“Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain,” goes the song. Is there such a thing as soap and water for the psyche? Yes: Metaphor is that powerful, say Spike W.S. Lee and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan in a literature review appearing in the latest issue ofCurrent Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.

Religious rites like baptism make psychological sense, the article suggests. Says Lee: “Cleansing is about the removal of residues.” By washing the hands, taking a shower, or even thinking of doing so, “people can rid themselves of a sense of immorality, lucky or unlucky feelings, or doubt about a decision. The bodily experience of removing physical residues can provide the basis of removing more abstract mental residues.”

One study the authors discuss found that people asked to judge the moral wrongdoing of others saw them as worse when exposed to an unkempt room or bad odor than when sitting in a clean room. In another study, participants asked to think of a moral wrongdoing of their own felt less guilty after using an antiseptic hand wipe; they were also less likely to volunteer for a good deed to assuage that guilt. Even imagining yourself either “clean and fresh” or “dirty and stinky” affects your judgments of others’ acts, such as masturbation or abortion. The “clean” participants in one study not only judged others more harshly, they judged themselves as more moral than others. [continue reading…]

In The Wall Street Journal today Elizabeth Bernstein writes about how working couples de-stress at the end of a busy working day Putting the ‘Honey’ back in “Honey I’m Home”

In her article Elizabeth waxes lyrical about that after-work period when we are tired, hungry, desperate to unwind yet still thinking about work. With dinner to make, kids to feed and quite often a mate requiring attention.
Here’s a link to read the article… while you’re there take a peek at some of the comments!!! Oh deary dear.. come back and tell us what you think Oh and while you’re at it (make mine a martini shaken not stirred)  😉

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Cognitive therapy has dynamically improved the most neurologically impaired, poorly functioning schizophrenic patients. For the first time, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that a psychosocial treatment can significantly improve daily functioning and quality of life in the lowest-functioning cases of schizophrenia. The study appears in the October 3 edition of Archives of General Psychiatry.

“Mental health professionals often give up on the lowest-functioning cases of schizophrenia and may say that they are not capable of improving,” said Paul Grant, PhD, lead author of the study and assistant professor in Psychiatry at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. “Our results suggest that cognitive therapy can improve quality of life, reduce symptoms, and promote recovery in these patients. This intervention can help these patients improve to the point where they may be able to move up to the next level in psychosocial functioning – i.e. going from being unemployed to volunteering part-time; not being in school to enrolling in night classes; not socializing to having a weekly social contact and making a friend or two.” [continue reading…]