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A post from Double X writer KJ Dell'Antonia:
The British Psychological Society just posed a question to leading
psychologists: Even with all your expertise, what's the one nagging
thing you still don't understand about yourself? The best answers
out the experts for falling into the very human traps they write about
so often. If you're an avid reader of the psycho-literary self-help
book, what's the one thing you do even though you know why you do it
(and why you shouldn't) ... (Read more in DoubleX.)
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Answer: Very. Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution links to this map of the relative neurosis of different states in America. New York, no surprise, is high on the scale. Though if Woody Allen ever moves to Vermont, we may become a lighter shade of gray. Click on the links below the map to get to some other fascinating research about the psychology of geography.
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There was a fascinating story in the NYT science section yesterday that I didn't fully understand. It presents a new genetic theory of major mental illness as being caused by a battle between the father's sperm and the mother's egg. The idea is that in the fetus' brain something goes wrong with children who develop either autism disorders on one end of the spectrum or mood disorders and psychosis on the other (everything from bipolar illness to schizophrenia). The researchers say these seemingly unrelated disorders are just different expressions of the same genetic glitch. If the father's contribution wins, the child will have autism: "a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development." If the mother wins, the child's brain will be wired toward "the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others'." This theory leaves me confused about people who inherit, say, bipolar disorder from their father. But more than that, it feels strangely reductive: Fathers convey an obsession with objects and systems; mothers make you hysterical.
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