Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

  Expect irrational talk and behavior to persist even after most people in any given nation who want to be vaccinated for COVID-19 get vaccinated. People created and propagated so many false stories about COVID-19 during the 2020 pandemic. Now that vaccines are becoming more available, the vaccines are part of false beliefs. What’s particularly striking is the harmful beliefs infecting the minds of Americans—a nation where leading scientists were a part of developing effective vaccines and exercising caution in approval. Vaccine Claims The scientists do not claim that their vaccines are 100% effective nor do they claim there will be no side-effects. The data reveal amazing statistics for protecting the vaccinated from serious COVID-19 symptoms and death. So I’m all in for getting my jab when it’s available. The results of clinical trials revealed different rates of effectiveness for those vaccinated. That means the vaccines were NOT effective for every person. Irrational ...

Much has been written about the power of forgiveness to help people reduce their current distress from hurts, which may have las ted for years. Studies have demonstrated that forgiveness has biological correlates related to stress. The hurts addressed by forgiveness have been called "social pain." Acetaminophen is a commonly used effective medication for physical pain. A new study by George Slavich and his colleagues looks at the interaction of forgiveness and acetaminophen on the reduction of social pain. Their article is an editor's choice selection in the current Annals of Behavioral Medicine ( December, 2019 ). Following is a quote from their article abstract. Results As hypothesized, acetaminophen reduced participants’ social pain levels over time but only for those exhibiting high levels of forgiveness (i.e., 18.5% reduction in social pain over 20 days). Conclusions These data are the first to show that forgiveness and acetaminophen have interactive eff...

Power of Psychotherapy I was a psychotherapist for many years. Like others of my era, we went to conferences, watched demonstrations, and read books in an effort to become better therapists. Many of us had years of supervision during school and after graduation. We believed that new research would uncover effective treatments or new components of treatments that would help our clients get well. Several other factors came into play: medications and managed care. As  medications  became more specific for the treatment of common conditions like depression and anxiety, I and others began to wonder about the value of psychotherapy- especially if medication was better or equal to psychotherapy and cost less. In this light, I began to take courses in psychopharmacology in the hope that psychologists could prescribe medication. I worked with others to pass legislation before I decided to retire from psychotherapy. The second factor was the emergence of  managed car...