The Psychology of Physical Symptoms

The Psychology of Physical Symptoms
Author: J.W. Pennebaker
Publisher: James Pennebaker
Total Pages: 205
Release: 1982-10-13
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0387907300

Physical symptoms are fascinating phenomena to examine. We all experience them, use them as signals to guide our behavior, and usually assume that they accurately represent underlying physiological activity. At the same time, we implicitly know that bodily sensations are often vague, ambiguous, and subject to a variety of interpretations. It is not surprising, then, that there is often a disparity between what we think is going on in our bodies and what is objectively occurring. In short, phenomena such as physical symptoms are the stuff of psychology. My own research into physical symptoms started by accident several years ago. In a hastily devised experiment dealing with the effects of noise on behavior, I had to write a post-experimental questionnaire that would be long enough to allow the experimenter time to calibrate some equipment for a later portion of the study. I included some physical symptoms on the questionnaire as fillers. The experiment was a total failure, with the exception of the symptom reports. People's perceptions of symptoms were easily influenced by our manipulations, even though their actual physiological state had not changed. And so began the present inquiry. Despite the pervasiveness, importance, and sheer amount of time and money devoted to discussing and curing common physical symptoms and sensations, very little empirical work has been devoted to examining the psychological and perceptual factors related to sensory experience. Occa sional papers have tested a specific theory, such as cognitive dissonance, wherein physical symptoms served as an interesting dependent measure.

XXXXX

XXXXX
Author: Xxxxx
Publisher: xxxxx
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2006
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0955066441

xxxxx proposes a radical, new space for artistic exploration, with essential contributions from a diverse range of artists, theorists, and scientists. Combining intense background material, code listings, screenshots, new translation, [the] xxxxx [reader] functions as both guide and manifesto for a thought movement which is radically opposed to entropic contemporary economies. xxxxx traces a clear line across eccentric and wide ranging texts under the rubric of life coding which can well be contrasted with the death drive of cynical economy with roots in rationalism and enlightenment thought. Such philosophy, world as machine, informs its own deadly flipside embedded within language and technology. xxxxx totally unpicks this hiroshimic engraving, offering an dandyish alternative by way of deep examination of software and substance. Life coding is primarily active, subsuming deprecated psychogeography in favour of acute wonderland technology, wary of any assumed transparency. Texts such as Endonomadology, a text from celebrated biochemist and chaos theory pioneer Otto E. Roessler, who features heavily throughout this intense volume, make plain the sadistic nature and active legacy of rationalist thought. At the same time, through the science of endophysics, a physics from the inside elaborated here, a delicate theory of the world as interface is proposed. xxxxx is very much concerned with the joyful elaboration of a new real; software-led propositions which are active and constructive in eviscerating contemporary economic culture. xxxxx embeds Perl Routines to Manipulate London, by way of software artist and Mongrel Graham Harwood, a Universal Dovetailer in the Lisp language from AI researcher Bruno Marchal rewriting the universe as code, and self explanatory Pornographic Coding from plagiarist and author Stewart Home and code art guru Florian Cramer. Software is treated as magical, electromystical, contrasting with the tedious GUI desktop applications and user-led drudgery expressed within a vast ghost-authored literature which merely serves to rehearse again and again the demands of industry and economy. Key texts, which well explain the magic and sheer art of programming for the absolute beginner are published here. Software subjugation is made plain within the very title of media theorist Friedrich Kittler's essay Protected Mode, published in this volume. Media, technology and destruction are further elaborated across this work in texts such as War.pl, Media and Drugs in Pynchon's Second World War, again from Kittler, and Simon Ford's elegant take on J.G Ballard's crashed cars exhibition of 1970, A Psychopathic Hymn. Software and its expansion stand in obvious relation to language. Attacking transparency means examining the prison cell or virus of language; life coding as William Burrough's cutup. And perhaps the most substantial and thorough-going examination is put forward by daring Vienna actionist Oswald Wiener in his Notes on the Concept of the Bio-adapter which has been thankfully unearthed here. Equally, Olga Goriunova's extensive examination of a new Russian literary trend, the online male literature of udaff.com provides both a reexamination of culture and language, and an example of the diversity of xxxxx; a diversity well reflected in background texts ranging across subjects such as Leibniz' monadology, the ur-crash of supreme flaneur Thomas de Quincey and several rewritings of the forensic model of Jack the Ripper thanks to Stewart Home and Martin Howse. xxxxx liberates software from the machinic, and questions the transparency of language, proposing a new world view, a sheer electromysticism which is well explained with reference to the works of Thomas Pynchon in Friedrich Kittler's essay, translated for the first time into English, which closes xxxxx. Further contributors include Hal Abelson, Leif Elggren, Jonathan Kemp, Aymeric Mansoux, and socialfiction.org.

The Lottery

The Lottery
Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher: The Creative Company
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2008
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781583415849

A seemingly ordinary village participates in a yearly lottery to determine a sacrificial victim.

Orthogonal Transforms for Digital Signal Processing

Orthogonal Transforms for Digital Signal Processing
Author: N. Ahmed
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 364245450X

This book is intended for those wishing to acquire a working knowledge of orthogonal transforms in the area of digital signal processing. The authors hope that their introduction will enhance the opportunities for interdiscipli nary work in this field. The book consists of ten chapters. The first seven chapters are devoted to the study of the background, motivation and development of orthogonal transforms, the prerequisites for which are a basic knowledge of Fourier series transform (e.g., via a course in differential equations) and matrix al gebra. The last three chapters are relatively specialized in that they are di rected toward certain applications of orthogonal transforms in digital signal processing. As such, a knowlegde of discrete probability theory is an essential additional prerequisite. A basic knowledge of communication theory would be helpful, although not essential. Much of the material presented here has evolved from graduate level courses offered by the Departments of Electrical Engineering at Kansas State University and the University of Texas at Arlington, during the past five years. With advanced graduate students, all the material was covered in one semester. In the case of first year graduate students, the material in the first seven chapters was covered in one semester. This was followed by a prob lems project-oriented course directed toward specific applications, using the material in the last three chapters as a basis.

The Reality Therapy Reader

The Reality Therapy Reader
Author: Alexander Bassin
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Total Pages: 712
Release: 1976
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Selected articles "written by Dr. Glasser himself ... by the three editors, and by many other therapists."