Psychology


    9/11 and Beyond: Coping Strategies for Trauma and Stress
he events of September 11, 2001, have dramatically shifted the worldview of most Americans. This program by award-winning filmmaker Robert Parish promotes hope and healing in the aftermath of traumatic events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Featured speakers include family advocate Jacki McKinney; Dr. Laurie Anne Pearlman, co-director of the Traumatic Stress Institute, in Connecticut; Dr. Frank Putnam, director of the Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children, in Ohio; The Reverend Dr. Frederick Streets, a chaplain at Yale University; and Dr. Ervin Staub, professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of The Roots of Evil.
     
    Ben and Damien: Observing Child Development
    The work of the Tavistock Clinic is firmly rooted in the belief that childhood holds the key to adult behavior. With that in mind, infant observation is a key part of training for trainee therapists. This program follows two ordinary families undergoing observation of their infants—newborn Damien and toddler Ben—to examine the growth of relationships between adults and children. As one Tavistock doctor explains, "It doesn’t seem very scientific, but actually what infant observation is all about is the study of love." Original BBC broadcast title: Ben and Damien
     
    Born to Survive
    Every human being has an armory of instincts that helps keep him or her alive. This program analyzes how the senses, innate physical reactions, and the ability to manage risk boost the chances of survival. An infant’s cry, its primary defense during life’s most helpless time; a craving for high-calorie foods that harks back to eras of food scarcity; an inborn disgust mechanism that prompts people to avoid eating things that taste bad or look sickening; the fight-or-flight reaction, as it affects thrill-seekers and crime victims; and a willingness to gamble—whether with money or life itself—are studied.
     
    Changing Lives
    While addiction may cause similar changes in the brains of different people, recovery is a very individual solution. Changing behavior is the aim of treatment, but no single treatment program will work for all addicts. This program visits the Ridgeview Institute near Atlanta to interview recovering addicts and sit in on a group therapy session. Mr. Moyers also visits Project SAFE, an innovative treatment program that reaches out to disadvantaged mothers who are addicts, and to their children who are at serious risk of becoming addicts. The DVD version of this program also includes a special video introduction by Mr. Moyers.
     
    Deepest Desires
    What conditions of physical attraction tend to subtly speak out to members of the opposite sex? Why is there typically a fundamental difference in attitudes between men and women toward sexual relations? What physiological factors can influence men and women to stray from their partners? This program seeks to answer those and other questions as it sheds light on the mystery of sexual attraction. The relationships between pheromones and an attractive immune system, status symbols and marital appeal, and ovulation and facial feature preference are also explored. Contains clinically explicit language.
     
    Dr. Stanley Greenspan: Talking to Children about a Dangerous World
    How can parents and teachers convey to children the dangers of today’s world without instilling in them an undue sense of fear? In this program, ABC News anchor Ted Koppel talks with Dr. Stanley Greenspan, child psychiatrist, clinical professor at George Washington University Medical School, and author of the book The Secure Child: Helping Children Feel Safe and Confident in a Changing World. Dr. Greenspan counsels parents on how to talk to their children without overreacting to the unfortunate events that prompt such discussions.
     
    The Experiment: Power, Behavior, and Identity under Duress
    This acclaimed four-part series from the BBC—a riveting documentary that grips the attention like reality TV—updates the controversial 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s inquiry into the power of social situations to distort identity and erode moral behavior.
Each inherently dramatic episode explores different aspects of the dynamic interplay between the study’s prisoners and guards, dealing with issues of leadership and negotiation, conflict and cooperation, work and stress, tyranny and resistance, power and powerlessness—elements of prison life that can be extrapolated to shed light on the social psychology of society in general. Contains harsh, inflammatory, and explicit language.
     
    Natural Born Heroes
    This program examines arguably the most human instinct of all: the instinct to protect, which, combined with other qualities, prompts people to risk everything for the sake of others. Three gripping stories—a mother who wrestled a cougar to save her son, a soldier who braved enemy fire to rescue a comrade, and two men who helped a woman in a wheelchair escape the collapse of the World Trade Center—are spotlighted. The effect of the familial gene pool on the impulse for self-sacrifice is considered as well, along with the role of mirror neurons in promoting empathy and a bent for fair play shared by humans and vampire bats alike.
     
    Obsessions: Understanding OCD
    Are compulsive hair-pulling, hand-washing, and even gambling learned behaviors or inherited diseases? Where do obsessions come from and how can they be managed so they do not dominate a person’s life? Using a number of actual case studies, this two-part series attempts to understand the roots of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, and looks at both standard and experimental treatment options.
     
    Order
    In this profile of the psychology of leadership, a new prisoner joins the group in lockup, a master set of the guards’ keys is stolen, and the two most forceful prisoners go head to head in a struggle for authority. Contains harsh, inflammatory, and explicit language.
     
    Rebellion
    As time creeps by, the exercise of reward and punishment and the friction of social inequality within the microsociety of prison take their toll, fraying nerves among the prisoners and generating anxiety among the guards. In this episode, two inmates form an unlikely alliance—and the guards are taken by surprise when three prisoners launch a nighttime revolt. Contains harsh, inflammatory, and explicit language.
     
    Seeking Perfection
    Gary’s love of soccer might wreck his wedding plans. Rosemary embezzled four million dollars in order to shop and hoard. An attractive young woman, Jennifer sees herself as disfigured due to body dysmorphia. These and other cases are used to illustrate how obsessive-compulsive disorder can be the flip side to strong, healthy self-interests. Along with studies of actual patients, the program features experts such as Dr. John Grant of the University of Minnesota, who has found similarities in brain circuitry and chemistry among those with OCD.
     
    The Next Generation
    Experts are increasingly focusing on prevention efforts based on community and family. This documentary looks at two of those efforts. One works with parents addicted to heroin by teaching them how to repair the damage to family wrought by drug abuse, and in spite of it, how to raise strong, resilient children. In a second program, vigilant counselors in Dade County schools watch for kids at risk of becoming drug addicts, and offer immediate counseling for those who are already involved with drugs. Nicotine addiction is addressed by a program that provides classes designed to prevent students from smoking, and another that helps them stop if they’ve already begun to smoke. School officials, counselors, and students are interviewed.
     
    Through a Child’s Eyes: September 11, 2001
    The effects of childhood trauma are unpredictable. How can emotionally scarred children best be helped in processing horrific experiences? In this poignant yet uplifting program, the victims themselves provide the key as a diverse group of children ranging in age from 2 to 11 share their thoughts and feelings on the September 11th terrorist attacks. Interviewees include those who lost family members on 9/11, those who live near Ground Zero, and those whose fathers serve in the U.S. military, as well as refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere. Young as they are, they convey a reassuring lesson in coping skills and a surprisingly mature understanding that life brings the tragic with the joyful.
     
    Tourette’s Syndrome: New Hope for a Cure
    This program takes a penetrating look at the pathophysiology of Tourette’s syndrome and a range of attendant disorders, including self-mutilation, through the cases of Shane Fistell, spotlighted in the series The Mind Traveller; John Davidson, profiled in John’s Not Mad and The Boy Can’t Help It; and others. Leading researchers such as Oliver Sacks discuss their findings as well as experimental—and frequently controversial—treatments, including transcranial magnetic stimulation, environmental therapy, low-level doses of THC, nicotine via transdermal patches, and injections of botulinum toxin. The genetic roots of TS are also considered.
     
    Tyranny
    Stalin and Hitler in the 20th century, the Industrial Revolution that turned workers into inhuman cogs in a machine, the slave trade—these are but more recent examples of the tyrannical forces that buffeted Macbeth and that he himself exercised. Tyranny, then, is a force as relevant and powerful in our day as in Shakespeare’s—and in Macbeth’s.
     
    Who’s Normal Anyway?
    Trichotillomania might be an unusual word, but it is a common obsession: hair pulling. By looking at several ongoing case studies, this program offers fascinating glimpses into obsessive-compulsive disorder, showing firsthand the debilitating physical and emotional effects, as well as outlining a number of treatment options. Brain scans of OCD patients illustrate differences in neural activity. Among the cases presented are Bob and Shirley, who hoard, Liz, who pulls her hair, and Stephanie, whose extreme fear of contamination is linked with her mothering duties. The program also features Dr. Randy Frost of Smith College, a leading expert on hoarding, and Professor Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah, who has altered a single gene in mice to produce trichotillomania.
     
    The Will to Win
    It has been said time and again: attitude, more than talent or circumstances, is the key to success—in sports, in business, in life. This program looks at the effect of an individual’s determination to succeed during early childhood, on the playing field, in business, in the way the body responds to illness.