Welcome to the blog of the Flying Shrink. I can say that I have many thoughts about what this blog might be about, but the most immediate focus is likely to be on the intersection of flying and clinical psychology. Flying presents a number of interesting thoughts that can be applied to our broader life context, and of course psychology has much to offer aviation. One example that comes immediately to mind is the line of research my sensation and perception professor Dr. Joel Warm was engaged in. At the time of my training at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Warm (or Dr. Diablo as we often called him - his class was the hardest class I have ever survived in my life!!!!) was conducting research on vigilance and perceptual errors as it relates to air traffic controllers. He had a very elaborate laboratory where he simulated the environment of a control tower and presented scenarios to participants to see what caused errors. Pretty important unless you appreciate having 757's zipping past you with a few feet to spare (thank G0d for TCAS eh?).
This line of work is not really my expertise within psychology, but I find this fascinating. I am also troubled about that question on the application for the medical certificate that asks about whether or not one has been evaluated by a psychologist. I will have a few thoughts about that as time evolves, I'm sure.
Thanks for checking out these pages. I'm a busy man, so I can't say that this will be a highly active blog.
