Child, Adolescent, Adult: Life Stages or Different Species? (South East European University, SEEU)

Summary

The lecture discusses the transition from childhood to adolescence, highlighting the historical misconceptions about adolescents being merely larger children and the negative perceptions associated with this view. It introduces key concepts such as the imaginary audience, referential ideation, and the differences in cognitive and emotional development between children and adolescents, emphasizing the lack of scientific validation for many traditional psychological theories. The lecturer also explores the neurobiological changes that occur during adolescence, including the development of the brain and the emergence of executive functions, which contribute to the unique challenges faced by adolescents. Finally, the lecture outlines the importance of understanding these developmental stages to better grasp the complexities of human growth and the factors that can disrupt this process.

Takeaway (1/8)

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The transition from childhood to adolescence has historically been viewed negatively, with adolescents seen as larger, emotionally dysregulated children, a perspective known as the storm and stress model. The concept of adolescence itself is relatively new, emerging in the early 20th century, and there is still limited understanding of this developmental stage. Two key models are introduced, highlighting the differences between children and adolescents: children seek attention and feel unnoticed, while adolescents believe they are constantly being observed and judged by an imaginary audience, a phenomenon exacerbated by social media. This leads to increased rates of anxiety and depression among adolescents today compared to previous decades. Additionally, adolescents oscillate between self-blame and blaming others, and they transition from being passive recipients of care in childhood to active agents capable of influencing their environment.

Okay, my name is Sam to remind you, S.

And today we are going to discuss the transition from childhood to adolescence.

Now, very, very long time until more or less the 1960s. We believed in psychology that adolescents are simply bigger children. They are bigger body-wise. They are bigger in other ways.

And they are not only bigger children, but they are crazy children. This was called the storm and stress model.

That adolescents are crazy. They're doing crazy things. They cannot control their impulses. They have temper tantrums. They don't control their emotions. They're emotionally disregulated.

So it was a very negative view of adolescents.

Take into account that the word adolescent was invented in 1906 by Stanley Hall.

So before 1906, there was no concept of teenager. There was no concept of adolescent. You were born and you immediately became full-fledged human being. And when you were six years old, you were a little man or a little woman.

There was no concept of child. There was no concept of adolescent. These are very, very, very new concepts.

And as you remember, those of you who do from the previous lectures, this raises the issue. Are these concepts valid? They're very new.

For example, we know almost nothing about adolescents. Almost nothing, because it's such a new field.

Only recently, only in the last five years or six years, we began to study the brain of the adolescent, adolescent brain. Probably because we assume that adolescents don't have brains until five or six years ago.

But now we discovered that most of them do. So we studied the adolescent brain. That's six years ago.

So as you see, it's a very, very new field. And we, as psychologists, as professionals, we are not quite sure of what we are saying.

One year we think that way, the next year we think in a different way and our interactions with adolescents are not grounded yet.

In other words, we talk a lot to adult people. We talk a lot to crazy people, of course, and we talk a lot to children, so child psychology is very developed.

But professionals, practitioners, clinicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, they're a bit afraid of adolescents, because they perceive adolescents as aggressive, unpredictable, they avoid adolescents. So they avoid adolescence.

So there's not much that we know.

However, I'm going to introduce you to two models.

This will be the beginning of the lecture and then we'll go deeper into something known as social cognitive theory.

Now, don't be alarmed. We're going to discuss Erickson and we're going to discuss Piaget in our future lectures.

The reason I'm not starting with Erickson and Piaget is that Piaget's work has been largely disproven. We now know that Piaget made many wrong assumptions, and most of his work is unfortunately not true.

And so we leave him to the end.

Erickson was a brilliant psychologist, although as I told you last time he was not exactly a psychologist, but never mind. Erickson was a brilliant something, and he came up with these stages of human life, which we are still using nowadays.

But again, there is no scientific validity to Erickson.

So Erickson, Piaget, Vygotsky, Freud, all these dudes, they are not scientists. They are like literature. They are like Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or, you know, they're the literature. They're not scientists because there are no scientific experiments and studies that support their work. We have no way of testing.

Many of what they are saying, we don't have a way to test. When you cannot test something, it's not science.

So that's why I'm leaving these guys to the end.

And I'm reminding you that you can find as much insight and enlightenment and education in the work of Jambazov as you can find in the work of Sigmund Freud.

So literature is a great introduction to psychology.

Today we are going to discuss, we're going to start, and throughout this course, we're going to focus on theories of development, theories of development, which are much more scientific than theories of development which are much more literary, like literature.

Okay? Why is a theory scientific? It's scientific because it yields predictions.

There's a theory and the theory gives us predictions.

And then we can test these predictions with experiments or with studies.

And then we can see if the prediction is right or wrong.

If the prediction is wrong, the theory is falsifiable. So we know the theory is false.

If prediction is right, it doesn't say the theory is right, because we need to continue to test, but it's a good sign.

Freud's theory, for example, cannot be tested. There's no way to design a test or a study or an experiment which will prove or disprove Freud. Same for Piaget.

Why?

Because Freud, Piaget, Vygotsky, and many others, they discuss what's happening inside the brain or the mind of a child. What's happening inside the brain or the mind of an adolescent?

And we have no way to prove this or to disprove this.

We have to rely on what the child is saying, what the adolescent is saying, and that is not science, of course.

Okay, let's start with two theories.

These are not the theories we're going to study today.

Today we're going to focus on Bandura.

Remember Bandura? I mentioned him last time. I gave you the very important piece of information that Bandura in many languages means tomato. But you should not hold it against him. He was still a very important scholar.

Okay. This is theory number one. It was created by a guy called Elkind.

Elkind, see his name here.

And this part, created this part. This part is not Elkin. This part is Elkind. This part is observations.

Piaget, Freud, Abel. So this part is history and this part is Elkind.

What are the differences between child and adolescent?

When a child is born, think of a baby. Think of a baby for a minute. What does a baby do? What do babies do?

Do you not know what babies do? You have never seen a baby?

They cry. They cry. Yeah.

Why do they cry?

Because they want attention.

Well, yes. They want attention. Do we know what is the attention for? Do we know what the baby wants exactly?

We don't know. The baby can be hungry. The baby can be wet. Maybe the baby wants to change the diapers, to dry diapers. Maybe there's too much light. Maybe it's not enough air. Maybe he voted for the wrong political party. There are many options why babies cry.

So the baby, the internal world of the baby is no one sees me. No one sees me. I'm not getting attention. I must get attention now. No one sees me.

And so this is called cueing. This behavior is called cueing. Cueing. Oops. Because the baby is sending cues.

By the way, not only crying. Not only crying. Crying is very important, of course. Crying is the main communication of the baby.

But babies do other things to attract attention. Give me another thing that babies do to attract attention. Can you think of something babies do to attract attention except crying all the time?

They throw things?

That's bigger baby. Yeah. When the baby is capable of throwing things, they throw things. That's about two years old.

But the baby is six months old. What do they do?

They smile.

They smile. And when mommy comes to the baby, the baby smiles at her.

This smile is a cue. It's exactly like crying. It's a message. It's a signal.

Mommy, I need you. Not mommy, I miss you.

There's no love here. Contrary to what you see on television, there's no love here. It's a need, it's a basic need. I need food. I need warmth. I need to be dry. I need you. Come here, servant. Change my diapers. Or you're fired.

So the baby cues the mother.

If you want, you can sit next to Lydia and she will help you.

Okay?

Yeah.

You bought coffee and not for me? Ah, not okay thank you no no no you got another one where da-da-da-da-d-da forget it okay.

Okay, so this is the child.

The child's main concern is, no one sees me, I must attract attention now.

The adolescent is exactly the opposite.

The adolescent thinks that everyone is noticing them. If they have pimples or acne, they think everyone is noticing the acne. You know, if they are fat, they think everyone is laughing at them, that they are fat.

So whereas the baby's basic thinking is no one is noticing me, the adolescent's basic thinking is, everyone is noticing me.

Elkind called it the imaginary audience. Imaginary audience.

The adolescent has an imaginary audience. It's like the adolescent is all the time on a stage. Adolescent is all the time on a stage and there is this huge audience and the audience is watching him or her all the time.

And whenever the adolescent does something wrong or is ugly, or said something stupid, everyone is there to notice, to mock him, to laugh at her, to humiliate.

And this became much worse with social media. Social media amplified it, made it much worse than it used to be.

So imaginary audience, what happened with social media, the imaginary audience became real audience.

And this is why adolescents nowadays are much more depressed and much more anxious than 40 years ago.

The rate of depression among adolescents is up five times. It's five times higher than 1980. And the rate of anxiety among adolescents is three times higher.

Why? Because they have a real audience in social media.

These are studies by Twenge and Campbell. If you want to read more, Twenge and Campbell said that the smartphone created depression and anxiety among adolescents.

Twenge.

If Elkind had created his theory nowadays, he would not have used the word imaginary. He would have used the word audience. Because every teenager nowadays has an audience and a real audience.

So this is no longer valid actually. But Elkind created his work in 1976, which was long before social media.

This is also known as referential ideation. So this, referential ideation, ideas of reference.

What is referential ideation?

Imagine that you enter a room. There's a room with many, many people. And they're all talking and laughing and eating from the buffet, and there's a big mess, and then you enter the room. And there are so many people around, yeah?

And suddenly, when you enter the room, a group of people start to laugh.

So if you think they are laughing at me, they're laughing at me because I just entered the room and they just started laughing, so they're laughing at me.

This is called referential ideation. It's the belief that everything is about you.

If people are laughing, they're laughing at you. If people are gossiping, they're gossiping about you. If people are angry, they're angry at you. Etcetera, etcetera. If people are angry, they angry at you, etc., etc.

Another concept you need to learn, so referential ideation. Referential ideation is also known as ideas of reference.

Another concept you need to learn is autoplastic versus alloplastic.

Autoplastic is when you blame yourself. When you say something is wrong with me, something is wrong with me. I'm ugly, I'm stupid, something is wrong with me, I made a mistake, I misbehaved, I should not have done this.

So you accuse, you blame yourself. This is autoplastic.

Alloplastic is when you blame other people. When you say other people are bad, other people are evil, other people are guilty, I didn't do anything wrong, I'm okay, I'm a victim.

So this is alloplastic defense. Autoplastic versus alloplastic.

Teenagers transition between autoplastic and alloplastic, and then again autoplastic and then again alloplastic.

They are not sure. They have no center.

So sometimes they say it's my fault. I did something wrong. And then they say, but actually I didn't do anything wrong. It's their fault. And then they say, but coming to think of it, maybe I did do something wrong.

And they're like pendulum. They go from autoplastic to alloplastic to autoplastic, and they can never find the center. They can never create the true picture. They can never have a nuanced view of reality in the world.

So we will discuss it when we discuss adolescence a bit later, I mean in the next lectures.

So this is one thing you need to, a couple of concepts you need to learn.

And the other couple of, hello, the other couple of concepts is ego dystonic versus ego syntonic?

Ego-synonic.

Ego-syntonic is when you feel good with yourself. You feel good with yourself. You feel comfortable. You feel you're doing the right thing. You feel you accomplish yourself. You feel you're doing the right thing. You feel you accomplish or achieve results. You feel that people love you or like you. So you're egosynonic. Feel good. Egosynonic is I feel good.

Ego-distonic is when you don't feel good with yourself. You are not comfortable in your own skin. You all the time doubt yourself, criticize yourself, put yourself down, mock yourself, and so on. So you're ego-distonic.

Okay?

I'm introducing you to the language because we're going to use it later in the course.

So, let's summarize the first difference.

First difference.

Baby and child, no one sees me. I must attract attention. I must attract attention. Now. That's baby and child.

Adolescent. Everyone is watching me. Everyone is watching me. Everyone is criticizing me. Everyone is analyzing me. I'm such a failure. I'm so ugly. I'm so stupid.

This is the exact opposite of the baby. It's not opposite of the child.

Sometimes, adolescents, because of this, because of referential ideation, adolescents become very shy, very avoidant. They try to avoid other people, or other adolescents, other teenagers. They isolate themselves.

This is a reaction to referential ideation. They become egodystonic, and they withdraw, and they avoid.

This process is called constriction.

Okay, next.

Baby and child are passive.

The baby just lies on his back, because most babies cannot walk immediately when they are born, so they lie on the back and they just wait. They wait for mommy to give them food, they wait for someone to change their diapers, they wait to be noticed, so babies are passive. And babies operate according to the principle of action, reaction.

So, mommy does something and the baby reacts. So action, reaction, and passivity.

Babies are recipients. Things happen to children. Children rarely initiate anything. Things happen to them.

And this is also known as helplessness. Helplessness. Children are helpless. They have no agency. Children have no agency. They are helpless. Everything is happening to them and there is nothing they can do about it.

In adolescence, this is not the picture. Adolescence develop cognition, cognitive processes, and they use cognition to impact other people, the environment, the world, and reality.

Adolescents are active agents. So, children are passive and they are not agents. They are non-agentic.

Adolescents are active and they are agentic. They act on the environment and they change it using cognition, which is a topic of today's lecture. We'll come to.

Takeaway (2/8)

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Children perceive themselves as part of others' narratives, while adolescents adopt an egocentric view, believing their story is the most significant and that others are merely supporting characters. This adolescent egocentrism, termed the personal fable, reflects a fantasy where the teenager thinks their existence defines the reality of others. Some individuals remain psychologically stuck in this adolescent mindset, leading to narcissistic behaviors throughout their lives. Kohlberg's stages of moral development suggest that morality evolves from fear of punishment to adherence to authority, ultimately reaching a stage of personal moral judgment. However, many adults do not progress beyond the earlier stages, often conforming to societal norms without critical reflection.

Next.

The child says, I am inside someone else's story. My mother has a story and I am inside this story. I am just an element in my mother's story, my father's story, my grandmother's story, later on my peers' story, my teacher's story. I am passively inside someone else's story. And I'm just an element in the story.

This is the attitude of children.

The attitude of the adolescent is exactly the opposite. It is my story, and everyone else is in my story. So there is egocentrism. This is known as adolescent egocentrism.

The adolescent says, the only story that matters, the only story that is important is my story. And all of you are in my story. You're actors in my theater production. You're actresses in my movie. This is my movie. I'm the director, I'm the superstar of the movie, and you just happen to be there.

So the baby or the child participates in someone else's movie, the adolescent, in adolescence, everyone participates in the teenager's movie. The movie belongs to the teenager.

And this is known in Elkind's work, this is known as personal fable, the personal fable, also known previously as fantasy. It's a fantasy, of course.

When you say this is my story and all of you are in my story, what you are saying is, if I eliminate the story, if I stop the story, you will all disappear. Yes, if you are inside my story and I finish the story, you're gone. If you're in my movie and I stop shooting the movie, you disappear.

But of course, that's nonsense. That is nonsense. So it's a fantasy.

If we put all of these together, this is known as narcissism. Adolescence are narcissistic.

Some people remain stuck. They remain stuck in adolescence. They see the world this way until they die. They see the world this way.

They think that everyone is paying attention to them. They think that everyone is paying attention to them. They think that everyone is an actor or actress in their movie. They think this way when they are 50, 60, 70, so they are narcissists. These are the people known as narcissists. They remain stuck at this stage.

For those of you who want to learn more about this process of getting stuck in adolescence and not being able to proceed, you can go online and look for this.

Puer Aeternus. Puerre Aeternus.

This is the clinical term when someone gets stuck in adolescence and cannot become an adult.

Okay, so this is Elkind on the differences between children and adolescents.

When you look at this, the most important component, the most important element, the element we're going to discuss today is cognition.

Because this is crazy. To believe that everyone is inside your story, this is fantasy. This is, you know, cuckoo.

When you grow up, when you exit adolescence, one of the first things you do, you get rid of this. And you understand that every human being has a story and that we are in each other's stories. There's no single story that is the most important. There is no privileged story.

So we get rid of this when we grow up and we get rid of this. Everybody notices me, I'm the center of attention. We get rid of this. We realize that no one cares. No one cares about you. No one pays attention. Who cares about you? Everyone has their own problems, their own troubles, their own life. I mean, people don't care about you.

So when we realize this, this is gone. And this is gone.

What is never gone, what is never gone throughout life is your cognition.

And this is the focus of today's lecture.

But before we go there, I want to discuss this.

Remind me of your name?

Alan.

Who is missing? There was a sixth one.

Michaela is missing?

She wanted to come.

Huh? Sheela is missing? She wanted to come.

She won't come.

She won't come. Okay.

Because I have to fulfill attendance of students and so.

I think that she won't go to you anyway.

Oh, she did? I didn't receive it. I did not receive.

So this is the second model, and that is Kohlberg's morality.

What is morality? If we have to summarize morality in one sentence, what is it?

By the way, Yovan, feel free to participate.

If we have to summarize morality in one sentence, which sentence would you choose?

Summary for me what is to be moral, what is to be ethical?

A single sentence.

You can also participate, feel free. Even Marian can participate.

You have to speak up, I'm afraid. If you have to define it in a single sentence.

You want to think about it? Think about it, and when you're ready, let me know.

I will suggest to you something and you tell me if you accept it.

I think morality is about not harming other people. As simple as it. Not harming other people.

You can do anything you want, you can do, you know, but do not harm other people. Do no harm, I think, is the basic principle of morality.

There is another way of saying it.

Treat other people the way you want them to treat you.

Treat other people, the way you want other people to treat you.

And because you don't want anyone to harm you, then you don't harm other people.

Google has a slogan, do no harm. You go to Google, Google's motto is do no harm.

And I think that's the essence of morality.

But there are many reasons to do no harm.

For example, maybe you are afraid. Maybe you do no harm because you're afraid the police will catch you and you will end up in prison.

It's a good reason to do no harm, right?

Maybe you do no harm because you empathize. You feel bad for the other person.

I mean, what I'm saying is the behavior is the same, but we don't know what's behind the behavior.

What is the motivation? What is the attitude?

So, Kolberg said that children go through three stages, I mean children, adolescents and adults, human beings, go through three stages.

Most adolescents are human beings, by the way.

They go through three stages.

One, pre-conventional.

Preconventional means I'm going to behave myself. I'm not going to harm other people, because if I harm other people, I will be punished.

So it's a very primitive thing. I'm not going to harm other people because I'm afraid of the outcomes. I'm afraid of the consequences.

If there are no consequences, I will harm other people. It would be a pleasure.

So this is what children think. And this is called the pre-conventional phase.

What other group in the population think this way?

I'm not going to harm other people because I'll be punished, but if there is a guarantee that I will not be caught and I will not be punished, I will harm other people.

What other group behaves this way?

We know that children, very young children, behave this way.

What other group behaves this way?

Come on, think about it. What other group in the population among people behave this way?

They are afraid of being punished, and if there is a guarantee they will not be punished, they will do something bad.

They have a name. You can't even guess?

No.

Criminals.

Yes? Criminals are afraid of punishment and the fact that there is punishment prevents a lot of crime.

But when they think they can get away with it, they will commit a crime.

Okay, I'll give you a second chance. Because I'm there in a very good and generous mood today. So I'll give you a second chance. What other group in the population behave this way, not criminals?

I mean, some of them become criminals. Some of them become criminals.

But what other group in the population, some of them criminals, some of them not criminals, behave this way?

Some of them, not criminals, behave this way.

Religious people?

They would be shocked to hear that.

Yeah, but it's a good point.

Some religious people are afraid of God's punishment, and if they think God, they can get away with it, they will misbehave.

But I'm talking about people whose life is like that, whose personality is like that. It doesn't depend on an outside factor like religion.

Sinners.

Sorry?

Sinners is a religious term for psychopaths.

Psychopaths are like this.

A psychopath. You know what is a psychopath?

All right.

Psychopaths are people who behave in a way that avoids punishment, even if it means harming other people.

In short, what I'm trying to tell you is that Kolberg was wrong.

He was wrong when he said that the pre-conventional face is typical only of children.

He was wrong about that.

There are quite a few adults who are stuck in the pre-conventional phase of morality. They are afraid of punishment, but if they think they can get away with it, they will not be punished, they commit crimes and sins and they hurt people and so.

And by the way, this is not a small number.

Do you know how many prisoners there are in the United States of America as we speak this very minute?

Can you guess the number?

A very high number.

Guys, wake up. In my class, you are participants like me. You don't just listen. You also talk. So, give me a number. Any number. How many prisoners do you think they are in the United States?

Only in the United States.

Millions?

Billions is an impossibility. The whole United States is 330 million.

But of 330 million people, how many do you think are in prison?

Give me a number. I will not do anything to you.

No, not 1,000, much thousand, much more. Sorry?

One million?

Three and a half million people. Three and a half million people are in prison in the United States.

So it's not a small group. The adults who are stuck at the pre-conventional phase of morality, this is not a small group.

Next is the conventional stage.

We are talking about Colberg, you remember? Colberg and the development of morality between childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

Conventional phase. The conventional phase is when you behave morally because someone told you to behave morally.

So your father told you you should behave morally. Your mother told you, you should behave morally. The government told you you should behave morally. Your mother told you, you should behave morally. The government told you you should behave morally. That would be funny. The police told you should behave morally. Someone told you to behave... religion told you to behave morally.

So someone, some authority, told you to behave morally. So you obey the authority.

And this is known as the conventional phase.

According to Kolberg, the conventional phase is typical of adolescence. Adolescents follow, they imitate. They imitate sources of moral authority.

There's a source of moral authority like religion, God, or like the state, or like some philosopher, and they follow this. They behave morally because they're imitating. Adolescent does what adolescents sees. So they imitate.

Again, Kohlberg was wrong when he said that each stage of morality belongs to each stage of life. He was wrong.

For example, conventional morality exists among religious people, adult religious people, as Mariam said. There are many religious people, and they are very moral, and they commit no sins, and they make no crimes, and they're very nice people, because they just follow the instructions of the church. That's it.

So they are stuck in the conventional phase of morality and they are not adolescents. They're 40 years old and 50 years old and they are no longer adolescents.

The last stage is post-conventional stage. It's a stage where you decide what is moral and what is not moral.

For example, imagine that there were a new law. A new law. A law is an instruction on how to behave. Laws are supposed to be moral.

Imagine that there's a new law that we should put a specific group of people in prison just because of who they are. We should put them in prison because of who they are.

Would you collaborate with such a law? For example, would you call the police and say, there's this guy and he belongs to this group, he should be in prison? Would you do that?

Why not? There's a law. Why don't you obey the law?

If I told you all homosexuals, all gay people should be in prison and you have a gay neighbor. Would you call the police and say, my neighbor is gay, you should come and take him and put him in prison?

Why? There is a law. And even some religions say that homosexuality is a sin. So why wouldn't you do that? Religion justifies you, the state justifies you, everyone justifies you, maybe some of your neighbors would justify you also. They would say homosexuals are, you know, bad people and so.

Why wouldn't you do that? You said no, why? Why wouldn't you do it?

I don't know, I don't care actually if he or she is gay or not.

So what you're saying is you don't think it's right to put him in prison.

Yeah, because they're so people.

You don't think it's right to put him in prison?

Yeah, because they're so people.

You don't think it's right?

Would you tell the police to come and pick this guy up?

Why?

Because I would feel bad.

Why would you feel bad?

Because you think it's not right.

It's not right to do that.

So this is the post-conventional phase.

The post-conventional phase of morality is when you have your own compass, your own judgment.

And you say, yeah, there's a law, but I don't think this law is right.

Yeah, religion says this, but I don't think religion is right about this.

Yeah, the politicians say it, I don't think they're right.

My father says it, I don't think he's right.

My mother says, I don't think so.

This ability to say, I don't think they're right. My father says it. I don't think he's right. My mother says it. I don't think so.

This ability to say, I don't think it's right. This is the post-conventional phase.

But many, many people are stuck here. And some people are stuck here. And they never make it to the post-conventional phase.

They just follow. They're like horses with blinders. They just follow the crowd. They follow the herd. They follow the... and they don't think for themselves. They have no critical thinking.

Takeaway (3/8)

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The lecture discusses the concept of cognition and the differences between children and adolescents, emphasizing the role of expectations in this transition. Children have limited expectations primarily focused on basic needs, while adolescents develop hundreds of expectations related to their environment and social interactions. The speaker highlights the discontinuity between childhood and adolescence, comparing it to the transformation of a butterfly, where the two stages are fundamentally different. The brain development stages are outlined, showing that a child's brain operates with minimal connections between hemispheres, while an adolescent's brain has more integrated connections but is still emotionally driven and lacks fully developed cognitive functions. This results in adolescents being more focused on pleasure and less capable of predicting the consequences of their actions, leading to risk-taking behavior.

So, let's discuss the topic of today's lecture, which is, just a second. Let's discuss the topic of today's lecture, which is cognition.

Cognition. The Bezobrasn? No, Kutuzhouen.

Catastrophe, I've seen now.

Debeliot professor.

Okay.

Tell me, are you going to remember this moment? Are you going to remember that I suddenly sat down and took out chocolate and began to eat. Is this moment memorable? Do you think you're going to remember it more than what I say? Let's say. Do you find this moment strange? It's strange, no, that a professor suddenly takes out chocolate and eats it?

I wish I could continue.

So, why do you find it strange? Why is it strange? Why is it strange?

Because it's rare when someone eats chocolate in class.

Sorry?

It's rare when someone eats chocolate in class.

In class?

Many people eat chocolate.

Mariah needs chocolates.

I eat chocolate.

Many people eat chocolates.

But in class.

In class? In class?

Did you ever see another professor eating chocolate in class?

So why do you say it's rare if you saw other professors eating chocolate in class?

But it's not always, like every day.

Okay. Did you expect me to eat chocolate in class? Did you expect it? Did you say today the professor is going to come and is going to eat chocolate in class?

So, you did not expect me to do this? Did I surprise you? Were you surprised? Maybe yes. You surprise you? Were you surprised? Maybe yes. You were surprised. Were you surprised? You were not surprised? All your professors eat chocolate in class?

No, but it was unusual, but I didn't ask if you minded it. I asked if I surprised you.

You were not surprised. Were you surprised?

When you say you were not surprised, it means this happens all the time. You're not surprised. Does this happen all the time?

Then why you were not surprised if it doesn't happen all the time?

I think that is normal for professor to eat chocolate in the beginning of a lecture.

You think? Okay. What if next lecture I come here in a bathing suit? Bathing suit? Swimming trunks. I mean, after you throw up, what would you say then? Would you then be surprised?

Sorry?

I'm crazy even without bathing suit.

But would you be surprised that I'm here with a bathing suit? Would you be surprised? And you'd be surprised.

But we're old people, so what's a problem?

You said we're old people, so what's a problem?

Sorry? I didn't ask if you see this a big deal. I asked if you would be surprised.

You wouldn't be surprised that the professor comes in a bathing suit? I'm sorry but I don't believe you.

I'm going to pray to a chocolate.

No, no, no, bathing suit. I come in a bathing suit. Ready to go to the sea, to the swimming pool.

Would be surprised.

So all of you would be surprised, yes? Maybe except Marion, he knows me. All of you would be surprised.

Why would you be surprised? Because you did not expect it.

Right? So the first lesson is expectations.

We are beginning now to discuss the differences between children and adolescents, between children and teenagers. How children become teenagers?

Okay, the first thing, the first difference, big difference between children and adolescence is expectations.

When you're a child, imagine that you are a baby. We're just born. What expectations do you have? A baby. You're lying in the crib. You cannot walk. You cry a lot. You do many other things which we cannot discuss in class.

What are your expectations? What do you expect as a baby?

To get food, milk?

Yeah, you expect food.

Expect food and a bit later when you are beginning to be aware of your environment, you expect your diapers to be changed. You're wet, you want to be dry. You want to be dry and fed. And then you want to be fed and dry. And then you want to be dry again and fed.

Essentially, these are the only two expectations. Until age two, actually. These are the only two expectations.

But as an adolescent, you have hundreds of expectations. Hundreds.

You expect me not to appear in the class in a bathing suit because this would be a major trauma. You expect your father and your mother to behave in certain ways. You expect all kinds of things. You expect policemen not to shoot you. You expect many, many things.

If you were to make a list of your expectations, everything you expect, you will discover that you have hundreds, maybe thousands of expectations.

So that's a major difference between child and adolescent, the amount of expectations and how expectations relate to the world.

What happens to the child when the expectations are not met? The child wants to be fed and mother doesn't feed the child. What happens then?

Baby cries. Why do you think a baby is crying?

He's trying to make force mother, signal to mother that he wants food.

But there's another reason.

The baby is frustrated. There's frustration. He could be, yes, and he's also scared that mother would never come back.

But when mother is there, so he's not scared, but she doesn't give him food, he's frustrated.

So babies have three basic emotions. They have like, I want, I want food, I want, I want, I want. They have, I'm afraid, I'm afraid that mommy will go away, would never come back. And they have, I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm frustrated.

So there are three basic emotions. Wish, will, will, I want something, I'm afraid of something, and I'm angry that I'm not getting what I want.

How many emotions do you have? How many emotions do you think you have? Do you have only three?

You actually have, last time we counted, you have about 180 emotions, last time we counted.

You're beginning to see that the connection between childhood and adolescence is not continuous. It's not like the child becomes an adolescent.

There is a child and then something happens. Something happens. There's no smooth transition. It's not like the child develops and develops and develops. Oops, suddenly becomes adolescent.

There is a child, and then the child disappears, and adolescent appears. There is discontinuity.

And I will finish this round by telling you why this discontinuity, why this happens.

First of all, it's a common mistake, even among psychologists, to believe that adolescents are just big children, like they're big children, but they're not.

Adolescents have almost nothing in common with children. Almost nothing psychologically, neurologically, biologically, almost not a single thing in common is like two separate entities.

What animal does it remind you of? An animal that is one thing and then another thing. And they have nothing in common.

There is such an animal, actually a group of animals, big group of animals, that they are one thing and then they stop being this thing and they become something completely different. And there is no connection between the two.

Butterflies, yes. Butterflies go through three stages. Lava, chysalis, and butterfly.

And if you look at the three stages, there's no connection whatsoever. None. They don't look the same. They don't feed the same. They don't have the same proteins. It's three different animals.

To a very large degree, human beings are like that.

Now I'll explain to you why, and I'll release you for a few minutes.

The reason is the human brain.

When the child is born, the human brain is about 40% developed. Only 40%.

As I explained to you last time, theabout 40% developed. Only 40%.

As I explained to you last time, the pregnancy continues outside the mother, because the head is expanding and if the head is too big, it's difficult to exit.

So the baby continues to develop outside the mother.

And initially the brain is only 40% finished.

And then the baby eats a lot and cries a lot and so on and the brain continues to grow and grow and grow.

And by the age of three years the brain is 80% finished. And by the age of five years, the brain is 90% finished.

But only when it comes to the size of the brain. Only the size.

The brain of the child has nothing to do with the brain of the adolescents. These are two completely different brains.

And I'll give you three examples to explain to you what I mean when I say that these are totally different brains.

The brain of the baby looks like this. A baby and up to age 7, 8. So the brain of people, up to age 7, 8 looks like this.

This is hemisphere and this is hemisphere. And that's it.

And within the hemisphere, there are parts, I'm not going into details, and these parts operate independently.

So it's a big bloody mess. It's total chaos.

There is a very thin bridge, very thin connection between the two parts, but this connection is not active. This connection is known as corpus callosum. It is not active.

So this is the brain of the child. Essentially two people. Left hemisphere, right hemisphere. Very little connection between them. Each part in the left hemisphere, each part in the right hemisphere operates totally independently.

Baby can be emotional one minute and not emotional the next because different parts of the brain are taking over and so. It's a mess. Big mess.

Here is the brain of the adolescent.

These are the two hemispheres. And there's a growing connection, finally a very strong connection between the two parts. And through this connection, information passes from the left to the right and from the right to the left.

So it's like a highway or like a communication channel.

The baby doesn't have this, the child doesn't have this, the adolescent has this.

So the brain of the adolescent is unitary, a single entity. The brain of the child is many, many independent parts.

Next thing, in the adolescent brain, there are parts which are very developed and parts which are underdeveloped or not developed at all.

The parts which are very, very developed are the parts that take care of emotions, emotionality. The limbic system, the amygdala in adolescence are very, very developed.

So adolescents are capable of emotions. They are much less capable of many types of cognition.

They are not good thinkers. They think they're good thinkers because adolescents are not narcissists. They think they're the best, the greatest ever and so on.

But actually adolescents don't know how to think. Their thinking is very primitive.

Especially they don't know how to think about the consequences of their actions.

Adolescents are almost unable to accurately predict the consequences of actions and then take this prediction into account in order to modify behavior.

So adolescents take risks and they do crazy things because they don't predict correctly what might happen.

And this is because in adolescent brain most of the activity and the only parts which are fully developed are emotional.

The cognitive parts and the executive parts are very, very, in a very, very, very primitive state. And they would take another 10 years to develop fully, up to age 25.

So this is the adolescent brain and now adult brain.

Adult brain looks essentially like a heart. The two hemispheres are totally integrated. Totally. The corpus callosum is built into the two hemispheres. So there's a single brain. All the information is shared everywhere. There are areas that replicate the functions of other areas. This is known as redundancy.

So if you take half the brain away, the other half will take over.

So the brain is totally integrated. All the areas are fully developed and fully active.

You can see that there is no connection between this tree.

In the child's brain, the level of chemicals known as neurotransmitters, the level of chemicals is very, very, very low.

For example, children have almost no dopamine.

Do you know what is dopamine?

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of pleasure.

We think that children experience a lot of pleasure.

That is not true. Children have almost no dopamine.

Adolescence produce a lot of dopamine. Actually, dopamine is the dominant neurotransmitter in adolescence.

So, adolescents are focused on pleasure. Pleasure, addiction.

So adolescents would seek sex. They would abuse substances because dopamine is connected to addiction and to pleasure.

So, no dopamine, or little dopamine, a lot of dopamine, crazy amounts of dopamine, normal amounts of dopamine.

Again, we see that there is no connection between the three.

These are like three different brains, three different creatures, three different entities, three different animals.

And so, remember that when we discuss the concept of transition from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood, which is how most of the textbooks are constructed.

When you take a textbook, they talk about transitions, phases, stages.

From the neuroscientific point of view, as far as neuroscience is concerned, that is a lot of nonsense.

There are no smooth transitions.

By the way, if you ask any adolescent, if you ask any adolescent, we have an exemplar here, they will tell you that they don't feel continuous, they feel like sudden transitions, eruptions, they feel discontinuous as far as the body is concerned, body image, cognition. It's all very discontinuous.

Takeaway (4/8)

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Cognitive dissonance occurs when there is a conflict between expectations and behavior, which can enhance memory and cognitive processes. The bio-ecological systems theory, developed by Bronfenbrenner, illustrates human development through concentric circles of influence, starting with biology and expanding to include various systems such as the microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem. Imprinting, as demonstrated by Konrad Lorenz's experiments with geese, shows how early attachments form based on initial interactions. Adolescents are particularly influenced by their peer groups, which can significantly impact their mental health and social development. The macro system encompasses cultural narratives that shape individual identity and societal behavior through processes of socialization and acculturation.

Okay. When you come back from, if you come back, then we will discuss what's happening in your mind, what's happening in your brain, something known as cognitive processes.

You remember that we were discussing your expectations about my behavior in class and my threat to wear a swimming suit to the next lecture, which would have contradicted your expectations.

How do we call a situation when there is A and there is B and there is a disagreement between A and B? B contradicts A or how do we call this? What's the name in psychology for such a thing when A and B don't sit well together? Can you think of a word?

Conflict? You heard of conflict?

So, conflicts.

The more professional word, if you want to appear or to sound more professional, then you will use dissonance.

Dissonance is just a fancy word for conflict. When you say dissonance, you appear to be very educated and very impressive.

So when you want to impress someone, say dissonance.

Otherwise, you can just say conflict. Conflict is good, because when there is conflict, for example, your memory is much better.

That's why I asked you when I was eating the chocolate, are you going to remember this moment?

You're going to maybe to forget a lot of the things I say, which is good for you, but you're very likely to remember this conversation about chocolate and swimming suit and so on, because it created conflict. There was a conflict between expectations and behavior.

Whenever there's conflict, your cognitive processes, your cognition is much better.

And actually, if you want to help yourself to have a better memory, to think faster, and so on, you need to create conflicts.

Now, most psychologists will tell you the exact opposite. They will tell you you need to be at peace, you need to be relaxed, you need to be, but that's not what psychology teaches us. Conflict helps cognitive processes.

Okay. Before we proceed to discuss additional concepts, I want to introduce you to the work of a guy with the impossible name.

By the way, the vast majority of psychologists and psychiatrists, they have totally crazy names. And I think they went into psychology and psychiatry because they have these crazy names.

So this guy is no exception. His name is Bronfenbrenner.

Now imagine if you have a name like Brunfenbrunner, wouldn't you want to become a psychologist to understand what's wrong with you? Of course you would.

So, Bron von Berner came up with a model to explain life to himself. And this model is possibly today the most influential model in lifespan development psychology, which is the topic of this course.

Today we use this model as the prime model.

So here is what this model says. This model says that we are like waves, waves in a pond.

You know when you take a small pebble or a small stone and you throw it into the water. You have concentric waves. You have a small wave and a bigger wave and a bigger wave. These are known as concentric. Concentric waves.

So, Brunf and Bruner's model is a concentric theory. In other words, there are smaller influences, bigger influences and bigger, and we'll discuss them in a minute.

The name of this theory is bio-ecological systems theory. Systems Theory.

And it's actually pretty cool. It's a cool theory. It's a nice theory.

Here's what he says. He says we are all born with B.

What is B? Biology. We are all born with some biology.

Biology is like the hardware. You're all born with hardware, and you are born with some basic software, like operating system.

But you're not born with any specific programs or any specific applications, you know, you're like a smartphone with no apps, just the...

So, this is the biology. This used to be called, this circle, used to be called, ethological theory. Ethological theory.

Do you know what is ethology? Ethology is the study of the behavior of animals. And politicians. Animals.

Animals. It's a study of the behavior of animals and politicians, animals. It's a study of animals, how animals behave. This is known as ethology.

Ethological theory is the theory of how animals behave, and it is the brainchild of a guy called Konrad Lorenz. Konrad Lawrence, as the name implies, was German.

One day, Konrad Lorenz acquired geese. Geese is the plural of goose.

Okay. He bought, he bought a few geese. He had a huge zoo farm, and he was experimenting on animals there. He was testing them, watching them, observing them, cooking them and so.

So he was this scientist who was into animal behavior.

And one day he bought a goose, a flock of geese. And there were male and female, so inevitably the female became pregnant. And they hatched the eggs and young geese came out.

Because of some accident, mother goose was absent when the eggs hatched. That means Mother Goose was somewhere busy, I don't know, Upra was Zravenny Preehodi, I don't know where she went, and the eggs hatched. And young geese came out.

And the first thing the geese saw was Konrad Lawrence. And Konrad Lawrence, the CITES.

So when the tiny geese came out of the eggs, they saw Konrad Lawrence. They didn't see Mother Goose because Mother Goose was busy with Upra Vazerni pre-Hoodi, so they saw Konrad Lawrence.

They didn't see Mother Goose because Mother Goose was busy with Uprovaserny, so they saw Konrad Lawrence.

And they started to follow Konrad Lawrence whereverLorenz wherever he went. He went back home, they followed him, he went to the...

So they were following him everywhere, everywhere, because they thought that Konrad Lorenz was Mother Goose.

So Konrad Lorenz designed an experiment. He designed an experiment.

He put all the small geese, the small geese that hatched when he was there, and the small geese that hatched later when Mother Goose was there.

So he had many, many small geese. He put all of them under a box, under a box, and then he stood to the left and mother goose stood to the right.

It's a true experiment. And there were many tiny geese under the box.

And again, some of them hatched when Lawrence was there and some of them hatched when Mother Goose was there.

So when he remotely lifted the box, some of the geese, some of the tiny geese went to Mother Goose and some of the tiny geese went to Konrad Lawrence.

Even though Mother Goose was there, the tiny geese that hatched with Konrad Lawrence regarded Konrad Lawrence as the mother.

So this process is called imprinting. Imprinting.

And so, in human babies, in human babies, the touch and the smell, touch and smell of the mother create imprinting.

The human baby is imprinted with the touch and the smell of the mother, and a bit later with the visuals, about four or five weeks old, the baby begins to see mother, to look at her face.

And so he's imprinted with her visual.

And he develops, the baby develops something called attachment.

Attachment is not unique to human babies.

Gis, the small gis, they got attached to Konrad Lawrence.

But in human babies, attachment starts biologically and then on top of the biology there is social attachment.

And this is a theory, it's called attachment theory, and this is a theory, it's called attachment theory, and this is a theory that was first described by Bowlby.

It is known as attachment theory.

So human babies start off like tiny geese, but then society intervenes, other people intervene, and human babies change from geese to human, and they develop human attachment.

This is the micro-system.

The micro-system is based on the biology, based on the baby's capacity to bond, to attach to other people. It's based on that.

And the baby attaches to the first people he sees. Baby attaches to mother, to father, to grandmother, to grandfather, to other people who are constantly, regularly in the environment of the baby.

And this becomes the micro system, micro system in proper pronunciation.

Okay? Biological system, micros pronunciation. Okay, biological system, microsystem.

Slowly, gradually, the baby begins to interact with people in the micro system.

But these people in the micro system, they're adults usually, or they are bigger, they are older than baby, older siblings for example.

So these people go to school and go out to the city and work, they have workplaces, they have jobs, so these people are exposed to the outside world.

Baby is here. That's baby, B could be biology, B could be baby. Baby is here. Baby is interacting with the family, but the family is interacting with the outside world.

And the outside world is the mesosystem.

The mesosystem is comprised of institutions.

Can you give me an example of an institution?

School is an institution, the most important one actually.

Another institution.

Hospital is an institution, most important one actually.

Another institution.

Hospital is an institution, although hospital is rare, like most people don't usually end up in hospitals.

State law?

Yes, municipal services, government.

Another example of an institution which affects the family, which affects the baby.

So you see the power is coming from outside. The power is coming from here all the way to baby.

And then baby develops from here all the way there. It's a two-way street.

So, religion, for example. Religion belongs in the mesosystem.

So here is a happy family with a happy baby, a crying baby, and the family is interacting with the institutions, and the baby is growing up.

As the baby is growing up, the baby begins to be exposed to institutions. You mentioned school.

So gradually the baby transitions from microsystem to mesosystem.

So baby goes this way. Maybe it goes this way.

Okay, mesosystem is institutions.

Then there is exosystem. The exosystem is the community.

What is the community? Community is not necessarily your city, not necessarily your country.

Community is the group of people with whom you share the same values, the same history, the same economic activities, and I forgot to write here the same language usually.

So this is your community.

And again, community doesn't have to be equal to nation or equal to city or it's simply the group of people that constitute your environment.

So baby goes to school and within school there will be a group of peers and they will hang out together.

Okay, these peers will hang out together. This would become the baby, the child's community.

So this is already the exosystem. It's pretty advanced. We are talking ages 6 to 9 maybe more. And in adolescence.

Exosystem, mesosystem and exosystem, and in adolescence. Mesosystem and exosystem, especially exosystem, is very crucial in adolescence.

Because what adolescents do, they create instant communities.

Wherever the adolescent goes, adolescent tries to team up with peers.

Actually, adolescents are much more influenced by peers and much more educated by peers, including sexual education, than by anyone else.

The peers of the adolescent, the people who are in the same age group, they influence the adolescent and they teach the adolescent much more than any teacher, any professor, any mother, and any father, and any grandmother and any grandfather. Peers are crucial in adolescence.

Because peers are crucial and they are their reference point, the adolescent always measures himself against the peers.

Am I like them? Am I not like them? Am I liked by them? Do they dislike me? Do they criticize me? Do they want me? Do they hate me?

There's always this, remember, imaginary audience.

So the adolescent always measures himself against the peer group and this creates a community in effect.

Adolescents are excellent at creating communities, and when they fail, they isolate themselves completely.

And actually, if an adolescent fails to create a community, this could have severe mental health consequences.

Adolescents that are rejected socially, they fail to create a community.

This kind of adolescents are anxious, depressed, and they have a pretty high suicide rate.

So social rejection is life-threatening in adolescence.

Not only in adolescence, by the way. Social rejection is life-threatening.

So adolescents will do anything. If they cannot belong to this group, they will create their own group.

If they are rejects and freaks, then they will team up with other rejects and freaks, and they will create their own community.

This is the exo system.

In between adolescence and early or young adulthood, we transition to the macro system.

The macro system is the culture. The culture we are in.

What is culture? Culture is a set of stories. Culture is a group of narratives.

Culture tells you this is right to do, this is wrong to do. Culture tells you, this is how you should behave, this behavior is not acceptable.

Culture tells you this is a common history. Culture tells you all other people are bad, we are the only good group.

Culture tells you many, many things. Culture is a kind of in-group.

We make a distinction between in-group and out-group.

In-group is the group we belong to. Out-group is everyone else.

And of course, our in-group is superior. We are the cleverest. We are the handsomest. We are the most amazing. We are. Or, we are victims. The out-group is evil and malicious and bad people. We are good people. We are victims.

So, there's a narrative. The macro system is a series of stories and it's very important to understand.

Animals need food. Animals need food, we also need food from time to time.

We, human beings, we need stories, not food. The thing that makes us human is stories, meaning. We need to find meaning.

If we don't find meaning, if we don't make sense of the world, we'd rather die than we prefer to die. If the world doesn't make sense to us anymore, we want to die.

We need to understand the world and we need to write a story which explains the world to us and explains us to the world.

So this is the stage, the macro system is a stage where we create a culturally conforming narrative, a narrative which would allow us to fit into society and into our culture.

This process is done in two ways.

Socializationand acculturation.

Socialization is when the child and then the adolescent is taught how to belong in society, how to behave in society, how to flirt with the other sex, how to work with other people, how to collaborate, how to. It's the period of how to.

These guides, these manuals, user manuals, society's user manuals, they are called scripts. So socialization is about scripts.

Acculturation is the same. Socialization is how to behave in society, how to fit in, how to be effective in society, how to collaborate, how to achieve outcomes in society.

Acculturation is how to do the same in a culture.

What's the difference between society and culture?

A culture can include many societies. For example, Western culture is the same in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Australia, in Israel, so it includes many societies.

Culture is much more important than society. Much more important.

That's why people emigrate. They live in one society, but they belong to the same culture. So they feel comfortable to move from Macedonia to Serbia or from Macedonia to Germany. It's the same culture. We are mobile within the same culture.

Society is much less important actually.

Takeaway (5/8)

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Scripts are learned behaviors that define how individuals interact with society, and some are fundamental to a person's identity. Gender roles are a prime example, as they dictate how individuals are expected to behave based on their biological sex, and deviating from these roles can lead to feelings of disconnection from one's identity. Cultural variations exist, such as in northern Albania, where women can choose to adopt male roles if no male heirs are present, illustrating the flexibility of gender roles in different societies. Developmental transitions can be disrupted by factors such as neurodevelopmental disorders, like autism, or adverse childhood experiences, including poverty and family dysfunction, which can hinder a child's ability to form a stable identity. These disruptions can have lifelong psychological and physical consequences, affecting an individual's sense of self and their ability to navigate social interactions.

Can you give me an example of a script? Something that your father and your mother teach you about how to behave in society in a way that you will obtain results and you will be accepted. Can you give me an example?

Based of course on your biology, on your family, because everything builds on the foundation. There's a foundation, it's a tower. It's like a tower.

So can you give me an example of a script?

To be kind to other people? That's a behavioral social script. True. That's true.

But a much more important fundamental script, which...

Respect is a behavioral script. But I'm talking about a script that defines you, that if I take away this script from you, you will not feel yourself.

So, you can be kind, but you can also be unkind. So it's not a problem with it. You will still feel yourself.

But there are scripts. There are some scripts that if I take them away from you, you will not feel that you are the same. You will feel very strange, very bizarre.

Don't spend more than you can earn?

That's a behavioral script. But you can spend more than you can earn and you will still feel like Marlon.

I want something that if I take it away, that I want, what is a script?

A script is when I teach you how to behave. I'm telling you you must behave this way. I'm telling you to behave this way.

If I take it away from you, you will not feel the same person. You will feel like a different person.

Okay, I will not torture you. Although it's a pleasure to torture you, but I will not torture.

Gender. Men and women, we are born, yes, being, alien, did you say it, belonging is the outcome of socialization and acculturation.

If you follow the scripts, you feel that you belong. We'll discuss belonging later.

It's not a script, it's the outcome of a script.

But men and women, we are all born with biology. Well, most of us are born with biology.

This biology is male-female.

In very rare cases, like in extremely rare cases, a baby is born with both genitalia. Male genitalia and female.

These babies are known as androgynous babies, but that's extremely rare.

Vast majority of human beings are born with male or female organs. And this is known as sex determined at birth.

Okay.

But then you are taught how to be a man or a woman. You're taught. They teach you how to be men and they teach you how to be women.

There is no necessary connection between your biology and your gender role.

That's why it's called a role. You're acting.

This is called performative role. It's a performance.

To be a woman is a performance.

Obviously, you all have makeup. It's a performance. Makeup. Actors put makeup. We are putting makeup.

So it's a performance. And it's a role and you learn it.

So if you as a small child, you're two years old, and you're a girl, you're a girl. That means you have a specific set of biological genitalia.

And as a girl, at two years old, you climb on trees, you beat up all the boys, and you like carpentry.

You are very likely, people are very likely to tell you what kind of behavior is this. You're not like a girl at all. That's not how girls behave.

And if you're a boy, you're two years old, three years old, and you cry. You cry because you're sad.

You're very likely to be told, boys don't cry.

So we are socialized into gender roles. It's an example of a script that if I take it away from you, you will no longer feel yourself.

If I tell you you're not a woman anymore, what are you? Not much is left.

So this is a script that is all pervasive, a script that takes over.

By the way, there are cultures and societies where people can choose to be male or female, men or woman, I'm sorry. Male and female is biology. Men or women.

And one of these cultures is very near here. In northern Albania, when there is a family and there are no male heirs, there are no men born, only females are born.

One of the females can choose to become a man.

So in northern Albania, according to the Canoon, by the way, a woman can choose to become a man. She declares that she's a man. She wears men's clothing. She goes to coffee houses and smokes in public, which is, you know, so she becomes a man.

Everyone treats her as a man and the law treats her as a man. From that moment on, throughout the rest of her life, she's a man.

Because the family did not succeed to produce men, she became a man.

And that is in Northern Albania. That is not in the United States with transgender and I don't know what. That is not far from here.

So in many societies and cultures in Africa and so on, you are born as a male or a female, but you can choose to be a man or a woman. Absolutely. And that's an example of a script.

The process of transition between systems, transition from this to this to this, up to the chrono, by the way.

The chrono system is the period in history that you were born into, your generation.

If you look at me, I'm a boomer. I'm the boomer generation, the worst generation ever. And if you look at you, you are Z, I think, Z generation.

So we belong to different generations. We have different experiences, different values, different cars, I hope. Different.

So we are different just by being born into a specific year and a specific generation. That's enough to define us in some ways.

So this is the chrono system.

So in the transition from biology, geese, tiny geese, to the chrono system, which is a whole generation all over the world, this transition through socialization and acculturation continues in most people, but not in all people. In most, but not in all.

You realize this is a process. It's an evolution.

The baby becomes child, the infant becomes toddler, the toddler becomes child, the child becomes adolescent, and so on.

It is not smooth, as I mentioned to you, these jumps.

By the way, there's a technical term for this. I love technical terms because it makes me look intelligent.

The technical term is punctuated equilibrium. That means it's not smooth, but it's like that.

So this is punctuated equilibrium.

So these transitions happen to most people.

Can you give me two cases where these transitions will be disrupted? Will not happen. At some point or another, the person will get stuck.

Can you give me two reasons for this to happen? Why would this happen? Why would this happen? Why a child would not make these transitions? Why a child would get stuck? A child can get stuck here, a child can get stuck here, here, at any stage, why would anyone get stuck? Can you think?

Why?

Afraid.

Sorry?

Yeah, but why?

Everyone is afraid of something new.

This is very interesting point. This is a very interesting point, I promise you.

Remind me of your name?

Yes.

After age 60, there is something called cognitive decline. It's when you're beginning to lose your memory, and you don't know where you are, and who you are.

So I'm 64, you can imagine.

Okay. Yuliana, I got it right until next time, Yuliana said that there is a kind of fear, that fear inhibits the child. The child cannot, and this is a very correct observation, by the way.

However, all children overcome the fear.

And I will describe to you one moment of such terror, complete terror, that all children overcome. They succeed to overcome.

When the child is about 18 months old, the child begins to notice something very strange. The child begins to notice that mother is an external object. She's outside. The child begins to realize that he and mother are not the same.

She's terrified. We discussed it, I think, last time.

And then the child begins to explore the outside, the external. The child begins to explore the world.

And it's frightening, because it's a two-year-old child, not even, two-year-old child, without a mother taking on the entire world. It's pretty terrifying.

So here's a moment of terror which the child overcomes. There's no greater terror than this.

This is known as separation individuation. I mentioned it last time. Margaret Mahler.

Fear is not the explanation.

Okay, I will help you with one example, but on condition that you give me another one.

What's happening here is called sadism. It's when someone likes to torture other people. And because there's nothing you can do about it, you know, you're my hostages. I'll give you one example.

Imagine that the child is born with a brain defect, with what we call a neurodevelopmental disorder, or a neurocognitive disorder.

Can you give me one example of a neurodevelopmental disorder?

Have you heard of neurodevelopmental disorders?

Did you hear about autism? Autism spectrum disorder?

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder. It's a damage to the brain, one way or another. The brain is abnormal in structure and in function.

Of course, such a child cannot develop normally and does not succeed to transition from one system to another.

And autistic people, especially, extreme autism, they're totally cut off from the world in effect.

Even people with autism, who are high functioning, these are people with autism who can function in society, and they're very good at their job. For example, they're great computer programmers, mathematicians, and so and so forth, professors of psychology.

So even people with autism, with high-functioning autism, they are not connected to the world. They cannot read, they cannot understand other people. They cannot read social cues, body language. They can't. They're inside their mind.

So neurodevelopmental disorders and neurocognitive disorders disrupt the process.

Can you give me another example of this?

Why would, what would be something that disrupts the process of this transition, of this development, of this evolution into an adult?

Because you're an adult only when you reach this point. This is where you become adult.

You must go through all the...

What could disrupt it?

You start to develop and then boom something and you're stuck and that's it for life.

So we said something in the brain.

Have a look at the systems.

Biology, that's the brain.

Next cycle is family.

No, I'm giving you a hint. Don't be so afraid. You can be wrong. Process of learning is based on mistakes, not on getting it right, but on getting it wrong.

So don't be so afraid to be wrong. I will not do anything to you. I think. We'll see. What?

For example, if the family is so poor and they don't have money to raise the child.

Very true. Poverty affects this. True.

Family, focus on the family. It's poor. What other options with the family?

If the family is poor, the children don't have the opportunities to develop.

By the way, it affects the brain. There are studies that show that in poor families, brain development in the children is much slower. That's a fact.

In poor families, brain development in the children is much slower. That's a fact.

In rich families, there is another problem.

It's known as impulse control or inhibition.

The children don't learn to socialize because they think they are entitled. No one can tell them what to do.

So, in these types of families, I'll give you another example, a family where the mother or the father or both are abusive. They're physically abusive, psychologically abusive, verbally abusive.

So these types of families, they're called dysfunctional families. Dysfunctional families can also arrest the development. It used to be called arrested development. They can arrest the developments.

And the child begins to develop, boom, stuck. And the child doesn't thrive.

Now there's a name for that. There was a big study, the biggest in history, by the way, of this arrested development, of cases where children cannot develop. And the outcomes, the consequences are lifelong and they're not only psychological.

For example, people who grow up in poor families, dysfunctional families, super-rich families and so on so forth, later in life, they have a lot more heart attacks a lot earlier.

So the body is affected also, lifelong.

And this study is the biggest in history, by the way. And this study is called ACE. ACE, Adverse Childhood Experiences, the ACE study.

So today we know, and the ACE study included only 10 elements of dysfunctional families, including divorce, for example.

So today we know that the development of the child can be disrupted early and this could have lifelong consequences, psychological and physical, body as well.

And if it is very, very early, like if there is a disruption in development, in evolution, much earlier than 36 months, the child fails to develop a self. The child has no self. No core identity, no feeling of essence, no stability in terms of who the child is. The child doesn't know.

When this child grows up, he doesn't know who he is.

So this kind of child needs other people to tell him when he grows up, when he becomes adult. This kind of child needs other people to tell him who he is.

So this kind of child when he grows up, he goes to other people all the time and says, am I like that? Is this true? All the time he needs feedback from other people. And if he doesn't get this feedback, he feels that he does not exist.

I have a puzzle for you, for a change.

Why don't you remember anything from age one?

Why?

Do you remember what you did yesterday? More or less? Yeah? More or less? A year ago? More or less? Probably. Do you remember what you did when you were 10 months old? Do you have any memory from 10 months old?

No.

Why? Don't you think it's strange? I mean you're born with a brain. Why don't you have?

This is known as infantile amnesia. And there are two reasons for this.

When you are very young, when you are one year old, two years old, and even three years old, you don't have a story, you don't have a narrative, and you don't have empathy.

Let me explain.

If I give you now a list of words, fall, wet, rain, forest, me, go. Ten minutes later, would you remember these words?

Some of them.

You remember some, but not all.

But if I say it was raining, I was wet and I went to the forest.

You're likely to remember it much more.

Memory is a function of narrative. To remember we must have a story.

It's not enough to expose you to numbers or to words. They must be connected.

The interconnectedness of words and numbers, the narrative cohesion is crucial for memory. There is very little memory where there is no story.

Let me give you an example. Look.

Okay. Which one has a narrative?

It's the same number of lines.

Same number of lines.

Yes, there are six.

Six there and six here.

Which one has a narrative? Which one has a story?

The first one has a story? What's the story of the first one?

The second you think? You have to explain why you... I mean, there are only two, so it's either the first one's the same.

You have to explain why.

Why?

Don't be afraid of me. Don't be afraid of me. I mean, I will punish you, but yeah.

Tell me the narrative. Think that we are sitting in a kafana and you're telling me a story. Tell me the story of the second.

Why?

Because there's space to do that.

What does the space say?

Let me help you. What does the space say? Let me help you.

It's a narrative. 1 plus 2 equals 3. And we get another number. It's like the room level 1, 2, spacebut this is definitely a narrative. Is there anyone here who doesn't know that one plus two is three?

No one.

No one. All the students know, some of the teachers also.

This is not a narrative.

Now here's something interesting, which you noticed.

Here's something interesting.

The less order we have, the more chaos, the more narrative we have.

Look, look again.

This is very organized. Yes? This is very regular. There's a lot of order here.

No? This is much more organized and orderly than this.

But this has no meaning. This has meaning. The more disorder, the more chaos, the more we need a story to make sense. the more a story emerges.

Where is there more chaos? When you are a baby or when you are adolescents? Where is more disorder? Where is more mess? When you are baby or when you're adolescent?

Adolescent, of course.

When you're a baby, there's food, mommy diapers.

Diapers, mummy food, mommy diapers.

How many combinations?

Three, nine combinations.

That's the world of the baby.

But when you're adolescent, it's a mess.

You have millions of configurations and so.

So this is baby and this is adolescent.

Less order, more narrative, more story. More order, less meaning, more story. More order, less meaning, less sense.

Without meaning and without narrative and without sense, we cannot have memory. That's why children don't have memory.

They don't have a story. They don't have a narrative.

They do have memory, like they have memory for about an average of 20 seconds.

The average memory of a baby under age six months is about 20 seconds.

They do have this. By the way, adults have this also.

When there is no narrative, adults remember things 10 to 20 seconds and then forget them.

When there is no narrative.

So, first thing important is narrative.

In the absence of narrative, baby doesn't remember anything, infantile amnesia.

Second thing is empathy.

The big discovery of the 1960s was that we create who we are, we become who we are, by interacting with other people.

Everything inside us, the unconscious, the conscious behaviors, cognitions, emotions, you name it. Everything inside us has to do with our interactions with other people.

You remember I told you about the feral children, the children who were left in the woods, in the jungle, you know, they didn't have it.

So, in the absence of other people, there's no me. There's no self. There's nothing, no entity that can remember.

If you don't have a self, who will do the memorizing? Who will remember? If you don't have a self, you cannot remember. And if you don't have other people around you, you don't have a self. And if you don't have a self again, you cannot remember.

The baby does not recognize the existence of other people externally and separately. He recognizes that other people exist and so on so forth, but the interaction of the child up to age more or less five years old, the interaction is extremely limited and is based on needs. I need something. I need food. I need to play. I need this toy. I need.

So the baby is focused on itself, not on others. The baby does not recognize that other people exist in any meaningful way, except as providers, service providers.

And therefore, the baby doesn't have full-fledged empathy. It is true empathy that we connect with other people, and it is by connecting to other people that we become who we are, and it is by becoming who we are, by having an identity that we can remember.

Because you need, in order to remember, you need to be someone. Someone needs to do the remembering.

By the way, it goes the other way also. If you don't have memories, you don't have identity.

So it's two ways. If you don't have identity, you cannot remember. Who will do the remembering? If you don't have memories, you don't have identity, you cannot remember. Who will do their remembering? If you don't have memories, you don't have identity.

Can you give me an example of someone who has no memories and therefore has no identity? An example of a human being without memories and therefore this human being has no identity. Can you give me an example? Can you give me an example, Lydia Angeluska? Huh?

You.

Politicians.

No, but I'm talking about human beings. Human beings. Let's talk about human beings.

Who doesn't have a memory and therefore loses his identity or her identity?

Have you heard of Alzheimer?

Alzheimer, dementia?

The core feature of Alzheimer is a loss of memory.

Consequently, these people in the extreme stages, the last stages, terminal stages, Alzheimer, and other dementias, these people have no identity. They don't know who they are. They don't recognize their husbands, their wives, their children, they have no memory of what they've done, and so on so forth.

Alzheimer's and dementia are wonderful compared to another disease, a disease known as Korsakoff syndrome.

Korsakoff syndrome is when you drink too much, like me, and ultimately, this damages your brain. It destroys your brain completely. The alcohol destroys your brain completely, and you become a Korsakoff patient.

Korsakoff patients have memory which is between 20 seconds and 5 minutes. They are unable to create long-term memories because their hippocampus is shot, destroyed. So maximum they can remember 5 minutes.

So when you meet a Korsakoff patient, you meet a Korsakoff patient, you meet a Korsakoff patient, hello, my name is, I don't know what, and you shake hands, my name is Sam. What's your name? My name is Zohan.

Okay. Five minutes later, he would say, who are you? I'm Sam. Oh, pleased to meet you, I'm Zohar. Five minutes later, who are you? I'm Sam, Zohar. And this continues forever. This is the Kosakoff patient.

When you ask the Kosakoff patient who they are, they don't know.

However, Korsakoff patients maintain a kind of memory that is known as working memory or semantic memory and it's a memory of how to do things.

So Korsakoff's patient can play the piano, for example, or work on a computer without any problem.

We will come to memory, we will discuss memory. It'sa fascinating field, amazing field, which demonstrates the brain's complexity.

But you got the picture.

The baby cannot connect to other people because the baby doesn't have empathy and the baby doesn't have a story.

Takeaway (7/8)

Previous takeaway – Next takeaway

Empathy develops through three stages: reflexive, cognitive, and emotional (affective). Reflexive empathy occurs in infants as a basic response to stimuli, while cognitive empathy emerges around ages two to three, allowing children to connect observed behaviors with emotions but lacking emotional response. Emotional empathy develops later, enabling individuals to act compassionately based on their understanding of others' feelings. Some individuals, such as those with narcissistic or antisocial personality disorders, may become "stuck" in the earlier stages, exhibiting cold empathy without emotional engagement. Additionally, concepts like cathexis, self-regulation, and the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning illustrate the complexities of emotional and cognitive development throughout the lifespan.

Let's talk a bit about empathy. A bit more about empathy.

It is such a pleasure to erase, much more than to write. Erasing is fun. Erasing is fun.

Okay. Empathy.

There are three types of empathy. Reflexive, cognitive, and emotional, affective.

Again, these levels of empathy represent developmental stages.

This course is about human development through the lifespan.

And as we're beginning to see, as we grow older, we have the same things, but they become different with time.

So we start with reflexive empathy and then it becomes emotional empathy.

And there's no connection between reflexive empathy and emotional empathy. It's as if we become different human beings from stage to stage.

It's an amazing process, similar to the butterfly.

So, reflexive empathy.

Reflexive empathy is when the baby sees mother smiling, mother smiles at the baby, and the baby smiles back.

That's a reflex. The baby doesn't know that mother exists.

Babies smile back 24 hours after they're born. Babies don't know that mother exists at this stage. 24, they can't even see, by the way. They cannot even see.

But she smiles, the baby smiles. That's a reflex.

And this reflex is based on something called mirror neurons, which we'll not discuss here.

A bit later in life, around the ages of two or three years old, the child develops cognitive empathy.

So the baby will see mother smile and smile back.

The child will see mother smiling and he will say, mother is happy.

So there is a connection, connecting of concepts to observed behaviors. Mother is smiling, she must be happy.

Why?

Because when I'm happy, I'm smiling. When I'm happy, I'm smiling. When other people are smiling, they're happy.

This is cognitive.

But there is no emotional reaction, especially around age 2 or a bit less. There's no emotional reaction.

So such a child can see someone crying and not do anything. He will see someone crying and the child will say in his mind, she is crying, she is sad.

But that's it. There will be no action.

Why?

Because this is missing. Emotional affective empathy. Emotional affective empathy.

Emotional affective empathy is, mother is crying. I think she said, because when I am sad, I'm crying, so I think she said, mother is crying, that is reflexive. I think she said that is cognitive.

I'm going to hug mommy. I'm going to hug mommy because I want to make her happy.

That's emotional empathy. That's the later stage, five years old, more or less.

Again, people can get stuck.

People can get stuck.

For example, people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and with antisocial personality disorder, also known as psychopaths, these people do not have emotional empathy. They don't have this.

These people get stuck and they have only reflexive and cognitive.

I coined the phrase cold empathy, which is now used in the literature also. Cold empathy is reflexive plus cognitive but without emotion. It is cold. It's not warm.

Let me give you an example.

Imagine that there are two guys, two guys in a bar.

Okay? They go to the bar, and there's a woman crying in the corner.

One of the guys is a healthy, normal, nice, kind person. The other guy is, let's say, a psychopath.

Psychopath is someone who has only cold empathy, has no emotional empathy, is exploitative, is goal-oriented, and so.

So there are these two guys and there's a woman crying.

The healthy guy would say, she's crying. I know that when I'm sad I'm crying, so she must be said, and because she said, I will make her happy.

So it goes to her, I'm going to do anything for you, what's wrong, want to talk about it, and so on.

This is emotional empathy.

The psychopath would say, she's crying, that's reflexive. When I'm sad, I feel like crying, so she must be sad, that's cognitive.

But then the psychopath will say, oh, I can steal money from her because she's destructive, she's crying, she doesn't notice, I can steal her purse. Or I can have sex with her. She's vulnerable. I can have sex with her.

So the psychopath will not transition into emotional empathy, but will immediately ask what's in it for me. How can I benefit from it?

So there are groups of people who are stuck at this stage, and they don't have this.

Okay?

What we are doing in this lecture, in this day, is I'm giving you all the parameters of development across life, so society, this, that empathy, and so on, so that we can begin to discuss, next time, we can begin to discuss specific theories of development because all these theories are using these concepts. They're using these words. If you are not acquainted with these concepts and words, you will not understand anything from this series.

Next.

Next is Cathexis, attitude, motivation.

So I'm now like introducing you to the dictionary, to the vocabulary. Okay?

Cathexis is emotional investment, emotional investment, commitment to a specific type of action, a specific behavior.

I'm emotionally invested in this project, I'm emotionally invested in teaching, I'm emotionally invested in running away from the class the minute I can.

You know, this is emotional investment. This is known as cathexis.

Attitude is a set of beliefs about yourself and about the world.

So for example, if you say, I'm pretty stupid, I'm a constant failure, I'm not likely to succeed, then you will not try. If your attitude is self-defeating, then you will not even try.

Attitudeconditions motivation. Attitude is a condition, precondition for motivation.

If on the other hand, your attitude is I'm a genius, I can do anything I want, I will always succeed, then of course your motivation will be very high.

Motivation is the driving force, the driving force to act. That's generally speaking, when we discuss specific theories, we'll come to it.

When we discuss specific theories, we'll come to it a bit later.

Okay, executive function.

These are concepts that we're going to use later when we discuss specific theories. You remember, yes?

So today's dictionary day, I'm sorry. It's as boring as dictionary.

Executive function emerges only in adolescence. Children do not have executive function, or very reduced executive function.

Executive function emerges in adolescence, and even then it is very primitive and very basic.

Executive function in its fullest form starts after age 25 or 30.

Consequently, in adolescence, there is a huge activity of emotions. Emotions are very powerful and there is no executive to control them.

The areas in the brain that control emotions, control impulses, are very primitive in adolescence.

So adolescents are driven by very strong emotions and very strong cognitions also, but they are out of control because there's nothing in the brain that helps them to execute, helps them to manage. There's no management system.

This management system in adults is known as executive function and it includes adaptation.

As the environment changes, the executive system dictates a change in behavior.

So the environment changes and the individual reacts by changing his or her behavior.

Self-regulation, that means control, we will talk about it a bit later, essentially self-control, and self-efficaciousness or self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is the ability to obtain or to extract beneficial, favorable outcomes from the environment.

The environment could be human environment, other people. The environment could be non-human environment, but to get best outcomes, best consequences, best results from the environment is called self-efficacy.

Adolescents don't have these. Adolescents are much less adaptive than adults. They're very rigid.

And so when an adolescent is frustrated, or when an adolescent comes across adverse circumstances, or when an adolescent is rejected or disappointed, the adolescent loses it. There's no adaptation. The self-regulation of adolescence is very reduced. We'll discuss it in a minute.

And adolescents are not actually very self-efficacious. In other words, they're not so good at manipulating or shaping the environment to obtain the best outcomes. They're not so good at it. They're more passive, they're more reactive. They react to the environment. They don't try so much to shape it.

So this is executive function.

Next, regulation.

Healthy, normal people, especially adults, but not adolescents, so much. Adults have something called self-regulation.

Self-regulation simply is when you have emotions, when you have moods, you up or down, when you have impulses, you want to do something very strongly.

You control it. You're in control. Impulse control. Emotional regulation. you control it, you're in control, impulse control, emotional regulation, mood stabilization, mood lability is when you cannot stabilize the mood, mood lability, when you cannot stabilize, emotional dysregulation is when you cannot regulate emotions. And lack of impulse control is when you cannot control your impulses, your drives, your urges. You want to do something, you have to do it, you do it, that's it. You don't care.

So, self-regulation is a sign of healthy maturation and development and a major feature of adulthood.

The healthy adult is fully in control of his or her emotions, moods and impulses.

Dysregulation is the opposite of self-regulation. Dysregulation is when you cannot control impulses, moods, and emotions. They control you.

So, when you have an emotion, you're overwhelmed. The emotion overwhelms you. It drowns you. You cannot cope with the emotion, it's too strong. You know, you see a sad movie, you fall apart, you cry. The emotions overwhelm you.

This is emotional dysregulation.

Or moods, you're up and down, you're depressed, you're euphoric, you're this, you're that, and you cannot control it. It's that, and you cannot control it. It's internal and you cannot control it.

Impulses, you want to do something, you do it, you don't care about the consequences, you don't care about other people, you just have to do it, and that's it, you must do it.

So this is dysregulation.

The most extreme form of dysregulation is in a mental health disorder known as borderline personality disorder.

People with borderline personality disorder, they have emotional dysregulation.

Actually, emotional dysregulation in borderline personality disorder is so bad that in big parts of the world, it's not called borderline personality disorder. It's called emotional dysregulation disorder.

It's because the emotional dysregulation is really, really bad in borderline.

The borderline falls apart whenever she experiences positive and negative emotion. Whenever she experiences love, she falls apart. Whenever she experiences rejection. Hurt. She's hurt. She falls apart.

You cannot control her emotions. They control her.

Impulses, the most extreme form of lack of impulse control is the psychopath.

Psychopaths have no impulse control.

The psychopath wants sex, wants money, wants something, he will get it now. He doesn't care, who is hurting, what happens around. If the police is, he doesn't give, you know, a fig. He goes for it. He is goal-oriented. It's like a machine.

So there's no impulse control in psychopathy.

Dysregulation can happen for many reasons.

For example, in borderline personality disorder, there is dysregulation when the borderline is rejected, when the borderline is abandoned. She goes into emotional dysregulation.

In other cases, when there are many demands, even healthy people can go into dysregulation if they are in a crisis under a normal stress.

So the outside environment generates internal dysregulation. It's a reaction to a very difficult environment.

And finally, there's something called external regulation.

People who are habitually dysregulated, people who are dysregulated all the time, like borderlines, like narcissists.

What they do, they use other people to regulate them.

So the borderline, for example, the borderline is overwhelmed by her emotions. Her emotions destroy her from inside. She's falling apart. She's crying. she's screaming, she can't control it. I'm saying she because historically most borderlines were women. Today half of all borderlines are men, so don't make a mistake.

And so the borderline is incapable of coping with her emotions. What she does, she finds an intimate partner. She finds a boyfriend, or he finds a girlfriend.

And the boyfriend or the girlfriend regulate the emotions. They regulate the moods.

These people are using other people to regulate themselves.

So, for example, if there's a borderline and she has a boyfriend and he tells her, wow, you're so beautiful today, you're amazing, she's in the sky, her mood is effusive and so and so forth.

But of course, if he tells her you're ugly today, he has the opposite effect.

The regulation comes from the outside. This is called external regulation.

Narcissists do the same.

Narcissists don't have a stable sense of self-worth. In other words, narcissists don't have a stable self-esteem.

The self-esteem of the narcissist depends on feedback from other people. Other people need to tell the narcissist, you're a genius, you're gorgeous, you're this, and then the narcissist takes this attention, takes this narcissistic supply, and regulates his sense of self-worth, self-confidence and self-esteem.

It's an example of external regulation.

Again, these are also the stages in human development.

Babies and children, up to age 9 plus cannot regulate. They rely on external regulation. They don't regulate from the inside.

Then around the age of 2 years old and around the age of 12 to 15, there are periods of dysregulation.

Two years old, they throw temper tantrums, they break toys, etc. This is known as the terrible twos.

And similarly, adolescents, especially in early adolescence, 12 to 15, 12 to 16, they are internally dysregulated and it shows in their behavior or in their reactions and so.

So this regulation is common in these periods.

Self-regulation appears only in adulthood.

Again, we have a situation here where concepts in psychology apply differently to different parts and phases of life.

So it is wrong to study psychology. There's no such thing. There is psychology of children, psychology of adolescence, and psychology of adults. There's no such thing as human psychology. Simply not such thing.

Because the differences are enormous, almost like differences between species.

The differences between children and adolescents are much bigger than the differences between men and women. Much, much bigger. So you can imagine.

Okay. Inductive versus deductive reasoning.

The child and the adolescent.

What they do, they collect information. They observe, they study, they read, they collect information.

All the time they collect information. They listen to figures of authority like teachers, parents, role models, influential peers, and so on. And they collect information.

And then what they do based on this information, they create a theory. They have a lot of information and they create a theory.

And this theory guides them, and this is known as inductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning, as I said, is common to early stages of life.

When you become an adult, you transition from inductive reasoning to deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is when you study the theory and the principles and then you apply them to your observations.

You don't go from observations to theory, you go from theory to observations. And then the observations prove the theory or falsify the theory.

Takeaway (8/8)

Previous takeaway

The dual process model of thinking includes intuitive, analytic, and critical thinking, with the latter being essential for distinguishing truth from falsehood. Intuitive thinking is emotional and impulsive, prevalent in children and adolescents, while analytic thinking is more common in adults and involves data analysis. Critical thinking applies to all forms of thinking and allows individuals to recognize when their intuitions or analyses may be incorrect. Metacognition, which encompasses self-awareness and reality testing, is crucial for understanding one's own thought processes and establishing priorities. The discussion also touches on the complexities of human development, suggesting that while brain development is smooth, life transitions between stages are not clearly understood and may relate to evolutionary adaptations.

Summary

Dual process model.

Dual process model says that there are two types of thinking, intuitive thinking and analytic thinking.

But I think it's wrong. I think we should add critical thinking. I think there are three types of thinking.

Intuitive thinking is emotional, essentially. It's like emotional thinking. It's impulsive, it's immediate, it's emotional, it's fast, no critical faculties, it's just, you know it's true when you ask someone with intuitive thinking, why do you think this way? I just know it, I know it's true, that's it.

Most grandmothers are like this, okay.

Analytic thinking is usually adult thinking.

So intuitive thinking is very common in childhood. Intuitive thinking is very common in childhood and in adolescence.

Analytic thinking is common in adulthood.

Analytic thinking, as the name implies, you analyze data and so on and so forth in order to derive general principles or vice versa, but there's a connection between principles and data via a process of analysis.

Critical thinking is not related to this tool. That's why I think it should be included. I think it should be three, not two.

Critical thinking is the ability to tell apart, true from false. True information from false information.

How to do that? There's a whole science on how to do that.

Butit's a third type.

Because you could be an intuitive thinker and realize that your intuition is wrong. So you could be intuitive critical. You could be analytic critical.

So critical thinking is not limited to analytical or intuitive, it applies to all thinking.

And this is, well, this is my addition, so this is the dual process model.

And finally, metacognition.

Metacognition involves self-awareness.

Children are beginning to be self-aware around the age of, well, depends.

Very basic self-awareness starts actually very early, a few weeks old. There's basic self-awareness. Like self-awareness of the body. This is known as proprioception.

But when I talk about self-awareness, I mean self-awareness of who you are, your limitations, your strengths, what you do best, what you don't know, to do, your skills, a well-developed, well-rounded perception of yourself. That's what I mean when I say self-awareness.

And this happens only in adulthood. Adolescents are not self-aware. Not in any meaningful sense. They get it wrong most of the time.

Their self-awareness is actually grounded in fantasy and not in reality.

Children in this sense of full-fledged self-awareness don't exist. They have absolutely no self-awareness.

Adolescence have some glimmers of self-awareness, but not fully. So this is self-awareness. Adolescents have some glimmers of self-awareness, but not fully. So this is self-awareness.

Self-awareness is connected to something known as reality testing.

Reality testing is the ability to gauge reality appropriately, to realize that this is reality. This is what's happening.

And so this perception of reality and to trust your own judgment of reality, this is known as reality testing.

You cannot be self-aware if your reality testing is impaired. If your reality testing is short, it's problematic. You don't appreciate reality properly. You're wrong about reality. You attribute all kinds of elements to the wrong causes and so on and so forth.

Then definitely you cannot be self-aware.

Some people will try to influence your reality testing. Some people, abusers, they will try to influence your reality testing.

You will tell them something and they will tell you you're wrong. That's not the way it is.

So, for example, you have a boyfriend and you have to fight with him. And you say to him, during the fight, you called me bad names.

And he would say, no way. I never called you bad names. You're completely wrong about it.

But wait a minute, I have a recording. Not true. I don't know when this recording is from. I did not call you yesterday any bad names.

This kind of person is trying to influence your reality testing. He is trying to make you distrust your reality testing, and this process is known as gaslighting, if you heard of it.

Abusers, in abusive relationships, the abuser usually tries to make you doubt your own ability to appreciate reality properly, to make you doubt your own reality testing by insisting on a version of events that has nothing to do with reality.

And then the term gaslighting comes from two movies, two movies made in the 40s.

And in these two movies, there's this guy, and there's this rich woman.

So she falls in love with him, it's charming. I could fall in love with him, she falls in love with him and everything.

And they...

Yes? Sorry?

Again, it's called gaslight. Both movies are called gaslight. And so they get married and then he begins to make her doubt her own reality. He removes paintings from the wall.

And she wakes up in the morning and says, Where's the painting? Don't you remember that you removed it yesterday?

No, I did not remove it yesterday. You did, my dear. You did. Something is really wrong with you. You must see a psychiatrist, you must take medication.

And then he steals her jewelry. And she looks for the jewelry and she says to him, Where's my jewelry? What happened to my jewelry?

And she says, Yesterday you wore it. Yesterday you wore your jewelry. And I don't know where you left.

No, I didn't touch this jewelry for six months. Yesterday you wore it. You're very wrong.

So he makes her doubt. She begins to think that she's crazy, you know? He makes her think that she's crazy. He impairs her reality testing.

This is called gaslighting.

Prioritizing.

Part of metacognition is to establish priorities. This matters more than this.

So I will dedicate my resources to this. Priority number one is more important than priority number six.

So I will put my effort, my resources, my time, my investment, my money, I will put it on priority number one. Not on priority number six.

Now, in many studies and experiments with children, we found out the children and even adolescents, actually, there are a few studies two that I remember with adolescents, cannot prioritize.

When they have like option one, two and three and four, they will not know what to do and they will begin to do all four simultaneously. They cannot say, okay, I will do one because one is most important. They try to do all four.

And this is prioritizing.

Have you heard of the marshmallow experiment? Have you heard of it?

No. You haven't heard of the marshmallow experiment. I'm gaslighting you.

Marshmallow experiment is a very famous experiment. You're invited, you're instructed, to watch it online. It's very cute. It's like two minutes, three minutes.

Marshmallow experiment, there's no link. Go to YouTube and type marshmallow experiment. It's super cute.

The marshmallow experiment is this. They are two kids. But I mean babies, like two, three years old. And they're very cute. They sit in two chairs, you know, and there's this psychologist.

This experiment is proof positive that all psychologists are sadists.

The psychologist comes into a room and she puts marshmallows. Do you know what these marshmallows? Very tasty. She puts marshmallows on the table.

And she tells these poor babies, she tells them, if you wait a little and you don't eat the marshmallow, I will give you another one. If you eat the marshmallow, you can eat the marshmallow now, but that's it. You will not get another one.

But if you wait a little, I will give you another marshmallow and you will have two marshmallows to eat.

So then the experiment starts. She leaves the room. It's a she usually. She leaves the room and the babies begin to talk. Babies are two or three years old. Infants, infants, clinically infants. They begin to talk.

And so usually the girl, there's a girl and a boy. I'm kidding you not. I mean, watch it online. Usually the girl says, wait a minute, let's wait because we will get another marshmallow.

And the boy says, no, I'm going to eat marshmallow now. And the boy eats the marshmallow.

And so this is about something called delayed gratification.

The boy, not the boy, some of them are girls. It is being done with thousands of children, by the way.

So the children who eat the marshmallow immediately, there are children who have no concept of the future. They cannot visualize the future. And they cannot delay gratification. They need to be gratified now. They have no impulse control.

So this is an example of prioritizing. They're unable to prioritize. And they're unable to relevance.

Relevance is to decide, this is more relevant, this is less relevant. I will focus on the more relevant and I will ignore the less relevant.

Next is memorizing. This is all metacognition.

Metacognition is a very fancy word, very frightening word. It simply means thinking about your own thinking. Thinking about your own thinking.

So part of it is memorizing, strategies to memorize things, and deficiencies in memorizing, inability to grasp strategies of memory, inability to produce them. We'll talk about it in detail a bit later.

This in a nutshell, today what we did is I introduced you to the total vocabulary of development theories.

So from now on when we talk about development theories, if you remember this vocabulary, you will not have any difficulty to understand.

There are quite a few development theories, and as I said to you, we're going to start with the scientific ones, and we're going to end with the literary ones.

And all the development theories deal with two basic questions.

What happens to us from embryo to death? What happens to us from child to adolescent, what happens to us from adolescent to adult?

In other words, stages, life stages.

And the second question, the developmental theories, lifespan development theories in psychology deal with, is are there any commonalities, are there any things that are lifelong, that are stable, that define us as humans, never mind if we are one-year-old or 100-year-old. Is there anything common?

Each psychologist has his own answer.

That's one thing you're going to discover in psychology.

If you have two psychologists, you have three opinions, usually.

So it's a big problem in psychology. There is disagreement about literally everything, all the time.

So even here there's a huge disagreement.

I, for example, and you don't have to accept my opinion, definitely. You don't have to accept my opinion, but my opinion is that there are some commonalities, but these commonalities are artificial.

I do think that humans develop much more like butterflies. There are stages that are distinct, and it's not clear at all how the transitions happen.

The brain develops, of course, but the brain develops smoothly. The brain doesn't jump. There's a smooth development in the brain, but there is no smooth development in life.

And this disconnect between the hardware, the hardware develops smoothly, but in life, we, as children, we are not like adolescents and we are like adults, we are totally different people.

This has not been explained yet. There is no good explanation how this happens. How a child suddenly becomes adolescent.

Yes, the body changes, of course.

But it's a common mistake to think that the biggest changes in the body are in adolescence. That is not true at all. The biggest changes in the body are between the ages of zero and two, actually.

And between zero and two, there is a continuity, a psychological continuity. No disruption. Everything is the same.

So I don't think it's the body that explains these jumps.

Why do we jump? Why do we jump from one stage to the next?

There is a question of evolution. There is something called evolutionary psychology. And there's a question, is it helpful as far as evolution, as far as our survival as a species? Is it helpful that we jump?

Maybe the jumping allows us to better adapt and better respond to the environment.

It's a mystery and we're going to try to probe this mystery because if we don't find some kind of solution or answer, then what's the point?

Because if you read the title of the course from adolescent to adult, it's a very misleading title. It's a misleading title. It's like it's a road from Tetovoot to Scopium.

It's not. It's not.

And we need to resolve this.

And we'll try our best.

We'll try to use theories of other people. Maybe we will come up with a theory of our own. And future generations will learn about us. Who knows?

Okay. Thank you for being patient and for surviving. See some of you, I hope, next time.

Child, Adolescent, Adult: Life Stages or Different Species? (South East European University, SEEU)

How Thinking Shapes Us: Information Processing Theory (South East European University, SEEU)

Adolescent and Adult (Lifespan Development) Psychology (South East European University, SEEU)

Is Personal Growth Always Positive? (with Clinical Psychologist Daria Zukowska)

No Identity Without Memory (Lecture for Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don)

How You Recall Trauma (University Lecture)

Field Theory of Consciousness (9th Global Experts Meeting Neurology & Neuropsychiatry)

YOU are THE Master Text (Prophets of Narcissism: Louis Althusser, 1960s, SIAS-CIAPS Lecture)

A-ha Moment, Gut Instinct, Insight, Knowledge, Intuition: Epistemology in Psychology

Personality: Fact or Fiction? Self, Traits, and Types (South East European University, SEEU)

Collective Unconscious, Gaza, Jews, Zizek-Lacan, Peterson, Narcissism (with Prof. Matthew Biberman)