Zingaro

I had friends that suffered from depression. Scotland has long dark winters, having kept their curtains drawn against the cold they neglected to open them in the Spring. I would visit, see them depressed and simply insist they open the curtains and let the sun in and this helped tremendously. People with depression their serotonin drops - exercise helps this every time. Getting out and about distracts people from sitting at home with depressing thoughts looping about their minds.

Because it's so rare when the few times I experience taste, touch or smell in a dream I wake up quite impressed by the experience. I think I've experienced each as little as twice. Maybe it happened other times and I don't remember

As a lover of poetry of the Romantic School I once read a statement by Tennyson that he was the only non-drug user of the group. On the one hand I wondered whether I believed him; on the other I understood why Colleridge, Byron, De Quincy, and Mary Shelley (with her Frankenstein novel) were much greater writers than he was. Remember opium sold for a penny in Carrol's day. Xanadu by Colleridge is accepted as an opium poem. I think the rabbit hole came from the same source.

I've known three schizophrenics; during a phase they are so incapacitated they couldn't plan to catch a bus. There have been killings by sufferers of this disease but they have always been spontaneous - an innocent happens to be standing next to them when they hear satanic voices telling them to kill. There was no sense that the victim was chosen - it's always purely circumstantial. A murderer capable of coherent and intelligent scheming and planning would have a psychopathic personality defined by their lack of human empathy. The schizophrenics I met were very compassionate and caring people - it's only for the length of an attack that they 'lose' it and in most cases this exressed itself as tortured attacks on themselves. People suffering from this illness would not like to read of themselves characterised as psycho killers, they suffer enough already.

Before falling asleep people go into what is called a hypnogogic state. They are still consciously aware but the dreaming part begins. This only lasts about a minute or so. But you can actually observe dream images and analyse them with your awake consciousness. When you wake up as the dream recedes you again go into a hypnogogic state where you are aware of the dream images and begin to have thoughts about them. For most people this happens so fast they are unaware of it but several artists have reported that they lie on a couch and induce the hypnogogic state to creat images or music - Yehudi Mehunin demonstated on tv how he lay on a couch and composed music in this state.

As a student of psychology I hypnotised people and did various tests to check that it was actually working (like sticking them with pins). It definitely works. I read that actually people with a higher intelligence were easier to hypnotise and I found this the case. People that have poor attention spans or lack concentration make poor subjects. There are people who go into trances watching a toilet flush. The use of ritual in services has been designed over the centuries to create a semi-hypnotic state. Cults where the dancers repeat regular rhythms puts them into trances, eg hypnotic state. Stage hypnosis is just entertainement with many subjects going along with the suggestions so as not to embarrass or let down the hypnotist.

The capacity to feel guilt is clearly inborn and is related to compassion and empathy. How much guilt a person is capable of feeling though, has to do with their sensibilities which would mainly be socially conditioned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy "Some students of animal behavior claim that empathy is not restricted to humans as the definition implies. Examples include dolphins saving humans from drowning or from shark attacks, and a multitude of behaviors observed in primates, both in captivity and in the wild. See, for instance, the popular book The Ape and the Sushi Master by Frans de Waal." "The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures." Frans de Waal http://www.empathogens.com/empathy/animal.html "Empathy may not be uniquely human quality: The ability to empathise is often considered uniquely human, the result of complex reasoning and abstract thought. But it might in fact be an incredibly simple brain process * meaning that there is no reason why monkeys and other animals cannot empathise too. http://www.percepp.demon.co.uk/lovempat.htm "Empathy is evolutionarily prior to love. Animals display empathy and manifest it in social groupings and behavior."

Getting married and having children. It's been noted that men who have behaved seriously thuggish in their youth can become strongly moralistic with their children as they don't want them to go through the suffering and consequences that they did. I'm currently reading a book "A Life Inside" by a former convict that argues that the system (bad as it is) does in fact help reform many people and enables them to understand the rewards of a moral life. Social conditioning clearly powers people's perception of morality, but I think much is inbuilt. The ability to empathise with others is a psychological trait that makes people want to stop others being abused. This can be observed in the animal kingdom. We also feel guilt which drives us to be moral. Freud holds that people lacking in moral intelligence have misses out on an essential developmental phase in their childhood.