Best Venue and Topic

The journal I am looking at mostly right now is PsyArt. According to their website, PsyArt is a peer reviewed journal that uses a psychological approach to the arts. PsyArt specializes in psychoanalytic psychology and literature, visual arts, music or film. PsyArts volumes extend back to 1997 and is free to anyone using the internet. My paper is going to be on the psychological aspect behind musical myths. Possibly finding and supporting proof and/or disproving certain musical/film myths and deciding whether to side with apophenia, synchronicity or even both.

Poissble Venues?

My topic has to do with musical myths and/or the psychological aspect behind it. I searched for music/art journals as well as psychology journals. The Connections Journal deals with social network analysis and has a section for psychology communication. Interactions is not a scientific publication but has to do with the connections that exist between people. I am interested in this because of the groups of people who can see the musical myths and the groups who do not. I am interested in how they differ. The Atlantic seems to have a variety of topics to squeeze into. I also did a search for journals that had a combination of music and psychology, thinking that there would not be many journals but I was surprised. PSYART is an online journal for the psychological study of art. The Journal of Music and Meaning is a good journal on music research. The Music and Psyche Network seems to be on the lower end but still has me interested. IT may fit my entry better than the rest.

Links:
Connections:
http://www.insna.org/pubs/connections/index.html
Interactions:
http://interactions.acm.org/submit.php
The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/index/books
PSYART:
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/index.shtml
The Journal of Music and Meaning:
http://www.musicandmeaning.net/links.php
Music & Psyche Network:
http://www.musicpsyche.org/

Which Side of Believing

The term apophenia was coined by Klaus Conrad in 1958. According to Skeptic's Dictionary apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena. In statistics this is called a Type 1 error, seeing patterns where none, in fact, exist. Many believe apophenia is the explanation to many unusual experiences and phenomena such as ghosts, hauntings, E.V.P., numerology, and The Dark Side of the Rainbow. Conrad described this as distortion of reality present in psychosis without really implying the presence of neurological or mental illness.
Others believe in the synchronicity, as defined by Carl Jung: a phenomenon in which coincidental events "seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality.” This theory is impossible to prove.
A big part of the psychedelic scene in the 60's was putting random film clips to unrelated music. I have even stumbled across “The Synchronicity Arkive.” (http://www.synchronicityarkive.com/) In The Dark Side of the Rainbow, Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon album is said to be in synchronicity with the visuals from The Wizard of Oz. A problem you encounter while watching this is that The Dark Side of the Moon album by Pink Floyd isn't as long as The Wizard of Oz. One theory is to put the album on repeat and let it start again. A second theory is to put on the Pink Floyd track Wish You Were Here and then finish it with PIGS from the Animals album, another song by Pink Floyd. I can remember watching the film a while back and thinking the same thing I did after watching it again. As awesome as a soundtrack as it sounds for the movie, and as many parts match, there still seems to be some gaps in between. I cannot choose a theory to support.

About Me

Hello everyone, my name is Evangelos Samaras and I am a Liberal Arts: Psychology major. I am currently interested in the criminal mind although I am not officially trying to earn a degree in Criminal Psychology(Forensic Psychology), but I have not completely ignored it either. As a long term goal I am interested in becoming a Psychiatrist but I have a lot of schooling left to reach that position. On my spare time I like to make music and watch Horror and B-list movies. I love to make music, whether it's playing the guitar, keyboard or writing lyrics, there is no aspect of it I don't like to tamper with.