Seed

Okayyyyy I’ve finally relented and decided to update. In all honesty, much has progressed since my last post, but I’ve just not been in the mood to type it all out (unlike Shari, who has suddenly resurrected her blog from the dust, haha). And also, I have to say that the past two weeks have been so busy with other assignments and essays and that I haven’t been thinking about the project much.

I really can’t wait for this sem to be over!

So anyway, after much brain-racking and endless cups of Ribena, here’s how I would sum up my project:

Wishing is a collective yet individual human tendency that springs from inciting possibility—whereby the contents of wishes themselves are not so much desired as the possibility of them being fulfilled. This “possibility” depends very much on the balance between (usually) unsubstantiated belief and anticipation, and rational action taken—the former leading into the realm of superstition and magical thinking, and the latter very much taking the form of goals or aims.

Okay, I see you scratching your head over there. So, to further illustrate, here’s an, uh, illustration:

Every wish each person has is like a seed. If nothing is done to it, it remains just that; a seed, or a mental desire in our head. However, we all know that what’s great and exciting about a seed is that it has the possibility of becoming a tree, with leaves, fruit, flowers and so on. (Hence the low opacity on the tree, if you noticed, because its only an imagined state.) This tree, in my little analogy, would be equal to the possibility of a fulfilled wish (or wishes).

In order for the seed to grow and fulfill its possibility, however, it relies on two elements—nature and nurture (for lack of better terms). Nature would involve sunlight, rain and other natural elements that are essential for the seed to grow, and this would be my metaphor for “belief”, superstition, anticipation, hope, and whatever you might call it. Nurture, on the other hand, involves a conscious effort of ploughing the soil, watering the seed, spraying fertilizers etc, which would be the metaphor for “action” or rational, physical steps taken to ensure that the wish comes true.

To complete the analogy, the “type of seed” may differ according to the type of wish one makes (tangible, fantastical etc), and the “type of environment” the seed grows in may differ according to the attitudes and beliefs of the wisher. For example, a ground which already has fertile soil may need little “work” on the part of the grower; and natural elements play a larger part in helping the seed grow. This could be likened to a wisher who is highly superstitious, and believes that simply making a wish and leaving it to “fate” to make it come true is good enough, without taking any further action to fulfill it.

The premise, however, is that there must always be both elements involved, no matter the proportion of each one, in order for the possibility of wish-fulfillment to be present.

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Right! Hope that explanation was clear/helpful/useful? Leave me a comment or feedback to let me know!

A Wishing Formula

Today Math said to me, in a cheeky sort of way: You can run, but you can’t hide!

Because believe it or not, you can even apply mathematical formulas to the concept of ‘wishing’—in this case, the level of ‘wishedforness’ (preference or intensity of the wish). Taken from the paper Remarks on Wishes and Counterfactuals, Ernest W. Adams:

Theories of preference and decision can be reinterpreted to apply to wishes and preferences among them – ‘degrees of wishedforness’. Consider the following. Let x and y be ‘objects’ among which a person, P, has preferences, and the strengths of these preferences are measured, as usual, by utilities, u(x) and u(y), in such a way that P prefers x to y if and only if u(x) > u(y). Suppose, moreover, that s1,…,sn are logically possible and mutually exclusive ‘possibilities’ whose probabilities, given, say, x, are given by p(s1/x),…,p(sn/x), respectively. Then Richard Jeffrey’s Logic of Decision (Jeffrey, 1983) implies that

(J) u(x) = u(x&s1)(p(s1/x) +…+ u(x&sn)(p(sn/x) .

Now obviously, I didn’t really understand 3/4 of the paper, considering I haven’t exactly touched Math in about 3 years, but I just found it interesting (and, I have to admit, slightly scary) that even a topic so abstract (or so you would think) as ‘wishes’ could be applied to such rigid formulas.

Besides the scary numbers though, this paper does bring up an important aspect: the fact that all wishes are related to conditionals; that is to say, if I say “I wish you would stay”, the reason or condition behind making that wish is that “I wish you would stay so I could show you my toy collection”. Therefore, different conditionals give rise to different levels of “intensity” in wishes. For example, if the conditional was “I wish you would stay because I really need someone to talk to”, then naturally we could assume that the intensity or ‘degree of wishedforness’ would be higher.

Interesting, no? I’ve been struggling to wrap my head around the concept of different “levels” and types of wishes and how to classify them, and I think this idea of intensity (based on the conditional(s) relating to each wish) seems to do the trick, more or less.

Four-leaf clover

Blowing candles on birthday cake

Dandelion seeds

Pennies in fountain

Wishing stars

Loy Krathong Festival, Thailand

Upon A Four-Leaf Clover Shooting Star Penny

Long-awaited post on the research I did about 2 weeks ago on wishing beliefs, superstitions and customs. What exactly do these entail? Well, I was basically looking into superstitions that people have when it comes to wishing—things we collect, rituals we perform, circumstances we make use of. These often have their roots in deeper, ancient and more religion traditions or practices, but I decided to focus more on the informal, secular and commonplace beliefs that they have evolved into.

You might say: Hey, I’m not the superstitious kind, I definitely don’t practice any rituals or customs. Well, that’s what I thought, but after looking at the many many wishing beliefs there are out there, I realised that I’m not completely exempt from them as well. We subscribe to such thinking generally more than we’d like to acknowledge.

To name the most obvious—and likely to be practiced by almost everyone, including myself—it would be the “close your eyes, make a wish silently without telling anyone, and blow out the candles on your birthday cake in one breath” one. We’re told to do that every birthday, and if we fulfill the necessary criteria of not telling anyone our wish and blowing out the candles in a breath, our wishes will come true. So far in all my 21 years I think I can safely say none of them have worked, but interestingly enough this is not a deterrent in most cases. Just try again the year; after all, no harm done.

Just by this simple act, I’m beginning to work towards some sort of a conclusion, or theory if you will, that when people make wishes, it is not exactly the wish actually coming true that matters, but the fact that it has been made, and the chance that it will. It’s all about hope, it’s all about possibility.

But more on that later. Other “wishing customs” or superstitions include things like wishing upon a shooting star, the first star you see at night, throwing pennies into a fountain, blowing dandelion seeds, finding a four-leaf clover, blowing a fallen eyelash—and also more traditional customs which are more country-specific, like the Tanabata festival in Japan, Loi Krathong in Thailand and slipping wishes on pieces of paper into the cracks of Jerusalem’s Western Wall in Israel.

Quite interestingly, I’ve even found several “modern” inventions which (most probably) have no root in any ancient traditions whatsoever, and have been made up by people in recent years. For example, word has it that if you happen to glance at your digital clock and the time is 11:11 or 3:33, you can make a wish. Or, if your necklace clasp slips to below your chin, you can make a wish as you bring it round to the back. As I doubt digital clocks and necklace clasps were invented very long ago, its quite safe to say that these “superstitions” are rather recently derived as well.

Making a wish is the process of expressing a desire or hope for something in the hope of getting it. Wishing for something is all about wanting something, and doing an action to try to tempt the object of desire from the hands of fate. For the more cynical, who do not expect a wish to come true, the use of the word ‘wish’ is just an expression of want or need. For those of us who have a childish flame in our hearts, it is not uncommon to simply close our eyes and think, ‘I wish I had a nice apple pie right now’. It is just as common for the wisher to open his or her eyes, and feel a tiny, but sharp pang of disappointment at the conspicuous absence of an apple pie. According to cultural tradition, there are several times in a person’s life, or places in the world, where making wishes is more effective in bringing about the desired end result. Source: BBC

What I find so fascinating about such beliefs is their longevity and permeability—being held on to for so many years, all around the world, differing in process but similar in intended outcome—which really shows, in my opinion, how humankind has an innate need for making wishes. In the broader context, perhaps, it again boils down to a sense of hope.

What is complicated, then, is that the concept of wishing is so hard to generalize into a “statement” or theory. Wishing can be nonchalant or it could express your deepest desire, it could be selfish or altruistic, it could be a perfectly tangible, possible wish, or it could be an abstract flight of fantasy. A wish can be something you take action and work towards, or it could be a mere “if only” statement thrown out and left as a wistful thought. When it comes to superstitious wishing beliefs, the amount of rationalism each individual adds into the mix varies considerably, thereby resulting in completely different attitudes and mindsets. Wishing gives hope but also brings disappointment; wishing can speak of regret but also of endless possibility.

So in summary, wishing is ______________?

Sing-a-wishes

As a little sidetrack, been looking into something which started me think about this whole topic on wishes in the first place: lyrics of songs. Just put down a few with videos included so we can get a feel of not only what the lyrics are like, but the songs themselves as well. Do songs which talk about wishing have a certain genre or feel? Apparently not really; I intentionally chose songs from varied genres and where “wishes” are used in different ways—interesting to note that most of these songs are more regretful or wistful wishes more than anything, rather than my initial idea that they would be more fantastical, imaginative etc.

Gregory And The Hawk – A Wish

I wish to feel smaller
under your sheets.
I wish for the whole truth
every time you speak.
I’m thinkin’ about how you care half as much for me
While I watch you arrive, smoke cigarettes, sleep…

And I guess it doesn’t matter what I say or what I seem
You stuck what I felt for you in the pocket of your jeans
Ignoring me the morning after
isn’t enough
and I swear I’m gonna cry.
I’m sick of tryin’ to be tough.

And my blood won’t stick
To the confines of my veins.
And your heart
Is gonna tear mine away.

And I wish to feel smaller under your hands,
though you seem satisfied as you slip mine
down your pants.
And I’m thinkin’ about how you care half as much for me
While you lift up my shirt after asking politely.

And I guess it doesn’t matter what I am or pretend to be
Cuz it’s her you’ll always love and it’s her I’ll always envy.
I want to end this now so dreams of you won’t keep me up.
But I swear I’m gonna cry.
I’m sick of tryin’ to be tough.

Hi5 – 3 Wishes

I’m in your dreams, I’m in your mind
I’m in your imagination.
I’ll be your friend, I’ll be your genie,
Your magical creation…

Cover you eyes, whisper my name
Join in my mystical game.
I’ll make a wish, believe in me,
You’ll never be the same…

Take my hand, close your eyes
Hold my hand and we’ll fly, fly, fly…

If you had three wishes, what would they be?
Three wishes, one, two, three!
Three wishes, would you give one to me?
Three wishes, what would they be?

Ooooh…

Feel the magic, feel the power,
I will always be near.
I’m your genie, your best friend,
When you need me I’ll be here…

Emi Fujita – Wishes

I looked in the sky and there
I saw a star shining so bright above
I closed my eyes and wished upon
the star that I would find true love
Someone who needed me
Someone to share my life
For a love that would be true
I would wait forever
So no matter how long it may be
I will be waiting
One star– brighter than the others
Two Hearts – beating for each other
I believe wishes really come true
Love at first sight I knew it from
the moment when you said hello
I hoped you felt it too, but we were
both so shy – how was I to know
When you reached for my hand
I knew you were the one
We laughed and talked for hours like
I’d known you forever
Like a dream or something from a book
True love had found me
One star – brighter than the others
Two Hearts – beating for each other
Noe I see wishes really come true
You just have to dream
Nothing’s as bad as it seems to be
Believe me
Someone’s waiting for you to try
There in the sky
One star – brighter than the others
Two Hearts – beating for each other
You will see wishes really come true
You can’t stop believing –
Wishes do come true
You gotta believe me (wish on a star)
Wishes do come true

The Pierces – Three Wishes

We’d be so less fragile
If we’re made from metal
And our hearts from iron
And our minds from steel
And if we built an armor
For our tender bodies
Could we love each other
Would we stop to feel

And you want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens
One to swim like fishes
And then one you’re saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

You say you want to know her like a lover
And undo her damage, she’ll be new again
Soon you’ll find that if you try to save her
It renews her anger, you will never win

And you only want three wishes:
You want never bitter
And all delicious

And then one you’re saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

You only want three wishes:
One to fly the heavens
One to swim like fishes
You want never bitter
And all delicious
And a clean conscience
And all it’s blisses
You want one true lover with a thousand kisses
You want soft and gentle and never vicious
And then one you’re saving for a rainy day
If your lover ever takes her love away

Yoko

Yoko Ono (if you don’t already know) is the wife of the late Beatles legend John Lennon, and one cool lady. Both propagators of “peace” and “anti-war” since their hippie-era days, Yoko Ono’s work has always been laced with a strong symbolism of “wishing” and hope. Above are pictures from her most recent project, Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree (Imagine Peace). Here’s an abstract from a Yoko Ono website that I found, that very aptly describes her work:

Wishing in Yoko Ono’s Art
“Keep wishing while you participate”

Yoko Ono: “As a child in Japan, I used to go to a temple and write out a wish on a piece of thin paper and tie it around the branch of a tree. Trees in temple courtyards were always filled with people’s wish knots, which looked like white flowers blossoming from afar.”

The Wish Tree has been a part of many exhibitions by Yoko Ono since the 1990s. People are invited to write their wish on a piece of paper and hang it to a tree branch. It’s like a collective prayer in a way. Some wishes are deeply personal, some global wishes for peace and better future for humankind.

Yoko Ono: “All my works are a form of wishing. Keep wishing while you participate.”

Yoko Ono has used different kinds of trees at different exhibition venues, to fit the particular venue’s nature.

Wish Piece by Yoko Ono (1996)

Make a wish
Write it down on a piece of paper
Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree
Ask your friends to do the same
Keep wishing
Until the branches are covered with wishes

There is something very poignant about having the wishes of individuals in a collective environment; where the hopes, dreams, aspirations, regrets and desires of humanity sort of come together in a single place.

Research Analysis: Factors in Wish-Making

Developmental and Experiential Factors in Making Wishes
Norman A. Milgram and Wolfgang W. Riedel, Child Development, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 763-771

Children in grades made up 3 wishes they hoped would come true. With increasing age, children wished for abstract or intangible human conditions rather than for concrete or tangible possessions; wished for things consistent with adult rather than child status; and made altruistic wishes, benefiting others rather than themselves.

“A projective technique commonly employed to investigate personality development in young children is to ask them to make up wishes that they hope will come true; these wishes are assumed to reflect the ungratified needs, the unexpressed impulses, and the unresolved fears of the children making the wishes. Analyses of…special adult groups from the vantage point of their particular life experiences, are absent from the research literature.”

Assumptions in wish-making:
1. A person will only wish for something of which he has some knowledge. As a bare minimum, he must possess a verbal label for the desired entity to communicate the wish to another person. 2. While a person need not possess extensive knowledge of the thing desired, he must necessarily recognize and value highly one or more of its properties.
3. No matter how valued the thing may be, it will not be wished for if it is readily available; it will simply be taken for granted under these circumstances.
The desired thing must be relatively high in the hierarchy of things valued by the person; otherwise, some other thing more valued will have been given priority in making wishes.

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Wishes, Gender, Personality, and Well-Being
Laura A. King and Sheri J. Broyles, Southern Methodist University

Study participants made three wishes and completed measures of the five-factor model of personality, optimism, life
satisfaction, and depression. Common wishes were for achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power as well as for happiness and money. Tests showed women were more likely to wish for improved appearance, happiness, and health; men were more likely to make power wishes and wishes for sex. Extraversion was related to making more interpersonal wishes and wishes for positive affect. Neuroticism was related to wishes for emotional stability. Agreeableness and Openness to Experience related to wishes reflective of these traits. Conscientiousness was related to low impulsivity. Depression was related to making highly idiosyncratic, specific wishes, suggesting the use of wishful thinking as a coping mechanism. In addition, happy participants were more likely to rate their wishes as likely to come true. Results indicate that the relatively commonplace process of wishing relates to traits, gender, and well-being.

“We make a wish over birthday candles, as we toss coins in a fountain, on shooting stars, and first stars. In some sense, these wishes reveal a latent optimism about the world, as if wishing for something might actually make it so…In fairy tales and in psychology, wishes have been portrayed as revealing important information about wish makers…More recently, wishes have been defined as aims that are unconstrained by the limitations of the real world…lacking the potency to become “wants”…Wishes have the potential to be less reality-bound than goals, although they may take the form of goals…wishes are mental statements…to express a more or less fantastic desire. These types of wishes represent samples of deliberate fantasy, rather than…wishes that might emerge in the stream of natural thought. Wish lists have been used previously in research and practice as measures of personal preference, bases for discussions, creativity enhancers, and as “ice breakers” in clinical settings. An invitation to “make a wish” is an invitation to engage in mundane fantasy.”

“Wishes are utterly unconstrained even by reality. Thus, wishes might be expected to be even more strongly related to aspects of the person than goals…There is no risk involved in making a wish, given the relatively low probability that a fantastical wish will “come true.”…wishes may express fleeting interests, colored by long-term concerns (e.g., “world peace”) but also potentially momentary situational factors (e.g., “to meet the woman sitting next to me”). Given the influence of caprice in wish making, the links between wishes and personality and well-being might be expected to be somewhat less than that typically found in goal research.”

“In any case, this study indicates that aspects of everyday fantasy have demonstrable relations to stable personality characteristics and to psychological well-being. To paraphrase Walt Disney, “When you wish upon a star” what you wish for depends on who you are.”

These two studies are probably the most exciting of the lot, because they are very closely related (in fact, they have practically covered half of my “research” for me!) to my intended topic. They deal with the particular aspect of making wishes, and how personal traits, characteristics, social- and experiential-development of individuals affect the contents of these wishes. The readings have helped me especially in the area of terminology – labeling types/categories of wishes, classifying different factors (gender, personality, well-being, experience) – which will help me to further my research in this area. The references provided in the studies also provide me with more material to look up. I think this is definitely an area that I want to look into deeper, as it corresponds closely to what I intended when I started on the topic of “wishes”. I have quite a few more papers/readings which I’ve found that cover the topics of motives and intentions with regards to wishes, so I’ll post up my thoughts when I’m done with them.

Research Analysis: Dreams

The Psychological Analysis of Dreams
S. Ferenczi, The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1910), pp. 309-328

“…the dream is nothing else than the concealed fulfillment of a repressed wish.”

“Some of the dreams of adults and most of the dreams of children are purely wish-fulfillment dreams…For the most part we attain in dreams just that which we painfully miss on waking.”

“The same tendency to wish-fulfillment rules not only nocturnal, but day dreams as well, the fancies in which we can catch ourselves at unoccupied moments or monotonous activity.”

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Students’ Views on the Role of Dreams in Human Life
Barbara Szmigielska and Malgorzata Holda

The present study examined the private concepts of dreams and dreaming, attitude toward dreams, and the influence of dreams on behavior, which can manifest in sharing dreams with other people, trying to interpret one’s own dreams, believing they have special meaning, or behaving according to the clues given by the dream.

“…participants claimed that dreams reflect their thoughts, emotions, or events that happen to them. Also, sub-consciousness is often specified as a source of dreams. Furthermore, subjects indicate biological sources and functions of dreams.”

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Dream Emotions, Waking Emotions, Personality Characteristics and Well-Being—A Positive Psychology Approach
Sue Gilchrist, John Davidson and Jane Shakespeare-Finch

The study aimed to discover whether personality characteristics and waking emotions relate to dreaming emotions. It was hypothesized that participants with significant positive emotional trait and state ratings in waking life would experience more positive dreams.

The Staats Hope Scale (SHS; Staats & Stassen, 1985) comprises 16 items representing two subscales: Hope for Self and Hope for Others. Participants rate their wish for a specific item and their expectation for the same item ranging from not at all (0) to very much (5). Sample items were “To what extent do you wish/expect to have good health” (hope for self) and “To what extent do you wish/expect peace in the world” (hope for others).

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As mentioned, one cannot escape Freudian theories when it comes to studies in psychoanalysis, and especially with relation to dreams. While the studies do concur that dreams, as Freud put forth, are the fulfillment of repressed wishes, most do not go to extent of concluding that these are all based on sexual desires. Dreams are also said to be what “keeps us asleep”, instead of previous theories that proposed dreams as subconscious thoughts that keep our minds restless when we sleep. Dreams tend to fulfill wishes or worries which in turn keeps us “satisfied” in our sleep; for example we do well in tests or get our dream job. This, however, does not seem to take into account what we call “nightmares”, in which the opposite happens (ie. we flunk badly). These can hardly be called wish-fulfillments, although they are still rooted in our desires – or rather what we strongly desire will not happen. The concept and study of dreams has been done to no end in psychology, and they are interesting because they deal mostly with the subconscious mind – something few people understand, even with regards to their own – but I have chosen to focus more on the conscious act of wishing, and the kind of motives, intentions, characteristics, emotions and personal situations behind making those wishes. So, it was necessary to cover this subject of “dreaming” not only because it is so closely related, but also because it is such a huge topic in the field of psychology, but its time to move on to something closer to what I intended.

Research Analysis: Hope

Notes on the Psychology of Hope
W. W. Meissner, Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), pp. 120-139

“In his hopelessness, the patient makes a basic presumption that he possesses no inner resources to bring to bear on the solution of problems or the fulfillment of wishes, or at least that his inner resources are completely inadequate.”

“A particular manifestation and expression of hopelessness is boredom. Boredom carries within it a sense of purposelessness, of the meaninglessness of things, of a lack of interest, of apathy and general disinterestedness. It is the death of wishing.”

This article brings to light the discussion about whether “wishing” or “hoping” is man’s greatest weakness, or whether it is what sustains us. It links hopelessness with the idea that one no longer has the capacity to fulfill his own wishes, and therefore has nothing to look forward to in life and depression sinks in. Meissner puts forth that most “depressed, withdrawn, and apathetic states” in disturbed or neurotic patients are caused by a lack of hope. While the concept of “hope” is not exactly the area I want to explore in my research, I find myself leaning more toward the view that “hope” – and in turn, the ability to wish – is something that drives everyone in life. Our wishes may all be different (and this is actually the part that interests me), but without the knowledge or hope that these wishes may actually sooner or later be fulfilled, our lives lose meaning and purpose. Of course, this then leads to the question of why people lose hope – often, it is because people wish too much or too big, and the lack of fulfillment of these then lead to a sense of hopelessness. So, I guess its always important to strike a balance between the realistic and the whimsical!

Sickkkkk

I have not been well :(

Head-achey and stomach-achey and flu-ey and sore-throaty and all that nonsense, which essentially has rendered me rather useless this week. But actually I did do many many readings for research this week, so above I have posted my thoughts/conclusions/analysis for the various topics (all still under the heading of “psychology”).

Go away, flu.