Sake White

I was doing an essay paper on psychology. I came across an interesting bit, that you may be interested in. It is Beck’s Cognitive Theory of Depression.

What does that mean? Here’s a portion from my paper. *Ah, the wonders of copy and paste*

Cognitive therapy is chiefly concerned with helping a patient solve problems through changing their thinking, beliefs, behavior, or reaction to emotions. Thus it is focused on problem solving in the now, in the present. Cognitive therapy is from the Cognitive school of psychology, where it is believed that our thoughts influence how we feel emotionally.

It begins with a mood check or specifically it involves the patient filling out forms assessing their moods in the categories of Depression, Anxiety, and Hopelessness. This is combined with asking questions about how a patient has felt during the last week or so. As the therapy progresses, the patient and the therapist works together to explore the feelings of the patient and what the patient is thinking. Oftentimes the problem is resolved without requiring medication, although some patients have the best results from a combination of medication and Cognitive therapy.

Beck’s theory about depression was centered around the main argument that depression is caused by a person’s view of themselves rather than depression causing a negative view of one self. A chief study done was on college students who didn’t get into the college of their choice. Beck proposed that the students had a lowered sense of themselves after being rejected, which would cause symptoms of depression to result. Beck’s theory about depression centered around three fields. They are polar reasoning, selective abstraction, and overgeneralization. Polar reasoning is what a person may call perfectionism. It is the belief that it must be all or nothing, that you must do everything well or perfect, that if anything went wrong that this meant that you failed. Abstraction is when successes are ignored, and thus a person doesn’t feel like he is winning because he doesn’t recognize the things he has done well. Overgeneralization is when a person sees something he has done badly, and then starts believing that this means that he has done everything badly. Guilt can be a chief motivator of overgeneralization. Beck believed that the kinds of thoughts listed causes depression in a person.

This actually reminded me of the Left or just Global Warming for convenience. The Left focuses a lot on this all or nothing approach to political goals. Either they get everything they want… or they filibuster and do character assassinations. Or just start throwing a temper tantrum.

I am not thinking of depression specifically related to the Democrats, of course. It is just that they seem to have a distorted self-image of themselves, this focus on perfection or utopia if you will, may not cause depression amongst folks but certainly it is destructive and self-destructive. (As an aside, even if Global Utopia and Warming doesn’t depress folks, it does me, and so does the Left’s treatment of Iraq as a failed experiment in perfection)

Another facet of this quirky Leftist personality trait and image of themselves is the concept of purity. The Left values purity almost as much as the Islamic Jihad does. The Left values ideological purity. Look at what happened to this poor and ignorant sap, Klein, when he stepped outside the lines demarkated for him by his masters. Purity was also an issue I found to be distasteful during the whole GitMo propaganda operation conducted by the Left. Most of the criticisms came from this belief that America was… better they claimed than the terrorists and therefore Ameri shouldn’t torture. However, if you won’t do what is necessary when it becomes necessary, how does that make you a better person? Is a better person someone who refuses to kill innocents, just cause terrorists kill innocents so therefore the “better person” shouldn’t kill innocents at all? Even on accident while trying to exterminate terrorist cockroaches? Ah, there we have the rub don’t we. There are two kinds of “better” in this case, as a heirarchy of values. There is better in the sense that more terrorists are killed, saving more innocent life in the absolute sense, even if innocent lives are lost in the short term. There is also “better” in the sense that you are morally better; meaning you are morally purer.

And that’s the argument claiming that America is better than terrorists. This idea of purity is dysfunctional for one reason, amongst many. That reason is that purity is not very important; either in nature or in philosopy. Hybrids are the better system design. Pure iron is just weak. Pure metals are weak and brittle; therefore that is why you want alloys. Alloys are strong, composites are strong, America is strong because it has done everything from killing boatloads and islandfulls of people, to saving continents from oppression and systemic death.

I do not believe that America can be made better by purifying America of all the nasty things that must be done in war, because if you do that you will weaken America. Count on it. Stronger is better in my view, because without strength how can you call yourself a good person? Without the strength to resist evil, how can you call yourself better than evil? If evil is fundamentally stronger than good, what makes good better than evil? Will the Left’s purity help them resist evil such as the Islamic JIhad? I think not.