What is a psychological test instrument?

A psychological test is, or ought to be, a well developed and well investigated measurement tool, constructed to study parts of human behavior and human cognitive capabilities (thinking attitudes, habits and intellectual resources). As a measurement tool the test is focused towards areas that are believed as measurable, possible to study on a scale, often ranging from 0 up to an often large number of steps.
One of the problems using a test is that there are several question marks about what measureable really means. What is possible to measure – especially in a way that is invariable and perpetual over time and space? This is really a problem as we all know that all of us can vary in intensity and quality from day to day and from one social situation to another.
Another problem concerns the fact that being a measurement tool the result has to be compared to a large group of people = a norm group. All comparisons have to be founded on qualified statistical analysis. Average, standard deviations, mean values and a lot more have to become important parts of the conclusions. All scientifically based results show that the results could provide quite a lot of important data when a group of people is being tested.
Testing one single person only may lead to wrong results and wrong conclusions, which easily could be shown by anyone with slight knowledge of statistics.
That is the reason why I have never been interested in conducting psychological test invetigations of one single individual only. Each test has to be followed up by a profound psychologically conducted interview – or, at least, by many more tests.

Winter in Stockholm

It is February in 2010. The light has started to return. Stockholm is dressed in a big and large white dress. I think it is something that has to do with the preparations for a wedding that is going to occur in June. Our Crown Princess is then going to marry….well, no, of course not…the winter dress has nothing to do with that. Anyhow – it is quite beautiful. Skiing is possible in any park area, also on some streets. Skating is possible on any lake nearby. Why not take a trip to the Capital of Scandinavia?

The management of politicians in our time

Government. Governing. Head of State. Running The Whole Business (of a nation). Being a Prime Minister or perhaps even a President. Managing The Whole Lot.
It is of course very easy to create imaginations of the meaning and the real content of such a position. And the more He (or She) talks about the importance of the State and the more He (or She) acts as He (or She) is in the posession of the key to Almost Everything the more will the Culture of Dependency among the citizens increase. After a while more and more common people will raise their voices requiring all sorts of assistance and benefits of different kind. One of the most common outcry directed to the goverments is about better or more job opportunities, and the debate going on between the men/women in charge and the oppositional parties will more and more circulate around how to create work assignments. And that is of course OK as long as those kind of jobs are to become realized in the public sector, but it is a different chapter in the book to create jobs in the private sector. And in that chapter has to be written new and more easy adapted regulations for all those companies, big or small, that could open up for new employments.
It is a complicated game to play, running a nation and a state, especially when the dependency culture is widespread and counted as a state of normality.

Life – the biology

Who are you? Who am I? What is life?
If you are interested enough you can spend your whole life trying to get some answers on questions like these – and you will probably not have reached any final conclusions anyway.
But this is a beginning:
You are a very complex and complicated animal. The number of cells that together form your body and that are the biological steering system for everything going on within you is around 10 000 000 000 000 (ten trillion), which means that your body consists of a much, much larger number of cells than there are people on this planet.
Each single cell is constructed by around 15 millions molecules. Some of the molecules are organized as basic steering mechanisms, containing detailed instructions and regulations of how and what the cell shall do in its continuous flow of communication pattern with the surrounding cells. This basic steering is the well known DNA, built by “the four letters” A, T, G and C. These four letters are combined in variations that could be described as an instruction book, around 100 000 pages long. Many of these pages are just trash and are not used. But around 40 – 50 000 pages are important instructions read by the other molecules in each cell over and over again.
A cell has its own defense system, directed towards the enemies, the unknown, foreign elements that could destroy the cell. There is always a fight, a struggle, going on in between the defense molecules and the attacking foreign elements (bacterias, virus, other micro organisms). Good, strong cells will prevail for a while but other cells, the old ones or the not so very well functioning ones will lose the fight. Losing the fight means that the surrounding cells will try to cast out the infected cell, kill it, destroy it. Each and every second, day and night, you lose around 100 000 cells, which will become replaced by new ones. But by age the replacement factory will run out of stock of new cells – and one day it is all over. Your life has come to an end.

Are you prepared to kill and to die for your belief systems?

There is for sure a heavy peculiarity among people in many countries. Hundreds of thousands or even millions have been taught and trained to believe in the learnings of some prophets that lived 2 000 years ago or more, may they were named Jesus Christ, Muhammed or something else. Most of what was preached during those years has been corrected and changed by modern science, a fact that quite often is totally ignored by many of the present representatives of the old churches, mosques or temples. The old sayings from the original prophets are still looked upon as valid statements: There is a God that loves everyone that believes in him. This loving God has to be praised every day (otherwise….). Those who do not believe are sinners. The sinners have to be punished, or, in the best of cases, become excused and pardoned.
Several – and I mean many – think that they justify their learnings by appearing as warriors that have to violently fight all those that do not share their beliefs. They proclaim and act as blood thirsty wolfs, who are prepared to kill and to die in their struggle of convincing all heathens (non- or other-believers) of the oh-so-very-correct-borders between The Right and The Wrong.
And it does not matter if the most powerful nation in the world, USA, will send thousands and thousands of troops to violently strike back against the Belief Warriors, because those feel and believe that they have all the Mighty Powers of Heaven on their side and they are then in the long run the winners.
This is the case in Afghanistan, and in Israel, and in Somalia, and in Jemen, and in Pakistan.
So, what to do about it? Are there any alternative strategies?
Yes, there are always alternative strategies.
Could you, yourself, come up with any strategy idea?

Stepping just outside the border

Here I go again. Well inside the borders = the limits. Everywhere all those regulations. Do not walk against the red light. Do not overpass the rule of maximum 50 km/hour. Do not be late to the dinner table. Do not just stay in the bed after the bedside clock has sounded its alarm. Do not eat too much. Do not eat too little. Pay your taxes according to what the tax authorities tell you to do.
And all those basic commandments: Do not steal. Do not kill. Do not lie. Honour your parents. You should not rely on any other Gods than The Only One. Do not become inflamed of desire and craving towards the … you know…etc..
Most people are now and then breaking and violating all those directives, more or less openly. We are just stepping out of the borders, the box or the cage. A little, tiny bit, here and there. We do not like to act and feel just as we are living in a prison. Even if, in fact, this kind of prison brings some sort of confidence and security. But just a tiny little bit…
Those tiny bits could, after a while, become bigger and bigger. You know, you get accustomed to all those small violations. So after some time you just enlarge the cage and if nothing dangerous happens you could perhaps try a tiny little bit more, and after a while you….well, why not make the cage even bigger. And so on.
At last you will get to the point of anarchy. It will come sooner than expected if the authorities do not take any measures and deliver proper information of why the borders have been set as they have been.
Closing in to the anarchy level is the symtom of the loss of good enough authorities, which is well experienced and well known from all family situations.

72

I was born one year prior to the start of the Second World War. I am convinced that this has affected and influenced me in many ways. I have always carried a deep layer of more or less mild anxiety, probably transferred from my parents worries of the horrendous sceneries cabled out every day through radio and newspapers. I am still not far from my expectations of dangerous threats just around the corner. And I am still quite sceptical against modern trends where promises of this or that are provided by authorities or other people in a for me too easygoing way. I have quite a sharp critical mind: nothing is certain until proved. This kind of thinking has been, and still is, a key program for me as an investigator of other peoples’ personalities.
When I was around 35 – 40 years old I became quite upset and worried as I became a close witness to my parents’ ageing processes. They both passed away within five weeks in 1980: my dad from a heart attack, my mother from cancer. At that time I thought that I would not become so very long lived as I feared that my genes and my body construction were too weak. I went to the doctor checking my heart, such things, but he was very supportive, telling me that he would be very surprised if I died before 60 years of age.
Today I am 72, and in an hour I am on my way to once more lead the aerobic class in the famous Swedish physical training association called Healthy&Sweaty.
It is great. To still be alive.

The “fix it” culture

Fix it!
I am not thinking of the hit tune by Coldplay.
I am thinking of the welcomed and reassured attitude in our present society, where more and more people are trained to turn to different authorities with the request: Fix it!
We are all living in hierarchical social systems. There are always people “up there” seated in power positions. This is of course visible also within the medical organizations. It is very easy to become defined as a patient, even if you are not suffering from any well defined disease. And as a patient you have the right to ask for a fix-it-cure. So you do it.
The more of fix-it-caring systems the less we need to start to think and to re-think – for example about our general living conditions, about the political systems, about the issues of power and powerless, such things. To state it in a blunt way: We are moving towards a social system where less and less people occupy themselves with intellectual reflections.
We are trained to act as fix-it-consumers.
And – of course – there are some giant dragons that earn money of this growing situation. Fix it – and I, or rather someone somewhere, will pay for the cure. Just fix it!

So you think you can…work?

The TV series named “So you think you can dance” have been very much appreciated around the world, mostly due to the professionalism of the judges and to the devotion and hard work of the dancers. The main producer is the British former dancer and coreographer Nigel Lythgoe, who also is one of the judges.
I have to say that it is of a special interest to follow the young, daring, skilled and talented dance artists. They continuosly show their efforts and hard work to learn more, to develop, to try to succeed – not because it is a competition only, but for the sake of it: to really become a master of different dances. Most of the ones that are selected to become in the top twenty group will probably have a very good professional career in sight.

This being said I have to conclude that the general, common people living in many countries are not that goal oriented. Regrettably there are also quite a lot of young men and women, still at school, showing that they are not willing to go for it. It seems that they don´t care if thet receive grades enough and it seems even if they don´t care if they will get any good enough employment or not. Some of them (definitely not all) are spoilt youngsters that rely on their more or less rich parents, who have not taught them enough about the realities of life, and some are probably suffering from some kind of depression. But then there are also some that have not learned how to tackle the problems that always are there somewhere in the societies. Some of them seem to believe that there is a prince coming on his white horse around the corner, saving them, bringing them to attractive positions without any real requirements.
So you think you can…work?

Climate change is not the same as weather fluctuations

Hard winter weather in main parts of Asia, Europe and USA does not say anything at all about the global climate change. While some countries have been hit by very cold winds and lots of snow other countries have had, and still have, much warmer weather than normal. As examples: The coming Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada, have become a risk project as it is much warmer than normal and the snow is melting down. The temperature in southern Australia is reaching new high records – it has not been hot like this during the last 100 years. Weather is not the same as climate.
The warming up of Earth will probably lead to much, much greater damages than we can predict – and I am now thinking of the loss of the good enough living conditions for hundreds of millions of humans. This will probably create streams of refugees in a number hard to imagine.
Saying this I do not underestimate other kinds of future climate changes. New ice ages will also appear, creating new cathastrophic scenarios.
Am I too pessimistic?
No, I do not think so. I look upon myself being quite realistic and rational.
What to do about the global climate situation?
It has been written lots of articles and books about what you and I can start to do.
So let us do it.