Cakeology 101
*Lo and behold! Each student's desk has a napkin containing a slice of their favourite cake (or scone)! Those who had no preference got black forest. How did she get all these, anyway? She either has connections or a whole lot of cake in the faculty fridge now.*
I must apologize for my behaviour last week. It had nothing to do with you kids. Those of you who were unable to finish those essays... your mark will not be affected. Those of you who did will get a bonus 5%.
I suppose this is the perfect opportunity to discuss defense mechanisms: Different ways the human (or otherwise) mind copes with stressful situations, often by distorting the way one perceives the situation to better handle it.
Most common is repression. This is when the mind shoves the most damaging memory of an event far beyond the reaches of one's conscious, effectively letting you "forget" all about it. A more extreme method of this is outright denial. Something bad happened? Oh, wait, no it didn't! Everyone else who says so is absolutely bonkers. It never happened. This is different from just pretending that something didn't happen in that even the person in denial firmly believes that the damaging event did not actually take place.
Next we have projection and displacement. Projection is taking your own negative thoughts and claiming they are someone else's. Say... You were taught by your parents to love and accept everyone. Even so, you don't like a certain person, but feel guilty for going against your teachings. So, using projection to cope, you reverse it and claim that it's that person who doesn't like you.
Displacement often occurs when you are unable to deal with the source of a problem because perhaps said source is intimidating, so instead you take your anger out on someone who doesn't deserve it. I am guilty of doing this last week - Someone greatly hurt my feelings, and so instead of discussing it with them I went and snapped at my students and assigned extra homework. Again, I apologize.
On to rationalization: which is, put simply, trying to excuse your actions with "logical explainations." You saw someone drop their wallet, and instead of returning it to them, kept the money? Let's rationalize: Well, that person obviously doesn't care or they'd pay better attention - maybe even attach their wallet to their belt loops with a chain. Besides, you're broke, and you need to eat... This must be karma coming back to you for donating so much money to the poor in the past!
Please note that I do not encourage keeping the money in such a situation. This is merely an example.
Intellectualization is a way to detach oneself from a situation by giving up the emotions and feelings involved with a stressful event in favour of looking just at the cold, hard facts. Suppose someone you love is dying of a disease. Unable to deal with the sadness that comes with that, some people choose to study the disease, know all the symptoms, effects, origins, life expectancy of a victim... And so they feel better prepared to handle the inevitable death.
Lastly we have regression, which is dealing with things in an extremely childish and immature manner, since these methods worked for them in the distant past.
...All right. As long as you have notes down - for your sake, not mine! - feel free to read, talk amongst yourselves, work on other homework, or something relatively quiet until class is over. I'll be sitting over here if you have any questions.
I must apologize for my behaviour last week. It had nothing to do with you kids. Those of you who were unable to finish those essays... your mark will not be affected. Those of you who did will get a bonus 5%.
I suppose this is the perfect opportunity to discuss defense mechanisms: Different ways the human (or otherwise) mind copes with stressful situations, often by distorting the way one perceives the situation to better handle it.
Most common is repression. This is when the mind shoves the most damaging memory of an event far beyond the reaches of one's conscious, effectively letting you "forget" all about it. A more extreme method of this is outright denial. Something bad happened? Oh, wait, no it didn't! Everyone else who says so is absolutely bonkers. It never happened. This is different from just pretending that something didn't happen in that even the person in denial firmly believes that the damaging event did not actually take place.
Next we have projection and displacement. Projection is taking your own negative thoughts and claiming they are someone else's. Say... You were taught by your parents to love and accept everyone. Even so, you don't like a certain person, but feel guilty for going against your teachings. So, using projection to cope, you reverse it and claim that it's that person who doesn't like you.
Displacement often occurs when you are unable to deal with the source of a problem because perhaps said source is intimidating, so instead you take your anger out on someone who doesn't deserve it. I am guilty of doing this last week - Someone greatly hurt my feelings, and so instead of discussing it with them I went and snapped at my students and assigned extra homework. Again, I apologize.
On to rationalization: which is, put simply, trying to excuse your actions with "logical explainations." You saw someone drop their wallet, and instead of returning it to them, kept the money? Let's rationalize: Well, that person obviously doesn't care or they'd pay better attention - maybe even attach their wallet to their belt loops with a chain. Besides, you're broke, and you need to eat... This must be karma coming back to you for donating so much money to the poor in the past!
Please note that I do not encourage keeping the money in such a situation. This is merely an example.
Intellectualization is a way to detach oneself from a situation by giving up the emotions and feelings involved with a stressful event in favour of looking just at the cold, hard facts. Suppose someone you love is dying of a disease. Unable to deal with the sadness that comes with that, some people choose to study the disease, know all the symptoms, effects, origins, life expectancy of a victim... And so they feel better prepared to handle the inevitable death.
Lastly we have regression, which is dealing with things in an extremely childish and immature manner, since these methods worked for them in the distant past.
...All right. As long as you have notes down - for your sake, not mine! - feel free to read, talk amongst yourselves, work on other homework, or something relatively quiet until class is over. I'll be sitting over here if you have any questions.