Dr. Evangelos Katsioulis' Interview

You are the most intelligent person  in the world, with an IQ 205, recognized by different  societies of high IQ.

1 ) How does your mind work?

We are curious about the unique way you look at the world, how do you see  things, people and contexts in a different  way than the average person? How do you perceive the whole universe? How is to be a genius?What is a genius in real world?

Thank you for your kind words. However, I have the feeling that I am rather myself than any entitled creature. As far as I could respond to such a question, I would say that I do enjoy being observative, relating facts with possible causes, analyzing available information or guessing missing data and responding quite faster comparing to most people around me. As you may have already figured out, that could be both a benefit and a disadvantage depending on the outcomes of the thinking process.

There are only a few important things in life and the top one is the realization that we also are biological entities with some more brain and accompanying abilities comparing to the rest living beings. There additional mental abilities, part of which may contribute to the perception of the soul, may be the cause that we complicate things and lower our life quality. Evolution offered us the abilities, which we most use for any purpose other than our happiness. We think a lot and we do much less than we can do. We procrastinate, we rationalize and we surrender our freedom and life to the service of higher goals missing the most important element of our life, our time.

We still miss a lot regarding the understanding of the universe, its creation and any purposes behind that. If your question targets my believes about God existence, then I could say that it seems to me that there is a rather high possibility that a hierarchically higher to mortal humans entity should exist. This could be named God, Physics laws or anyhow else.

A genius should be a mentally gifted person, who can use his/her abilities for accomplishing any of his/her goals the most efficient and less time- and energy-consuming manner. Information process depth and speed, abstract thinking, extraction of useful outcomes out of any condition, imagination, creativity and efficiency may also characterize the everyday life of a genius.

2) How do you describe your background, your skills and your work?

You have a lot of intellectual skills, including mathematical abilities. How is to work in  a profession which deals more with people, feelings, psychological issues than  pure hard science?Why did you make this choice ?Were you an unusual child in your infancy?

As you are already aware, I am currently working as a psychiatrist, psychotherapist. My main passion is communication and expression by any means. Given all the above, psychotherapy is an everyday challenge for me, professionally and personally, which I enjoy the most. Writing is a old habit of mine and I intend to publish my thoughts and ideas really soon.

As a child, I can recall myself being very curious about almost anything. I had fun reading books from early age, when painting was my passion. On later life stages, I left the brush and grabbed the pen.

3)Tell us about the topic  “ Intelligence”.

 In your personal definition , what is intelligence? Where comes from your intelligence?  Is it possible someone becomes more intelligent up to genius level? Are there techniques or tools anyone can use to increase his or her level of intelligence? What do you recommend?

Intelligence is mainly inherited from our parents. To be more accurate, intelligence genes provide only the wide range of intelligence performances, available to each one of us. The exact intelligence performance anyone could achieve at any stage in his life is the resulting effect of both the genetic background and the environmental influences. The more anyone uses his brain, the higher his intelligence could advance within the genetically predefined range. It is the exact same thing that happens with our bodies. The most we physically train ourselves, the more we progress and develop physical abilities. The same goes with the brain. The more we use it, the better it becomes.

The only advice I could offer to anyone, is to use his mental abilities the most interesting and challenging manner he could. There is no way that anyone can progress and advance high enough focusing on an uninteresting or boring field.

4) There is a agreement  that “knowledge is power”.

In our current days, with the advance technology ,do you agree with this phrase or not?What are the secrets in achieving more results in business, relationships or even getting a life with happiness?

Knowledge is indeed power, however nowdays there is an excess of knowledge, which may be confusing or distracting to many. I would say that today the key factor is knowledge management rather than knowledge itself. We need to detect what we are interested in and we need to find the best possible way for us to learn more about it. One more aspect in relation to the knowledge field, is that we need to first know ourselves before we reach any other person or even make any type of choice. In our times, people have no time to invest on self-awareness, appreciation and esteem and this is one of the worst possible curses of modern societies. People are pushed from early ages to choose, to succeed and to survive without having the time to realize who they really are. We can never be happy if we are not ourselves.

5) If you could choose a set of subjects for a school “curriculum” of the future…

Which would they be? What would be 10 subjects more important for the future of the next generations? Why did you select them? Explain, please.

The key factors of any educational system should be to offer basic knowledge about language and maths to children, stimulate their brains, offer options to them, make them realize themselves and their preferences and present to them any available knowledge fields. Education should be preparing children to choose their interests and should never end up a boring but unavoidable period of any child life. There are plenty of national educational curriculi, which trap children into a giant labyrinth of more or less useless knowledge, numbers and facts that they will definitely forget, just because they will never use them.

6)  In my country , Brazil, people have prejudice regarding Psychiatry. They think the psychiatrist treats just “crazy people” and that “mental disorders are inventions ,from groups with hidden interests , as laboratories and doctors.”

Do you see this situation in your country and around the world too? What do you think about? And how to minimize these obstacles to provide mental health to everybody?

Unfortunately, that is the case also in Greece among many other countries. If anyone needs to visit a psychiatrist, he is out of his mind, nuts, lunatic or crazy. However, it appears that the latest generation experiences less negative thoughts against shrinks and seeks their feedback and support. We need to realizeand accept that Psychiatry is a prettyyoung medical specialty having only 65 years of existence. In the past, people, who are currently considered in need of a psychiatrist’s assistance, were isolated from society and stigmatized as being conquered by evil spirits or demons. Who can forget the fact that such ‘crazy’ people were burned in fire in Medieval ages. I have the feeling that the quality of services provided by mental health professionals would be itself the absolute argument, which will eventually make people change their minds about mental health concerns.

7) Your are a Founder & CEO of ANADEIXI (AAAA.GR), World Intelligence Network (IQSOCIETY.ORG) and 7 International High IQ Societies .

What are your general goals with this endeavor?

I strongly believe that children is our future. They deserve everything and they need to have the chance to live their lives the way they want. I took the initiative to form a voluntary group of specialists to support educational, psychological and future professional needs of younger individuals. AAAA.GR group is currently an internet-based community, within which interested parties interact and exchange useful information.

World Intelligence Network (WIN) is an international organization, which is created to support the communication and interaction needs of gifted individuals. CIVIQ, HELLIQ, OLYMPIQ, GRIQ, QIQ and IQID High IQ Societies are created to bring together people of higher cognitive abilities and offer the proper stimulating environment to develop their potentials.

8) Your work consists in different activities as Mental State Examination, Psychiatric Diagnostics, Treatment plans, Follow-up, Psychotherapy sessions, Psychodynamics, Counselling, One to One and Group settings. 

Tell us more about your approaches to clarify the public what mean all these modalities of treatment in the mental health.

My main professional and personal passion is communication and my principal interest is in psychotherapy. I use a newly innovated combination of various approaches and techniques in my everyday psychotherapy practice.To elaborate, I applyan amendment of the brief intensive psychotherapy protocols with many person-centered, cognitive, analytical, behavioral, systemic and gestalt elements. I am focused on gaining the expected therapy outcomes as soon as possible. If there is more time available, I am exploring in a more analytical manner any relevant causes and events.

Currently, I am cooperating with an online psychotherapy company, PsyCall.com, offering online therapy sessions via Skype. Telepsychotherapy may well be very popular very soon, since it eliminates many disadvantages of the traditional face to face meetings in addition to less time and resources consuming.

9) I work with  Psychopharmacology in my private practice. You are  PhD in Psychopharmacology !

 What are the importance of the medications in the treatment of mental disorders and how do you deal with the controversy involving the resistenceof  some branches ,within the psychology, for example,  in accepting this therapeutic model nowadays?

What do you think about this battle of treatments:  Psychoterapy versus Psychopharmacology?

It is a fact that our knowledge about mental health disorders,their etiology and effective treatment requires further development. We are in need of further research and elaboration of the implementing causal mechanisms of all mental health disorders. Consequently, the efficiency of the currently available psychopharmacological options is rather limited comparing to the medications used in the physical medicine. For instance, we are all aware that any combination of antidepressants may be efficient up to 2/3 cases (Star-D) and approximately the same is the efficiency of the antipsychotics. On the other hand, anxiolytics (benzos) are highly effective and therefore useful.

Having said all the above, my clear recommendation is that the combination of psychotherapeutic and at cases psychopharmacological support may be the best available practice for almost any mental health concern.

10) If you could give your best advice for the next generations about how to live the life and build a new world, what would it be in a wide scope?

Live your day as it was the last one. Prefer to act instead of thinking how to act. The most important in life is our time only and we should realize and appreciate our temporary stay in this life. Noone else but onyyourself is responsible for your life, conditions and quality. Refrain from blaming others when you haven’t yet done anything you can to make your life better. You need to find and value what you want and not count on what anyone expects from you. We came to this planet on our own and we leave it the same way. In the meantime, we may spend have some good time with people around us.