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February
16, 2007:
Do You Ever Have Evil Thoughts?
Interview
with Lee Baer, PhD, author of The
Imp of the Mind
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Mike
Carruthers:
It
may come as some comfort that everyone (not just
you), everyone has bad thoughts…
Lee Baer, PhD:
We all occasionally will think about swerving our car
off the road and what if we jumped out that window
from a high place, or what if we got angry and hurt
our children, although we know we wouldn't do it.
Psychologist
Dr. Lee Baer, author of the book
The Imp
of the Mind - Exploring the Silent Epidemic of
Obsessive Bad Thoughts...
There are a few
people who can't trust themselves, and
who really worry that they will one day snap and act
on their bad thoughts.
Dr. Baer treats
people like this and he says the
interesting thing is the people who obsess over these
bad thoughts virtually never act on them.
Even though I
reassure these people that none of my
patients have ever done these things, and as a matter
of fact, these are the least likely people to act on
these thoughts - they just can't feel certain enough or
trust themselves.
Dr. Baer says
it's not only true that the people who
obsess about doing evil things never do them; the
people who do them never obsess about them beforehand.
There are obviously
people who do bad things, and when
our patients see stories like a few years ago, Susan
Smith drowning her children, they become terrified
because they think, "How do I know that I won't do that?"
And what we have to explain to them is that the people who
worry about these things, the actual worry and the
guilt is a sign that their brain is functioning
correctly.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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