ScienceDaily (2009-07-28) — It is widely known that the brain perceives information before it reaches a person’s awareness. But until now, there was little way to determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness. That has now changed.
Read full article here.
ScienceDaily (2009-07-08) — Darwin’s theory of evolution predicts that men will take more care of children that look like them. Scientists have now verified this prediction.
Read full article here.
Photo source: www.mjjpictures.com
In the past weeks I have tried to keep myself away from temptations like the one that webbed me right now, which is to post a blog entry about the death of Michael Jackson. Today however, when the “saying-goodbye moment” arrived, I knew I had to dedicate a few lines to the memory of the man whose influence I have felt in my life since childhood.
I will keep the post short and hopefully not melodramatic, for the extended version is probably addressed to myself only.
Michael Jackson’s artistic life and the bits of his “allowed to be seen” private life have shown me what it takes to be a number one in both fields of “happiness and success” and “personal drama”. I will use the moonwalker metaphor, for in his life, Michael has walked on both sides of the “Moon”, the light one and as well the dark or unseen one. On one side there is the complete artist, the singer, dancer, songwriter, director, actor and all of these roles have been taken to the very top of excellence. On the other side, there is the dramatic life of a person that struggles with many unfavorable psychological aspects. In my opinion, Michael’s early life has been a cluster of factors that later have lead to major psychological problems, such as depression, feelings of lonliness and injustice, the incapacity to create and maintain healthy relationships with persons of the opposite sex, hypochondria, probably anorexia, along with the so spotlighted dysmorphophobia. I am sure the list can continue and probably the reader feels that I am stressing the negative aspects, when it would have been more appopriate to build a word-statue for the King of Pop. However, I am taking the risk, for I consider the personal drama a key towards understanding Michael Jackson’s musical career and a main factor in creating the legend. It is his “unusual” way of being that created the original artist.
In psychotherapy, we talk about the personal style of the therapist, which refers to his own original manner of understanding and practicing therapy. Considering the personal style, classic Freudian psychoanalysis mirrors the personal style of Sigmund Freud more than his theories. His own needs and way of life interfered with the psychotherapeutic process, resulting in a custom-made therapeutic style.
In the same way, I believe Michael Jackson’s personal style has been mirrored in his way of practicing the arts of music and dance, for this was the only way he could adapt to the world, by cutting his own stencil. And the world loved that stencil! I loved that stencil… and now I have to insert some trivia about myself. Before choosing the path of psychotherapy, I used to be a singer (from the age of 7) and the influence of Jackson upon that choice has been the only one I can remember. Prior to that though, my first public appearance ever has been during kindergarten, Michael Jackson’s “Black or white” . Well, “it takes a village to raise a child”… if I am aloud to put it this way, Michael has been one of the people in the village that raised me.
“Artists seem to get in the way of the music. Get out of the way of the music! Don’t write the music, let the music write itself.”
Michael Jackson
In loving memory of the wonderful Michael Jackson,
Lucia Grosaru
Article by Lucia Grosaru
