User talk:Dr Joe Kiff

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Archive 1 Archive 2 User talk:Dr Joe Kiff Archive - 3

Take care

Tom Tom Michael, BSc - Mostly Zen ( talk ) 12:58, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Tom. Thats really good news. We missed you. Hope the PHD has gone well. Email me a phone number and I will be happy to advise, meet up etc. I like the 30 minute idea beats doing the crossword or sudoku!! Dr Joe Kiff 17:45, June 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Joe, I'm getting re-acquainted with the site, the layout and the editing. Its looking a lot better with less of those red links which make the wiki look a bit "dead". Its good that you and the others have copied over so much psych articles from wikipedia etc. I guess we'll have to decide on how far to go with copying over articles for which there are red links, i.e. do we really need the WP article on mathematics?


 * For today I'm mainly reading articles from the therapeutic approaches article, psychoeducational interventions for my PhD and getting an overview of some of the approaches for when I eventually have a clinical interview. I'm guessing that you need some quality editing now as the wiki is much more mature than last time I was active here. It will be a slow process, but one thing I could do is to write articles on my own work, after its been published (as either thesis/dissertation or journal articles) and cite them in the wiki article. This might only produce a few articles a year, but they would be of very high quality. For example, look at the authors of this article: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Working_memory


 * I will be away from Brum for the next 3 weekends (down in London doing neuropsych tests with some brain injured participants, and purely coincidentally staying at my girlfriends house) but will have a look at the wiki each Sunday morning for about half an hour. After that, we can meet up for a brainstorming session if you like?


 * Tom Michael, BSc, PGCert - Mostly Zen [[Image:Baby_tao.jpg]] ( talk ) 09:46, June 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Tom. My apologies for the delay in replying but my mother has been ill and its thrown me out of my usual routines. Thankfully she is OK now. High quality articles are always welcome. The scholarpedia article is interesting as an encyclopedia article.and is fine as far as it goes. But there are over 10,000 articles under short term memory on Psychinfo and I feel that this different sort of professional site should review material at a deeper level. To me our knowledge proceeds and can be organised in, for want of a better word, a 'fractal' model. We hew out a concept like memory, then if you examine that we distinguish short and long term, then you can go into each of these and they have their own level of complexity, which themselves can be unpacked. It may be worth thinking how you can organise the material in your area before you start and how this can be integrated into the overall structure. This is perhaps something we can go into when we meet.

As far as contributing goes I find it useful to have a number of tasks on the go at different levels of complexity and I choose which one to pursue depending on my mood. Some days I just gather material off of a list, other days I do restructuring work, other days I might do deep editing of an existing article or produce something new. On your lighter days I would appreciate you running a fresh eye over the material new members see and how we might improve it further. I know you did a great deal of work on this in the early days and it was an important contribution.

I hope your interviewing is going well. Looking forward to discussing it. Dr Joe Kiff 08:20, June 25, 2010 (UTC)

Hi Joe - my name is Seyed, and I have questions about your CNS figure on your wiki page. Could you email me to discuss it? ssafavy@gmail.com

hoLa!
good day sir. .can you send me some of your edited articles about job performance? this is for my research literature. notsniw7@gmail.com

Clinical Leadership
Hi Joe,

I am not sure if it is yourself that quoted the artile but I have seen that you made changes to the page so feel it is possible. On the 'Clinical Leadership page' there is a reference to B Malby Clinical Leadership article from Advance Paractice nursing quarterly and wondered if you had a copy of this article you could share with me. I have been looking high and low for this.

Kindest Regards

Jenna129.11.76.230 09:57, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

[mailto:j.l.paglia@leeds.ac.uk j.l.paglia@leeds.ac.uk]

Bondage
Yesterday I checked the Wikipedia article on Bondage (sexual) and it seems to be an advocacy page, violating Wikipedia norms of neutrality. The first entries date from 2002. Why has this been allowed for so long? Or does Wikipedia advocate bondage?

Bondage often begins in early childhood as a form of child abuse. It's also an intergenerational trauma. When the child grows up they find themselves trapped in patterning and habituation of relationships based on bondage. They have a choice--to become a perpetrator, to remain a victim, to avoid all emotionally intimate long-term relations, or to try to reprogram. Many people resign themselves to their "fate" because trying to break the pattern is too painful and is too much work. What is voluntary about that?205.167.120.201 00:12, September 17, 2010 (UTC)

Bondage
Yesterday I checked the Wikipedia article on Bondage (sexual) and it seems to be an advocacy page, violating Wikipedia norms of neutrality. The first entries date from 2002. Why has this been allowed for so long? Or does Wikipedia advocate bondage?

Bondage often begins in early childhood as a form of child abuse. It's also an intergenerational trauma. When the child grows up they find themselves trapped in patterning and habituation of relationships based on bondage. They have a choice--to become a perpetrator, to remain a victim, to avoid all emotionally intimate long-term relations, or to try to reprogram. Many people resign themselves to their "fate" because trying to break the pattern is too painful and is too much work. What is voluntary about that? (yes I wrote the above)--Margaret9mary 00:53, September 17, 2010 (UTC)


 * The points you make here are important and the article requires a great deal of work to make it suitable for psychologiss. If you can help please do so. Dr Joe Kiff 17:58, September 18, 2010 (UTC)

Re:Thanks
No problem. -- CodΣxpert (  talk  ) 22:34, September 21, 2010 (UTC)

On Bonding and Bondage
Dear Dr. Joe-- I've tried two computers and both are semifreezing up -- I hope this gets through. Please RSVP

PRELIMINARIES--To examine the issue of BDSM Bondage we should begin with some basic psychoneurobiology*, with mirror neurons and empathy--and ask how someone can witness another's pain and distress and not vicariously feel that pain but, on the contrary, feel pleasure. (see for example Allan Schore's 1999 Forward to John Bowlby's Attachment--in which he discusses the neurobiology of attachment).

The capacity to feel empathy is a function of all social animals. The wiring for it is genetically determined, but it must be activated--ie. experienced in the context of a reciprocal relationship with a primary caregiver during the symbiotic bonding stage of infancy.

(In fact we find mirror neurons or their parallel in many animals. Mirror neurons serve two purposes.  One is LEARNING--to learn by observing others.  An animal that depends entirely on genetic programing is extremely limited in its behavior, and so learning through experience begins extremely early--even one-celled organisms respond and adapt to their environment.  Learning through direct experience is the next level.  Learning through observing a more experienced individual is the next level--an essential part of mammalian function. With greater brain complexity increasingly complex social behavior becomes possible.

Reading the inner responses of another by observing the nuances of their body language is another function of mirror neurons, and perceiving them as if experienced by the observer is empathy. In other words, mirror neurons give us the capcity to feel what another is feeling. So what happens with SM?

I see you have edited the entry on Sadism and Masochism. What is your response to the above?-- Margaret9mary 23:36, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

P.S. The above is 17 lines long.--Margaret9mary 23:40, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Torture-Bondage-Sadism
Dear Dr. Joe,

I was shocked when I came across the article on Bondage (sexual). Some weeks later I checked the article on Torture and saw you had started it. It says some crucially important things about an extremely difficult subject, including how it harms the person torturing. But it doesn't mention the physiology involved--that its purpose is to put the person's system in extreme sensory overload, that trauma alters the homeostatic set point of the stress response, and that torture--and sadism--involve a reversal in healthy programming. Perversion is the correct term. Recovery requires a reversal of that programming. And it doesn't mention how mirror neurons are involved in the nonverbal communication in the relationship between victim and perpetrator and how in torture, bondage and sadism "relationships" mirror neurons involve (and entrap) the victim with the perpetrator. These are parallel systems. Fromm spoke of necrophilic and biophilic systems and these definitely fall in the area of necrophilic systems. I had hoped you would comment on my second note to you. Please comment on the above.Margaret9mary 23:16, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Did answer briefly on your user discussion page. I have been short of time lately. If you feel you can improve this article to an academic standard with appropriate referencing then please do so. Dr Joe Kiff 22:01, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

Response
Your response to me of Oct 7-9 has not been posted--at least yet. About improving the entry on torture--there's another problem and perhaps you can tell me how to handle it. One of the major problems in science today concerns continued difficulties in interdisciplinary communication. This was a major complaint of Gregory Bateson (mentioned in his Introduction to Steps to an Ecology of Mind, I believe, in 1973) and he spent the last 10 years of his life trying to set up a new level of science that would resolve that problem. Also Lawrence Bale wrote a piece on Gregory Bateson that has an excellent explanation of this dilemma.

But to give an example: I once asked the teacher of physiology at the local community college if PTSD was the alteration of the set point of homeostasis of the stress response. He paused only a few seconds before answering emphatically, "Yes!" and he printed out the introduction to his textbook on physiology that says that all systems in our body involve homeostasis (if you want a direct quote I'll locate it). But Bessel van der Kolk complains in his book on Traumatic Stress (1996) that the study of the physiology of normal stress and the study of traumatic stress were begun separately and still hadn't been brought together. So we find the 1980 DSM lists "altered startle response," but many professionals even today still don't understand PTSD as an altered physiological response of stress, but as a mental obsession. --And 30 years have passed!

In fact this involves simple logic: The person who experiences a traumatic stress responds with his/her normal stress system--not just overcome by the idea of an appalling reality, but is physiologically in sensory overload {and to survive the body may make a temporary or permanent shift of the set point--this is seen with drugs such as meth]. But it would be hard to find a brief quotation on this. Must we ignore the obvious until professionals in a field widely recognize a concept? Or can I cite the above and perhaps someone else will have a better source?--Margaret9mary 23:01, October 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * You make some good points here. As an integrative thinker myself, one of my motivations for developing the site has been to try to bring together accounts of phenomena from different perspectives and different levels of analysis. The wiki format is helpful in that you can develop subpages off an article and go into an area more deeply. The key for you is to try to focus on broadly accepted approaches as this is not really the place for personal agenda. So it is important to ground what you say in the literature, highlighting areas of disagreement as you go. You may also want to add to the article on set point as you have quite rightly identified that this has a wider application than commonly supposed. Dr Joe Kiff 23:19, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

Hello
Hello Dr Joe Kiff, I was wondering if J36Bot could be marked as a bot here, so that I could do work regarding Template:Category redirect at a much faster rate. I would also be able to do other jobs as well. --J36miles 22:57, October 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * Your help is most welcome and I will try to arrange this for you. Some time ago we had someone help us copying missing pictures and templates from Wikipedia. As we have now finished the main tranch of copying it would be good to give it another run. Could you do that? Dr Joe Kiff 10:02, October 16, 2010 (UTC)


 * I will see what I can do about transferring information from Wikipedia. Thanks for all the help. --

J36miles 15:14, October 16, 2010 (UTC)

New Section
Hm-Integrative thinker--interesting term. What's the formal definition? One of the strong points of the article on torture is that it's presented in a way that it can only with difficulty be misused. Perhaps a section on the physiology of traumatic stress could be done in a similar way. van der Kolk has a section titled "is PTSD a Stress Response?" I'm organizing it. I will start working on this tomorrow.--Margaret9mary 23:03, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

Problem with Viewing recent changes
Joe,

Hi. I notice that I cannot get a listing of Recently edited pages so that I can check edits and welcome new users. When select the menu item, Popular Pages and then Newly Changed, nothing happens.

regards

art  Dr. Becker-Weidman  Talk 20:00, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

what type of marriage would this qualify as?
dear dr. joe what would a polygamistic relation ship where a man is married to more than 1 person and some those people are married to others as well be?Firelord jay 17:37, October 31, 2010 (UTC)
 * The different combinations and forms of complex marriage and group marriage are not always named. You might look at the articles on polyamory polygamy and polyfidelity for more information. Dr Joe Kiff 20:49, November 2, 2010 (UTC)

Clarification
Re your comment on personal agendas. I think I should clarify here that I understand and accept WP rules re Neutral Point of View and No Original Research. In addition to hackers and vandals disrupting articles just for the fun of it, people who don't read or listen carefully, who take a biased point of view and refuse to hear and consider other viewpoints including a consensus among scientists are also distruptive, and people who want to use WP to publish their research without peer review are seeking the wrong forum. But I'm also a witness to the misuse of the authority of science--after all, scientists are only too human. To promote personal agendas for power and prestige, to use intimidation and ostracism of scientists who present data that goes against prevailing thinking (such as Bowlby in psychiatry); or the bias of some scientists who refuse to listen--sometimes to their own data, sometimes for decades had led to tragedies. Gregory Bateson's Introduction to Steps to an Ecology of Mind comments on this dilemma. Scientists can get lost in their own jargon and/or their colleagues can miss what they are saying. So I hope WP won't get lost in this. Peer review is helpful, but not everything. (See also new section in Double Bind--Double Binds in Science).

Careful reading and understanding what is read should not be banned from WP.

"Advocating"--when it's speaking up for a reality ignored is not bias.

Writing about the physiological distortions that make for torture is extremely difficult--and it would be unethical to do laboratory experiments on it. And so what can be done is similar to what Einstein did--thought experiments. We know we have mirror neurons and how they work to help us perceive what others are feeling. What twisting makes it possible for a sadist to witness extreme pain and experience pleasure? And what makes it possible for persons who have chosen torture as a means to not see how they have dehumanized themselves? And how can one say this blandly?

I wrote about Double Bind Theory because I have a lifetime of first-hand experience with DBs. I understood what Bateson was talking about from the first, and that was nearly thirty-five years ago. But in attempting to write about it now I read Bateson slowly and repeatedly, to seek to understand exactly what he is saying and how. It wasn't easy; Bateson is difficult to read because he's a non-linear thinker who seems to many to jump around from subject to subject, but who does get where he's going--and who refused to predigest ideas and present them as simple definitions; instead he very insistently expected his students and readers to do their own thinking. And he was just beginning on the subject and hadn't found the clearest words to describe what he was talking about.

But I especially wrote about Double Binds because science has indeed caught itself in the Double Binds that Bateson and Bale described--and the first way out is to understand the dynamic and reestablish systems of feedback. . Margaret9mary 01:38, December 15, 2010 (UTC)

Request
I am asking if there would be any issues if I ran a bot that fixes the double redirects on this wiki. The bot in question would be User:ZammyBot, and it would fix ~400 double redirects if I get your permission. ZamorakO_o ( talk ) 22:10, January 9, 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, it's running now. ZamorakO_o ( talk ) 00:47, January 10, 2011 (UTC)
 * Task complete. However, there was a few pages that redirected to themselves, they are here, here, here, and here. ZamorakO_o ( talk ) 01:29, January 10, 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks ZamorakO that is very helpful. I will tend to the rogue links. Dr Joe Kiff 10:20, January 16, 2011 (UTC)

tv show
I'm currently looking for contributors for a TV show for a fashion network focusing on why people wear certain clothing items and colours.

Would you be interested in potentially speaking about the usuage of colour in fashion?

please email me at:

pdocherty@bigfootstudios.com

Bot?
Hi,

I hope you are well. I was wondering if there is a Macro or Bot I could use to "welcome" new users listed in the user-creation log rather than my having to go in an welcome each one individually. Or, if you don't know, is there a site I can go to to ask someone else?

regards

Art  Dr. Becker-Weidman  Talk 18:58, January 30, 2011 (UTC)

Explicit images
Hi Joe,

There's a bit of a problem with some of the more recent images on this wiki. The images on Erection_(penis), Masturbation and possibly other pages are very explicit, and not suitable for Wikia. I know that the intention is educational, and that Wikipedia allows such images in that context, but we try to keep to the guideline of "no sexualized nakedness, and no full frontal nudity/genitalia". Can you remove them please? (Or I can if you don't have time over the next couple of days).

On the good news side - the reason we noticed was because one of our designers was looking at images here for inspiration for a spotlight for the wiki. It will be one of the Valentine's day spotlights and say something like "learn the psychology of love"(and link to Love). Should be a nice way to show visitors something outside the gaming wiki world :) -- sannse http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb32675/wikia/images/e/e9/WikiaStaff.png (help forum | blog) 23:21, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

re definition of attachment
I read Bowlby's Attachment about 15 years ago and since then have wondered why attachment isn't a concept better known in the general population. Looking around the web repeatedly I found Bretherton, Fonagy and others, but only recently took a close, careful look at the WP article. It was obvious some things were missing. After 2 months of puzzling over it, writing on the talk page and considering the feedback received it became obvious that the concept of systems theory is missing from many of the secondary resources.

In the index of Attachment (1999 edition with Schore's Forward) it lists under "feedback control of behavior" over 150 pages. I came across Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind 30 years ago and so I understand the difficulties. Systems theory involves non-linear thinking and most people are linear thinkers. Bateson, in the Intro to Steps... complains that he often isn't understood. One of the reasons is he goes back and forth from one concept to another--which can be very hard to follow in linear thinking--like watching a tennis match and keeping your focus on one player instead of on the ball. Lawrence S Bale, in his article Gregory Bateson, Cybernetics and the Social/Behavioral Sciences, says: ''"Apparently many scholars and practitioners of the social/behavioral sciences, as well as the humanities (myself included), were first introduced to the cybernetic paradigm through Bateson's work. Yet, he seldom offered his audience more than a cursory reference to the key principles underlying cybernetics..." ''Bale goes on to remedy the deficiency in the first 8 pages of that article.

Both Bateson and Bowlby were exemplary multidisciplinary thinkers and of course thinking nonlinearly came naturally to them--but neither of them developed a definition that could be readily understood by linear thinkers--and so of course this is a problem....

I made a number of suggestions, and the responses from Fainites were what led me to understand some of the difficulties--and why bother to edit an article if people think that Bowlby didn't say these things.


 * Bowlby was describing infant attachment as an interactive relationship--that the mother maintains proximity and the infant seeks proximity, not as behavior primarily of the child seeking the mother. --see p 244--forms of behavior mediating attachment...


 * When he first wrote the concept of attachment was virtually unknown to science so he used examples people were familiear with--ungulates that walk at birth and the imprinting/following behavior of ground-nesting birds--and noted the similarities and differences(!). He did not confuse them, although his readers did.


 * I pointed out that in mammals nursing requires proximity, proximity facilitates social interaction and social interaction in a social animal is necessary for survival.


 * The attachment system is ready to be activated at birth although in humans following behavior isn't possible until the child can crawl or walk. To say that attachment begins at or after 6 months may be understood by professionals in the field but is misleading for others. Etc.

I'm puzzled about what to do with this. Consider--if people believe attachment doesn't begin after birth they will assume it doesn't matter who or how a child is being cared for. But if a child isn't cared for by an adult willing to be attached to the child, the child will probably not develop a secure attachment.Margaret9mary 00:03, February 13, 2011 (UTC)205.167.120.201 00:00, February 13, 2011 (UTC)


 * I responded to Dr. Art's comments on his page.Margaret9mary 00:45, February 18, 2011 (UTC)

Hello Dr. Kiff,

How would I relocate the Educational Trauma page to be a sub page of Emotional Trauma? Do you think that would be a more appropriate place? Thank you for your input and asistance.DrLeeanne 21:18, February 17, 2011 (UTC)


 * All you need to do is edit the article Emotional trauma and create a new section with " ==title==" and then copy the material there that you want there from the Educational trauma article.  Dr. Becker-Weidman  Talk 01:02, February 18, 2011 (UTC)

More on attachment
One of the reasons I posted the above comments on Dr. Joe's page is that he did much of the editing on the Psychology Wiki article on Systems theory; it shows a much greater understanding of systems theory than the WP article.

What does one do when the scientific paradigm central to Bowlby's understanding of Attachment has been virtually ommitted from the Handbook of Attachment (and left out of the WP article)? And what does one do when so many others are still struggling to find a way to define (complex) systems theories in a comprehensible way?

Gregory Bateson was criticized for using too many metaphors, but let me offer one of my own.

Understanding attachment without including (complex) systems theory is like understanding a tennis match by watching only one of the players, and not watching the ball. One can study one player's actions exhaustively, but without seeing the ball and the other player and the resulting interaction one has missed most of it.Margaret9mary 23:21, February 18, 2011 (UTC)

Response to Dr. Art --Feb. 18.2011

 * When I saw your note of Feb. 13, 2011 I wondered why you sent me such a message. My primary interest in editing anything on WP and Psychology Wiki is good science, and readability for non-experts. When it comes to taking any position I first listen extensively to various positions and seek to find any common ground that might exist--even between extreme opponents*.
 * I've been patiently waiting for progress to be made on Attachment theory since the mid-1990s after reading Bowlby's Attachment. In 2006-7 I did extensive further reading and thinking about it for a paper (and used WP for a starting point for reading). Not until Dec 2010 did I involve myself with the WP/Wiki articles.
 * In the last 2 months I've been "parsing" Bowlby's Attachment--examining how it's constructed, reading and rereading carefully, etc. One of the most obvious points was the importance for Bowlby of "control" systems theory--this is a scientific worldview,--see Bale, below (however it was clear Bowlby was struggling to put into words the implications of systems theory for attachment theory and I've long been aware of the difficulties)--In the Index under "feedback control of behavior" more than 160 pages are listed--over 2/5 of the book. To make a comparison, on Fainites urging I purchased the Handbook of Attachment. In the index of a book of nearly 1000 pages it has listed under "systems theory"--4 pages; under "feedback"--nothing. Clearly, Bowlby thought it central to his understanding and yet systems theory has been virtually left out of the Handbook.
 * Lawrence S. Bale has provided the best description of the paradigms of systems theory and of classic science in the first 8 pages of his article, Gregory Bateson, Cybernetics and the Social/Behavioral Sciences (1995)-- -[http://www.narberthpa.com/Bale/lsbale_dop/cybernet.htm] . (if this doesn't go through, the link is in the WP article on [Gregory Bateson] under Further Reading). First Published in: Cybernetics & Human Knowing: A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics & Cyber-Semiotics, Vol. 3 no. 1 (1995), pp. 27–45.
 * The greatest problem which has delayed the understanding of systems theory has been to translate nonlinear thinking into terms linear thinkers can understand. I first saw this difficulty in the late 1970s in Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind.


 * Note--my first insight into common ground was during the Cold War when I realized that neither Americans nor Soviets wanted to die--the U.S. military had dubbed their position with the acronym MAD (mutual assured destruction).
 * The extremely long comments I wrote on the Talk page of the Attachment theory article on WP was my struggle to understand the conflict in views and how it could be remedied. But eventually it became evident that because my brain is wired to be a nonlinear, interdisciplinary thinker I was reading Bowlby with systems theory whereas apparently many people missed it.
 * I hope this goes far enough in explaining my position.Margaret9mary 00:35, February 18, 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments. I'll look forward to hearing more from you. Dr. Becker-Weidman  Talk 00:57, February 18, 2011 (UTC)

Systems theory (biology)

 * WHAT CAN BE DONE?

None of the various WP and Psychology Wiki articles on Systems Theories describe biological systems that are non-linear, with information systems of feedback and homeostasis. All of the articles confuse linear systems and non-linear systems--biological (living) systems and man-made, artificial systems. Trying to explain non-linear systems in linear terms makes them so impossibly complicated noone can fully understand them.

Some form of 'disambiguation' is needed. This confusion has been going on for over 60 years* (see sources) and an understanding of biological systems is long overdue. Please forgive me for advocating for an end to this confusion.

Linear systems, preferred by engineers because of their relative simplicity and ease in prediction and control, are one directional-- A -> B -> C -> D -> (billiard balls or the domino effect), whereas 

Non-linear systems are A <-> B, A <-> C, B <-> C etc. They have the potential of being extremely complex, but have their own internal system of parameters. We don't have to control them. All we have to do is understand how they function in a healthy manner, respect those requirements and let nature do the work.

A simple example is our circulatory system. Blood carries oxygen, water, nutrients, immune system components, waste, etc. All of these systems are subsystems--semi-autonomous, maintaining their own homeostasis; yet they interact and maintain an overall homeostasis. And this is but one subsystem in the overall system of the body. We can study each sub-sub-system but its impossibly complicated to follow the whole of it at one time. Again, we don't have to control them or predict precisely. They are self-regulating. "The principle of homeostasis is...the foundation of all modern physiology" (from the first paragraph of the Introduction to a first-year college textbook of physiology).

More complicated examples include ecosystems--everything from local ecosystems to the whole biosphere.

Biological systems do not function like hard science--chemistry, physics, etc. Biological systems have their own "uncertainty principle." They are reciprocal, self-regulating, self-correcting and even self-healing and self-replicating.

My Sources include Gregory Bateson (Steps to an Ecology of Mind) who recognized that the same principle of non-linear systems applied to human relations and social systems (cultures) and John Bowlby (Attachment)who saw that they applied to infant attachment in mother-child relationships. Neither of them gave a full, easy-to-reference definition, but mentioned the underlying principles, often in asides. Marston Bates (The Forest and the Sea) is another source--a book-length explanation of ecosystems.(cc Art Weidman) Margaret9mary 03:31, March 16, 2011 (UTC)

Again, please excuse me for advocating for an end to this confusion. What can be done about it?Margaret9mary 03:16, March 16, 2011 (UTC)

Hot potato? or consensus
Re your response to the above which you left on my Talk page--do you think this is unimportant? Or is it a radioactive hot potato no one wants to handle? Or a muddle no one has found the way to straighten out? I tried editing a page--and was instantly reverted. I came across the Talk page of Complex system and encountered a previous dispute over the same issue.

ARTICLES EXISTING as of now include--Complex system, Complex systems, Systems theory, Systems psychology, Complex Systems theory, Complexity theory, Dynamical Systems theory, Nonlinear system, Attachment theory, Chaos theory, Cybernetics, Systems dynamics, Gregory Bateson, John Bowlby, et al, There are articles in Simple English, Wikipedia and Psychology Wiki.

WHAT CAN I DO that would be acceptable?

Even Lawrence Bale points out Bateson did not develop an articulated description of nonlinear systems, process or thinking. I could string together numerous quotes of Bateson. I could use Bateson's example of linear vs nonlinear--''if he kicks a ball it will go in a certain direction at a certain speed. If he kicks a dog [it could bite him, or growl at him or cower and whine--its behavior cannot be "predicted"--aka predetermined-- unless you know the dog]'' but then I might have problems with PETA. Or I could come up with some examples of my own--but that seems to fall into the category of "original research" But ultimately the question is--Must we go on without a definition of nonlinear systems/process/thinking until another expert comes along with a referenceable quote? Or can we come to some consensus?Margaret9mary 00:01, March 18, 2011 (UTC)

P.S. In any case, a good example of a nonlinear system is a human relatiionship--or a social systemMargaret9mary 00:08, March 18, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you and request for image use
Dear Dr Kiff,

I am a neonatologist at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, in San Jose, California, United States. I work as a clinician, researcher, and teacher in neonatal intensive care, and my area of focus is family centered care. In trying to serve my patients, their families, and our community, I have been thinking about their needs in Maslow's heirarchy of needs framework. I recently came across your wiki, and I wanted to thank you. It has been incredibly helpful-- so thoughtful and well designed. Many of the families I work with face serious life challenges to meet basic needs in addition to having an infant in the hospital, and my work focuses on better understanding and meeting those needs.

I am also writing to ask you if it would be alright for me to use your Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs.png image, in a poster I'm preparing about the needs of families in my community. I'm planning to present the poster at thePediatric Academic Societies conference in Denver, Colorado next month. I would of course include a reference to you. I'm also happy to share the results of my work or talk about other ways I might contribute to your work. Thank you so much for this site. The information you have here and it's dynamic, linked form is a powerful way of making the world a better place.

107.3.157.247 12:41, April 22, 2011 (UTC)Dr Sunshine Weiss


 * Dear Dr Weiss

Thank you for your kind words about the site. You are most welcome to use material from here in your professional activities. It is all published under the CC-BY-SA license the full details of which are here. We would very much welcome any academic improvement you can make to articles on the site, or by setting up new articles. This is a collaborative project and we particularly need referenced contributions from specialist It is simple to contribute,links to tutorials and beginners guides appear in he sidebar. If you log onto the site and create a user name I will give you further links that you may find useful. Best wishes. Dr Joe Kiff 09:59, April 23, 2011 (UTC)

Species dysphoria
Hello, could you take a look at this article? Thanks, Equivamp 04:33, May 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * I could take a look around for sources, online, and in books. Not sure how much help I'll be, I'm not actually a psychiatrist, it's just a passion for me. Equivamp 16:27, May 24, 2011 (UTC)

analytics
Hi Dr Joe, There are definitely some oddities in Google Analytics data at the moment. Basically, Wikia grew too large for GA, and our analytics got turned off. It's now back on, and we're in the middle of reorganising stuff so that we can continue to get full data. I don't know specifically how that's affecting your feed, but I'll try and find out more on Monday. Sorry 'bout this -- sannse http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb32675/wikia/images/e/e9/WikiaStaff.png (help forum | blog) 22:24, June 12, 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Sannse. I have just checked the Google Analytics site but they are not yet reporting any increase in traffic. Its good to know why its happening. Please let me know when you think its been fixed. Thanks Dr Joe Kiff 17:53, June 15, 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Joe, the solution we've come up with is to direct 10% of our traffic to Google Analytics instead of the full number. So the reported numbers are proportional to the full traffic, but you need to multipy by 10 to get the actual figures.  It's not perfect, but it does mean we still get a measurement of the site (would be handy if Google provided a pay-service for larger volume!).  Sorry for the slow reply here too, I'd missed your reply >_< -- sannse http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb32675/wikia/images/e/e9/WikiaStaff.png  (help forum | blog)  02:03, June 27, 2011 (UTC)