't hear of him for a while. But I was too tired to check just then. I went to bed and the next morning I read in shock and total surprise my daily mails from the Guardian newspaper with latest news. Robin Williams was dead. When I went online with my chat programs, I read that my friend had already read the sad news, too.

So with some delay now, this M&M today in memory of Robin Williams. Philip Seymour Hoffman is an actor, probably unknown or by not too many German speaking people. In “Patch Adams” he's a fellow student and room mate of Patch Adams. Philip Seymour Hoffman died this year (February, 2nd) and I write this entry in his memory, too.

Patch Adams is a movie from the year 1998 and tells the true (as always with feature movies, for dramatic reasons not always the very true) story of Hunter “Patch” Adams. Okay, I know close to nothing about the real Patch Adams and many (online) reviews about this movie are rather negative. Since I know only very little about the “real” Patch Adams and this is a movie review anyway, I'll only stick to what's in the movie.


Hunter Adams is suicidal and admits himself to a hospital for treatment. His room mate is a man, who keeps him awake at night with a squeaking bed, because he needs to go to the toilet, but doesn't dare out of fear for the squirrels he sees. Adams starts a squirrel hunt then and shoots the squirrels (with his hand miming a pistol). After a wild squirrel shooting, the room mate is finally able to go to the toilet. Adams is impressed that he was able to help another person with humour and decides to study medicine to help even more.

During his studies, Adams notices that he doesn't have to learn much. We actually never see him sticking his nose in his books. (I don't know how much this was true. Although there are some lucky ones, who really don't need to do much to learn and remember things.) Adams notices something else, too: the doctors seem often very functional and stern and distant towards patients. Once they talk about a patient in the hospital as she's lying in bed, surrounded by the students and the doctor. They talk about her illness (diabetes with poor circulation and diabetic neuropathy), also treatment (shocked the patient hears the possibility of “amputation”). Then Adams asks, “What's her name?” All just look at him. “I was just wondering the patient's name”, he says. The doctor has to look at the chart. “Marjorie.” “Hi Marjorie”, Adams greets her smiling at her and addressing her personally.

In time he also makes friends with patients and is able to give them some treats and grant them wishes. Some find it “a little disturbing”, that he's sneaking into a room full of kids (the children's ward) and “acting like a clown”. Surely he was eccentric in that scene. Surely I personally couldn't get out of myself like that. Simply because I'm too shy and introverted for something like that. But “disturbing”? Because he's a man among children? He isn't a child molester! He wanted to make the children laugh and they were happy! What's so wrong about that?

Like many Hollywood movies, this one too can't come without a love story. Patch Adams befriends with female student. At first she only wants to study and not make friends, tells him that, too. Some say that Patch Adams is pushy and reckless, forcing his will and happiness on everybody else. I read that just now, as I was reading some comments at the imdb.com Patch Adams forum. All I can say is that I didn't see this movie and certain scenes in that way so far. Anyway, his girlfriend meets this mentally disturbed patient as the movie goes on, which leads Patch Adams to a faith and life crisis for a short time. (From what I read, this student/girlfriend never existed. One might wonder why all of that is in the movie then.) She meets this patient when she and others help Patch Adams starting a free hospital, even though they're still students. Because Adams is shocked when he sees that desperate relatives are first asked to fill out forms and give information when their sick partner is clearly in pain and in need of immediate help.

The fact that Patch Adams is always happy, seemingly never learning and still gets top grades and that he's practising medicine without a doctor's degree, leads him to almost not be able to finish his studies. So he goes to the court and that fight fills the last about 15 minutes of the movie.

Like I already wrote, I don't know much about the life and works of the real Patch Adams. It may also be questionable why Patch Adams gets this girlfriend, who has to go through what we see in the movie. I have no idea how eccentric the real Patch Adams is or isn't and whether Robin Williams' portrayal is realistic or not. Some critics ask in a provocative way if you really like to be treated by a doctor wearing a red clown nose. I'd like to tell those people one thing. A couple of years back there was a hot summer and I went to see a female doctor. It was so hot that most girls and women wore short t-shirts or sleeveless tops. When the doctor came into the room, she didn't have her coat on. She asked me, if I was okay with that. I don't remember, what I actually said to her. Certainly something affirmative. Today and in hindsight I might have asked her, whether her knowledge is in her coat or in her head and depending on it, I would have insisted on the coat or not.

Tastes differ. Nobody has to like the movie “Patch Adams” or watch it. I still think some thoughts expressed in that movie are important: being friendly to the patients, asking them every now and then, how they're doing or what they would like, instead of talking about then in their presence in a sort of “Mrs. Broken-Leg” and “Mr. Terminal Cancer” sort of way. Especially the American health care system is in need of a change. The idea of a free hospital therefore is commendable and worthy of support. For fans of Robin Williams, who didn't know Patch Adams and his works, at least he showed them that and I think that's a good thing.

Until next blog,
sarah

Monday 29 September 2014

We're all humans part 2 or: Why I don't watch feature films set in germany anymore

Dear reader,

I don't watch feature films set in germany anymore. I do watch feature films, which aren't set in any particular time. But when they're set in a certain time, it seems that the german film industry and other countries, know nothing other than the nazi time. Certainly it's important that this time is never forgotten. I'm also sorry for what happened to those, who lived during that time. Still does every single film set in germany or where the time it's set in is relevant, be in the nazi time? Oh, I almost forgot. Alternatively: the time the wall still existed or when it fell. It's important to remember and something like that should never ever happen again. I'm just annoyed, that practically every historical germany type of feature film is reduced to that time in german as well as foreign films.

When I was studying, a student, who was about 20 years old, told us she had been to england once. She found some nice friends there. They walked away from her though, after they found out that she was german. Nazi. Yes, of course. Someone just 20 years of age is certainly a nazi, because she's german. Okay, there are still nazis around today, neo-nazis. So someone could possibly be a nazi even today and being young doesn't mean, they may not be one. But that doesn't mean every single german is also a nazi! Suppose her parents got her when they were about 30 years old. That would make her parents about 50 years now. So not even her parents lived during the nazi time, much less are they inevitably nazis, because they're german.

I liked the Hellboy movies by Guillermo del Toro. I already reviewed his movie Pan's Labyrinth last month. What I didn't like at all about the first Hellboy movie, was the prologue, the beginning. That's set in the nazi time, yes, with the bad germans. And because Hellboy, a devil, already is a good guy and the nazis are no longer as strong as they have been before Hitler's death, the movie needs another baddie. The classic baddie of the russian history is Grigorij Rasputin, the so called “faith healer”, who helped the tsar son on a regular basis. Some to this day see him as a sort of devil, or in fact “the” devil himself. Regardless what he was (first of all, he was a human, like all of us), he was an interesting person. I will write more about him in separate entry. I don't know yet when that will be.


In my entry Pride and prejudice I already wrote that I like the film music composer James Newton Howard and that I enjoy listening to his music. In 2008 the movie Defiance came out in cinemas. Maybe I'll write about that some day in a M&M post. Even though it's not one of my “favourite movies”. It is a good movie. I found it, because I was a bit more aware of what Daniel Craig was doing and I had seen him in the James Bond movies. When I read that James Newton Howard scored the film music to it, I listened to that. “Naturally” I liked what he had composed. With certain people I know, even when I don't like the movie, I can trust those people and enjoy it still, because of them. I liked James Newton Howards music enough, to make me curious. I read that the movie was about sibblings in russia, who were hiding and helping other nazi regufees. The movie is based on a true story. It seemed to me to be more of a sort of modern Robin Hood version rather than “the bad nazis once again” story. I'd describe that movie to others that way in fact. Yes, people are fleeing from the nazis. It's about a group of people, who start a new life in the woods and are willing to make this new home safe and defend it. But it's not so much about the nazis as such in the movie. To me it really is more like a Robin Hood story and without knowing the true, historical details of the life of those brothers, I liked the movie and find it worth watching. Defiance was however the only movie set in the historical nazi time, I deliberately watched. Valkyrie on the other hand did get good reviews, as far as I know. The Stauffenberg assassination attempt was talked about a bit in our history lessons a bit. I don't remember much about it though. So actually it is a suspenseful aspect of german history. And yet I delibertely didn't watch the movie to this day. Add the fact that Tom Cruise is in that film and I don't like him that much. Maybe it is a good movie. I'm willing to be convinced to watch it once, if it's really worth it. Right now, it's just another movie in the line of “the forever bad nazi” movies.


With all respect for what happened and for the persons, who suffered then and to this day, with all respect for history: it's starting to be enough for me. Write to me. If you know good movies, I am in fact open, despite maybe sounding bad, annoyed and closed. I am open for watching movies set in the nazi time or at the time of the fall of the wall or something. But I will not just like that watch those movies, because they're on telly just now or because everyone is rushing to watch them in the cinema. Because I think, those masses of nazi movies especially don't help other countries, to change the image of the bad german everlasting nazis. Certainly not all british or non-germany are as uneducated as those sad friends of that student. I still wish that they'd start making other movies now about germany and the germans and that germans aren't only the bad guys of the movie.

Until next blog,
sarah

Saturday 27 September 2014

Remember not to forget

Dear reader,

I think Albert Einstein was right when he said, „The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Sadly this happens far to often and far to quickly when one is looking for something and can't find it. At least for me anyway. This happened again actually the day before yesterday.

Normally I keep a couple of things only at very few specific places and never anywhere else. I taught myself to do that automatically with my flat keys for example, to avoid looking for them for long and so I don't lose them. I keep the keys to my dad's flat, say, almost all the time in a certain backpack and in a specific inner pocket there. But a few days ago I had them in a different backpack, haven't been at my dad's, but I was in the neighbourhood and just in case, I had those keys with me. I did see those keys in this other, unfamiliar outside pocket several times the days before two days ago. I knew where they were. In the small outside pocket of the smaller backpack. I had seen them there the previous days again and again when I had the backpack in my hand and the outside pocket had been open. And yet I only checked the bigger pocket and also repeatedly(!) completely emptied the big backpack. It took me almost a quarter of an hour to finally take the small backpack again and for once also check the outside pocket to find the keys again.

Years ago I was looking for glasses once with blue tinted eyeglasses, which I have had. But did I have them still? In the past I had glasses at all times. Only a couple of years ago I started wearing them only occasionally. That's why I never used the sunglasses with the tinted eyeglasses. They didn't have the glasses I would have needed for my eyes sight. Did I have the glasses still? I checked every possible drawer of two specific cupboards in my room, also two drawers in the hallway. Several times. Because it's so much fun and suddenly the biggest things could have become tiny and hidden and be overlooked. I thought of Einstein checking everything the second time. After the third time I cursed myself for checking again, although I had found nothing the first two times already. I thought to myself, “I'll go to the living-room ask my mum. Maybe I don't even have the glasses anymore anyway. Checking a 100 times wouldn't help then. Maybe she knew something. Should I still have the glasses, I trust my unconscious and wish for to just walk up to the right drawer to find them there.” I went to my mum. She knew what I was looking for, but couldn't remember if we still had the glasses or not or where they might be. I went back to my room. Purposefully I stood in front of a commode where the guinea pigs and their cage were sitting on. There is only one drawer there where the glasses might be, in which I keep necklaces and earrings and also a big magnifying glass with a horn grip, too. If the glasses were there at all, it would be in that drawer. The other drawers had paper, note books and notes. I really pulled out the drawer this time and in the back of a corner there really was the small blue paper box in which I kept the blue tinted eyeglasses. I thanked my unconscious for guiding me to them that way.

Many scientists agree now that our brain never forgets and in theory we could remember everything that happened once. The individual information gets displaced by other information and new information and with that they fade into the background so much that we seemingly forgot them. Methods like the memory palace can help to organise and sort through thoughts and memories and find them faster, have them more “handy”.

Dr. John Watson gives a quite good description of how the memory palace works in “The Hounds of Baskerville” (Sherlock season 2, episode 2). Sherlock Holmes knows that he's got important information in his head “somewhere buried deep”. He tells John and Dr. Stapleton to get out, he'd go to his mind palace now.
“His what?”, asks Stapleton confused.
John explains to her, “Oh, his mind palace. It's a memory technique, a sort of mental map. You plot a map with a location, it doesn't have to be a real place. You deposit memories there. Theoretically, you never forget anything. All you do is find your way back to it.
“So this imaginary location could be anything?”, asks Stapleton. “A house or a street?”
“Yeah”, confirms John.
“But he said "palace"”, bursts out Stapleton. “He said it was a palace!”
“Yeah, well, he would, wouldn't he?”, says John almost a bit bored and maybe a bit annoyed that his friend has to boast with a palace in his head.

The way to information or memories is in fact important, too and doesn't have to be a mental walk or visual, seen in your mind. In “Dynamic Learning” by Robert Dilts and Tod Epstein, Epstein describes his work with an old lady. With her eyesight fading, she also had difficulties remembering certain things, which didn't cause problems before. Epstein noticed that the lad was visualising and thinking in pictures to retrieve memories. With fading eyesight, it became more difficult for her to see in hear mind. Epstein helped her getting back to memories through other senses. Which helped her memory getting better again, too. Before reading “Dynamic Learning” I only read in Thomas Harrison's books about the memory palace and after Derren Brown's “Tricks Of The Mind” I started creating a sort of system for myself. The suggestion that the way we retrieve information and that the senses we use for that are relevant as well, was new and an important aspect. It didn't change anything for me personally, not that I'm aware of anyway. Nevertheless it is something especially people working with other people, old people specifically, should keep in mind. Apparent memory loss doesn't necessarily have anything to do with not remembering.

Until next blog,
sarah

Tuesday 23 September 2014

Sweet dreams (Father, don't you see that I am burning?)

Dear reader,

let me tell you a bedtime story. One of Freud's clients came to him and told him of a father, who had the following dream (from “The Interpretation of Dreams“ by Sigmund Freud):

A father had been watching day and night beside the sick-bed of his child. After the child died, he retired to rest in an adjoining room, but left the door ajar so that he could look from his room into the next, where the child's body lay surrounded by tall candles. An old man, who had been installed as a watcher, sat beside the body, murmuring prayers. After sleeping for a few hours the father dreamed that the child was standing by his bed, clasping his arm and crying reproachfully: "Father, don't you see that I am burning?" The father woke up and noticed a bright light coming from the adjoining room. Rushing in, he found that the old man had fallen asleep, and the sheets and one arm of the beloved body were burnt by a fallen candle.”

How could a dream like that happen? One option may be that the father sensed the smoke or the light and integrated it into his dream. That's how we're supposedly dream anyway, we dream of things we experienced during the day and/or actual sensations we experience now creep into the dream. A logical explanation. But it doesn't explain why time and again there are people burning to death in their bed after having fallen asleep with a light cigarette or something. Also they say about hypnosis and trance that if we really have to be awake, because there's danger ahead, we'd be out of hypnosis or trance instantly and ready to act. Without having experienced that personally, I do believe that about hypnosis and trance to be true. But it doesn't explain the burn victims.

Next theory. We enjoy dreaming. Likewise many people enjoy being in a trance. That means that in order to wake up, we need either a strong outside stimulus or the dream has to be so uncomfortable, that being awake seems more pleasant and that's why we wake up. The father dreamed of his son, to be close to him. But the fire was a stimulus that needed to action. So he dreamed of his son waking him up. Sounds logical, doesn't it? Maybe. But much like the paragraph above, shouldn't we wake up with a fire all the time? Either waking up from the fire itself or from dreams forcing us to wake up?

Taking into account the possibility of a life after death or that the soul lives on after death or something like that, the son could also have contacted his father for real in or through that dream. Although personally I rule out that theory. Because I know that Harry Houdini wanted to contact his mother very much. After he was dead, he would have done everything possible, to contact his living wife. Even if he tried, there's no account of him actually succeeding in it to this day.

What then can we make of this dream? Your theories?

Until next blog,
sarah

Saturday 20 September 2014

Sometimes unconscious is better

Dear reader,

I'm very consciously writing about the “unconscious” and not the “subconscious”. The “subconscious” doesn't exist. It's just what many, sadly also experts for example my professors at university used for the word “unconscious”. Even Wikipedia, otherwise despised by teachers and professors points this out. A search for the "subconscious" does get you to a separate page in english, unlike the german website, which just redirects you to the “unconscious mind” with just a paragraph that the word “unconscious” is just everyday speech. Very correct. There are areas in our mind, doing and perception, which are conscious and others are not conscious. Unconscious. But not subconscious. I will not correct or rebuke anyone about it who is using the word “subconscious”. I find it sad that even experts don't use the correct word. I assume it's because everyone knows what it is anyway. So the “subconscious” and the “unconscious” are used synonymously. I for one will write about the “unconscious” now and in the future and not about the “subconscious”.

One aspect, which got into the consciousness more especially because of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is gestures, body posture, body position, facial expressions. It's time and again suggested, in order to get good contact with your dialogue partner (rapport), to adjust your own body posture and body position to the one of your partner. For example if the other person is crossing his or her legs, you do the same. Either crossing the same leg over the other, say both crossing the left one over the right or if the other one has the right one over the left, you have your left one over your right.

Outside features are not the only ones you can mirror. Speaking rate and breathing are also things you can match, among other things. Feel free to read up on that some more, if you're interested.

It's important and correct to notice body posture, body position, facial expressions, gestures, speaking rate and all of that. Especially it's important to notice certain signals and perceive them. Even more so when they are expressions of disagreement or otherwise negative. Everyone should be able to see those signs, to be able to prevent unpleasant processes of a discussion, especially when it's a negotiation meeting.

Far too often people forget to mention that mirroring should be used carefully and not be done strictly all the way through in a conscious way throughout a whole meeting, especially not a long one. If you use it too often and for too long to essentially mimic aspects of your partner, it's going to be a silly copy and instead of positive rapport, it'll give the other person a bad feeling at best and he or she will feel offended. Even if the people don't know or notice exactly what you do. I guarantee you that they will at least get a strange feeling.

Personally I'd recommend you to use body posture and that consciously at the beginning of a meeting and once it's going, to just let it flow and keep it going on a more unconscious level, only to be aware of signals, but not to abuse them, only to notice. It can be a lot of fun to have a great talk with another person and to keep it at an unconscious level like that, only to notice consciously how movements and positions are flowing in sync with the other person. It's not only fun to be in a discussion like that, but also to just watch two or more people doing it. All knowledge you could and should have about this to a certain degree, there certainly are reasons why so many things are rather unconscious for us. Some unconscious things are better consciously left unconscious.

In the beginning it can actually help to consciously cheat. I once had to give a talk in an english class. I was very nervous. But I knew enough about body language, to at least give the impression of confidence. At first I was very nervous and very conscious of my body posture. It often helps to fake a body posture to get to the actual feeling. Much like Charlie Brown describes it, as I posted already in my post about “Showing feelings”. My teacher actually gave me that feedback right away that I appeared very confident and sure-footed. She had no idea...


Until next blog,
sarah