Dr Paul McQueen is a Clinical Psychologist, holding a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Melbourne. He has experience working in both adult and child mental health services in Queensland and Victoria.
Dr McQueen is comitted to providing high quality, evidence-based interventions for a range of mental health conditions. He specialises in the treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Depression.
Human behaviour can be strange and fascinating. That is why I decided, back in high school, to pursue a career in psychology: because I was fascinated by human behaviour. (Yes, I told people it was because I wanted to find out what was wrong with me, and fix it. But I lied.)
I’d like to take you on a little journey into the fascinating world of human behaviour. As a starting point, perhaps you could solve the following little mathematical problem for me. Please humour me and don’t google it … yet. But you can use a calculator if you like:
Please write your answer down, or at least remember it, before reading on. Continue reading
Often when people talk about having an “anger problem” what they really have is an aggression problem. What’s the difference?
I have often found that people whose aggressive behaviour lands them in trouble actually have very good reasons to be angry… but there is a problem with their anger being directed at the wrong people and being expressed in the wrong way.
Anger is an emotion that motivates us to take action. Our response to anger falls on a scale ranging from passivity at one end – taking no action and pretending we weren’t angry to begin with; and aggression at the other end – raging, shouting, punching, throwing … Continue reading
Conflict. Most people hate it. Because we hate it, we usually do what we can to avoid it (an example of experiential avoidance). But sometimes avoiding conflict actually makes it worse.
There are essentially four ways we can handle a fight or disagreement with someone – four broad types of strategy for handling interpersonal conflict.
Have you ever heard someone describing an ongoing problem they’ve been having with a friend or colleague and thought to yourself, “The problem is you, not them!”
Why is it that if a man’s own behaviour is the major cause of his own problem he can rarely see that it so – while it may be painfully obvious to others?
The problem lies with perspective. We all look at the world through our particular unique filters that make up our perspective of our world. Different people usually have slightly different biases: One woman assumes everyone she meets is trustworthy; one man believes that children don’t like him. There are also a number of biases that are nearly universal: for example, the confirmation bias which involves favouring information that supports our existing beliefs (e.g., choosing to read more articles by climate change skeptics than proponents because you are skeptical of climate change and, what’s more, being highly critical of proponent’s arguments but accepting skeptic’s arguments without cross-checking their supporting data).
These biases and the narrowness of our perspective make us vulnerable to errors of judgment – including the failure to realise when we are the source of our own problems. Continue reading
In one of Psychology’s dark moments, an 8 month old baby was taught to have a phobia of harmless furry things.
These unethical experiments, conducted in the 1920s by psychologist John Watson, were seen as evidence of how fear of harmless things can be learned through a process called classical conditioning. A careful observer will note numerous problems in the above video with how Watson conducted his research. However, better-controlled studies have since confirmed that fear, or anxiety, can indeed be learned through clasical conditioning.
What is classical conditioning?
Classical conditioning is a process by which we learn to associate an automatic response (such as fear, hunger, sleepiness) with a particular cue (a sound, object, sensation) because that cue has repeatedly been experienced to coincide with something that already caused that response. In the little Albert experiment, poor Albert was repeatedly distressed by a loud sound, causing fear, at the same time as he was exposed to a white rat. With time the rat (or more probably Watson himself) became a trigger of fear.
This is one way that we can learn to fear a thing – by its coincicidence with something scary. If I happen to be watching The Wiggles on tv at the moment a car crashes into my lounge room wall it is possible I might experience trepidation when I next hear a Wiggles song. Continue reading
There are two key facets of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are thoughts, images or urges that repeatedly and uncontrollably intrude, unwelcome, into a person’s mind. They are a source of distress, often because the content is unpleasant, theatening or believed to be socially unacceptable. A passion for cars, or cooking, would not be classed as an obsession – even if you talk about it so much it annoys your friends: Obsessions are the last thing you would want to be thinking about; interests are the first things you want to think about. Continue reading
What is it like to have Borderline Personality Disorder?
Just a few hours ago, Charlene had felt like she was on top of the world. She had been out shopping with her best friend, Jenny, and they were both having a great time. Charlene made quite a few purchases. She’d spent more than she intended but they were such great value, she couldn’t resist. Plus, she recently got a new job, which pays well, so she’d felt confident that she would be able to manage the expense.
Then everything changed. While leaving the shopping centre Charlene suggested to Jenny that they should meet up again next weekend. Jenny hesitated, then said she already had other plans. Charlene felt immediately disappointed. As she was driving home afterwards she found herself unable to stop thinking about Jenny’s response. The more she thought about it, the more certain she began to feel that Jenny had just been making an excuse, and really didn’t want to spend time with Charlene again. Charlene felt growing feelings of having been rejected, and a growing certainty that Jenny wanted to distance herself from Charlene and end their friendship.
Feelings of being rejected and abandoned by Jenny were quickly followed by feelings of intense anger. How could Jenny treat her this way? Why did Jenny hate her – after everything Charlene had done for her? Soon all of the past disputes and misunderstandings that had ever happened in their friendship were filling Charlene’s mind. With every passing minute Charlene felt increasingly furious at Jenny and a growing hatred for her. How could she have been so blind to think Jenny was a friend after all the times she had hurt her? Charlene hated Jenny. There was no way she would ever speak to her again.
Right on the heels of hatred began feelings of self-loathing. Why did Charlene’s friends always end up hurting her like this? She concluded that it was because she is a vile, detestable person. Nobody could possibly care for someone so obviously defective. Continue reading
ABC Radio National’s Health Report recently did a fascinating program on neuroplasticity: Brain plasticity / Measuring brain plasticity (for those who don’t want to listen to the audio there is also a link there to the transcript of the program). I highly recommend this program which outlines some exciting new implications of research into the workings of the human brain.
Our brains are not like computers, which have a fixed hardware onto which you load software and that stores information by re-arranging some ones and zeros electrically. For one thing, the transfer of information in our brains uses a highly complicated combination of electrical and chemical signalling. More significantly, though, as we form new memories and learn new skills our brains actually change structurally. Neuroplasticity is the ability your brain has to change structure – to “rewire itself” in response to experience. Continue reading
