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Profs & Pints: Bizarre Psychological Disorders

Profs and Pints presents: Bizarre Psychological Disorders, with Brian A. Sharpless, associate professor of clinical psychology at the American School of Professional Psychology and visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths University of London.

Have you ever believed that you were abducted by aliens? Do you ever wake up to the sound of explosions only to find that everything is fine? Are you convinced that you can transform yourself into a different species? What about having sex while youre sound asleep? You aren't alone

Even if you are among the vast majority who have never experienced any of these conditions, you will be fascinated to hear Professor Sharpless discuss some of the many tricks that your mind can play.

After all, people are nothing if not confusingly complex, and some end up thinking, acting, and behaving in unusual, odd, and extreme ways. Some of the strangest psychological orders that they can acquire are not well-known to the public or even many mental health professionals, despite some such as isolated sleep paralysis actually being fairly common in the general population.

Dr. Sharpless will focus on five interesting conditions. He'll place them in historical or cultural context and will summarize the scientific literatures on their diagnosis and treatment. You'll learn, for example, about how sexsomnia has made some criminal trials amazingly complex. You will learn how those afflicted with clinical zoanthropy might have sparked Medieval werewolf panics. You will also learn how exploding head syndrome is associated with a popular conspiracy theory.

It is our hope that you will leave this talk with a better understanding of the full range of mental-health conditions and, perhaps, a sense of your own good fortune if psychologists and psychiatrists have not found themselves bewildered by your thinking and behavior.