Sheep are ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. One of the earliest animals to be domesticated for agricultural purposes, sheep are raised for fleece, meat and milk. A sheep’s wool is the most widely used of any animal, and is usually harvested by shearing.

Being a key animal in the history of farming, sheep have a deeply entrenched place in human culture, and find representation in much modern language and symbology. As livestock, sheep are most often associated with pastoral imagery. In contemporary English language usage, people who are timid or easily led are often compared to sheep.

Sheep are prey animals with a strong gregarious instinct, and a majority of sheep behaviors can be understood in these terms. The dominance hierarchy of sheep and their natural inclination to follow a leader to new pastures were the pivotal factors in it being one of the first domesticated livestock species. All sheep have a tendency to congregate close to other members of a flock, although this behavior varies with breed. Farmers exploit this behavior to keep sheep together on unfenced pastures and to move them more easily. Shepherds may also use sheepdogs in this effort, whose highly bred herding ability can assist in moving flocks.

Flock dynamics in sheep are only exhibited in a group of four or more sheep. Fewer sheep may not react as normally expected when alone or with few other sheep. For sheep, the primary defense mechanism is simply to flee from danger when their flight zone is crossed. Cornered sheep may charge or threaten to do so through hoof stamping and aggressive posture. This is particularly true for ewes with newborn lambs.

In displaying flocking, sheep have a strong lead and follow tendency, and a leader often as not is simply the first sheep to move. However, sheep do establish a pecking order through physical displays of dominance. Dominant animals are inclined to be more aggressive with other sheep, and usually feed first at troughs. Primarily among rams, horn size is a factor in the flock hierarchy. Rams with different size horns may be less inclined to fight to establish pecking order, while rams with similarly sized horns are more so.

Sheep can become stressed when separated from their flock members. They can recognize individual human and ovine faces, and remember them for years. Relationships in flocks tend to be closest among related sheep. In mixed breed flocks, same breed subgroups tend to form, and a ewe and her direct descendants often move as a unit within large flocks.

Sheep are frequently thought of as extremely unintelligent animals. A sheep’s herd mentality and quickness to flee and panic in the face of stress often make shepherding a difficult endeavor for the uninitiated. Despite these perceptions, a University of Illinois monograph on sheep found them to be just below pigs and on par with cattle in IQ, and some sheep have shown problem solving abilities.

A flock in West Yorkshire, England allegedly found a way to get over cattle grids by rolling on their backs. In addition to long term facial recognition of individuals, sheep can also differentiate emotional states through facial characteristics. If worked with patiently, sheep may learn their names, and many sheep are trained to be led by halter for showing and other purposes. Sheep have also responded well to clicker training. Very rarely, sheep are used as pack animals. Tibetan nomads distribute baggage equally throughout a flock as it is herded between living sites.

Karen Horney (pronounced “horn-eye”) was a German psychodynamic psychologist of Norwegian and Dutch descent. Her theories questioned traditional Freudian views as well as the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis and its genetic psychology.

From roughly the age of nine Horney changed her perspective on life, becoming ambitious and somewhat rebellious. She felt that she could not become pretty and instead decided to vest her energies into her intellectual qualities. At this time she developed a crush on her older brother, who became embarrassed by her attentions. It was here Horney suffered her first of several bouts of depression that would plague her for the rest of her life.

Horney looked at neurosis in a different light from other psychoanalysts of the time. Horney believed neurosis to be a continuous process, with neuroses commonly occurring sporadically in one’s lifetime. This was in contrast to the opinions of her contemporaries who believed neurosis was a negative malfunction of the mind in response to external stimuli, such as bereavement, divorce or negative experiences during childhood and adolescence.

From her experiences as a psychiatrist, Horney named ten patterns of neurotic needs. These ten needs are based upon things which she thought all humans require to succeed in life. A neurotic person could theoretically exhibit all of these needs, though in practice much fewer than ten need be present to constitute a person having a neurosis. The ten needs, as set out by Horney, are as follows:

Moving Toward People

1. The need for affection and approval. Pleasing others and being liked by them.

2. The need for a partner. One whom they can love and who will solve all problems.

Moving Against People

3. The need for power. The ability to bend wills and achieve control over others. While most persons seek strength, the neurotic may be desperate for it.

4. The need to exploit others, to get the better of them. To become manipulative, fostering the belief that people are there simply to be used.

5. The need for social recognition, prestige and limelight.

6. The need for personal admiration, for both inner and outer qualities. To be valued.

7. The need for personal achievement. Though virtually all persons wish to make achievements, the neurotic may be desperate for achievement.

Moving Away from People

8. The need for self sufficiency and independence. While most desire some autonomy, the neurotic may simply wish to discard other individuals entirely.

9. The need for perfection. While many are driven to perfect their lives in the form of well being, the neurotic may display a fear of being slightly flawed.

10. Lastly, the need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders. To live as inconspicuous a life as possible.

As implied, while non-neurotic individuals may strive for these needs, neurotics exhibit a much deeper, more willful and concentrated desire to fulfill the said needs. Horney, together with fellow psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, formed the Neo-Freudian discipline.

Through her views on the individual psyche, Horney postulated that the self is in fact the core of one’s own being and potential. Horney believed that if one has an accurate conception of oneself, then one is free to realize one’s potential and achieve what one wishes. Thus, she believed that self-actualization is the healthy person’s aim through life, as opposed to the neurotic’s clinging to a set of key needs.

According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one inflicts one’s own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. It is a common process that every person uses to some degree.

To understand the process, consider a person in a couple who has thoughts of infidelity. Instead of dealing with these undesirable thoughts consciously, he or she subconsciously projects these feelings onto the other person, and begins to think that the other has thoughts of infidelity and may be having an affair. In this sense, projection is related to denial, arguably the only defense mechanism that is more primitive than projection. Projection, like all defense mechanisms provide a function whereby truth about a part of themselves that may otherwise be unacceptable is shielded.

Compartmentalization, splitting and projection are ways that the ego continues to pretend that it is completely in control at all times, when in reality human experience is one of shifting beingness, instinctual or territorial reactiveness and emotional motives, for which the “I” is not always complicit. Further, common in deep trauma, individuals will be unable to access truthful memories, intentions and experiences, even about their own nature, wherein projection is just one tool.

It has been described as the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable, too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous by attributing them to another.

The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach based his theory of religion in large part upon the idea of projection such that the idea that an anthropomorphic deity is the outward projection of man’s anxieties and desires.

Psychological projection is the subject of Robert Bly’s book A Little Book on the Human Shadow. The shadow, a term used in Jungian psychology to describe a variety of psychological projection, refers to the projected material. Marie-Louise Von Franz extended the view of projection to cover phenomena in Patterns of Creativity Mirrored in Creation Myths and notes that wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image.

When addressing psychological trauma the defense mechanism is sometimes counter projection, including an obsession to continue and remain in a recurring trauma causing situation, and the compulsive obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the trauma or its projection.

Carl Jung mentioned that all projections provoke counter projection when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject.

Projection is the opposite defense mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have.

The self preservation instinct appears to our consciousness under the guise of that deep rooted clinging to life, that desire to live, which characterises every living thing. It is this instinct, functioning simply in simply organised creatures, that leads them to seek food and avoid danger, and also causes that complex organism, a civilised man, to carry out the elaborate activities of “earning a living.”

It is essentially a selfish instinct, for it leads the individual to regard his own welfare alone, and to consider others only so far as their existence is essential to his. For instance, shooting and hunting during the breeding season are forbidden by law, not out of consideration for the hunted creatures, but because the continuation of their species is useful to us.

Its influence, however, is often modified by the two other great instincts whose influence may become so strong under certain circumstances as to induce a man not only to disregard his own interests, but even to lay down his life for others.

In many varieties of animals, however, only two instincts are present, self-preservation and reproduction; but in animals that are associated together into herds or packs, a third instinct is developed, the social instinct. When this occurs, the functioning of the self-preservation instinct is greatly modified; the individual no longer owes his existence solely to his power to cope with his environment, but depends mainly upon his ability to keep his place in the herd; and upon the social organisation devolves the task of adaptation and survival. The strayed sheep is soon hunted down, the solitary wolf starves.

This is equally true of man, who is also a social animal. The misery of Central Europe, in the breakdown of social organisation following upon the war, has shown us the helplessness of the individual human being and his complete dependence upon herd life.

The self-preservation instinct and its ruthless functioning under the law of natural selection has furnished a theme to many moralists and sociologists of the materialistic type, but they are apt to forget that the socialisation of humanity has changed the nature of the problem; the unit of survival is no longer the individual, but the social organisation of which he is a member. The law of self-preservation has given place to the law of group preservation, and the centre of psychic gravity is shifted. The importance of this point cannot be over-estimated in practical psychology.

By some psychologists the instinct of nutrition is distinguished from that of self-preservation, but for all practical purposes they are identical.

It must be borne in mind, in applying the standards of psychology to the human character, that in the more highly developed types of human being the self-preservation instinct is not fulfilled simply by the continuance of physical life; there is self-preservation of the personality as well as of the bodily existence, and unless a man has adequate scope for self-expression and self-development, he will experience that sense of incompleteness and imperfection characteristic of the repression of an instinct.

Fear is a universal emotion that includes everything from the decision to fight or flee to the insidious mounting of stress. It can also cause us to “freeze”, which is not an indicator of indecision in the face of fear, but stems rather from an ancestral skill used to respond to a stalker or predator. A fearful stimulus primes the body with adrenaline and prompts the fastest physical reaction possible. When the brain is triggered in fear, the autonomic system and stress hormones are activated. The amygdala gets immediate input from the thalamus and acts to start up the internal readiness and reaction system. This bypasses the cortex and any consideration of the context and such. It is just responding. In fact, the feared stimulus and the programmed response to it are indelibly etched into the amygdala, as its job is to alert the animal to dangerous, novel, and interesting situations and to direct its response.

The physical and mental responses to fear were so important to the survival of primitive man that they remain very powerful and longlasting. Unfortunately, this adaptive response is not always appropriate in today’s world. Our civilization has evolved away from the need to overrespond, but we still do. Regularly overresponding to life’s minor troubles can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, migraines, and ulcers. Other malfunctions of the fear system are shown in disorders such as panic and phobias. Once we learn to be afraid of something, our brains become programmed to remember that stimulus in the same way, so that it’s hard to get rid of our conditioned fears.

The startle response is a good example of an adaptive fear mechanism that can sometimes get out of control. A loud, sudden noise will elicit a startle response from most people. As this type of noise is often associated with danger, it is important to be immediately alert and have the adrenaline pumping. However, if a stimulus like a loud noise is repeatedly paired with a dangerous situation, some people will develop an overactive startle response. This is often the case in PTSD. People with this disorder, war veterans or victims of abuse, startle easily and often. They suffer from physical ailments more frequently than the general population, and have an increased incidence of cancer, which is associated with a lowered immune response and raised levels of cortisol. Many of the physical and psychological symptoms associated with PTSD can be traced to the frequent, sometimes constant state of startle and hyperalertness that afflicts these individuals.

Jackie, a victim of early child abuse, was afraid of everything, from new situations to her own shadow. She was not agoraphobic or afraid of going out into the world, but nevertheless stayed at home. She always overresponded to new situations, seeing them essentially as threats, bringing with them the possibility of her being hit again.

The most poignant example of PTSD is seen in women who have been raped and cannot allow themselves to enjoy sex again. Such a woman is often indelibly programmed to be vigilant and fearful. She may consciously want to engage in sex with her mate but has an inner resistance to it. Clearly, this can cause real trouble in valued relationships.

The amygdala is the area of the brain most involved in fear. Stimuli have a direct pathway through the sensory filter of the thalamus to the amygdala, which can then mobilize the body through its brainstem connections. If you see a snake, or anything that looks like a snake, in the corner of a shadowy garage, the amygdala is immediately triggered and you react before cognizing the image. The image triggers the optic nerve to send a signal into the brain. On its way to the cortex, the signal takes a short route to the amygdala, which shouts “Emergency!” to the rest of your body, triggering a cascade of reactions: your heart rate soars, your blood pressure increases, and your senses become heightened as your body prepares to take action.

With enough time or experience, reason can stop the action. There is another, slower pathway for fear, where the information about a fearful stimulus goes from the thalamus to the frontal cortex and then to the amygdala. This occurs when you realize that the “snake” is really an old coiled garage-door spring. The response to the second pathway overrules the indication of the first. Now all systems reverse. Your blood pressure comes down and your heart rate returns to normal. The lower brain, the amygdala and the rest of the limbic system, is inhibited by the upper brain. You then begin to “think” about what just happened rather than just respond.

The two pathways can be seen as the low road and high road of fearful responses to danger. The path straight through the thalamic projections to the amygdala (the low road) is rough and crude but fast. The pathway using the cortex (the high road) gives a more accurate assessment and can be expected to lead to a more considered response, but it takes longer.

Fear responses to sudden, potentially life-threatening stimuli such as explosive noises or the attack of an animal are automatic in most people. But many other fear responses are learned. Most of us have marveled, for example, at how young children seem to have no fear of heights. We also have to teach them to look both ways before crossing the street, for fear that a car might hit them. New MRI studies also show that teenage brains may not have fully developed the reasoning pathways to adequately assess fear, which may contribute to teens’ difficulty in dealing with emotions. Neuropsychologist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd of McLean Hospital flashed forty faces showing expressions of fear to sixteen adolescents age eleven to seventeen. The younger teens reacted with heightened activity in the amygdala but only a modicum of activity in the frontal lobe. The older teens had greater activation in the frontal lobe. In previous tests, adults showed greater activity in the frontal lobe and less in the amygdala than adolescents. Apparently, there is a gradual shift of emotional and cognitive processing from the instinctive to the cognitive regions as the adolescent brain learns and grows. While this growth of wisdom or activation of the frontal cortex can help teens learn how to stay calm in stressful situations, it can also cause them to learn from parents or friends fears they didn’t have, or need to have, such as an undue fear of heights or of social situations.

As the snake example shows, fear involves contextual conditioning. A garage corner is dark, cool, and dirty, making it much more likely to be the place to find a snake than a corner of the living room. Context is a collection of many stimuli and is dependent on accurate memory of situations. The hippocampus is the brain area responsible for assessing this function. It receives processed information from the cortex that has already been associated with the context of the situation and the fearful stimulus, bringing the whole picture into perspective.

Contextual conditioning can be used in reverse to treat panic disorders and phobias such as fear of snakes, dogs, or heights. The technique, which is called “flooding,” involves a step-by-step process of gradually experiencing more and more of the feared stimulus so that the patient can learn that snakes or dogs or heights are not invariably dangerous. First the patient is asked to visualize the least fearful aspect of the experience, the snake’s interesting skin design, the dog’s cuteness, the great view from the bridge, and then to practice relaxation or meditation, which gradually lessens the anxious firing of the brain’s neurons and relaxes the tense muscles of the stomach and legs, relieving the fear input from the body. Note that both the brain and the body symptoms must be dealt with, again supporting the theory that emotions are sustained by varied systems throughout the body. Eventually the patient works up to actually experiencing the feared stimulus: holding the snake, petting the dog, standing on the bridge.

Hans Sieburg, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Diego, has developed a virtual-reality treatment for acrophobia that he calls City Project. Patients wear high-tech goggles that provide a realistic, three-dimensional image of what it looks like to be standing on the top of a skyscraper, and while wearing them are calmed with music and reassurance. With practice in repeat sessions, they realize that they are not going to fall. Their bodies stop swaying at the sight of the ground far below. The off-balance feeling subsides. They learn with their bodies that they are not going to fall, and thus they conquer the irrational fear. They train their cortex to re-evaluate the situation and quickly respond to inhibit their amygdala.

The flooding process is straight cognitive behavioral training; it is rearranging the circuits in the brain, reducing all the neural connections that have long supported the thesis that height equals falling while strengthening the circuits that convey “safe.” By gradually rewiring, the patient begins to refocus on the fact that he’s not going to fall off the building. Separating the low (bodily) and high (cognitive) roads in this way seems to be the key to successful treatment.

Synesthesia is a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In one common form of synesthesia known as color synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored. Another recently identified type, visual motion sound synesthesia, involves hearing sounds in response to visual motion.

It is estimated that synesthesia could possibly be as prevalent as 1 in 23 persons across its range of variants. Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained. Psychological research has demonstrated that synesthetic experiences can have measurable behavioral consequences. Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process. Psychologists and neuroscientists study synesthesia not only for its inherent interest but also for the insights it may give into cognitive and perceptual processes.

Though often stereotyped in the popular media as a medical condition or neurological aberration, synesthetes themselves do not experience their synesthetic perceptions as a handicap. To the contrary, most report it as an additional hidden sense, something they would not want to miss. Most synesthetes have become aware of their different way of perceiving in their childhood. Some have learned how to apply it in daily life and work. Synesthetes have used their gift in memorizing names and telephone numbers but also in more complex creative activities like producing visual art, music, and theater.

Very little is known about the overall cognitive traits associated with synesthesia. Some studies have suggested that synesthetes are unusually sensitive to external stimuli. Other possible associated cognitive traits include left-right confusion, difficulties with math, and difficulties with writing.

Synesthetes may be more likely to participate in creative activities, and some studies have suggested a correlation between synesthesia and creativity. Other research has suggested that synesthesia may contribute to superior memory abilities. However, it is unclear whether this is a general feature of synesthesia or whether it is true of only a small minority. This is a major topic of current and future research.

Synesthesia has been a source of inspiration for artists Van Gogh, Kandinsky and Mondrian, composers Scriabin, Messiaen and Ligeti, poets and novelists, as well as contemporary digital artists. Kandinsky and Mondrian experimented with image-music correspondences in their paintings. Scriabin composed symphonic poems of sound and color. Messiaen captured the colors of landscapes in music.

Although synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was largely abandoned in the mid-20th century and has only recently been revisited by modern researchers. Neuroimaging studies have identified differences in patterns of brain activation among synesthetes, and psychological research has demonstrated that synesthetic experiences can have measurable behavioral consequences.

Concentration is a focusing of the mind. It consists of focusing upon a certain subject or object, and being held there for a time. It seems very easy, but a little practice will show how difficult it is to firmly fix the attention and hold it there. It will have a tendency to waver, and move to some other object or subject, and much practice is needed in order to hold it at the desired point.

But practice will accomplish wonders, as one may see by observing people who have acquired this faculty, and who use it in their everyday life. Many persons have acquired the faculty of concentrating their attention but have allowed it to become almost involuntary and they become a slave to it, forgetting themselves and everything else. This is the ignorant way of concentrating, and those addicted to it become slaves to their habits instead of masters of their minds.

They become day-dreamers and absent-minded people instead of conscious and mindful. The secret is in the mastery of the mind. Many enlightened beings can concentrate at will and completely bury themselves in the subject before them, then extract from it every item of interest. They do not allow abstraction to come into the picture. They are very wide awake individuals, close observers, clear thinkers and correct reasoners. They are masters of their minds, not slaves to their moods.

The ignorant concentrators bury themselves in the object or subject and allow it to absorb themselves, while the trained thinker asserts the self and then directs the mind to concentrate upon the subject or object, keeping it under control and in view all the time.

Concentrate the attention upon some familiar object; a pencil, for instance. Hold the mind there and consider the pencil to the exclusion of any other object. Consider its size, color, shape and type of wood. Consider its uses and purposes, its materials, the process of its manufacture, etc. In short think as many things about the pencil as possible allowing the mind to pursue any associated paths, such as a consideration of the graphite of which the lead is made, the forest from which the wood used came from, the history of pencils and other implements used for writing.

Then practice focusing the attention upon some abstract subject. Think about the subject in all its phases and branches one by one until everything is known about it. It is surprising to find how much more there is know about any one thing or subject than previously believed. In hidden corners of the mind there are found useful and interesting information about the subject. This exercise will not only help to develop intellectual powers but will strengthen memory and give more confidence.

We are all largely influenced by the thoughts of others. Vibrations of thoughts linger in the atmosphere long after a thought has passed. The atmosphere is charged with the vibrations of thoughts from many years past, and still affect those whose minds are ready to receive them. And we attract to us thought vibrations corresponding in nature with those which we are in the habit of entertaining. The law of attraction is in full operation and we may see instances of it at all time.

By maintaining and entertaining thoughts along certain lines we allow these thought vibrations to influence us. If we cultivate a habit of thinking along the lines of cheerfulness, brightness and optimism, we attract to ourselves similar thought vibrations of others and we find that before long we will find all sorts of cheerful thoughts pouring into our minds from all directions. Likewise, if we harbor thoughts of gloom, despair and pessimism, we lay ourselves open to the influx of similar thoughts which have emanated from the minds of others.

Not only are we affected in this way by the thoughts of others, but what is known as suggestion also plays an important part in this aspect of subconscious influence. We find that the mind has a tendency to reproduce the emotions, moods and feelings of other persons, as evidenced by their attitude, appearance, facial expression, or words. If we associate with persons of a gloomy temperament, we run the risk of assimilating their mental trouble by the law of suggestion, unless we understand this law and counteract it.

In the same way we find that cheerfulness is contagious, and if we keep in the company of cheerful people we are very apt to take on their mental quality. The same rule applies to frequenting the company of unsuccessful or successful people, as the case may be. If we allow ourselves to take up the suggestions constantly emanating from them, we will find that our minds will begin to reproduce the characteristics, dispositions and traits of the other persons, and before long we will be living on the same mental plane.

These things are true only when we allow ourselves to take on the impressions, but unless one understands the law of suggestion and understands its principles and operations, one is more or less apt to be affected by it. We all remember the effect of certain positive persons with whom we come in contact. One individual has a faculty of inspiring with vigor and energy those in whose company we happen to be. Someone else will cause a feeling of uneasiness in those around him by reason of a prevailing attitude of distrust, suspicion, and low cunning.

Some carry an atmosphere of health around them, while others seem to be surrounded with a sickly aura of disease, even when their physical condition does not seem to indicate the lack of health. Mental states have a subtle way of impressing themselves upon us, and the student who will take the trouble to closely observe those with whom he comes in contact will receive a liberal education along these lines.

There is of course a great difference in the degree of suggestibility among different persons. There are those who are almost immune, while at the other end of the line are to be found others who are so constantly and strongly impressed by the suggestions of others, conscious or unconscious, that they may be said to scarcely have any independent thought or will of their own. But nearly all persons are suggestible to a greater or lesser degree.

It must not be supposed that all suggestions are bad, harmful, or undesirable. Many suggestions are very good for us, and coming at the right time have aided us. Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance to always let our own minds evaluate these suggestions before allowing them to manifest in our subconscious mind. We must let the final decision be our own and not the will of another.