Let's look at the enigmatic “Big Five Personality Traits" again. They aren't new. The idea began in United States Air Force in the 1950s, then psychologist J.M. Digman proposed the "five factor model" of personality in 1990. Human resource departments in large corporations have been using it for a long time to assess potential employees. … Continue reading Rescuing psychology | The Big Five Personality Traits | Shouldn’t it be the Big Ten?
Rescuing psychology | Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘I am a Rock’ | Incels and detachment
In The Shyness Guide, I make the case that detachment is a tool one can use to enter and explore the social world.
Rescuing psychology | socialization is good for us | but is it good for you?
What's good for some people sometimes isn't always good for everyone all the time.
Autism | People who don’t need People
Do you know the Barbara Streisand song......'People Who Need People'? - which said that such people are are the 'luckiest people in the world'?
Rescuing Reality | Why reading and writing are older than talking
Whenever I see animal tracks ...... I'm always reminded of this obvious truth: that reading and writing are older than speech.
Autism | Theory of Mind | Do you think like a Baboon?
Sometimes psychologists try to explain autism using 'theory of mind'. Books on psychology devote whole chapters to theory of mind, but to keep a lid on this idea, I'll just quote Dictionary.com: the ability to interpret one’s own and other people’s mental and emotional states, understanding that each person has unique motives, perspectives, etc. Those … Continue reading Autism | Theory of Mind | Do you think like a Baboon?
Autism | Lack of creativity?
One morning this week, editing my 2012 journal, I came upon a surprise that surprised me again – in physicist Lisa Randall's book Knocking on Heaven's Door (her book about expectations for the Large Hadron Collider), near the end of the book, she makes a comment to the effect that some scientists, like autistic people, … Continue reading Autism | Lack of creativity?
Rescuing the truth | Where did insensitive people come from?
Insensitivity may ultimately destroy this planet, so it has to be confronted.
Autism | Do we know what it is? | A review of The Autism Matrix: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic
Sociologist Gil Eyal's 2010 book The Autism Matrix: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic was a bombshell in the debate over autism. Yet over a decade later almost no one appears to have heard the explosion. The concept of autism was first presented in the 1940s, more or less simultaneously, by New York psychiatrist … Continue reading Autism | Do we know what it is? | A review of The Autism Matrix: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic
Alan Conrad 