The Hydra Hypothesis | Psychology These days
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The Hydra Hypothesis | Psychology These days

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Source: Vizetelly/Pixabay

Hydra

Source: Vizetelly/Pixabay

One of the fiercest creatures in historic Greek mythology was the Hydra. The serpent beast experienced lots of heads, poisonous breath, and venomous blood. Hercules, the Greek mythological hero, was tasked to go after and defeat the Hydra. The battle of the Hydra proved hard when a head was severed, then much more heads would improve in its spot.

In some psychoanalytical traditions, these as individuals launched by Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung, mythology was a device to conceptualize and focus on human processes. Mythos is nevertheless employed by contemporary psychologists. Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, utilised the Hydra mythos to go over lying. The illustration paints the photograph that lies beget lies and that the implications of just one lie can increase into various other implications. The hydra analogy even factors to the challenges of striving to offer with a single lie, in that it can be challenging to include, as numerous grow in its put. Together with the difficulty of running lies, the Hydra imagery alludes to lies as venomous and toxic.

To analyze the Hydra Speculation, some of our do the job explored this in the context of pathological lying. We found that pathological liars indicated far more than non-pathological lairs that their lies grew from an first lie. In comply with-up analysis discussed in our book, we located individuals who discovered as pathological liars would report telling some seemingly innocuous lie that morphed into numerous lies.

For case in point, a human being who lied about sensation unwell 1 day led to many decades of fabrications and exaggerations to a range of health care professionals and household customers. People who wrestle with pathological lying may possibly explain to a seemingly inconsequential lie in the moment devoid of an apparent motivation, this kind of as lying about the working day of the week a person was born. Then, the particular person could start telling other people today the identical lie and even embellish in purchase to retain the original lie.

The lies that improve are not so inconsequential. These lies can lead to problems in associations when found by many others. They can also pose troubles for the personal who engages in pathological lying, as they normally report encountering distress and regret for some time immediately after telling a lie. Some folks who are pathological liars may well even ruminate on why they lied about one thing that appeared so trivial.

To date, pathological lying has nevertheless to be acknowledged as a official prognosis. Nonetheless, there are some recommendations and treatment considerations for people today who discover by themselves struggling with lies that grow—or those who are battling the Hydra.

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