The Personality Analyst

On July 3rd, 2009, Governor Palin announced her intent to resign as Governor of Alaska. Speculations as to her reasons for doing so began almost immediately, as did commentary on the implications of her resignation for her future political career. Governor Palin's attorney, Thomas Van Flein, sent a letter warning various media outlets about "false and defamatory allegations" concerning the Governor. Which raises the question: "What is defamation of character?" Read More

Consciousness as we know it today -- reflective, rich, personal -- may not have been fully developed until the Great Transformation (Axial age; 1000 BCE - 200 BCE). The philosopher Daniel Dennett suggests that if we want to understand what happened then we may have to radically stretch our imagination, and we could be wrong... Read More

Written records of pre-Axial peoples suggest those individuals were conscious in a more limited fashion than we are today. The central characters of the ancient Greek epic, the Iliad, often heard the voices of gods and followed those voices as much or more, seemingly, than they followed their own thoughts. The pre-Axial peoples' identities, too, were limited relative to our identities today. Read More

Some psychologists believe that before the Axial Age (c. 800 BCE- 200 BCE) ancient peoples differed fundamentally in their mental lives from people today. Those who lived before the Axial Age appeared to exist with only minimal self-reflection if any, and without the capacity to clearly monitor their inner thoughts, feelings, and motives. They may have lacked much sense of psychological identity beyond their names, parentage, and their life experiences. Read More