Posts Tagged Under: María Moya Guirao

Stanley Milgram Experiment

Stanley Milgram Experiment

Stanley Milgram Experiment

Did you know…..

recently it has been seen that the conclusions of the famous experiment of Stanley Milgram, researcher of the prestigious Yale University, are not valid due to the multiple irregularities that occurred in its realization?

The Milgran experiment has been taught for decades in Psychology Faculties throughout the world, and is present in most of the books of Experimental Psychology and Social Psychology.

The methodological errors of the experiment have been detected by Australian researchers from the University of Melbourne, Nick Haslam, Steve Loughnan and Gina Perry, when reviewing the files of the experiment that are kept at Yale. This review has been published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.

These researchers say that the study of Milgram has been considered as the most emblematic experiment in the history of Psychology, and that in the fifty years since it took place there has been much debate about whether Milgram demonstrated the ability of ordinary people to do the evil and the roots of the Jewish Holocaust, but nobody until now had reviewed it.

The experiment that Stanley Milgram conducted in 1961 consisted of alleged students responding to a memory test, and when they failed a teacher should give him an electric shock, a discharge that increased in intensity as they gave more errors, even reaching a discharge that could be mortal Actually the device did not produce any discharge, but the student pretended to receive it. Well, according to the Milgram, some teachers gave painful discharges to students who failed in their answers, even knowing the great pain they produced.

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Biography of Abraham Maslow

Maslow Pyramid

Maslow Pyramid

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was an American psychologist famous for advocating what was called “The Third Force in Psychology“.  This third force proposed a Psychology based on a humanistic approach, the so-called Humanistic Psychology. It was called third force since it came to occupy the third place, after the other prevailing psychologies, which were those of dynamic orientation (Psychoanalysis), and the Behaviorist.

Maslow received his doctorate in Philosophy in 1934. He also studied Watson’s Behaviorism and researched in the area of animal behavior. Later on he was appointed Professor of Psychology at Brandeis University (USA: US), and held the position of President of the American Psychological Association for several years

Furthermore this american psychologist affirmed that Psychology had taken too much care to the study of Psychopathology, that is to say to the sick “psyche“, and had forgotten the healthy or Eusychic mind. From the above he concluded that Psychology, having emphasized the pathological or “sick”, had obtained a partial image of the human being and a pessimistic vision of its potentialities.

In his studies on healthy people Maslow highlighted the value of spontaneity, self-acceptance, impulsive awareness, naturalness and liberation as agents that oppose destructive tendencies. He also highlighted the scope of the inherent potentialities of humanity.

Abraham Maslow affirmed that the human being has certain basic needs. These needs are:

1.- The necessities necessary for the maintenance of life, which would be, on the one hand, hunger and thirst, and on the other the gratification of the impulses of affection and self-esteem. He called these needs D or Deficiency needs.

2.- Needs B or “Meta-needs”. They are what drive a person to self-realization, such as impulses to freedom, beauty, goodness, unity and justice.

Abraham Maslow said: “The restriction of the basic needs can lead the person to neurotic needs that, being really impossible to satisfy, give how to waste human potentiality and exhaust human energy. And this is the fundamental tragedy of mental illness development outcome“.

All the above was captured in a graphic way in his famous pyramid, the “Maslow Pyramid” as it is known

Maslow with his “Psychology of the Third Force” advocated a “Self-Realizing Creativity” that would lead to health and growth. And he added that real people who accept themselves and others are self-realizing. These people would be spontaneous, creative and independent subjects.

In his last studies he talks about “Maximum Experiences” to refer to mystical or self-transcendental experiences.

Most of Maslow theories were exposed in his book “Towards a Psychology of Being“.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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William Tuke and the York Retreat

William Tuke

William Tuke

Did you know…..

William Tuke (1732-1822) was the founder of a psychiatric hospital called the “York Retreat“?

William’s great-grandson, psychiatrist Daniel Hack Tuke, described El Retiro as a refuge or oasis of tranquility in which the mentally ill were treated in a more humane way and could recover. The treatment carried out in that insane asylum was later called “the moral treatment of madness“.

William Tuke was a great philanthropist who dedicated part of his fortune and his time, until he was eighty-eight years old, to the management of the York Retreat. Tuke belonged to “The Society of Friends“, popularly known as the Quakers.

Tuke later influenced John Conolly, a pioneer in the treatment of non-restriction of the mentally ill. William Tuke was contemporary Philippe Pinel, French doctor who unchained the mad or alienated Bicêtre asylum in 1793.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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John Conolly and the Non Restraint method

John Conolly

John Conolly

Did you know…..

the English physician John Conolly (1794-1866) pioneered the complete suppression of containment methods for the 800 patients of the Middlesex Asylum in Hanwell?

This doctor was in favor of the so-called “Non-restraint” method, which consisted in the non-use of methods of mechanical restraint (for example, ties) with the mentally agitated patients.

Conolly, belonging to a Scottish family, studied medicine in Edinburgh and practiced as a doctor in several English cities. Later he worked as a professor at the University of London.

John Conolly and two other medical colleagues, Forbes and Hastings, were the founders of a medical association that would later lead to the British Medical Association. Conally and Forbes created a publication entitled “Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine” for  medical topics.
Among Conolly’s publications, the following should be mentioned:

1.- In 1830 Conolly edited his book “An Inquiry Concerning the Indications of Insanity with Suggestions for the Better Protection and Care of the Insane” was published.

2.- In 1847 he published “Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums“.

3.- In 1856 he published “The Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraints“.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Psychiatric Hospital and Therapeutic Community

classical mental hospital

asylum

Did you know…..

that in 1953 an Expert Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the psychiatric hospital should be a therapeutic community?

According to said committee that therapeutic community should be governed by certain principles. Among such principles would be the conservation and safeguarding of the individuality of the patient, the conviction that the mentally ill are trustworthy and capable of taking their own initiatives and of assuming their responsibilities.

The previous was a step to end the classic psychiatric asylums in which there was a long history of oppression, abuse and violence, physical and mental. During those years a series of initiatives were taken in many Western countries to put an end to these practices, and to convert the old asylums into modern, short-stay hospital units and humane treatment. In addition, new and more effective treatments were instituted.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Dead and drugs

No drugs

No drugs

Did you know…..

Many people die each year because of their addiction to drugs, tobacco and alcohol?

Cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, etc., take many lives each year.

In recent years the use of cocaine has increased a lot in our country. Cocaine can lead to death, as it frequently produces strokes and myocardial infarction. To this must be added deaths due to overdoses and adulterations.

Unfortunately many people who use drugs do not quite believe the dangers of drugs.
In Spain there have been numerous anti-drug programs, but unfortunately the drug is easy to acquire in our country and in many others.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Surrealist Revolution

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali

Did you know…..

That in 1925 a group of French artists and writers signed a “manifesto” in the name of what they called the “surrealist revolution“?

This manifesto of the group of surrealist artists and writers addressed to the directors of psychiatric hospitals in France. Among other things they wrote the following:

“Tomorrow, at the time of the visit, when you try, without the help of your lexicon, to communicate with these men, you can remember and recognize that you only have a superiority over them: strength.”

The voice was raised by the inhuman conditions in which the mentally ill lived in the insane asylums of that time.

Philippe Pinel, the eminent French doctor, removed the chains to the madmen of the Bicêtre asylum in the eighteenth century. In this and other asylums it was usual to keep the mentally ill tied with chains.

(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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Anxiety and Obesity

obesity

obesity

Did you know…..

Some people try to calm their anxiety by overeating and compulsively?

The increase in the intake of foods has led to a large increase in the weight of the inhabitants of many developed countries. What has been called obesity epidemic causes a serious risk to health. It is shown that obese people have an average life ten years less than people who have a normal weight.

We can affirm that people who eat healthy and avoid sedentary lifestyle have a weight appropriate. In some countries more than half of the population weighs more than their share.

The increase in the average weight of the inhabitants of some countries has tripled with respect to the average weight of 30 years ago. Even in countries where in the past there was no overweight or obesity, such as Japan and Korea, the average has also increased.

From this page we encourage you to lead a more active lifestyle and take a healthier diet, both adults, young people.
We also want to warn of the danger of certain diet to lose weight that can put in serious risk the health.

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(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)

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