M-Me

Major Depression: aka Unipolar Disorder, see Clinical Depression.

Mania: a mood disorder characterised by a variety of symptoms including inappropriate elation, extreme motor activity, impulsiveness and excessively rapid thought and speech.

It is often experiences as the ‘up’ side of Manic Depressive Psychosis (aka Bipolar Disorder).

Manic Depressive Psychosis: aka Bipolar Disorder, this is a mental illness characterised by both the kind of Depressive episodes characteristic of Major Depression/Unipolar Disorder and episodes of Mania. The Manic phases are characterised by elevated and expansive mood, rapid speech that can be hard to understand, delusions, overactivity and impulsive behaviour.
A number of studies of monozygotic twins (from the same egg) have shown high concordance rates - even as high as 80% - implying there is often a genetic predisposition (diathesis) in the development of this condition.

Maoism: the Communist doctrines of Mao Zedong, as formerly practiced in China. Its central idea is that of ‘permanent revolution’, with anti-intellectualism, mass movements, purges of counter-revolutionaries and the destruction of social structures. It also stressing the importance of the peasantry leading agricultural collectivisation. Alongside the rural agrarian bases, Maoism allows for small-scale industry.

Marxism: a sociological perspective, derived from the work of Karl Marx, which stresses the role conflict plays in society. The basic argument of the Marxists is that economics is at the base of social life and progress is made through the struggle between different social classes.

Marxist sociologists have influenced a number of areas of social life, most notably in the study of stratification, work and politics. There are different variations within Marxism which are often as divided from each other as they are from their political opponents.

Marxist Feminism: a branch of Feminist thought which attributes inequalities between men and women not only to patriarchy but also to Capitalism.

A potent strand in Marxist Feminist thinking is that women do ‘unpaid labour’ in nurturing the current generation of workers while raising the next.

Marxist-Humanism: a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Karl Marx's earlier writings, especially the ‘Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844’ in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural conception of Capitalist society.

Marxist-Leninism: a Communist ideology that is officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin which promotes the development and creation of international Communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary Socialist state that represents the will and rule of the proletariat. It supports the creation of a totalitarian single party state. It rejects political pluralism external to Communism, claiming that the proletariat need a single, able political party to represent them and exercise political leadership.

The Marxist-Leninist state forbids opposition to itself and its ideology. Through the policy of democratic centralism, the Communist party is the supreme political institution of the Marxist-Leninist state

Mean: see Measures of Central Tendency.

Means of Production: the ingredients necessary for the production of goods and services, including the social relations between workers, technology, and other resources used.

Karl Marx (1867) believed that Capitalism was characterised by the split between the Capitalists, who owned the means of production, and the proletarians, who had only their labour services to sell.

Measures of Central Tendency: descriptive statistics which produce a single figure to represent a data set. The 3 most commonly-used measures of central tendency are:-

• Mean  - the arithmetical average calculated by adding up all the values in a data set and dividing that sum by the number of values in the data set. x̄ = Ʃx

      n

• Median - the middle or central value of a data set put into ascending or descending order
• Mode - the most common value in a data set

Measures of Dispersion: descriptive statistics which shows the spread of scores in a data set. There are others but the 2 most commonly used are:-

• Range - the simplest measure of dispersion - the distance between lowest and highest value and most accurate if you add 1 to the difference (assuming the scores are all whole numbers) to account for possible measurement error
• Standard Deviation - the most accurate measure of dispersion. It measures the average deviation (difference) of each score from the mean. Every score is involved in the calculation.

            sd = √Ʃ(x-x̄)²

                       n-1

Median: see Measures of Central Tendency.

Medical Model: an explanation for illness based on the assumption that all illnesses (physical and psychological) have an underlying physiological basis.

Examples of this include the ‘Monoamine Hypothesis’ for Depression which postulates that the symptoms are caused by low levels of the monoamine neurotransitters noradrenaline and/or serotonin.

Medulla Oblongata: a structure in the hindbrain which is more or less an extension of the brainstem. It controls vital functions such as heart rate and breathing as well as important reflexes such as salivation and sneezing.

Melatonin: a hormone produced by the pineal gland which increases sleepiness.

Meme: a term coined by Richard Dawkins (1976) for a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is contained in a medium of communication - eg: a book - or is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. When it 'infects' a mind, a meme is effectively a culturally-transmitted schema.

Memeplex: Susan Blackmore's (1999) term for a confluence of memes which together comprise a bigger idea - for example: a large memeplex such as religion is comprised of hundreds of smaller memeplexes - such as worship which is composed of more singular memes such as prayer and adoration. The meme-memeplex relationship is an example of the holon-holarchy relationship.

Memetics: the study of how memes are transmitted culturally in a 'virus-like' manner.

Memory Trace: the neurological/physical record or 'trace' of a memory.

Mercedes Model: reputedly named by Tad James & Wyatt Woodsmall (1988), this is the Think/Cognitive-Feel/Emotions-Do/Behave/Bodily Condition) model developed by Richard Bandler & John Grinder (1975) in the early days of NLP from the state concepts of the great Russian philosopher, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. The crux of this model is that what we think cognitively, how we feel and what we do are all bound up symbiotically and change in one domain will inevitably influence change in the other two.
For instance, if someone has a bodily cold, they will tend to feel 'down' and think sluggishly. Someone who uses strong and positive body language will tend to feel confident and think positively.
NLP thus presupposes that a positive intervention in one domain will have therapeutic effects in the other domains also.

MeshWEAVER: Don Beck's (2002) title for those involved in creating MeshWORKS, using CAPI and Spiral Dynamics.

MeshWORK: Don Beck's (1998) terminology for the application of Spiral Dynamics at an organisational or cultural level.

Meta-Analysis: statistical technique for finding common patterns and trends in the findings from a number of studies.

Meta-Mirror: a conflict resolution exercise developed by Robert Dilts, using the 4 Perceptual Positions.

Meta-Model: the Meta-Model is a complex analysis of linguistic structures developed by NLP founders Richard Bandler & John Grinder (1975), based upon the 3 key filters identified in Noam Chomsky's classic 1957work - ie: we delete information, we distort information and we generalise from it. To meta-model someone is to break apart that person's linguistic patterns and enable exploration of issues at a far deeper level.

Meta-Programme: an NLP concept, meta-programmes are observable distinctions in mental processing styles, usually measured between two opposites - eg: Big Picture/Little Detail, Self-Referenced/Others-Referenced.
Some meta-programmes - eg: Introvert-Extravert - appear to be grounded in temperament - but most can be related to the operational structure of a person's vMEME Stack.

Meta-State: this NLP concept, developed by L Michael Hall, is closely related to schema theory in Cognitive Psychology. It is concerned with how we interpret events, then how we interpret the result of that interpretation, then how we interpret the interpretation of the interpretation, then how we interpret the interpretation of the interpretation of the interpretation, etc - creating multiple layers of interpretation. with every additional layer that much more removed from the original sensory information. Each layer beyond the initial primary interpretation-less state is a meta-state. So a meta-state can be defined as 'the mental state arrived at through the application of meaning' .
The Cognitive Triad can be linked to meta-stating to show how vMEMES influence the formation of belief structures at every level.