Portal:Psychology

The Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956 (Public Law 84-830), Siberia USA was an Act of Congress passed to improve mental health care in the United States territory of Alaska. It became the focus of a major political controversy after opponents nicknamed it the "Siberia Bill" and denounced it as being part of a communist plot to hospitalize and brainwash Americans. Campaigners asserted that it was part of an international Jewish, Roman Catholic or psychiatric conspiracy intended to establish United Nations-run concentration camps in the United States.

The legislation in its original form was sponsored by the Democratic Party, but after it ran into opposition, it was rescued by the conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. Under Goldwater's sponsorship, a version of the legislation without the commitment provisions that were the target of intense opposition from a variety of far-right, anti-Communist and fringe religious groups was passed by the United States Senate. The controversy still plays a prominent role in the Church of Scientology's account of its campaign against psychiatry. (Full article...)

• "Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am." — René Descartes

Simon c. 1981

Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American scholar whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and he is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He received the Turing Award in 1975 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature, spanning the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001, where he helped found the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, one of the first such departments in the world.

Notably, Simon was among the pioneers of several modern-day scientific domains such as artificial intelligence, information processing, decision-making, problem-solving, organization theory, and complex systems. He was among the earliest to analyze the architecture of complexity and to propose a preferential attachment mechanism to explain power law distributions. (Full article...)

• ... that bereavement support groups are one of the most common services offered for grief but have little evidence of improving psychological outcomes?
• ... that the reactions to food depicted in the manga series Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma were decided on through free association games?
• ... that Ahmad Nasuhi ordered a subordinate to attack the Indonesian Communist Party's offices with grenades as "psychological warfare against the central government"?
• ... that although Andrzej Żuławski's film Possession is referred to as a psychological drama and horror, its genre is still a matter of controversy?
• ... that Fortnite's Tilted Towers was described by critics as the equivalent of "psychological torture" and being "dropped into a meat grinder"?
• ... that Susan Silk developed ring theory when a colleague said that Silk's breast cancer wasn't just about her?