As Dr. Pretlow has said, the destructive side of the displacement mechanism is found in people who allow drugs, alcohol, or food to take over their lives. How does that happen? We speculate… Read More

As we learn from Dr. Pretlow’s “A Unified Theory of Addiction,” Moving the opposing drives out of equilibrium, by avoiding or resolving the underlying problem/stressful si… Read More

The previous post went into the question of why researchers feel okay about labeling animals’ actions as “inappropriate” when they are just examples of displacement behavi… Read More

Addiction seems to be a very difficult subject about which to generalize. Or maybe it is too easy to generalize about, and the holdup lies in the unlikelihood of reaching an agreement on an… Read More

Is food addiction a disease? Is there enough evidence to justify calling it that? Or is this whole idea still considered too controversial to take seriously? The planning document called &l… Read More

When addiction is the topic, there are all sorts of side roads to wander down, like the Rat Park experiment, in which rodents were given the opportunity to live in a community, and the wher… Read More

Readers will recall hearing about this virtual event, “Consensus Building Workshops on addiction-like symptoms related to consumption of certain foods.” It was created to persua… Read More

In “Reconceptualization of eating addiction and obesity as displacement behavior and a possible treatment,” Dr. Robert Pretlow and Suzette Glasner wrote about displacement behav… Read More

Many people experience “food noise.” For others, it isn’t even that conscious, but just a primitive instinct that commands, “See that thing over there? Lunge at it… Read More

In “Reconceptualization of eating addiction and obesity as displacement behavior and a possible treatment,” Dr. Pretlow wrote, Displacement behavior is a bio-behavioral mechanis… Read More

As we saw in the previous post, to stop intrusive thoughts there are other ways than drugs, including making mental adjustments. For example, some people give great credit to Transcendental… Read More

One problem with people is: Often it is not that difficult to put a finger on What Is Wrong, but sometimes people want to take a deep dive into the cesspit and spend a monumental amount of… Read More

Wherever people are overwhelmed by cravings, and afflicted by disorders like binge eating and stress eating, gigantic corporations stand by, ready to help them commit slow suicide. The docu… Read More

An interesting virtual get-together and meeting of minds will take place in August, and Dr. Pretlow will be a participant (more on that later). This is not surprising, because the basic ide… Read More

Behavioral scientist and Professor Katy Milkman’s message is that in order to promote positive life changes, you don’t have to be a hyper-achiever with the willpower of steel. Y… Read More

As promised, here is additional information about the virtual event called “Consensus Building Workshops on addiction-like symptoms related to consumption of certain foods,” whi… Read More

As previously mentioned here, electronic devices that include screens may have very beneficial effects, or devastatingly bad ones. Smartphone abuse can rise to levels that alienate friends… Read More

Ten years ago, electronic health records were making news. Professionals were excited about the opportunity to intervene more “aggressively,” though that might not have been the… Read More

Or is it? This is a casual look at some of the things that have been thought and said about technology over the past several years, particularly as related to health, and even more specific… Read More

The promise of fitting into different clothes and being socially acceptable is the bait. And keeping the interest of a loved one. Oh, and being healthier. People have all kinds of reasons t… Read More

Dr. Pretlow says, Fried foods, like fried potatoes, are crunchy and chewy and also involve a lot of hand-to-mouth motion and mouth manipulation. That’s high displacement activity valu… Read More

In “The Displacement Mechanism as a Basis for Eating Disorders,” Dr. Pretlow wrote: Theoretically, the displacement mechanism functions by rechanneling overflow mental energy to… Read More

Every time somebody publishes a paper, it creates fertile ground for thoughts to sprout in other brains, whether those brains are academic, professional, journalistic, etc., or whether they… Read More

As Dr. Pretlow teaches, it is a lot better to treat the underlying cause of a problem than to treat the symptoms. One reason for this is, treating the symptoms is just not practical. Sympto… Read More

This post is a continuation of yesterday’s, whose general topic is the increasing unrest over the latest guidelines published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. In particular, we… Read More

Online gambling or iGaming has been gaining popularity in the last decade. The global COVID-19 pandemic helped push the interest toward online gambling even further, yet, not many US state… Read More

Two weeks ago, New York marked the one-year anniversary of legal mobile sports betting by announcing that it generated far and away more revenue than any other state. Governor Hocul annou… Read More