This schematic is more problematic, however, when applied to other domains.  In 1949 Ernst Nagel hypothesized there was a hierarchy of intertheoretical explanation, with derivative sciences (such as “life science,” “natural science” and “social science”) “reducing” to more fundamental ones using “bridge laws” to connect them (Nagel, 1949, 1961).  Thus, for example, psychology is explainable in terms of neuroscience; neuroscience, in terms of molecular biology and biochemistry; molecular biology and biochemistry, in terms of biology; biology, in terms of chemistry; and chemistry, in terms of physics.  Since then there has been considerable debate (summarized at Schafner, 2001 and Darden & Tabery, 2009) as to whether life sciences are amenable to the deductive nomological model.  The main reason why it is thought they might not be is because they are not describable in terms of strict, universally applicable causal laws.  Kandel, Schwartz & Jessell (2000), for example, do not set forth any such principles governing the operations of the human brain.

Even more difficult is the status of cognitive science.  Whatever their parameters, neurophysiological processes have the potential to result in psychological states.  The former could not exist without the latter.  There is nowhere else for them to come from; they do not result, for example, from the process of digestion.  The precise nature of this relationship, however, creates several vexing problems.  Even as psychological states interact with neurophysiological processes, and in some sense are caused by them, there are no strict psychological laws to predict or explain them.  They are untethered or “multiply realizable,” because an initial set of neurophysiological conditions has the potential to result in different psychological outcomes, and any given psychological state may be grounded in different neurophysiological processes.  Because of this underdetermination, what might be called “psychological libertarianism” is compatible with its counterpart, “neurobiological determinism,” and vice versa.

In his paper “Mental Events” (1970) Donald Davidson characterized this as the “nomological irreducibility of the mental” or the “anomalism of the mental.”  Psychological processes must be explained, to the extent they can, on two different but interdependent levels of description: a physical one, and a mental one.  In principle, one neurophysiological process might be explainable in terms of another, and one psychological state in terms of another.  Particular psychological states also might be explainable in terms of particular neurophysiological processes.  However, conceived as a heteronomic class, the former only are indeterminately related to the latter.  As a consequence, Davidson (1974) writes: “[T]he social sciences cannot be expected to develop in ways exactly parallel to the physical sciences, nor can we expect ever to be able to explain and predict human behaviour with the kind of precision that is possible in principle for physical phenomena.” (p. 42)

Later, Joseph Levine (1983, 1999) characterized this as an “explanatory gap.”  As an epistemological thesis, it is impossible to determine whether statements that particular psychological states are derived from particular neurophysiological processes, are true.  Writes Levine: “Even if conceivability considerations do not establish that the mind is in fact distinct from the body, or that mental properties are metaphysically irreducible to physical properties, still they do demonstrate that we lack an explanation of the mental in terms of the physical.” (Levine, 1999, p. 3)  See also Block & Stalnaker (1999).

The anomalism of the mental and the explanatory gap have given rise to a number of countervailing objections and alternative theories.  Illustrative are epiphenomenalism, supervenience, emergence, eliminative materialism and externalism.  “Epiphenomenalism” is the idea that psychological states are nothing more than effects or by-products of neurophysiological processes (Honderich, 1981; McLaughlin, 1985).  “Supervenience” is the idea that while a change in a neurophysiological process will result in a change to a resulting psychological state, the converse is not true (Kim, 1989; Child, 1994).  “Emergence” is the idea that even though they are not reducible to them, psychological states nonetheless arise from neurophysiological processes (Chalmers, 2006; Kim, 2006).  Under all three concepts, psychological states are irrelevant or even illusory, because they play no role (or make no difference) in the explanation of neurophysiological processes, psychological states, or human behavior.  They are causally inert, or empty.

If this is so, then where did they go?  Eliminative materialism holds they can be replaced entirely by descriptions of neurophysiological processes (Churchland, 1981; Stitch, 1983; Churchland, 1986; Crick & Koch, 1990).  Externalism holds they depend primarily on social usage and environmental contexts (Putnam, 1975; Burge, 1979).  Another view is we might never be able to untangle the psycho-physiological link, in principle (McGuinn, 1989).  These theories in turn are subject to numerous disputes and disagreements, summarized at e.g. Feser (2005), Kim (2005) and Searle (2005), the main one of which is they ignore what we would like to think of as distinctive and ineliminable features of mind, such as the quality of subjective experience and its intentionality or directedness.

In my opinion much of this controversy results from a basic category mistake.  As Searle observes, it assumes science only can study “objective” phenomena, such as the neurophysiology underlying cognitive events.  Science is “epistemically objective” in that it uses replicable methods and procedures to obtain and verify results.  Brain anatomy and brain chemistry in turn are “ontologically objective” in that they are about discoverable facts, which exist independently of any particular person’s mental or psychological state.  Mental states, however, are “epistemically subjective” because the person who is having them is the only one who can experience them.  They also are “ontologically subjective” because they are real only for that person; my feelings aren’t yours, and vice versa.  They might be revealed, for example, by a person’s behavior, or described by a person’s self-report.  They cannot, however, be independently accessed or observed.  This being so, there is no reason to conclude there cannot be an epistemically objective science about mental phenomena that are ontologically subjective – which is what psychology is all about.

References

Block, N. & Stalnaker, R. (1999).  Conceptual analysis, dualism, and the explanatory gap.  Philosophical Review, 108, 1 – 46.  Reprinted in D. Chalmers (2002) (Ed.).  Philosophy of mind – Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 371 – 393).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Burge, T. (1979).  Individualism and the mental.  Midwest studies in philosophy, IV, 73 – 122.  Reprinted in Burge, T. (2007).  Foundations of mind (pp. 100 – 150).  Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.  Also reprinted in A. Pessin & S. Goldberg (1996) (Eds.).  The twin earth chronicles (pp. 125 – 141).  Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.  Also reprinted in D. Rosenthal (1991) (Ed.).  The nature of mind (pp. 536- 567).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.  Also reprinted in D. Chalmers (2002) (Ed.).  Philosophy of mind – Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 597 – 607).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Chalmers, D. (2006).  Strong and weak emergence.  In P. Clayton & P. Davies (Eds.).  The re-emergence of emergence.  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Child, W. (1994).  Anomalism, uncodifiability, and psychophysical relations.  Philosophical Review, 102, 215 – 245.

Churchland, P. (1981).  Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes.  The Journal of Philosophy, 78(2), 67 – 90.  Reprinted in D. Rosenthal (1991) (Ed.).  The nature of mind (pp. 601 – 612).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.  Also reprinted in Lycan, W. (1999) (Ed.).  Mind and cognition: An anthology (2nd ed.) (pp. 120 – 132).  Malden, MA: Blackwell.  Also reprinted in D. Chalmers (2002) (Ed.).  Philosophy of mind – Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 568 – 580).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Churchland, P. S.  (1986).  Neurophilosophy: Toward a unified science of the mind/brain.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Crick, F.  & Koch, C. (1990).  Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness.  Seminars in the neurosciences, 2, 263 – 275.  Reprinted in N. Block, O. Flanagan & G. Güzeldere (1997) (Eds.).  The nature of consciousness: Philosophical debates (pp. 277 – 292).  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Darden, L. & Tabery, J. (2009). Molecular Biology.  In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2010 ed.). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/molecular-biology/

Davidson, D. (1970).  Mental events.  In L. Foster & J. Swanson (Eds.).  Experience and theory (pp. 79 – 101). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.  Reprinted in D. Davidson (2001).  Essays on actions and events (2nd ed.) (pp. 207 – 224).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.  Also reprinted in N. Block (1980) (Ed.).  Readings in philosophy of psychology, volume one (pp. 107 – 119).  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.  Also reprinted in D. Rosenthal (1991) (Ed.).  The nature of mind (pp. 247 – 256).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.  Also reprinted in B. Beakley & P. Ludlow (1992) (Eds.).  The philosophy of mind – Classical problems, contemporary issues (pp. 137 – 150).  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  Also reprinted in Lycan, W. (1999) (Ed.).  Mind and cognition: An anthology (pp. 35- 46).  Malden, MA: Blackwell.  Also reprinted in D. Chalmers (2002) (Ed.).  Philosophy of mind – Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 116 – 125).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Davidson, D. (1974).  Psychology as philosophy.  In S. Brown (Ed.).  Philosophy of psychology (pp. 41 – 52).  London, UK: Macmillan Press.  Reprinted in D. Davidson (2001).  Essays on actions and events (2nd ed.) (pp. 229 – 245).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.  Also reprinted in J. Glover (1976) (Ed.).  The philosophy of mind (pp. 101 – 110).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.  Also reprinted in Bermúdez, José (2006) (Ed.).  Philosophy of psychology (pp. 22 – 30).  New York, NY: Routledge.

Feser, E. (2005).  The philosophy of mind: A short introduction.  Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications.

Hempel, C. and Oppenheim, P. (1948).  Studies in the logic of explanation.  Philosophy of Science 15(2), 135 – 175.  Reprinted in Hempel, C. (1965).  Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science (pp. 245 – 290).  New York, NY: Free Press.

Honderich, T. (1981).  Psychophysical lawlike connections and their problem.  Inquiry, 24, 277 – 303.

Kandel, E., Schwartz, J. & Jessell, T. (2000).  Principles of neural science (4th ed.).  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Kim, J. (1989).  Supervenience as a philosophical concept.  Metaphilosophy, 21, 1 – 27.  Reprinted in J. Kim (1993).  Supervenience and mind: Selected philosophical essays (pp. 131 – 160).  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kim, J. (2005).  Philosophy of mind (2nd ed.).  Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Kim, J. (2006).  Emergence: Core ideas and issues.  Synthese, 151(3), 347 – 354.

Levine, J. (1983).  Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap.  Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64, 354 – 361.

Levine, J. (1999).  Conceivability, identity, and the explanatory gap.  In S. Hameroff, A. Kaszniak & D. Chalmers (Eds.).  Toward a science of consciousness III (pp. 3 – 12).  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

McGuinn, C. (1989).  Can we solve the mind-body problem?  Mind, 98(391), 349 – 366.  Reprinted in N. Block,

O. Flanagan & G. Güzeldere (1997) (Eds.).  The nature of consciousness: Philosophical debates (pp. 529 – 542).  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.  Reprinted in D. Chalmers (2002) (ed.).  Philosophy of mind – Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 394 – 405).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

McLaughlin, B. (1989).  Type epiphenomenalism, type dualism, and the causal priority of the physical.  Philosophical Perspectives, 3, 109 – 135.  Reprinted in Lycan, W. (1999) (Ed.).  Mind and cognition: An anthology (pp. 336 – 349).  Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Nagel, E. (1949).  The meaning of reduction in the natural sciences.  In R. Stouffer (Ed.).  Science and civilization (pp. 99 – 135).  Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.  Reprinted in A. Danto & S. Morgenbesser (1960) (Eds.).  Philosophy of science (pp. 288 – 312).  New York, NY: World Publishing Co.  Also reprinted in S. Sarkar (1996) (Ed.).  Logic, probability, and epistemology: The power of semantics (pp. 316 – 353).  New York, NY: Routledge.

Nagel, E. (1961).  The reduction of theories.  In Nagel, E. (2001, 2^nd ed.).  The structure of science: Problems in the logic of scientific explanation (pp. 336 – 397).  Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Newton, I. (1687/1999).  I. Cohen & A. Whitman (Trs.).  Mathematical principles of natural philosophy.  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Putnam, H. (1975).  The meaning of meaning.  In K. Gunderson (Ed.).  Language, mind and knowledge – Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, VII, 131 – 193.  Reprinted in H. Putnam (1979).  Mind, language and reality (Philosophical papers, vol. 2) (pp. 215 – 271).  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.  Reprinted in A. Pessin & S. Goldberg (1996) (Eds.).  The twin earth chronicles (pp. 3 – 52).  Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.  Reprinted in D. Chalmers (2002) (Ed.).  Philosophy of mind – Classical and contemporary readings (pp. 581 – 596).  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Schafner, K. (2001).  Theory structure and knowledge representation in molecular biology.  In Sarkar, S. (Ed.).  The philosophy and history of molecular biology: New perspectives (pp. 27 – 46).  Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Searle, J. (2005).  Mind: A brief introduction.  New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Stitch, S. (1983).  From folk psychology to cognitive science: The case against belief.  Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

“Choice,” on the other hand, is the experience of acting voluntarily.  For example, Paris had to choose between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite and select who was the most beautiful.  He picked Aphrodite, who as a reward gave him Helen, wife of Menelaus.  The Trojan War started when he abducted her off to Troy (Judgment of Paris, 2011).  He had a subjective, phenomenological experience of deciding between competing alternative possibilities.  He had to evaluate reasons and “make up his mind” what to do; he “could have done otherwise.”  He couldn’t simply sit there and wait to see what happened. [1] Contrasted with determinism, this perspective is called “libertarianism” (Wiggins, 2003).

This leaves us in the paradoxical position where there is no freedom at the neurobiological level, because psychological states are determined by neurophysiological states, which follow a causal sequence.  There is, however, freedom (underdetermination) at the psychological level, because in the ordinary course, each psychological state is insufficient for the next psychological state, even though the underlying neurobiology is sufficient.

Historically, reconciling determinism with libertarianism has proven difficult.  “Compatibilists” hold a deterministic universe only provides a background or network of states of affairs, within which agents still have freedom of action (Lewis, 2003).  From an ethical standpoint, compatibilism also rescues our sense of individual responsibility, because it allows for moral choice (Nagel, 2003).  This is an important feature of being human; to deny it threatens the meaning of life.  Compare the determinist, who simply can reference antecedent causes, and thus remains free from personal accountability.  “Incompatibilists,” on the other hand, adopt a “consequentialist” deterministic-type of argument, and hold that everything an agent does is necessitated by a prior physical state of the universe (Inwagen, 2003).

I think incompatibilism is wrong and that some version of compatibilism is right.  The main reason why – not typically discussed in these debates – is that free choice doesn’t occur in a vacuum.  At a decision juncture, an agent is presented with finite range of possible choices.  It’s not like agents can choose anything they want. [2] There is an additional complication, which is that determinists fail to take into account the issue of randomness.  Randomness means that events, which seem to be determined, in fact lack causally sufficient antecedent conditions (Mlodinow, 2009).  They just happen to people, haphazardly and unpredictably.  Randomness should be sensitive to the laws of probability, just like any other phenomena in an actual world (Hawking & Mlodinow, 2010), and some people are in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”

Seen from this perspective, the various classes of persons on 9.11 who seem as though they were able to exercise free will actually might not have been able to do so.  Rescue workers believed they had some control over the outcome of their actions (indeed, it was their job to affect it causally).  Even so, they were constrained by orders from their supervisors, operationalized protocols regarding what to do in a disaster, even the camaraderie and shared ethos of their colleagues.  The hijackers also may appear to have had some control over their actions.  In fact, though, they were motivated by religious zeal, a constrainer similar to that of the public service ethos of the rescue workers.  A central tenet of the Islamic faith is divine predestination:

As the omnipotent creator of all things, God must be the progenitor “of the good and evil, “of the little and the much, of what is outward and what is inward, of what is sweet and what is bitter, of what is liked and what is disliked, of what is fine and what is bad, of what is first and what is last” (Aslan, 2006, p. 154).  Those who died instantly at the World Trade Center or at the Pentagon, on the other hand, had no chance to think about anything.  They were random victims. [3]

In summary, I envision a continuum between pure determinism on the one hand, and pure free will on the other.  Situated somewhere in-between are compatibilism and randomness.  Often, events in decision space, which appear to be freely chosen, in fact are driven by a complex, group-psychology type of dynamic.  One’s beliefs about what is possible are constrained by personal, contextual and cultural factors.  Many outcomes are neither determined nor chosen; they simply happen as a result of the impact of random events.  We characterize these if “fortuitous” if they are desirable, or “unlucky” if they’re not.  The various categories of persons present at 9.11 differentially illustrate these outcomes.

References

Aslan, R. (2010).  No god but God.  New York, NY: Random House.

Graves, R. (1993).  Greek myths.  New York, NY: Penguin.

Hawking, S. (1988).  A brief history of time.  New York, NY: Bantam.

Hawking, S. & Mlodinow, L. (2010).  The grand design.  New York, NY: Bantam.

Inwagen, P. (2003).  An argument for incompatibilism.  In G. Watson (Ed.).  Free will (2^nd ed.) (pp. 38 – 57).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Judgment of Paris (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.theoi.com/Olympios/JudgementParis.html

Lewis, D. (2003).  Are we free to break the laws?  In G. Watson (Ed.).  Free will (2^nd ed.) (pp. 122 – 129).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Mlodinow, L. (2009).  The drunkard’s walk: How randomness rules our lives.  New York, NY: Vintage.

Nagel, T. (2003).  Freedom.  In G. Watson (Ed.).  Free will (2^nd ed.) (pp. 229 – 256).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Watson, G. (2003).  Introduction.  In G. Watson (Ed.).  Free Will (2^nd ed.) (pp. 1 – 25).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Wiggins, D. (2003).  Towards a reasonable libertarianism.  In G. Watson (Ed.).  Free will (2^nd ed.) (pp. 94 – 122).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

[2] For example, even if I had selected it as a potential career option (which I never would!), it’s highly unlikely I ever could have become President of the United States, no matter what my desires.  I am situationally and contextually restrained.  I function within a cultural matrix specifying familiar dynamic factors such as age, gender, race, SES, etc.

[3] I am not impressed by arguments that they could have exercised free will by not, for example, going to work that day.  That’s not a decision vector where people make a conscious choice; one simply does it, because that’s what one does.

Darwin, by contrast, is primordial.  He introduced a new model of scientific explanation that is non-teleological.[2] Molecular evolution commenced from purely random or arbitrary beginnings, constrained only by the laws of physics (e.g. the speed of light, gravity, entropy) (Dennett, 1995, chapter 7, section 1).  After these proto-beginnings, organisms acquired sufficient critical mass that they could compete for resources and reproduction opportunities based on their differential ability to adapt to their environment.  Even then, the human being probably isn’t the right unit of selection.  Rather, according to Richard Dawkins (1976/1989), it’s the gene.  Humans merely are one type of “survival machine” that implements the interests of “replicators,” which are genes.

Random beginnings?  No meaning or purpose in life?  Humankind simply carrier devices for replicators?  These are scary concepts, because they throw the entire project of what the phenomenological psychologist Martin Heidegger called “being-in-the-world” (Heidegger, 1927) into doubt.  Darwin himself did not fully understand some of the more granular implications of his work.  It has taken contemporary zoologists, biologists, ethologists and evolutionary psychologists to force Darwin to the conclusions he should have reached.  Darwin’s perspective, and its logical entailments, has three primary implications, all of which have made considerable difference in my thinking about them.

Cognition. Enlightenment thinkers such as Rene Descartes (1614/1911) and John Locke (1894) started with the mind as the fundamental foundational premise of human existence.  I formerly shared this point of view.  Evolutionary psychology turns it on its head and holds that mind (consciousness) is nothing more than a useful adaptation in the myriad permutations resulting from differential survival of the fittest.

The precise way this works is subject to debate.  Daniel Dennett (1995) reports the size, complexity and flexibility of the brain – and its precipitates, such as consciousness – primarily is due to adaptation, which is an algorithmic result of natural selection (Dennett, 1995, chapter 13).  An “adaptation” is a functional trait evolved by an organism as it interacts with its environment; it often means the organism achieves the maximal fit possible, given genetic and ecological constraints.  For adaptations to occur “algorithmically” means there is a series of causal steps by which this has occurred, traceable in principle back to their beginnings.  Stephen Jay Gould (1997a) objects to Dennett’s mechanistic, engineering-based account, and reports other factors may be involved.  Algorithmic evolution alone is insufficient to account for “all the phenomena of organic diversity.”  Consciousness, for example, may have evolved in fits and spurts depending on constraints imposed by environment, the “punctuated equilibrium” of evolutionary change (rather than slow and steady, most new species originate in an ageological “moment”), unpredictable contingencies (such as the meteor that wiped out half the world’s species 65 million years ago), and any number of other factors.  Regardless of these nuances, evolutionary psychology presents a shocking alternative to the view of mind as the primary determiner of human destiny.

Language.  The preeminent linguist of the 20^th Century is Noam Chomsky.  In his book Syntactic Structures (1957) he set forth his theory of transformational grammar.  The capacity to generate language is “innate” to the human mind.  Even though it doesn’t specify a particular language, the mind is structured such that it can accommodate the learning of any language, and create (and understand) completely novel sentences, through a formal “language acquisition device.”  Chomsky (1959) critiqued B. F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior (1957), which held that language is learned from use and context, just like any other functional behavior.  Chomsky’s critique widely was regarded as devastating to Skinner’s position, for many of the same reasons why the cognitive theories of the 1960s overtook behaviorist theories of the 1950s.  Weaned on the former, I used to believe that Chomsky was right and Skinner was wrong.

Evolution once again casts serious doubt on both Chomsky’s and Skinner’s position.  It was not until Stephen Pinker published The Language Instinct (1994) that there was a thorough-going contemporary account of the role of evolution in language.  Pinker held that, like other evolved features, language is a biological adaptation shaped by natural selection.  While Pinker agrees with Chomsky that certain features of language are innate, they don’t strictly “live in the head.”  Pinker takes Chomsky’s argument a step further, arguing that evolution is the only way to explain (for example) how primitive tribes of hunter-gatherers were able to communicate their intentions, such as to go hunting, which in turn lead to survival advantage and reproductive success.  In time, spoken and written language became more complex, and now is a unique feature of humankind.

Again, Gould (1997b) has added an interesting wrinkle to this.  He argues language is what he called a “spandrel,” that is, a non-adaptive by-product of other evolutionary features, which later was co-opted for other useful purposes.  Predictably, Dennett (1997) disagreed, insisting that language too was the product of the same algorithmic process characteristic of evolution itself.  Dennett dismisses the idea of spandrels, contending that organisms evolve as complex and interconnected wholes, not as loose alliances of separate parts.  Dennett was joined by Pinker and two other authors (1997).  They too argued for an exclusive principle of adaptive design, versus Gould’s evolutionary “pluralism” and hypothesis of other possible explanations for diverse phenomena of human existence.[3] Regardless of etiology, a theory of language from the “bottom-up” perspective of evolutionary psychology is far different from the “top-down” theories offered by Descartes and Locke, in which I originally believed.

Culture. Finally, I would like to examine briefly the influence of evolution on culture.  It was Thomas Hobbes (1651) who famously held that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”  Only a “social contract” would enforce cooperation between competitors and, with that as a precondition could society, culture, art and morality emerge.

Hobbes’ position has been challenged on different grounds.  From the standpoint of evolution, two of the most influential works are Dawkins’ (1976/1982) book, The Selfish Gene, supplemented by his 1982 book, The Universal Phenotype; and Pinker’s (2002) book, The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature.  Dawkins argues for a concept, which he calls the “meme” (rhymes with “gene”).  A “meme” is a unit of cultural transmission arising out of human thoughts and actions – anything from religious faith to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears’ latest videos on YouTube.  Culture evolved through the growth of memes, in a manner analogous to the natural selection of genes.

Pinker has a slightly different approach.  Much like his extension of Chomsky, he argues for a fundamental human nature, which has inborn predispositions to develop cultural precipitates and artifacts such as language, art and music.  We are not, as Locke (1894) and the other British empiricists contended, mere “blank slates” upon which nature makes its mark.  Attracting the ire of deconstructionists, Pinker further contents that culture is not “socially constructed” or “culturally relative.”   Among other things, those give to much weight to human mind and intention (the self? the soul?) over the brute facts of biology.

What I think about this is that minds have an amazing feature, which is they are not “cognitively closed” (a term from Dennett, 1995).  We can think up new thoughts and simulate novel situations.  We have the capacity to countermand genetic influences, use our minds, and to create meaning in a hostile world.  Our brains can rebel against the dictates of evolutionary machinery.  This ability qualitatively differentiates humans from other mammals, whatever their state of evolution.[4] We are, however, more than just another species of big mammals.  We have the power to affect history – both for the better (art, religion, cultural artifacts), but also for the worse (genocide, nuclear disaster, excessive energy use) (Diamond, 1992).  This imposes on us – and psychologists, in particular – a special responsibility.

References

Chomsky, N. (1957).  Syntactic structures.  Berlin, GR: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.

Chomsky, N. (1959).  A review of B. F. Skinner’s “Verbal behavior.”  Language, 35(1), 26 – 58.

Darwin, C. (1859).  On the origin of species.  London, UK: John Murray, Albemarle Street.

Darwin, C. (1871).  The descent of man.  London, UK: John Murray, Albemarle Street.

Dawkins, R. (1976/1989).  The selfish gene (2^nd ed).  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1982).  The extended phenotype: The gene as the unit of selection.  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Dennett, D. (1995).  Darwin’s dangerous idea – Evolution and the meanings of life.  New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Dennett, D. (1997).  “Darwinian fundamentalism”: An exchange.  The New York Review of Books.  Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/aug/14/darwinian-fundamentalism-an-exchange/

Descartes, R. (1641/1911).  Meditations on first philosophy.  E. Haldane & G. Ross (Trs.).  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Diamond, J. (1992).  The third chimpanzee – The evolution and future of the human animal.  New York, NY: HarperPerennial.

Gadamer, H. (1984).  The hermeneutics of suspicion.  Man and World, 17, 313 – 323.

Gould, S. (1997, Jun. 12).  Darwinian fundamentalism.  The New York Review of Books.  Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/12/darwinian-fundamentalism/

Gould, S. (1997, Jun. 26).  Evolution: The pleasures of pluralism.  The New York Review of Books.  Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/26/evolution-the-pleasures-of-pluralism/

Hobbes, T. (1651).  Leviathan.  London: Crooke.

Heidegger, M. (1927).  Being and time.  New York, NY: HarperOne.

Locke, J. (1894).  An essay concerning human understanding.  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Pinker, S. (1994).  The language instinct.  New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Pinker, S., Kalow, W. & Kalant, H. (Oct. 9, 1997).  Evolutionary psychology: An exchange.  The New York Review of Books.  Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/oct/09/evolutionary-psychology-an-exchange/

Pinker, S. (2002).  The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature.  New York, NY: Viking.

Ricoeur, P. (1970).  Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press

[2] That is, there is no striving or aiming towards some outcome or objective) (Greek = τέλοϛ for “end”, “purpose” or “goal”).  Mankind does not get progressively “better.”  There is no ultimate design or function.

[3] The various discussions between Gould and Dennett in The New York Review of Books are highly entertaining to read because they call each other the worst possible names, but using delightfully sophisticated terms.  I highly recommend them.

[4] Descartes (1641/1911) famously declaimed that the only thing he could not doubt was his own consciousness, because that’s what allowed him to doubt in the first place.  I would add the following to Descartes: that I cannot doubt I have my own genes.  While I don’t know for sure, insofar as I can tell, this is an original thought.

I spoke with her psychiatrist and her father, who was out of town.  She came in with her mother and we met in our assessment room.  The daughter was 17 years old and gorgeous.  She had long auburn-colored hair, strong facial features, a beautiful complexion, and a well-proportioned figure.  She was highly intelligent.  Although she was a poor historian, it transpired that for the last month she had been on a wild binge of polysubstance abuse and reckless behavior, culminating in a suicide attempt by hanging that left her in the emergency room of a local hospital, from which she was transported directly to our facility.  She had experienced acute renal failure at the hospital and may have been as close as five days away from dying.  She now had detoxed, her vital signs were stable and within normal range, and she was medically clearable.  She was not psychotic.  Though her thought processes were logical and coherent, she clearly lacked judgment and insight.  She was casually but not inappropriately dressed.  She was well oriented.  Her affect, however, was subdued and withdrawn, and she spoke softly.  She was quiet and introspective, as if contemplating each word carefully before she uttered it.  She was curled up in a ball across from me, avoiding eye contact.

What steps could I possibly take to establish rapport with her, and convince her to admit herself?  In order to be effective, all therapists must be Rogerians at heart, at least initially.  Empathy can be tricky; it’s not enough simply to aver that you understand the subjective, phenomenological reality of your patient’s experience.  If it’s obvious you don’t, then the patient – particularly an intelligent one – will see right through you, completely disrupting the possibility of any meaningful interaction.  Rather, you have to convince the patient, typically using words, of your sincerity.  You must beguile, and in a way, enchant them, in order to demonstrate your sincerity.  This inevitably involves some extent of self-disclosure.  It’s difficult, however, to know where to drawn the line.  Too much disclosure will bore the patient, or confuse the patient into thinking it’s all about you, not them.  Not enough disclosure, on the other hand, will be ineffective to induce the patient to believe you truly comprehend the complex dimensions of their own personal experience, at least on a level that’s sufficient for you to accomplish some form of therapeutic result.

This is an art form, not a science.  It concerns me that many younger therapists, freshly minted from graduate psychology school, say in their mid-20s, do not understand this dynamic.  It’s not their fault; they simply are incapable of doing so.  Many are taught, for example, to classify their patient initially on the basis of some salient characteristic – say, ethnicity.  This then becomes the premise upon which to understand not only the substantive propositional content of the patient’s thoughts, but also the reasoning process by which the patient retrieves them.  It is the most relevant classification point and entirely explains their pathology.  You put them into a box.  In fact, in some cases, if the patient denies the psychological influence of the salient characteristic, then it is the therapist’s obligation in effect to alter the patient’s consciousness, and convince them this lies at the root of their presenting problem, even when it doesn’t.  There is something fishy about this.  Most patients’ experience is far more multi-dimensional, and not amenable to analysis using such a simplistic template.  The whole purpose of the initial encounter with a patient is not to snap them into seemingly obvious diagnostic categories, but rather to comprehend their world-view and the set of circumstances that caused, or created the possibility of, the life-crisis they now face.

I am in the process of developing and refining a facility for doing this.  Some of it comes from being older.  I have a broader palette or repertoire of experiences, upon which to draw, in order to be effective.  I can speak with authority.  Conversely, this also enhances the prospect of dystherapeutic counter-transference, which I must militate against.  I don’t want to confuse patients into thinking I’m their father, or some other authority figure in their lives.  That would provoke a panoply of recoils and reactions, none of which would be likely to be positive.  I think it fair to say that many psychologists are mildly schizoid, in that they want to empathize with their patients, yet at the same time preserve a bright line between them.  One must cultivate an “I – thou” relationship, while at the same time remaining in an impermeable bubble that protects you from being sucked into the swirling, tornado-like vortex of your patient’s own psychoses.

I took a few tentative steps.  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked.  She sat there, blankly.  “I absolutely am not going to consent to being here,” she said.  More conversation about her stay in the hospital and the circumstances of her suicide attempt.”  “I can’t make sure you’re safe at home,” said her mother.  “I don’t care,” daughter said, “I don’t want to be here, I don’t belong here, and I’m not going to admit myself voluntarily.”  I began to think of her as a nihilist.  She was beyond feeling despair, because despair implies the absence of hope, and both of those categories were far behind her.  She was teetering right on the brink of the edge of simple non-being itself, and was in the process of preparing to jump over that cliff, or permit herself to fall over it, into a real of pure nothingness.  I thought of the steep descent described by Dante into the inferno, an elaborate and intricate network of stairways leading down sheer, vertical cliffs.  Rather than tip-toe her way through them, she was on the verge simply of plummeting, avoiding all of the intermediate stepping stones, way-stations and points of observation and reflection.

I thought of my daughter, when she was 17.  She too was (and is) whip-smart, a tall, blonde-haired Valkyrie.  My mind raced back a half-dozen or so years.  Had she ever been like this?  I didn’t think so, or if she had been, it certainly didn’t seem that way.  But how could I be sure?  Then, I thought of my own experiences, when I was 17.  From time to time I felt depressed, although in retrospect this unquestionably was transitory, situational depression.  I had a small group of true friends, all of which now have vanished in the wind.  But for a while we provided subjacent lateral support to each other, if only tacitly; all of us belonged within the same tightly self-defined group.  If somebody was in a hole, the objective wasn’t necessarily to throw them a lifeline, or help them dig their way out.  Rather, it was to physically support them in their natural state by not extracting psychic assets from the adjacent diaphragm of support; put simply, not to excavate adjacent holes, or burrow into theirs, and to help them prop up their own personal walls and boundaries.  I still do this today, by interposing (perhaps over-interposing) personal walls and boundaries between myself and experience, if only to protect myself against it in all of its raw, viral, untamed, unmitigated majesty.  I told this to her, not by just using words, but by literally enacting the experience, like an actor on a stage – getting myself into her frame of mind and putting myself into her shoes, as best I could.

Acute care psychiatric facilities provide this same form of containment.  They are a safe place, yet one that is sharply contrasted from the milieu of the patient’s day-to-day experience.  While psychiatric services (medication) and psychological services (individual, group counseling) are important, some significant part of the therapy comes simply from just being there and participating in the environment it presents.  It is startlingly dichotomous to the timbre and texture of one’s ordinary, day-to-day life.  I suspect that, as they grow older, many adolescent in-patients will look back on their stay at such a place as a kind of fulcrum or pivot-point, sharply defining their mode of interacting and coping with the world.

My mind raced as I thought about how to express all of this.  I ended up telling her, “In my experience, many people with suicidal ideations aren’t necessarily wrong about what they’re thinking.  They have a vivid, pulsating, throbbing ideation, which propels them forward.  They even may know what it is, and are able to describe it in intricate detail.  Nonetheless, they go astray.  What’s wrong is the means by which they choose to express themselves.  Suicide never is the right solution, because it entails the negation of the possibility of any further experience.  This includes high points (for example, my patient expressed the excitement and joy she recently had felt while riding on the back of a motorcycle).  It also includes low points.  Although they may seem averse, they too are worth experiencing, if only for their content qua experience, that is, as experiences that are deserving in and of themselves to be experienced.”

This may seem like a complex, overly intellectualized argument, but as I was putting it forth, using different words of course, I saw a glimmer of interest in her eyes.  If I was she, it was a series of inferences that would have worked on me, and I sensed we had developed enough of a shared understanding, that it also might work with her.  “How long would I have to stay here?” she asked.  I could tell we were making progress, because we were moving from theory to praxis.  “At least 72 hours,” I said, referring to the initial period of the 5585 hold.  “What happens after that?” she asked.  “A psychiatrist will evaluate you to make sure you’re safe.  There’s a possibility you may stay a while longer, but only as long as you need to.”  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked.  She was a true empiricist, indeed.  I quickly turned to the computer, managed to find and then print out for her, a copy of the relevant legal provisions outlining the scope of the 5585 hold.  “Here you go,” I said.  She perused them carefully.  After a few more minutes, which seemed to pass very slowly, she slowly picked up the pen, and signed the form for voluntary admission.  I silently rejoiced, and told her, to affirm her: “You’re doing the right thing.”

I have summarized our encounter only briefly.  In truth and fact, it lasted for over 90 minutes.  I was exhausted at the end, fully depleted by the experience.  I felt as though I had summoned all of my inner resources and powers.  It had been intense and emotional, but it was the kind of intensity and emotion I craved, because only the most acute cases illustrate the true modalities of authentic being-in-the-word and the unfathomable complexity of its epistemology and ontology.  I stepped outside for a few minutes to get some fresh air, tears welling up in my eyes.  I have seen dozens of adolescents in various stages of acute distress.  What was it about this particular patient that I found so resonant?  The answer is simple – we had broken through the physical and mental boundaries that separated us and, through a process of hierarchal, mutual calibration and attunement, and had come to a shared outcome.  We had experienced a form of kinship, based on intersubjective experiences of isolation and alienation.  I had been able to communicate my own private state of psychological certitude, that this was the best outcome for her.  She was able to perceive this, came to trust it, and then acquiesced in it.  To encounter a patient with this level of acuity, combined with this level of intelligence (leading to insight and comprehension) was a rare experience, and I was privileged to have interacted with her.

Metaphor also has had a long history in psychology.  In Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct (1986), Theodore Sarbin contends that metaphor is an organizing principle for human action.  Metaphors are off-the-shelf narratives that facilitate the formation and maintenance of personal identity.  People rely on metaphors to provide them with a vocabulary of behavioral templates.  Karin S. Moser refined Sarbin’s concept in her article “Metaphor Analysis in Psychology – Method, Theory and Fields of Application” (2000, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 1(2), http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0002212).  Conceding that metaphors are culturally and socially defined, she further contends they are a basic cognitive strategy of analogical problem solving.  As “mental models” or “cognitive schemata,” they are “abstract models of reality” facilitating “micro-interactions between cognition and culture.”

With this background, it may seem surprising there are few recent studies of actual metaphors deployed by psychiatric patients to describe their own subjective, phenomenological experience.  The reason why is this type of self-report or self-assessment only is amenable to qualitative research; per se there is no way to derive the propositional content of a metaphor from a neuropsychological state.  Psychoanalytic speculation notwithstanding (Freud, Jung, etc.) there is (and in principle never can be) any meaningful taxonomy of metaphor.  Nonetheless, metaphors remain intrinsically interesting from a psychological standpoint and have considerable explanatory value, if only because they are suggestive (albeit not determinative) of a patient’s state of mind, and the strategies the patient deploys for being-in-the world.

I recently ran into two patients with interesting figurative and metaphorical tropes.  The first reported he felt as though he was enacting his life on a theatrical stage.  He was interacting fluidly with the other participants.  Simultaneously, though, he was a critic in the balcony, reviewing the action below.  He was the only one of the actors who knew they were in a dramatic production.  This created a condition of dissonance for him because he was unable to “act” in a “normal” fashion, that is, cope with reality as it presented itself.  As a result, he felt as though he was in a kind of characterological “bubble.”  He was pulsating with energy as the bubble transported itself temporally through his life.  But, he remained strangely insulated, unable to permeate this membrane and connect with genuine emotional experience.

The second reported she felt as though she was entwined around a tree.  She was rooted, connected to the earth – an organic force, far more powerful than herself.   Her arms and fingers were the branches and leaves, waving gently in the wind, almost as though she was dancing.  There was a nest in the tree, and her consciousness (my parsing of her words) was encapsulated in an egg in the nest.  A bird alit on the nest, which gave her a feeling of freedom she never had known before.

The big problem with theorists of metaphor is they try to generalize from specific instances to universal themes.  I make no claim for the quality or caliber of these metaphors, or their potentially broader applicability.  They simply are interesting and allusive.  From time to time I will post additional patient metaphors that strike me as particularly descriptive.

We rotated four of you for each of three group sessions today.  I would like to thank you for coming, and for attending carefully to what as going on.  This group was in the highest level of detention, observation and treatment.  Those on initial 72-hour psychiatric holds still are decompensating; those on extended 14-day holds are here for a reason, which is that they remain a danger to self, danger to others, or gravely disabled.  In either case, all of them were acting out, or are psychotic, some of them flagrantly so.  They have psychomotor agitation, speak incoherently, end up in conversational dead-ends, and may even seem to be, or are, violent.  In today’s group, for example, one person got up and started wandering around the room, touching people individually, which easily could be interpreted as threatening. These are not your typical groups like you will find in discussions of group therapy by authors whom you may have studied, such as Irvin Yalom.

One of the group participants asked why several of you were in the room and, as frequently happens, this theme quickly spread to other group members.  In response, a couple of you sensed group hostility, and left the room during the second session.  What I would like to tell you is that none of this was directed against you personally.  It is a normal part of dealing with this segment of the psychiatric inpatient population.  Nurses continually monitor the proceedings to see if anything violent is taking place, and are in a position to respond instantly to danger to staff.  You may find it surprising, but at the third group session, several members of the group asked where the missing nurses went.  Their seemingly challenging behavior during the second group really was nothing more than an artifact of their own subjective psychological processes.

These experiences that some of you had lead to a broader issue, which is what it is like to work in an acute care psychiatric facility.  In a way, it’s like working in an emergency room, but instead of treating accident victims or gunshot wounds (for example) you’re dealing with people in acute psychological distress.  It’s their minds that are injured, and the mind is part of the body just like an arm or a leg.  There’s more to it than that, but this is the place to start.

If you’re at all interested in how the mind works, or the relationship between the mind and the body, then I encourage you to consider acute care clinical psychology as a career option.  It’s always interesting, and I never cease to be amazed at the sheer variety of human experience.  Pathological human experience in turn sheds the best light on the mechanics and dynamics of non-pathological human functioning, and how we are attuned to our being in the world.  Thanks again for your help today, and I hope to see you again, soon.

Although records were not available, D. admitted a history of mental illness.  She also conceded a history of substance abuse, although she claimed to be clean and sober at present.  She averred she was in constant pain and that she had a prescription for medical marijuana.  Her mother was jealous and abusive; she had broken her feet in a fall, when “my mother threw me out of the house in a wheelchair.  She threatened to cut off my wrists and feet.”

On admission it was difficult to communicate with her, or even establish minimal rapport.  She was isolating and withdrawn, turning her head away on approach and refusing to make eye contact.  Although she could follow what was being asked, she refused to answer any questions about her living situation, marital history, or whether she had children.  At one point she claimed to have children, but this was a fleeting reference, and seems unlikely.  She was suffering from vaginal bleeding, as a result of having ripped out an IUD.

Her medications on admission were Abilify and Topamax.  Even though dosage was modest, she was non-compliant.  While she was oriented x4, she was unable to recall any of three items after three minutes.  She was globally impaired had no capacity to conduct activities of daily living (ADLs).  I would estimate her GAF score as low as 5.

D. became an in-patient on what is known as a “5150 hold.”  Section 5150 is a provision of California’s basic mental health law.  It permits certain specified professionals (such as members of law enforcement) to detain a person for 72 hours and have that person committed to a locked psychiatric care facility.  Grounds for a hold are that probable cause exists to believe the person detained is a danger to self (DTS), danger to others (DTO) or gravely disabled (GD), which means unable to take care of basic personal needs such as food, clothing and shelter.  Typically, the detainee has attempted suicide (in the case of DTS) or has made specific threats to harm someone (in the case of DTO).  In D.’s case, it was the latter.

Law enforcement is faced with a choice when confronted with a person who is DTO: they either can take that person to jail, or they can initiate a 5150 hold.  From a practical standpoint this is a judgment call, depending on the nature and life-threatening potential of the person’s overt acts and inferred thought processes.  Extraneous and unacknowledged factors also often come into play, such as a jurisdiction’s desire to keep its reported crime rate low, or a concern for diversion of law enforcement attention and resources away from other, potentially more impactful criminal activity.

Upon the expiration of the 72-hour period, the facility can certify the detainee for intensive treatment of mental disorder during an additional 14-day hold.  Reasons for certification include the patient’s behavior, or refusal or unwillingness to accept treatment.  The detainee has the right to contest this extension, in which case a mental health court referee will conduct a certification review hearing at the psychiatric facility.  These hearings are summary in nature.  The detainee has the right to be present.  A nurse or other qualified person on the psychiatric facility’s staff presents the case.  A hearing advocate is present to represent the detainee’s interests.  On the conclusion of the hearing, the referee either releases the detainee, or finds that probable cause exists to continue commitment, on the same grounds as the original 5150 hold (the detainee however may remain at the facility on a voluntary basis).  The referee’s finding must be backed with specific factual information upon which the referee has relied, in reaching a conclusion.  If the detainee disagrees with the outcome of the hearing, then the detainee has the right to seek judicial review.  Upon the expiration of the 14-day hold, the facility may certify the detainee for an additional 30-day hold, in which case the same procedure applies.

D. requested a certification review hearing and was certified for an additional 14-day hold.  In my judgment it is unlikely D. will experience any remission of symptoms during the 14-day intensive treatment period, and it seems likely she will be certified for an additional 30 days.  It was hard to envision a scenario under which she would be able to comply with medication, utilize treatment resources effectively, or meet even the simplest treatment goals.  At such point, she probably should be transferred to a facility specializing in longer-term psychiatric care.

I was able to interact with D. over the course of six sessions of group therapy.  Approximately a dozen people attended each group.  In my experience, a third of attendees at group in an acute care psychiatric facility are asleep; a third have nothing to contribute; and the remaining third are active.  D. fell into this latter category.  I base this note on my observations of her behavior and remarks during group.  Etymologically, “pathology” is derived from the Greek word πάθος (“pathos”), which standing alone means suffering; another derivative, “pathetic,” means pitiful.  D. aptly might be characterized under all three of these semantic dimensions.  She is one of the most floridly psychotic patients I ever have met.

From an epistemological standpoint, her insight and judgment were impaired.  Her thought process was alogical, tangential, fragmented, disorganized, even scrambled, full of non-sequiturs and cul-de-sacs.  She had difficulty expressing herself coherently, pausing for long intervals to choose words, which, when stated, made no sense.  That is, one might be able to understand the meaning of individual words, but combinations of words and phrases, when strung together, were incomprehensible.  I would characterize her thoughts as “racing,” though from a clinical standpoint there is nothing amiss with racing thoughts per se.  All of us have periods when we have extreme flight of ideas.  The problem arises when one is unable to track them, or keep up with them.  D. met this criterion.  Showing poor impulse control and complete lack of insight, D. simply would blurt out whatever ideation she was having at the moment.

From a behavioral standpoint, she was irritable, paranoid, and at times almost childlike.  She would curl up into a ball, seemingly ruminating over her thoughts.  But then, from her lair, she would fix her gaze on you, staring, almost trying to bore a hole in your skull.  I would characterize her emotional affect as highly labile.

D. appeared to be continually affected by various hallucinations and responding to internal stimuli.  She complained of nightmares, and paranoia; “People around me talk about me behind my back.”  The most interesting moment came when D. was describing a persistent, highly directive internal command.  “I have a vision,” she said.  “I am a moon goddess.  I am the one in charge of bread and wine” (which I interpreted as a reference to the Catholic sacrament of communion).  “Moon goddesses are devil worshippers.  My soul uplifts and I ascend a spiral staircase.  At the top, I bash my head into a set of drums.  I am strong.  When I find love I turn Satanic; I become the embodiment of pure evil.  It is a critical time in the world.”

Then:  “I have the power to ruin everything.”  D. repeated the phrase “ruin everything” a half dozen times, on each occasion swooping her right arm around in ever-enlarging concentric circles.

Then: the frightening part.  Her speech became precise, but temporally and audibly modulated; she spoke slowly, then quickly, placing irregular stress and emphasis on certain syllables of words.  “My soul is angry,” she said.  “In fact, I am so angry I could turn into a dragon with a red body, crow’s feet and seven horse’s heads.  I could fly across the room and end the entire world.  I am an expert at wielding a knife, and I will scar your face.”

I did not interpret this as a suicide threat, that is, she might end her own private world.  Rather, she literally believed she had the power to terminate mankind’s existence on earth.  As she said this, she became especially brittle.  I was reminded of shattered windshield glass, or the cracks that appear in newly formed ice, if it is pressured.  I was afraid of her.  I believed she fully was capable of flying across the room and transforming into the mythological creature, which she described.  Then, she turned softer.  “I can guard against this presence of evil by streaking my hair with red dye, burning incense, and putting marijuana in my shampoo.”

I should note that D. carried a Bible with her.  Nothing she said, however, made me think she was overtly religious, or, if she was, all she was able to take from her religious beliefs were theories about Satan and the end of the world.  She focused on the New Testament book of Revelations, claiming to see the numbers “666” in various floor tiles (“666” is the so-called “mark of the beast” appearing at Revelations 14:9).  She was an expert astrologist, and at one point offered detailed, albeit disconnected interpretations of a fellow patient’s astrological sign.

The specificity and precision of D.’s bizarre delusions, and their monothematic religious content, is one of the reasons why she was so interesting from a clinical standpoint.  In principle it is not possible to devise an epidemiology of bizarre delusion.  There can be no question but that they result from activity in the brain.  Just like digestion occurs in the stomach, there is nowhere else for them to come from.  The precise mechanism of how this occurs, however, is poorly understood.  A variety of genetic, neurochemical, neuroanatomical and environmental factors must come into play.

An example is schizophrenia.  A genetic hypothesis: it may result from 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, which is the absence of a small piece on chromosome 22.  A neurochemical hypothesis: it may result from hyperactive dopaminergic signal transduction.  A neuroanatomical hypothesis: it may result from abnormal myelination of white matter fasciculi in the central nervous system.  An environmental hypothesis: under the diathesis-stress model, it may result from a combination of genetic, biological and psychosocial factors.

All of these elements may be active in various combinations.  None of them, however – singly or in combination – ever will be able to account for the substantive propositional content of a bizarre delusion.  The reason why is that there is no necessary connection between the brain and the mind.  One and the same alignment of brain states and processes has the potential to result in a plethora of different lived, phenomenological experiences.  They are multiply determined or realizable.  While technologies such as fMRI enable the researcher to isolate a region of the brain where cognitive processing occurs, it never will be able to identify what those thoughts are.  As a result, there is what has come to be referred to as an “explanatory gap” between the two.

So, in D.’s case, where did they come from?  In what combination of ingredients did they originate?  Proclivity towards having bizarre delusions is genetic, neuroanatomical and neurochemical.  What they comprise, however, must be environmentally or situationally associated.  It’s hard to say for sure, and most likely we never will know.  Cases like D.’s are particularly illustrative, because their extreme nature illuminates with clarity the modality of normal, non-pathological mental functioning.

Another thought I had about D. was the interplay between Axis I and Axis II disorders.  Under Federal and state mental health laws, only a dozen or so Axis I disorders have parity with non-psychiatric medical conditions.  Thus, as a practical matter, diagnoses in acute care psychiatric facilities fall into only a few categories, such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or bipolar disorder.  For this reason, diagnostic impressions as to any Axis II disorders uniformly are deferred.  Most patients, however, have them.  The root of most Axis II disorders is poor coping skills, whether self-induced or environmentally stimulated.  The patient is out of attunement with the requirements and demands of psychosocial reality.  In D.’s case, it would be interesting to study the interplay between these two categories, in particular, the impact of Axis II pathology on Axis I, and vice versa.

During the last session, one of the attendees was patient A.  She was as sweet and innocent as D. was enraged and bitter.  She had been admitted on the grounds she was DTS.  A. had attempted suicide on two prior occasions.  She stated: “I am a hidden angel.  I am on my way to heaven.  I am tired of dealing with the pain of this world.  I am not trapped forever in my mortal body.”  What was disturbing about A. was the contrast between her sweet and innocent personality, with her specific, theologically motivated suicidal ideations.  Her head was surrounded by a halo of dark black hair.  She spoke clearly and articulately, albeit softly.  Her thought process was logical, connected and coherent, though resulting in a distressing conclusion.  Her eyes gleamed, clear and bright.  I wish I would have had the opportunity to spend more time with her.  What impressed me the most was the juxtaposition of A. against D., particularly as they interacted in group.  The demonic versus the angelic, all in the space of a single afternoon.

Thanks to Eric Hamilton for sharing diagnostic impressions with me as background for this note.

Skepticism is a critical attitude, orientation or outlook towards a proposition or a thesis.  It typically is characterized by doubt about, or at least dubiousness towards, its substantive truth value.  As such, it is an epistemological stance, not an ontological one.  The proposition or thesis actually might be so, however, we lack the means to discern or evaluate whether this is the case.  As a practical matter we may never be able to acquire the means, or we may lack it in principle.  Thus, for example, one might be “skeptical” about whether Jesus actually performed the miracles attributed to him in the synoptic gospels.  One needs more evidence, possibly provided by textual examination or scientific inquiry, to determine whether this is so.  If such evidence is not forthcoming, or never can be produced, then the skeptic will remain doubtful, and is justified in doing so.  Skepticism can be taken to the micro level; for example, Hume was skeptical about the process of induction.  For him, it simply was one damn thing after another.  Much of modern philosophy is about refuting Hume and trying to justify the validity of causal inferences, scientific theories, etc.  Psychology is particularly complex in this regard because while it is epistemically objective (one can look at behavior, or outcomes on psychometric tests, or neuronal processes, etc.) it is ontologically subjective (one never will be able to bridge the explanatory gap between them and phenomena such as first-person mental states or “consciousness”).

Nihilism, on the other hand is an attitude, orientation or outlook of indifference towards the proposition or thesis.  The nihilist refuses to engage in an epistemological process of examination, discovery or analysis into its truth value.  The nihilist is disinterested in its ontological status.  The nihilist neither accepts nor rejects its substantive truth or falsity.  For that matter, the nihilist is unable to characterize the proposition or thesis as “meaningful” or “meaningless,” to begin with, because that would entail making a substantive evaluation or value judgment.  The nihilist just doesn’t care.  Thus, for example, the nihilist neither is a believer nor an athiest (the latter requiring one to adopt a stance towards truth value, i.e., affirmatively disbelieving a theological proposition, or asserting it is false).  The nihilist is not even agnostic, because that would require one to adopt an epistemological stance (e.g., “it can’t be proven true or false one way or the other”).  The most common mistake people make in trying to define nihilism is that they think it is “about” something.  Not only is it not about something, it is not even about nothing.  The nihilist doesn’t care that he doesn’t care, and so on recursively.  For these reasons nihilism is not particularly useful, except possibly as an extreme counterexample.

DID formerly was known as “multiple personality disorder.”  Under that name it became a subject of fascination throughout history (North, Ryall, Ricci & Wetzel, 1993); and, more recently, a pop culture phenomenon with books such as The Three Faces of Eve (later made into a movie), Sybil, and the television show United States of Tara. The Internet has made it possible for people to assume alternative identities with ease, especially in chat-rooms, on dating web-sites and in role-playing games such as Second Life (Dreyfus, 2008). In fact, a new clinical disorder called “internet addiction” has been proposed for inclusion in the forthcoming DSM-V (Block, 2008; Young, 1998), even as DID has become a target for removal (Gharaibeh, 2009).

Because it implicates concepts such as “self” and “personal identity,” DID is intrinsically interesting in its own right (Braude, 1995). The experience of it undoubtedly is disturbing from a phenomenological standpoint; see, e.g., the essays and other creative works collected at Cohen, Giller & Lynn (Eds.), 1991. There are a half dozen treatment modalities, none of which are particularly effective, ranging from psychopharmacology to psychoanalysis, with stops in between for cognitive behavioral therapy and group therapy; for a review, see Braun (Ed.), 1986, and Putnam (1989). Although there are plenty of theories, DID’s epidemiology and etiology remain uncertain (Ross, 1996). Even as they defend it as a viable psychiatric diagnosis and distinct clinical pathology, the most current authorities recognize it is the source of confusion, gaps in knowledge and conjecture (Dell & O’Neil, 2009; Ross, 2006).

It seems quite likely there is such a thing as DID. Unlike many others (e.g. Lynn & Deming, 2010), I am not a DID skeptic. Most likely DID is caused by severe childhood trauma, such as sexual abuse. The victim creates an alternative personality and assigns the traumatic event (or series of traumatic incidents) to it, rather than to his or her “core personality” or “self.” In that way, the trauma becomes contained by or encapsulated in the alternative personality. Conversely, it becomes depersonalized or derealized vis-à-vis the victim’s core personality, enabling him or her to cope with greater facility in daily life.

That notwithstanding, there are several reasons why DID has had such a mixed reception. Some of them are practical; some, more theoretical. Here are a few of them:

1. How is developing a stand-alone, independently viable alternative identity different from simply expressing a personality trait or characteristic, or being in an affective state or mood?  DID theory confuses “who” with “what.” “Who” refers to an entire person. “What” refers to an ascriptive predicate attributable to that person, such as, “that person is a student,” or “that person is a musician” or “that person has red hair.” This does not necessarily entail, nor should it, an inference that each of those ascriptive predicates leads to the development of a discrete personality, centered on that trait or characteristic. DID may involve simply a reallocation or redistribution of one’s ascriptive predicates, i.e., “today I feel like playing music” or “today I feel like writing poetry,” rather than the creation of an entirely new personality (“poet” or “musician”).

2. How is it possible for somebody to acquire more than one alternative personality?  It is not difficult to see how one might develop a single one, as a way to compartmentalize early trauma, such as childhood sexual abuse. It is harder to develop a rationale, though, for the subsequent proliferation of additional personalities. Does each require separate new trauma, so there is a one-to-one correspondence with each new personality?  If so, why wasn’t the existing alternative personality sufficient to accommodate the new trauma within its scope?  Perhaps new personalities develop as the victim ruminates on certain salient features or aspects of the original trauma. How do these new internal narratives proliferate, and how do they catalyze the creation of additional alter egos?  Why certain features, and not others?

3. If there is “more than one” alternative personality, then how do they relate to each other?  What are the parameters within which each operates, and what determines these boundary conditions?  Do they share characterological traits?  If so, then why is there more than one of them?  Does it make sense to think of one as being “dominant,” in the sense of organizing reality for the others?  Can it even be said to begin with, that one is an “original” or “core” personality, especially if it is expressed with less temporal frequency than some other one?  What causes a segue or transition from one personality to another?  There must be some sort of a trigger, or prime – almost like a startle response. But how strong must the trigger be; must it cross some kind of an imaginary threshold in order to activate the alternative personality, or is just a little bit of exposure or recollection sufficient?  Can one be “half in one personality,” and “half in the other” – that is, blend traits or characteristics of two (or more), depending on situational or environmental factors?

4. What if the victim is mistaken about some aspect of the trauma, or (in an extreme case) it never happened, to begin with?  It is not difficult to see how one’s recollection of factual details might be incorrect, particularly with memories arising in young childhood (the most likely age for DID trauma to occur). Then, later interpretation is based not so much on the original trauma, as it is on previous recollections of the trauma at subsequent points in time. At each such later point in time, the victim has reflected on the original trauma, and on previous recollections of it, and experienced intervening life events. These may attenuate his or her recollection of the original trauma. It may subsequently become confabulated, based on reinforcing experiences – possibly, to the point where the original recollection is obliterated entirely. Therapy itself may have caused the victim to adopt a meta-analysis, which has overtaken events as they originally occurred. If so, then the phenomenological experience of DID is not based so much on trauma, as it is on the transience and variability of memory and recollection. Other alternative selves are not traceable to earlier trauma, but rather, on subsequent recollections and elaborations of it. Theorists such as Derek Parfit (1975) have devised complex theories about how one’s singular personal identity remains consistent over time. This process would become impossibly complex – factorially – if one were juggling multiple personal identities simultaneously. How much importance one assigns to different aspects of one’s reality depends entirely on how attention one devotes to them. Given this arbitrary, even chaotic environment, where nothing really is as it seems, one can become convinced of just about anything.

5. Does DID have neurological correlates?  From a materialist perspective, it is clear that even victims of DID have only one brain. Although there a variety of theories about whether, why and how this occurs, that brain gives rise to, or is the substrate of, phenomena such as “self,” personality, memory, personal identity and “mind.” However described, do people with DID instantiate two (or more instances) of them?  Does each entail a separate neural wiring scheme, or activate different brain regions (as shown by fMRI)?  If so, how are they different?  In principle, one and the same neurological state might give rise to any number of different phenomenological experiences, and a person could have as many different memories as there are neural connections or potentials comprising them. But it’s a long way from this to a completely different personality state. Someone who has undergone commissurotomy certainly is entitled to have two separate selves. But what about people (most of us) with only one brain?

6. Several DID theorists conjecture it originates in cult and ritual abuse (Noblitt & Perskin, 2000). Like all conspiracy theories, this has too many moving parts to be plausible. Compare:  Freud originally thought that all cases of hysteria were caused by paternal sexual molestation during childhood. He was forced to retract this hypothesis when his colleagues discovered cases of hysteria where no childhood seduction was implicated (Makari, 2008). Cult and ritual abuse theorists make this same type of over-generalization.

Based on concerns like these, I often have heard it said, or implied, that persons with DID are “acting” or “faking it.” This hypothesis seems unlikely to me, because it’s too complicated. It hypothesizes the existence of at least four different psychological states, each of which must be maintained simultaneously. Here they are: (1) the subject must have some concept of what might be referred to as a “normal” or non-pathological state – the shared reality in which all of us exist. (2) The subject then must have some concept of what a “pathological” state is, particularly in contrast to (1). The subject must be able to discriminate his or her altered or (ostensibly) pathological state, and discern the myriad ways in which it’s different, or has a different feature set. (3) The subject then must have a subjective impression of “what it’s like” to be in (2); a personal “take” or understanding of what it involves, the cognitions it implies, and the behaviors it requires. Finally, (4) the subject must plan a series of steps in order to implement (3), that is, not only a subjective impression of (3), but also the practical, operationalized steps necessary to achieve it.

This is where some variant of “acting” comes in. It would be difficult to attend to all four of these separate cognitions, simultaneously. If one is “switching” between (say) a dozen different personalities, then 12 times 4 = 48 separate mental states are implicated. Earlier in this note I hypothesized it isn’t necessary (and probably impossible) for the subject to adopt a complete feature set for each different personality, rather, only a more limited set of ascriptive predicates that might be attributed accurately to that state. If so, then the number of separate cognitions required could be virtually limitless; at the least, it might approach 12! (factorial) or even 12^12th power. If DID theory is true, then it would be more parsimonious simply to infer that the subject is transparently assuming, with ease and facility, the alternative identity. This would reduce considerably the dimensionality of the vexing issues DID presents. A subject who is “acting” doesn’t really implicate a genuine alternative identity; the subject lacks some form of “sincerity” condition, and only is being “as if.” This may be a form of psychopathology, but it’s different than DID.

References

Block, J. (2008). Issues for DSM-V: Internet addiction. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 165, 306 – 307. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2007.07101556

Braude, S. (1995). First person plural: Multiple personality and the philosophy of mind. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Braun, D. (1986) (Ed.). Treatment of multiple personality disorder. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

Cohen, B., Giller, E. & Lynn, W. (1991). Multiple personality disorder from the inside out. Baltimore, MD: Sidran Press.

Dell, P. & O’Neil, J. (Eds.). Dissociation and the dissociative disorders: DSM-V and beyond. New York, NY: Routledge.

Dreyfus, H. (2008). On the internet (thinking in action). New York, NY: Routledge.

Gharaibeh, N. (2009). Dissociative identity disorder: Time to remove it from DSM-V?  Current Psychiatry, 8(9), 30 – 36.

Lynn, S. & Deming, A. (2010). Review: The “Sybil Tapes”: Exposing the myth of dissociative identity disorder. Theory & Psychology, 20(2), 289 – 292.

Makari, G. (2008). Revolution in mind: The creation of psychoanalysis. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Noblitt, J. & Perskin, P. (2000). Cult and ritual abuse: Its history, anthropology, and recent discovery in contemporary America. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

North, C., Ryall, J, Ricci, D. & Wetzel, R. (1993). Multiple personalities, multiple disorders – Psychiatric classification and media influence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Parfit, D. (1971). Personal identity. Philosophical Review, 80(1), 3 – 27. Reprinted in J. Perry (1975) (Ed.). Personal identity, pp. 198 – 223. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Putnam, F. (1989). Diagnosis & treatment of multiple personality disorder. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Ross, C. (1996). Dissociative identity disorder: Diagnosis, clinical features, and treatment of multiple personality. New York, NY: Wiley.

Ross, C. (2006). Dissociative identity disorder. Current Psychosis and Therapeutics Reports, 4(3), 112 – 116. doi: 10.1008/BF02629306

Schreiber, F. (1973). Sybil. New York, NY: Penguin

Thigpen, C. & Cleckley, H. (1957). The three faces of Eve. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press.

United States of Tara (2009 – 2011). Showtime Network.

Young, K. (1998). Internet addiction: The emergence of a new clinical disorder. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 1(3), 237 – 244. doi:10.1089/cpb.1998.1.237

Summary of Wilson and Ross

Autobiographical memory and the self. Wilson and Ross (2003) explore the interaction between one’s autobiographical memory and one’s construction of a sense of self. Since they do not explicitly define either, one must turn elsewhere to attempt to discern their meaning. Autobiographical memory “refers to the store of memories of events that have happened to an individual” (Rubin, 2006). Although philosophers and psychologists have argued for centuries about what the self is, recent speculation is to the effect that there “may not be a single thing to be described.”  Rather, the self “is a multiplicity of related, yet separable, processes and contents” (Klein & Gangi, 2010, p. 2). These include “episodic memories of one’s life events;” “semantic summary representations of one’s personality traits;” “semantic knowledge of facts about one’s life;” “an experience of continuity through time;” “a sense of personal agency and ownership;” “the ability to self-reflect” (self-consciousness); and the “physical self” (one’s body) (Klein & Gangi, 2010, p. 2).

Wilson and Ross’ (2003) basic theory is that there is a reciprocal relationship between one’s autobiographical memory and one’s sense of self, in that “people’s recollections influence their self-views and vice versa” (Wilson & Ross, 2003, p. 137). Given this bivalency, one’s current self-appraisals should influence how one reconstructs one’s past; and one’s past in turn should influence one’s current conception of whom one is.

It is important to understand Wilson and Ross’ framework clearly. One exists at a current moment in space and time. At that moment, one has a certain concept of one’s self. One performs an act of reflection, traveling backwards in time to a discrete temporal moment or interval. One then characterizes that past interval, based on how one conceives of oneself now, in the present. The past interval then in turn affects one’s present characterization of one’s current identity. The moment of the now, of course, itself constantly is moving forward in time; as I write this sentence, it is later than it was when I started writing this paragraph.

For clarity, I divide Wilson and Ross’ (2003) argument into two distinct propositions. The first is that sense of self affects autobiographical memory; and the second is that autobiographical memory affects sense of self. I will examine each, followed by a critique of both.

Sense of self affects autobiographical memory. As to their first proposition, Wilson and Ross (2003) characterize the “received view” as premised on a “consistency bias,” in that one who believes one’s personality is firmly established tends to think of one’s past as a stable progression of events through time. Although not cited by Wilson and Ross, this idea is based on earlier work by Maylor, Chater and Brown (2001). Wilson and Ross attempt to refute Maylor et al.’s theory by arguing one’s concept of one’s identity changes. In fact, it changes for the better. Across various samples, “people reported their past selves to be inferior to their present self” (Wilson & Ross, 2003, p. 139).

There is some expansion to this process, in that one does not experience time as a discrete sequence of instants, each of equal duration. Rather, one’s phenomenological perception of time is elastic and enlarges in response to positive self-evaluation. Thus, “to protect their current [positive] self-regard, people are motivated to feel farther from past failings than from achievements, even when calendar time does not differ (Wilson & Ross, 2003, p. 141). Older memories of past failures are “less vivid” and typically phrased in the third person, as opposed to pleasant memories, which typically are phrased in the first person (Wilson & Ross, 2003, p. 144).

This facilitates a process of reattribution. One can assign past transgressions to a former self – an “old” me – thereby relieving oneself of personal responsibility and blending in more smoothly with one’s social environment, or coping with it with improved dexterity and facility. It also has considerable psychological utility, because “people’s moods and reports of life satisfaction improve when they recall pleasant personal experiences and worsen when they remember distressing personal episodes” (Wilson & Ross, 2003, p. 145).

Autobiographical memory affects sense of self. As to their second proposition, Wilson and Ross (2003) assert, “autobiographical memories influence current self-views” (Wilson & Ross, 2003, p. 142). It is somewhat more confusing to understand just how this works. Wilson and Ross describe a previous study they had conducted, in which a sample group was presented with a time-line spanning many years from “now” to the distant past. Participants were asked to situate a specific pleasantly-remembered event somewhere along the time line. The time-line then was re-scaled to span only recent years, and participants again were asked to situate the remembered event. These two trials then were repeated, only this time participants were asked to situate a specific unpleasant remembered event somewhere along both lines.

Wilson and Ross found that people situated the event much closer to “now” when the time-line spanned only a few years, as opposed to when it spanned many years. Further, using an undisclosed psychometric measure, Wilson and Ross found people who situated themselves closer to failures tended to have less-favorable current self-appraisals, and vice versa. On this basis, Wilson and Ross concluded that remembered outcomes affect present self-regard.

Problems with Wilson and Ross

Wilson and Ross (2003) do not explore several correlates to their theory, which tend to invalidate or at least severely challenge it. Some of these issues are raised by, variously, Arbuthnott et al. (2006); Schacter (1996); and Bechara et al. (1995), among others. I will review six of these issues.

Negative self-concept. In their first proposition – that sense of self affects autobiographical memory – Wilson and Ross (2003) only consider the situation where one’s concept of self improves on reflection. What happens in the reverse situation – that is, when one’s concept of self deteriorates?  Wilson and Ross assume one in effect becomes progressively more content with one’s sense of self and that as one does so, one feels closer to past achievements and further away from past failures. It is entirely possible, though, that one might view one’s former self in a better light than one’s current self. This should entail that one would feel closer to one’s past failings and further away from one’s past achievements.

It is not difficult to imagine a situation where one’s present recollection of an early memory might shift in one direction (positive) at one point in time, then shift in the opposite direction (negative) at another. This process might occur in real time, during a spontaneous and perhaps non-conscious moment of reflection. It also might transpire, more deliberately, during the therapeutic process. In a kind of pretest-posttest, one subject, pre-experimental research design, a clinician might record a patient’s early autobiographical memories. Then, later in therapy, the content of those early autobiographical memories, together with their associated emotional affect, might be reconsidered. This comparison might reveal nuanced shifts, subtle changes in details, extraneous commentary, and other perspectives, which then can be assessed. They might demonstrate a transition towards a more positive self-concept; or, a deterioration. Something like this takes place during Adlerian therapy. Wilson and Ross, however, do not explore this hypothetical.

Although they characterize it somewhat differently, Arbuthnott et al (2006) do so. Rather than speculating about the human condition in general, their approach is to focus more on specific clinical psychopathologies. They develop several examples. (1) Persons with affective disorders may be unable to differentiate autobiographical memory (recalling its semantic content) from the associated emotions it provokes. The memory’s affective content in turn may exacerbate, or retard, its impact. This in turn may cause various interference effects, such as “emotion-regulation difficulties will selectively interfere with specific memories more than general memories” (Arbuthnott et al., 2006, p. 68). (2) A person prone to dissociate may have difficulty “connecting the dots” of discrete temporal locations in order to form a coherent memory of a past event. (3) Persons with major depressive disorder might be more likely to ruminate over past failures than those with better coping or problem-solving skills, which also “creates interference in a memory retrieval task” (Arbuthnott et al., 2006, p. 68). (4) Persons with who have experienced PTSD or childhood trauma may find these comprise a “stronger part of their self-concept and had more negative influence on their current life” (Arbuthnott et al., 2006, p. 59). In this respect, Arbuthnott et al.’s account is more nuanced than that of Wilson and Ross (2003), who simply attempt to describe the phenomenological nature of human experience in general – an initiative which, because it is not context-sensitive, seems less likely to succeed.

Reverse causation. Wilson and Ross’ (2003) second proposition – that autobiographical memories influence current self-appraisals – lacks coherency. The methodology of their research protocol, with its dueling time-lines, is suspicious. It does not really prove their second proposition is true. More significantly, it is impossible for one to reconstruct a stand-alone, independently verifiable, third-party perspective on a previous event in one’s life. Under Wilson and Ross’ first proposition, concept of self thoroughly permeates autobiographical memory. This being so, how is it possible for the self (assuming the validity of this construct in the sense Wilson and Ross intend) to reorganize one’s past in a way that makes it intelligible as an unbiased source of recollection, and as a causal influencer?  It is difficult to see how one can do so, free from the influence of one’s current concept of self. Wilson and Ross’ reasoning is circular because there is no independent narrative structure.

Salience. Wilson and Ross (2003) also fail to consider the relative salience of events. It stands to reason that a particularly impactful event would accrue greater topographic prominence in the conceptual landscape of one’s thoughts. An incident of early childhood trauma, for example, might be better-remembered, despite being in the distant past; as might an early childhood achievement, such as winning an academic or athletic competition. Because of their relative prominence, their persistency, and their effect on one’s personality at the time, these impactful events may be less subject to temporal elasticity in the manner Wilson and Ross propose.

Arbuthnott et al. (2006) address this issue by distinguishing between three types of autobiographical information – lifetime periods, general events, and event-specific knowledge. Lifetime period knowledge “organizes personal memories according to major segments or transitions in one’s life (Arbuthnott, et al., p. 57). General event knowledge is “knowledge of personal events and categories of events that are of shorter duration and narrower focus” (Arbuthnott, et al., p. 57). Event-specific knowledge is an experiential “re-evoking of sensory and affective experiences that occurred during the original event” (Arbuthnott, et al., p. 58). These snips overlap, recombine, and need not present themselves in a specific temporal sequence. Sometimes they even become conflated, or cross the border into the imagined. The source memory may not correspond in many significant particulars with the actual event. Wilson and Ross should have evaluated these possibilities, all of which suggest widely varying differential outcomes.

Multiple recollections. Wilson and Ross (2003) rely on an overly-simplified schematic. For Wilson and Ross, one’s present self, comprising an ensemble of ascriptive predicates, simply reflects on a single previous event. Recollection of previous events, however, is far more complicated. One seldom focuses on a particular, discrete incident. Rather, one constantly flits back and forth between the immediate and the distant past, often without rhyme or reason (and certainly this often happens during the process of therapy, for example, “free association” in a Freudian sense). Not only do a multiplicity of events present themselves for contemplation, but they also do not organize into a neat temporal sequence. Rather, their location on a chronological time-line is bi-directional and even jumbled. There are intervening, over-lapping, multi-cause-provoking and multi-effect-producing events. Sometimes they might be teleologically oriented, sometimes causally, or sometimes completely random. It seems unlikely this subjective, stream-of-consciousness assignment of events to temporal phases or stages ever could be duplicated over successive trials.

Arbuthnott et al. (2006) correctly identify this lability. They state:

[M]ental objects are not simply located in whole from a vast store of past experiences, but rather are constructed to satisfy the needs of current goals and contexts … In therapy, even theoretical modalities that concentrate on the present, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, rely on client’s recollections about therapeutically targeted behaviors or complaints. (p. 55)

Arbuthnott et al. (2006) continue: “Two recollections of the same event are seldom identical, as different occasions usually involve different goals and different cues with which to probe long-term memory” (Arbuthnott et al. p. 62). They hypothesize there are two different types of retrieval processes. Direct retrieval is activated by a cue or prime, which is a “current sensory experiences that accesses a similar phenomenal sensation in the event-specific knowledge base”  (Arbuthnott et al., p. 63). Intentional retrieval is a reconstructive process. “A rememberer will first access general or lifetime period knowledge, and use the retrieved information to generate more specific cues to the target event” (Arbuthnott et al., p. 64). This account seems to better accord with actual experience, than what Wilson and Ross propose.

Developmental processes. A related variable, not considered by Wilson and Ross (2003), is the issue of how memories change with the developmental process. Wilson and Ross assume one’s ability to retrieve autobiographical memory remains constant with age. Schacter (1996) convincingly demonstrates this is not so. Schacter’s particular concern is the coherency of memories of persons who are older adults. He evocatively describes an informal experiment conducted by Pat Potter, an artist from Alabama, who selectively altered old photographs to correspond with one’s present recollections of the incident they portray (Schacter, 1996, p. 281). The substantive propositional content of those autobiographical memories is considerably altered as faces, places and situations change.

This being so, it would be incorrect to assume the autobiographical memory of persons who are older is based predominantly on “forgetting.”  Schacter reviews studies, which show persons who are older, have considerable neural plasticity. There is not as much cortical and hippocampal neuron loss as once was surmised. Schacter cites previous studies using brain imaging techniques such as PET scans, which showed that retrieval of autobiographical memory occurs in the frontal lobes. Both persons who are older and those who are younger have similar levels of hippocampal activity. Schacter concludes the abilities of persons who are older to retrieve autobiographical memories vary “widely across different situations, ranging from perfectly normal to significantly impaired” (Schacter, 1996, p. 283). Absent degenerative conditions, semantic knowledge is retained; “our abilities to call on our enormous networks of facts and associations are generally well preserved” (Schacter, 1996, p 291). In some instances, one’s ability to reminisce and recall very old experiences (those occurring in adolescence or early adulthood) actually is enhanced, a phenomenon Schacter calls a “reminiscence bump” (Schacter, 1996, p. 298). While procedural memory (novel cognitive skills, motor skills) is somewhat impaired, implicit memory (using cues and primes to facilitate memory retrieval) remains intact. Schacter concludes the ability of persons who are older to retrieve and narrate autobiographical memories plays an important role in promoting community and social cohesion. “The need to preserve memories across intergenerational time … is a fundamental human imperative” (Schacter, 1996, p. 305). The continuing development of new technology, such as the Internet, facilitates one’s ability to undertake this task.

Mood and affect. Wilson and Ross (2003) base their entire theory on a conscious process of self-reflection. There are, however, many other factors that influence not only the semantic content but also the temporal organization of recalled events, and the ease with which they are brought to fore. Generally these might be characterized as “unconscious” mediators or moderators such as those, which are the subject of psychoanalysis. One’s characterization of past events may be subject to a number of other variables, all the way from complex personality traits to something as simple as one’s mood and affect, Arbuthnott et al. (2006).

The role of mood and its interplay with cognition particularly is important to the encoding and retrieval of declarative knowledge, such as autobiographical memory. Wilson and Ross (2003) do not consider these neuropsychological variables. A study, current when Wilson and Ross wrote, is Bechara et al. (1995). Bechara et al. examined the roles played by the amygdala and the hippocampus in coding and retrieving memory. The amygdala regulates emotional response and conditioning. The hippocampus contributes to the establishment and access of declarative knowledge. Bechara et al. studied three persons with different brain lesions. In person (1), the amygdala was damaged but the hippocampus was intact; in person (2), the hippocampus was damaged but the amygdala was intact; and in person (3), both the hippocampus and the amygdala were damaged. Each person underwent several trials to determine whether he or she could acquire conditioned autonomic responses, pairing various audio and visual stimuli. Each person subsequently was asked several questions about the stimuli (e.g. “what was it”). Person (1) was unable to acquire a conditioned response, but was able to answer facts about the stimuli. Person (2) acquired the conditioned response, but was unable to supply factual information about the pairing, i.e. the opposite of Person (1). Person (3) was unable to do either. On this basis, Bechara et al. concluded the amygdala was crucial to couple “exteroceptive” stimuli (originating outside of the body) with “interoceptive” stimuli (originating inside the body, such as somatic and affective states). While Bechara et al.’s methodological approach is subject to critique on several grounds, it sets forth a basic and still-useful framework for the interaction between emotion and cognitive variables in the coding and recall of autobiographical memories.

Bechara et al. (1995) present several challenges for Wilson and Ross (2003). Neuropsychological events, such as those described by Bechara et al., clearly cause conscious processes such as autobiographical memory; there is nowhere else for them to come from. Yet, the mechanism of just how this occurs remains unclear. Neuropsychological processes are “multiply realizable” because they have the potential to cause different cognitive states (Putnam, 1967; Fodor, 1974). This leads to an “explanatory gap” between them (Levine, 1983). Wilson and Ross do not even attempt to reconcile these opposing points of view. If the doctrines of multiple realizability and the explanatory gap are true, it would not be possible to distinguish positive memories from negative ones, or for that matter the substantive propositional content of any memories, to begin with.

The problem becomes even more complex when one transitions from the cognitive to the affective. Broadly read, Bechara et al. imply the hippocampus affects autobiographical memory, and the amygdala affects its associated emotional affect. If Bechara et al. are correct, and if there is a disconnect in the relationship between cognition and the hippocampus (as postulated by the doctrines of multiple realizability and the explanatory gap), then any disconnect between affect and the amygdala will be even more difficult to discern. Current work in the neuroscience of memory identifies other important aspects of this process such as outcome uncertainty, which dramatically affects the adaptation of internal timing mechanisms to the temporal characteristics of the environment (Jazayeri & Shadlen, 2010); and factors such as retrieval rates, relative recency effects, relative lag-recency effects, and issues of contiguity and scale similarity (Moreton & Ward, 2010).

Attachment Theory

I also will briefly examine the relationship between Wilson and Ross (2003) work and attachment theory. Attachment theory considers the relationship between a child’s emotional development and the caliber and quality of its relationships with initial caregivers (predominantly, the child’s mother). The child requires consistency and sensitivity in these relationships in order to develop secure cognitive and affective models for adult life (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991). If there is lack of early maternal interaction, or the child’s attachment bond with his or her mother is disrupted, then subsequent personality development can be adversely affected.

Bowlby argued that attachment had evolutionary utility; “the establishment of a deep and tenacious bond to the mother is an instinctual system that enhances the infant’s chances for survival” (Mitchell & Black, 1995, p. 136). In this respect, Bowlby was fundamentally different from Sigmund Freud, who held children went through stages of psycho-sexual development (the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital), driven by innate sexual drives, the repression of which resulted in the development of neuroses. Anna Freud, who was Sigmund Freud’s daughter, succeeded him. She thought that poor parenting and environmental deprivation were the chief sources of childhood trauma. The mother primarily is a need-gratifying object (who in turn has needs that need to be gratified), and the child can be separated from the mother, so long as some other competent caregiver replaces her (Makari, 2008).

Ainsworth supported Bowlby’s theories experimentally with field research into the child-rearing practices of Ugandan women. Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s research led them to hypothesize various infant styles of attachment – the anxious-avoidant, secure, ambivalent-resistant and disorganized/disoriented. All are based on the mother’s interpretation of and response to infant behavioral signals. Ainsworth developed what she called a “strange situation” test, which puts the child in various stressful situations where a stranger replaces the primary care giver. The child’s response to these tests is a predictor of subsequent adult personality development. Based on Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s work, Mary Main, Erik Hesse and Ruth Goldwyn developed an “adult attachment interview,” used to assess the relative impact of these and other factors.

Wilson and Ross (2003) ignore attachment theory. If attachment theory is true, then the stability and consistency of a child’s early relationship with his or her primary caregiver affects how the child encodes early memories, together with their substantive propositional content. It also should affect the ease with which they subsequently are retrieved, and the emotional or affective valence with which they are associated.

Although not discussed by attachment theorists, this makes sense from a neurological perspective, and should be validated by the types of experiments performed by Bechara et al. (1995). Brain activity is lateralized in the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. Each hemisphere executes different, specialized functions. Normal right-handed persons use the left hemisphere to undertake cognitive activities such as language (including narration, interpretation) and analysis (rational thought, abstract reasoning, problem-solving). They use the right hemisphere for feelings, emotions, intuition, and creativity. (These are of course generalizations.)

According to neurophysiologists such as Eric Kandel (2007), the infant’s right hemisphere develops first. It dominates information processing from birth for up to 36 months thereafter. It develops “procedural” or “implicit memory” for non-verbal exchanges (as opposed to “explicit” or “declarative” memory, which has semantic or propositional content). It therefore should be the one most responsive to the kinds of non-verbal cues transmitted between mother and baby, identified by Bowlby and Ainsworth.

Two hypotheses should follow. First, the mother also should deploy right brain functioning in order to communicate with the baby and maximize the likelihood of successful interactions. Second, infants who have undergone trauma during the right-brain developmental period are unlikely to remember much of what occurred. The reason why is they lack sufficient left-brain capacity. Only with deep analysis and simulation or even reenactment of the actual aversive situation will they be able to articulate their implicit memories and in effect convert them into explicit ones (1). If Bowlby and Ainsworth are right, then the types of attachment relationships they identify should develop in the evolving milieu of the child’s right-brain environment. Initially they will be non-representational, non-semantic and non-propositional. Bowlby and Ainsworth do not contend that during the baby’s critical developmental period, attachment style is an actual cognitive, self-conscious or reflective mental state. They are not even unconscious or non-conscious; it would be more accurate to describe them as pre-conscious. They are precipitates of the emotional interaction between mother and child. As part of the child’s operational reality, they affect not only the child’s early development, as demonstrated in behavior patters and behavioral reactions – for example, where the child goes, and what the child does, when the child is hurt and needs soothing. They also in turn reflect the child’s later adult personality. It is at that point they also become amenable to articulation and reflection, as disclosed (for example) by the adult attachment interview, among other psychometrics. The child’s types of instinctive or intuitive feelings, and the attachment relationships they engender, correspond exactly to the development of the right brain. This reconciles Bowlby and Ainsworth with the actual neurology of the brain processes involved. Wilson and Ross (2003) do not consider any of this, even though it crucially affects the theory of autobiographical memory they develop.

Personal Application of Wilson and Ross (2003)

In conclusion, I would like to state that I have a number of interesting and suggestive early autobiographical memories. I have lead a busy life, full of static arising out of sequences of disconcerting events (though no more disconcerting or eventful than anybody else’s, considered qua event). I do not claim these are in any way unique; they just happen to be the personal ones that I have experienced. I do not doubt they have been subject to the attenuation process Wilson and Ross (2003) describe. Most noteworthy, the entire propositional content of my early memories has been compressed into a series of brief snapshots, much like colored slides or thin strips of celluloid. The emotional affect associated with the original experience has been attached to that file, riding along like a kind of appendage. Unlike Wilson and Ross, however, neither the memories, nor their correlative emotional lenses, have been redefined over time. In fact, their relative stability has enabled them to serve as reference points, or check points, throughout the confusing amalgam of activity that characterizes one’s temporal existence. I can take them out, flip through them like a photo album, and then put them back in the box from whence they came. I attribute this durability primarily to the original memory’s impact, and salience, in my conceptual scheme and view of the world.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume believed there was no such thing as a self, only a disconnected sequences of perceptions and impressions with no constancy or invariability. We confusedly amalgamate these together and derive a sense of continuous personal identity. We further hypothesize there is some sort of entity, which undertakes this activity (Hume, 1888/1968). Hume’s concept of the self has been critiqued on thousands of occasions since and it is beyond the scope of this essay even to summarize the various arguments and counter-arguments that have been adduced in support of, or against, his theory. Although they do not discuss it, Wilson and Ross (2003) would have to enroll themselves in the list of Hume defenders. I will observe, however, that as applied to me, Hume is not quite right. The reason why is because I have experienced a finite number of what might be characterized as “anchor events,” my memory of which has remained more-or-less stable and continuous, and provided me with consistent points of reference over time, despite the plasticity and variegation of other recollections.

Footnote

(1) This is just a hypothesis on my part; I cannot find any references in the literature to this connection.

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