"In this lecture, I explore the dreadful socio-political consequences of the individual inauthentic life: the degeneration of society into nihilism or totalitarianism, often of the most murderous sort, employing as an example the work/death camps of the Soviet Union. 

Buy The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It is arguably the most important book of the twentieth century."

Jordan B Peterson

In this lecture, I bring the 2017 Introduction to Personality and its Transformations to its close, talking about the psychology of belief, describing the reality and potential of the individual. Human beings are information foragers, evolved to live on the border between explored and unexplored territory, order and chaos and, symbolically, ying and yang. That's where information flow is maximized, and the meaning that helps buttress us against tragedy is to be found.

Personality and Its Transformations

Conclusion: Psychology and Belief

"In this lecture, I talk about the thorny problem of predicting performance: academic, industrial, creative and entrepreneurial); about the practical utility of such prediction, in the business and other environments; about the economic value of accurate prediction (in hiring, placement and promotion) -- which is incredibly high. 

Intelligence (psychometrically measured IQ) is the best predictor of performance in complex, ever changing environments. Conscientiousness is the (next) best predictor, particularly in the military, in school and in conservative businesses. Agreeable people make better caretakers; disagreeable people, better disciplinarians and negotiators (within reasonable bounds). Open people are artistic, creative and entrepreneurial. Extraverts are good socially. Introverts work well in isolation. People low in neuroticism have higher levels of tolerance for stress (but may be less sensitive to real signs of danger). 

Match the career you pursue to your temperament, rather than trying to adjust the latter. Although some adjustment is possible, there are powerful biological determinants of the five personality dimensions and IQ (particularly in environments where differences are allowed to flourish)."

Biology and Traits: Performance Prediction

In this lecture, I provide details about trait conscientiousness, the best predictor of life success after intelligence (particularly among managers, administrators and students). Sounds good? But conscientiousness is partly composed of aspect orderliness, along with industriousness, and orderliness is associated both with disgust and with authoritarianism (particularly among those low in openness to experience). Hitler and the Jews? The Holocaust? Orderliness and disgust sensitivity gone mad.

Biology and Traits: Orderliness, Disgust, and Conscientiousness

In this lecture, I complete my discussion of Big Five trait openness to experience, which is the dimension composed of an amalgam of creativity and intelligence. I also discuss IQ: how it is measured, what it means, how powerfully it predicts long-term life success, as well as the highly skewed Pareto distribution of creative production.

Biology and Traits: Openness, Intelligence, and Creativity, Part 2

In this lecture, I talk about Big Five trait openness to experience, which is the dimension composed of an amalgam of creativity and intelligence. I also discuss IQ: how it is measured, what it means, how powerfully it predicts long-term life success, as well as the highly skewed Pareto distribution of creative production.

Biology and Traits: Openness, Intelligence, and Creativity, Part 1

"In this lecture, I talk about the Big Five trait agreeableness, which is the dimension of the care system, in Jaak Panksepp's terminology. It can be construed as cooperation vs competition, or compliance vs non-compliance, or tender-mindedness vs tough-mindedness. It is also an important determinant of political belief, being the trait most associated with the body of ideas that has come to be known as politically correct.

Agreeable people tend to view the political world as innocent infant vs reptilian predator. Perhaps this is good for you (although probably not) if you are placed in the innocent infant category, but it is not so good if you are deemed reptilian predator :)"

Biology and Traits: Agreeableness

"In this lecture, I continue my discussion of the relationship between subcortical brain processes and the big five personality traits identified by psychometric researchers, focusing on the relationship between positive/negative emotion and extraversion/neuroticism.

This is a repost from a 2014 lecture, but the slides are edited in. I was not available for this class, and the scheduled replacement speaker had to cancel."

Biology and Traits: Incentive Reward and Neuroticism

"In this lecture, I begin my discussion of the relationship between brain function, at a deep, subcortical level, and the existence of the five traits identified by psychometric researchers.

This is a repost from a 2014 lecture, but the slides are edited in. I was not available for this class, and the scheduled replacement speaker had to cancel."

Biology and Traits: The Limbic System

In this lecture, I begin discussing the development of modern trait theory. Psychologists, expert in measurement and statistics, discovered extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience, and began the process of delineating their social significance and biological underpinnings.

Introduction to Traits/Psychometrics/The Big 5

Existentialism via Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag

In this lecture, 12th in the 2017 series, I discuss the Heidegger's phenomenological philosophy of Being, interpreted through the eyes of the psychotherapists Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss. The phenomenologists were attempting to to reduce the painful separation between object and subject that has as one of its consequence the elimination of meaning from existence.

Phenomenology: Heidegger, Binswanger, and Boss

Existentialism: Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard

In this lecture, 10th in the 2017 series, I begin to talk about Dr. Carl Rogers, a humanist psychotherapist in the phenomenological tradition, and an expert on listening and embodied wisdom. Dr. Rogers offers very profound and practical lessons on the value of truthful relationships.

Humanism and Phenomenology: Carl Rogers

In this lecture, 9th in the 2017 series, I discuss some of the essential of Sigmund Freud's theories, concentrating on his conceptualizations of the dynamic (living) unconscious.

Freud and the Dynamic Unconscious

In this lecture, I finish my analysis of Disney's Lion King, which provides a dramatic representation of many of the archetypes identified and analyzed by Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, student of Nietzsche and Freud, and originator of analytical psychology.

Carl Jung and the Lion King, Part 2

In this lecture, I use Disney's Lion King to further illustrate the basic principles of the personality and clinical theories of Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, student of Nietzsche and Freud, originator of analytical psychology, and great interpreter of mythology and archetype.

Carl Jung and the Lion King, Part 1

In this lecture, I talk about the great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who was interested, above all, in the way that knowledge is generated and transforms. His analysis of the development of morality in children, which relates early play to social cooperation and competition,  is particularly profound.

Jean Piaget and Constructivism

In this lecture, 04 and 05 combined, I discuss the relationship between the initiatory structure characteristic of shamanism and the process of radical personality transformation, self- or therapy-induced. The basic structure is order/paradise, chaos/the fall, re-establishment of order/paradise. Since all paradises fall, however, the true paradise is identification with the process of transformation itself.

Heroic and Shamanic Initiations

In this lecture, 02 and 03 combined, I provide some historical context for the understanding of personality, suggesting that the clinical theories, concerned with the transformation and improvement of personality and character, are embedded within a classic narrative/mythological structure.

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