A great start to my weekend

This past Friday I attended an evening with the Atlanta Psychoanalytic Society and had a great time.

The lecture was about psychoanalytic theories of
trauma, and the
lecturer, Mickey Nardo MD, started off summarizing The Red Badge of
Courage and it’s depiction of the civil war. He noted that in the first
part of the story the book is written in the first person from the perspective
of the soldier, but once he takes the battle field the story is told by an
unnamed narrator. Dr. Nardo thought this was symbolic of the soldier traumatized
in battle.

 

He went on to trace the mental illnesses
described in soldiers after the Civil War then discussed approaches to “shell shock” during and after WWI,
including Freud’s studies of German and Austrian soldiers after the war.
Apparently Freud and his colleagues opened several clinics to treat the
soldiers. At the end of the war Freud thought that the soldier’s symptoms would
go away, but later realized he was wrong (and I must say, I’m finding that Freud
was able to admit he was wrong in several places, despite more infamous stories of instances when he could be a bit dogmatic in defending his theories). Freud apparently wrote Beyond the
Pleasure Principle in response to treating patients with trauma disorders,
including soldiers. This book was the introduction of thanatos, the
death drive. I must say that even for me, the theory makes more sense after
hearing that story.

 

Dr. Nardo went on to say that his experience with treating patients is that the patients suffering with trauma symptoms cannot describe the event,
they “lost their minds” during the traumatic event, and cannot explain it
coherently. Exposed to the possibility of their own mortality, the trauma
sufferer is attempting to “prevent the past.” He or she sees the event in front
of them, about to happen, and the symptoms are an attempt to prevent the past
from happening. (I hope that made sense, it did when Dr. Nardo explained
it.)

 

Before you turn that smile upside down…

So, in an article on sadness, depression, and treatment, I find the following comment:

Don’t be happy, worry

There
is also evidence that too much happiness can be bad for your career. Ed
Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois in
Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues found that people who scored 8 out
of 10 on a happiness scale were more successful in terms of income and
education than 9s or 10s – although the 9s and 10s seemed to have more
successful close relationships (Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol 2, p 346).

This
could simply demonstrate that the happiest people are those who cherish
close relationships over power and success, but it could also signal
that people who are “too happy” lose their willingness to make changes
to their lives that may benefit them.

Are you kidding me with that last sentence? Isn’t it really time we reassess the idea that the person with the most toys/money/things is really the best off? As the whole Freakanomics sensation indicates, economists assume that all rational choices lead to more money and resources.

But, I have to ask if rational choices should really be judged by what is best for the individual, or should we instead use decisions that are rational for the survival of the species as a guidepost? We assume that evolution is about the survival of the fittest, but is there really a point to being “fitt-est” instead of “fit” or “fitt-er”? To really be the last man standing would be useless. Certainly, I’m better off if I am part of a generally fit group.

Where Religion Works With (not Against) Science

Psychoanalytic writers since Freud and Jung have written articles about the divergence and antagonism of science and religion in the Western world. Like science, religion ought to be a search for the truth, and here’s an example of religion and science joining together in that search:

Buddhists welcome science into monasteries at Short Sharp Science blog.

Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers

26 Oktober:

Yes, I am certain my friend, certain and ever more certain that a creature’s existence matters little, very little. One of her friends came to Lotte, and I went into the adjoining room to take up a book but couldn’t read, and took up a pen to write. I heard them talking softly; they were telling each other insignificant things, news of the town: how this woman married, how that one is ill, very ill – she has a dry cough, the bones are standing out in her face, and she has fainting fits; I wouldn’t put a penny on her life one of them said – Mr. X is also in a bad way, Lotte said.  – He is swollen, the other replied. – And my vivid imagination transported me to the beds of these poor creatures; I saw them saw how reluctantly they turned their backs on life, how they – Wilhelm! and my little women were talking about it the way one talks about it – that a stranger dies. -  And when I look around the room, and see around me Lotte’s clothes and Albert’s writings and this furniture with which I am so familiar, even this inkwell and think: See what you are to this house! Everything! Your friends honor you! You often make their joy, and it seems to your heart that it could not exist without them; and yet – if you were to leave now, to part from this circle? Would they, how long – Oh, man is so transient that even where he is really certain of his existence, even where he makes the one true impression of his presence, in the memory, in the soul of his dear ones, even there must he disappear, be extinguished, and that so soon!

- J. W. v. Goethe

A Bit More on Attachment and Heredity

Once I get started on Attachment Theory there is just no stopping me…..

The last post on attachment styles and heritability really got me thinking, so I did a bit more looking. If you really want a great overview of scientific attachment research in the last few years, Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver put together an excellent book, Attachment in Adulthood. This book is always one of my first stops when I have a question about attachment theory.

In their summary of genetic and heritability research they note that the research done up until the point the book was sent to the publisher was conflicting, but curious.

These . . . studies indicate that genetic factors may contribute to adult attachment styles measured by self-report scales. Moreover, compared with the relatively low genetic component found in twin studies of infant attachment, these two studies raise the interesting possibility of changes in heritability with age. It is possible that for some personal characteristics, including attachment orientations, genetic influences become more pronounced as children become older and leave home, because the constraints of the family environment might inhibit the expression of termperamental tendencies.

The available data at that time indicated that environment was still the larger factor in predicting attachment styles. They found that the studies on specific genetic markers and attachment style were mixed and contradictory.

I found some other articles online last night, but it was too late to really look into them. My curiosity is aroused.

Speaking of Attachment Theory

I just noticed this entry by Jay Belsky, PhD, commenting on an article indicating that their may be a genetic component to aspects of attachment security. I can’t access the article online yet using my school’s library (tsk, tsk), but will keep an eye out for it. I’m not a genetecist, but I’d be eager to see how this study was performed.

Bowlby theorized that people would have access to secure and insecure attachment styles and that each would be favored for development under certain environmental conditions. As nature seems to like diversity it doesn’t surprise me that some people might be genetically predisposed to one style or another, but it is at the same time a fairly radical departure from existing theory.

 

Have I met you before?

The Latent Freudian’s first love is attachment theory. In a brief nutshell, attachment theory is the study of how our earliest attachment to Mom (or an alternate primary caregiver) impact our relationships for the rest of our lives.

In particular,attachment theory predicts that as infants we learn strategies for keeping our caregiver nearby. We learn how the caregiver reacts to our attempts to get her attention and what strategies work and don’t work.

These strategies become ingrained and create patterns in the brain called Internal Working Models (IWM’s). We reuse the IWM’s in our relationships later in life, including our romantic relationships, and our relationships with our own children.

John Bowlby was the originator of attachment theory. He theorized that IWM’s form the template we apply to future relationships, but it has been unclear if these templates apply only to people we are in significant relationships with, or if they can be applied more generally.

Recent research is starting to indicate that we apply these IWM templates to a very broad range of people we meet. An artice in December’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that we apply these templates to strangers. They observed adolescents in social interactions with other adolescents that they had never met before and observed the attachment related behaviors that the teens displayed in their interactions with these strangers. They concluded that IWM’s (learned in infancy) were at work even with people they had never met before.

This is an exciting observation as it demonstrates how we apply existing patterns to figure out the world around us, and how easy it is to reinforce these patterns when reality is just the opposite. For example, if my mother was a kind helpful woman (at least to me) then I will apply that template to strangers as a way to interpret their intentions and behaviors. Of course, I can’t actually know their real intentions and their actual behaviors may demonstrate an opposite attitude, but my initial impressions of them will be clouded by and will potentially serve to reinforce my IWM. In other words, this is a sign of how we create our own reality through generalizations and irrealities.

 

Amygdala, Anterior Cingulate Cortex, and Anxiety

I’ll be keeping an eye out for an upcoming American Journal of Psychiatry article that PsychCentral highlighted this morning. Jack Nitschke and his colleagues at U-Wisconsin used an fMRI to look at activity in brain regions of patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) to develop two findings.

First, they determined that amygdalas in people with GAD are very active in response to both positive and negative stimuli. In people without an anxiety related disorder, the amygdala is active only in response to negative stimuli. In other words, for people with GAD anxiety is experienced in response to perhaps all stimuli, regardless of if the stimulus is potentially harmful or threatening – even happy things can cause a certain amount of stress.

While GAD patients showed no difference compared to healthy subjects in
brain activation in response to the aversive or neutral pictures
themselves, they displayed unusually high levels of amygdala activity
in response to both anticipatory cues. According to Nitschke, the
response suggests that the patients are hypersensitive to the
anticipation of any stimuli, even those they are told will not be
negative.

The second finding determined that patients with higher levels of activity in the nearby Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) responded better to treatment with a common anti-depressant  (in this particular case, Effexor). The ACC is known to be a brain region that regulates emotional response.

The patterns of brain activity also appear to hold predictive power for
how patients will respond to treatment for their anxiety. After their
brain scans, the GAD patients in the study received an eight-week
course of treatment with venlafaxine (Effexor), a common
antidepressant. Clinical improvement on the medication was associated
with higher levels of pre-treatment brain activity in the anterior
cingulate cortex (ACC) in anticipation of both aversive and neutral
stimuli.

I am intrigued by the findings that help explain who responds to a particular treatment and who does not. Many non-drug therapies for Anxiety and Anxiety related depression attempt to teach patients how to regulate reactions to stimuli by becoming aware of their automatic reactions and learning to differentiate and regulate reactions so that they are appropriate to a particular situation. I wonder if those therapies also require an active ACC to be effective.

As it is written up in the PsychCentral story, the researchers seem to think that if a person doesn’t already have a well functioning ACC, then they aren’t a candidate for treatment with this particular medication. It would be interesting to see if other forms of treatment can stimulate the ACC, and to see if any other forms of treatment can treat GAD beginning with an inactive ACC.

When Freud Leaves the Schools, Illusions Ensue

I’m experiencing confusion about some headlines in the news lately. First, John Tierney reports on an article from the January 09 Psychological Bulletin (not yet available online) that says being religious makes you a healthier, more self controlled person.

Elsewhere in this week’s headlines I read reports on violence and growing tensions between religious factions in Israel and the Gaza strip, Iraq, India, and Pakistan. In California and Arkansas religion is focused hard on breaking up functional, and loving families, and words of condemnation from religious leaders like the Pope convince gay adolescents they are best off committing suicide.

Although one of the authors is quoted in Tierney’s articles as saying he is not religious himself, the original article (I received my copy yesterday) seems a bit prejudiced towards highlighting a lot of positives about general group membership onto religion and calling it piety. I’ve received my copy of the article in the mail, and notice that the negatives of religious membership, like blowing people to bits and organized disenfranchisement are asides.

The illusion is alive, well, and supported by dubious science.

Holidays writing block

I’ve been stuck with a bit of writer’s block this week. I’ve identified three culprits:

• Even writing on the on the blog it feels like I’m violating my oath of procrastination.
• When I’m writing things that other people will read (instructors, strangers) my inner critic wakes up. 
• I’ve come across so many articles and news items from the world of psychology that I’m not sure where to start.