tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/sigmund-freud-1174/articles
Sigmund Freud – The Conversation
2023-12-07T17:28:07Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219281
2023-12-07T17:28:07Z
2023-12-07T17:28:07Z
OCD is so much more than handwashing or tidying. As a historian with the disorder, here’s what I’ve learned
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563995/original/file-20231206-25-yjbxqt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C22%2C5077%2C3328&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/woman-touching-her-temples-hands-suffering-2196452389">Elena Abrazhevich/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Readers are advised that this article contains explicit discussion of suicide and suicidal and obsessional thoughts. If you are in need of support, contact details are included at the end of the article.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>At the age of 12, “out of nowhere”, Matt says he started having repetitive thoughts concerning whether he wanted to end his life. Every time he saw a knife, he would ask himself: “Am I going to stab myself?” Or, when he was near a ledge: “Am I going to jump?”</p>
<p>Matt had heard a lot about teenage depression, and thought this must be what was going on. But it was confusing, he says: “I didn’t feel suicidal, I really enjoyed my life. I just had an intense fear of doing something to hurt myself.”</p>
<p>Shortly afterwards, pre-empted by hearing about a notorious banned film, Matt began questioning whether he, like the central character, might be a serial killer. These thoughts “kept coming and coming” and he would lie in bed running over scenarios, trying to work out whether he was “going crazy”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I really needed help. I didn’t know who to talk to. But it wasn’t on my radar to think about this as OCD.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a significant mental health diagnosis in the 21st century. The World Health Organization (WHO) lists it as <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g2183.long">one of the ten most disabling illnesses</a> in terms of loss of earning and reduced quality of life, and OCD is frequently cited as the fourth most common mental disorder globally after depression, substance abuse and <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/social-anxiety/#:%7E:text=Social%20anxiety%20disorder%2C%20also%20called,better%20as%20they%20get%20older.">social phobia</a> (anxiety about social interactions).</p>
<p>Yet everything Matt knew about OCD, he tells me, came from daytime talkshows where “people were washing their hands 1,000 times a day – it was all about external and really extreme behaviours”. And that didn’t feel like what he was going through.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Across the world, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of mental illness at all ages, from children to the very old – with huge costs to families, communities and economies. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/tackling-the-mental-health-crisis-147216?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=ArticleTop&utm_campaign=MentalHealthSeries">In this series</a>, we investigate what’s causing this crisis, and report on the latest research to improve people’s mental health at all stages of life.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>A similar experience is recounted in the 2011 book <a href="https://overcoming.co.uk/582/Taking-Control-Of-OCD---VealeWillson">Taking Control of OCD</a> by John (not his real name) who, after a colleague had taken their own life, became “inundated with thoughts” about what he might do to himself. Every time he crossed the road, John thought: “What would happen if I stopped moving and was run over by a bus?” He also had thoughts of murdering those he loved. John recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Try as I might, I just couldn’t chase the thoughts out of my head … When I tried to explain what was going on to my girlfriend, I couldn’t find a way of articulating what was happening to me … At the time, I thought OCD was all about triple-checking you had locked the front door and that your drawers were tidy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the prevalence of OCD in contemporary society, the experiences of Matt and John reflect two important features of this disorder. First, that the stereotype of OCD is one of washing and checking behaviours – the <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/overview/">compulsions</a> aspect, defined clinically as “repetitive behaviours that a person feels driven to perform”. And that obsessions – defined as “<a href="https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/overview/">unwanted, unpleasant thoughts</a>” often of a harmful, sexual or blasphemous nature – are viewed as obscure, confusing and unrecognisable as OCD.</p>
<p>People who experience obsessional thoughts are therefore frequently unable to identify their symptoms as OCD – and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26132683/">neither</a>, very often, are the experts they see in clinical settings. Due to mischaracterisations of the disorder, OCD sufferers with non-typical, less visible presentations usually <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666915321001578?via%3Dihub">go undiagnosed for ten or more years</a>.</p>
<p>When John visited his GP, he was diagnosed with depression. He recalled that the GP concentrated more on the visible effects of his distress - a lack of appetite and disrupted sleeping patterns. The thoughts remained invisible. As he put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t know how you’re supposed to tell someone you don’t know that you have thoughts about killing people you love.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even for those with “textbook” OCD such as my friend Abby, “the compulsion is just the tip of the iceberg”. Abby was able to self-diagnose at the age of 12, when she experienced handwashing and locking door compulsions. She says people still think of her as “Abby [who] likes to wash her hands a lot”.</p>
<p>Now, she tells me, “I realise that I have no interest in washing my hands – I’m a pretty messy person, and I don’t mind other people being messy.” Rather than a love of cleaning, her acts were related to the altogether scarier obsessional thought: “What if I am going to hurt other people?”</p>
<p>Clinical guidelines, such as those provided in the UK by the <a href="https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg31/resources/obsessivecompulsive-disorder-and-body-dysmorphic-disorder-treatment-pdf-975381519301">National Institute for Health and Care Excellence</a>, define OCD as being characterised by both compulsions <em>and</em> obsessions. So, why do the difficulties encountered by Matt, John and Abby – of recognising the internal thoughts that dominate their lives – appear to be <a href="https://letsqueerthingsup.com/2018/05/12/i-didnt-know-i-had-ocd-heres-why-the-stereotypes-are-so-harmful/">so common</a>?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Wordcloud for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564001/original/file-20231206-27-hklxdx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">OCD is a multifaceted disorder, yet understanding tends to focus on the visual, compulsive aspect.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd-word-cloud-1786299122">Colored Lights/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>My experience of OCD</h2>
<p>From the age of 16, I have also suffered with thoughts that I later came to associate with OCD, but which began as invisible and tormenting. An article I wrote in 2014, entitled <a href="https://www.ocduk.org/the-unseen-obsession/">The Unseen Obsession</a>, described my experience of having left university midway through my studies due to a single thought that gathered “such power that I even ended up attacking my body in an attempt to eliminate its force”. I wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have suffered with obsessional thoughts for the last four years, and can safely say that [OCD] is far from being about clean hands.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My obsessions have taken many forms since my teenage years. They began with me wondering whether things really existed, whether my parents were really who they said they were, and whether I wanted to harm – and was a risk to – my family, friends, even my dog.</p>
<p>Many of us know what it is like to ruminate about a person, a conflict, or something else we feel anxious about. But for those with obsessional thoughts (diagnosed or otherwise), this is quite different to simply “overthinking”. As I attempted to explain in my article:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Conversations falter as the thought leaps through your mind. Other topics seem less important, and time to yourself provides space to assess, analyse, and look for evidence of the thought being ‘true’ … [Obsessing] is like fighting: you push and shove your thoughts away and they come back with twice as much force. You spend time trying to avoid them and they pop up everywhere, taunting and mocking your failed attempt at running away.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It took me six months of weekly therapy sessions before I felt able to voice my obsessional thought to my therapist – someone I had known for a number of years. My unwillingness to be open about it was not only tied up with feelings of shame about its taboo content, but also my inability to see such thinking as part of a recognised disorder.</p>
<p>The question of what constitutes OCD, why we understand – and misunderstand – it as we do, as well as my own experience of living with it, led me to study <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/visible-compulsions-ocd-and-the-politics-of-science-in-british-clinical-psychology-19481975/D431B7D6003860F9E6ABE50476BA46A4">how OCD became recognised and categorised as a mental health disorder</a>.</p>
<p>In particular, my research shows that there are important insights to be gained from the research decisions made by a group of influential clinical psychologists in south London in the early 1970s – shedding light on why so many people, myself included, still struggle to recognise and make sense of our obsessional thoughts.</p>
<h2>The origin of the concepts</h2>
<p>Categories of mental illness are not stable across time. As medical, scientific, and public knowledge about an illness changes, so does how it is experienced and diagnosed.</p>
<p>Prior to the 1970s, “obsessions” and “compulsions” did not exist in a unified category – rather, they appeared in an array of psychiatric classifications. At the start of the 20th century, for example, British doctor James Shaw <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/8D219344EF697D92E69BF9ED60F8508B/S000712500016204Xa.pdf/verbal-obsessions.pdf">defined</a> verbal obsessions as “a mode of cerebral activity in which a thought – mostly obscene or blasphemous – forces itself into consciousness”.</p>
<p>Such cerebral activity could, according to Shaw, arise in hysteria, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/neurasthenia">neurasthenia</a>, or as a precursor to delusions. One of his patients – a woman who experienced “irresistible, obscene, blasphemous and unutterable thoughts” – was diagnosed with obsessional melancholia, a “form of insanity”.</p>
<p>The symptom arose from what Shaw defined as “nervous weakness”, an explanation that reflected the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/25373/chapter-abstract/192459930?redirectedFrom=fulltext">broader 19th-century view</a> that obsessional thoughts were indicative of a fragile nervous system – either inherited, or weakened through overwork, alcohol or promiscuous behaviour (described as “<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3514404/">degeneration theory</a>”). Notably, Shaw did not mention any form of repetitive behaviour in relation to these verbal obsessions.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bearded man holding a cigar" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563989/original/file-20231206-15-nk8woa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sigmund_Freud_LIFE.jpg">Max Halberstadt via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At a similar time to Shaw’s writings, Sigmund Freud, the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, developed his psychoanalytic category of “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957154X9800903504">Zwangsneurose</a> – translated in Britain as "obsessional neurosis” and in the US as “compulsion neurosis”. In Freud’s <a href="https://www.mhweb.org/freud/ratman1.pdf">writings</a>, the “Zwang” referred to persistent ideas that emerged from a repressed conflict between unresolved childhood impulses (those of love and hate) and the critical self (ego).</p>
<p>Freud’s <a href="https://ia802907.us.archive.org/17/items/SigmundFreud/Sigmund%20Freud%20%5B1909%5D%20Notes%20Upon%20A%20Case%20Of%20Obsessional%20Neurosis%20%28The%20Rat%20Man%20Case%20History%29%28James%20Strachey%20Translation%201955%29.pdf">most famous case study</a>, published in 1909, featured the “Rat Man”, a former Austrian army officer who possessed a variety of elaborate symptoms. In the first instance, he had become obsessed that he would fall victim to a horrific rat-based punishment that had been recounted to him by a colleague. The patient also expressed that if he had certain desires such as a wish to see a woman naked, his already-deceased father “will be bound to die”.</p>
<p>The Rat Man was described by Freud as engaging in a “system of ceremonial defences” and “elaborate manoeuvres full of contradictions” that have been read by some as the behavioural aspects of what would become OCD. However, there are crucial differences between the “defences” of Freud’s client and the compulsions of OCD, including that the former largely involved thinking rather than acting, and were by no means consistent or stereotyped.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The psychoanalytic category of “obsessional neurosis” was adopted and modified in Britain during the first world war, and became a staple – but inconsistently defined – diagnosis in British psychiatric textbooks of the inter-war period. Up to the 1950s, the terms “obsession” and “compulsion” were being used interchangeably in psychiatric writing. The complexity surrounding their meaning is demonstrated in the <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Inquiries_in_Psychiatry_Clinical_and_Soc/JsZrAAAAMAAJ?hl=en">writings of Aubrey Lewis</a>, a leading figure in post-war British psychiatry, who referred to “obsessional illnesses” as being made up of “compulsive thoughts” and “compulsive inner speech”.</p>
<p>Like Freud, Lewis mentioned the “complex rituals” of the obsessional – such as the patient “who is perpetually putting himself in the greatest trouble to ensure that he never steps on a worm inadvertently”. But he cautioned against “the dangers of associating any kind of repetitious activity with obsessionality”, writing that “it certainly cannot be judged on behaviourist grounds”.</p>
<h2>Defining OCD by visible behaviour</h2>
<p>OCD began to emerge in the form we recognise it today from the early 1970s – and was established as a formal psychiatric disorder through its inclusion in the third and fourth editions of the American Psychiatric Association’s <a href="https://aditpsiquiatriaypsicologia.es/images/CLASIFICACION%20DE%20ENFERMEDADES/DSM-III.pdf">Diagnostic and Statistical Manual</a> (commonly known as DSM-III and DSM-IV) in 1980 and 1994.</p>
<p>The centrality of visible and measurable behaviours in the categorisation of OCD – particularly washing and checking – can be traced back to a series of experiments conducted by clinical psychologists in the early 1970s at the Institute of Psychiatry and the Maudsley Hospital in south London.</p>
<p>Under the direction of South African psychologist Stanley Rachman, the complex array of symptoms contained in the categories of obsessional illness and obsessional neurosis were divided into two: “visible” compulsive rituals, and “invisible” obsessional ruminations. While Rachman and his colleagues conducted a large research programme on compulsive behaviours, obsessions were relegated to the backburner.</p>
<p>For example, in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000579677190009X">their investigation</a> of ten psychiatric inpatients diagnosed with obsessional neurosis, “compulsions had to be present for entry into the trial and patients complaining of ruminations were excluded” – a statement reiterated throughout subsequent experiments.</p>
<p>Indeed, this study did not merely require patients to exhibit some form of visible compulsion. The ten patients included were exclusively those with “visible handwashing” behaviour, which was viewed as the “easiest” symptom to experiment on. Likewise, the second round of studies only included patients who engaged in visible “checking” behaviour, such as whether a door was unlocked.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005796771900088">1971 paper</a>, Rachman offered his rationale for taking this approach, explaining how “obsessional ruminators raise special problems for the clinical psychologist because of their subjective, private nature”. This, he argued, was in contrast with “the other main feature of obsessional neurosis, compulsive behaviour, which can be approached with greater ease. It is visible, has a predictable quality, and many reproducible analogies in animal research”.</p>
<p>Rachman viewed compulsions as “visible” and “predictable” in large part due to the way clinical psychology had developed as a new profession in Britain, at the Maudsley Hospital in particular, in the decades following the second world war. To differentiate their practice from the existing mental health professions of psychiatry (medically trained doctors specialising in mental health) and psychoanalysis (talking therapy derived from Freud), these early clinical psychologists presented themselves as “<a href="https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/eysenck-and-development-cbt">applied scientists</a>” who brought scientific methods from the laboratory to a clinical setting. Their conception of science was rooted in empiricism – with an emphasis on visibility, measurability and experimentation.</p>
<p>As part of this commitment to empirical science, these clinical psychologists adopted a <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fh0054288">model of anxiety</a> derived from 20th-century behaviourism. This focus on observable behaviour was <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-mental-science/article/abs/learning-theory-and-behaviour-therapy/38CA4A9BC0CA773F6BEE93EDDC71584F">viewed as</a> having much greater scientific value than psychoanalysis, which dealt with the “<a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203766767/causes-cures-neurosis-psychology-revivals-eysenck-rachman">unverifiable</a>” and “unscientific” realm of thoughts and thinking.</p>
<p>So, when obsessional ruminations gained a renewed focus in the mid-1970s, it was through this lens of visible compulsive behaviours. Rachman and his colleagues started talking about “mental compulsions” (such as saying a good thought after a bad thought) as “equivalent to handwashing”- rather than focusing on the importance and content of these thoughts in their own right.</p>
<p>In the early 1980s, clinical psychology came under pressure from cognitive psychologists (those concerned with thinking and language) for its reductive focus on behaviour. But despite this move to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0005796785901056">include cognitive approaches</a>, the centrality of visible behavioural compulsions has continued to characterise perceptions of OCD in cultural and clinical domains. </p>
<p>This is perhaps most evident in media portrayals of the disorder – a critique taken up by cultural scholars such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01639625.2013.872526">Dana Fennell</a>, who look at representations of OCD in TV and film.</p>
<p>The archetypal portrayal of OCD has <a href="https://www.ocduk.org/david-beckham-documentary-our-statement/">not been helped</a> by the recent publicity given to David Beckham and his <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/health/david-beckham-ocd-update-football-31102545">extensive tidying</a>. When I ask Abby what she thought about the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/apr/28/david-beckham-ocd-obsessive-compulsive-disorder-netflix-documentary">attention</a> that Beckham’s OCD was receiving in the media, she replies: “It’s so boring. It’s the same presentation that always gets thought of as OCD.”</p>
<h2>Limitations to the ‘gold standard’ treatment</h2>
<p>This archetypal portrayal of OCD also relates to how it is treated. The <a href="https://www.dovepress.com/getfile.php?fileID=54942">“gold standard” treatment</a> in the UK today is the behavioural technique of <a href="https://www.ocduk.org/overcoming-ocd/accessing-ocd-treatment/exposure-response-prevention/">exposure and ritual prevention</a> (ERP), either on its own or combined with cognitive therapy. ERP gained acceptance from the experiments of Rachman and colleagues in the early 1970s, when they were exclusively working with patients with observable behaviours.</p>
<p>One of their <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005796772800032">key studies</a> involved patients from the Maudsley Hospital who repeatedly washed their hands. They were told to touch smears of dog excrement and put hamsters in their bags and in their hair, while being prevented from washing for increased lengths of time.</p>
<p>Such experiments were again governed by observability and measurability. The “success” of ERP treatment – and its perceived superiority over psychiatric and psychoanalytic methods – was demonstrated by a reduction in the patients’ visible handwashing behaviour.</p>
<p>Today, if you are diagnosed with OCD by a psychiatrist and given OCD-specialist treatment via the NHS, you will most likely be told to undergo the same kind of ERP procedure that hospital inpatients were experimentally given in the 1970s: touching a set of items that you fear (exposure) while being prevented from engaging in your usual compulsive behaviour.</p>
<p>An identical method is also used when it comes to obsessional thoughts. Patients are asked to identify their worrying obsession, then either expose themselves to provoking situations or repeat the thought in their mind without engaging in “mental compulsions” – such as counting, replacing a bad thought with a good thought, or trying to “solve” the content of the obsessional thought.</p>
<p>It’s certainly true that this form of behavioural therapy can be <a href="https://www.dovepress.com/getfile.php?fileID=54942">hugely helpful</a> in the treatment of OCD symptoms. Abby, after undergoing ERP for 14 years, said she had “developed a lot of practices around not giving into my [washing and checking] compulsions”.</p>
<p>I also found the approach beneficial in reducing the threatening quality of my obsessional thoughts. Repeating “I want to hurt my family” or “I don’t really exist” to myself over and over again, without actually trying to solve these issues, reduced the time I spent ruminating.</p>
<p>However, while being a huge advocate of ERP, Abby also observed that “sometimes when I get rid of a compulsion, it doesn’t mean I just get rid of the obsession.” While the “outward compulsions” disappear, “it doesn’t mean my mind stops cycling and mental questioning”.</p>
<p>Some contemporary clinicians have referred to ERP, designed around visible symptom reduction, as a “<a href="https://www.justinkhughes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ocd_texas_talk_with_molly_and_justin_2019__22common_pitfalls_of_erp_for_ocd_22.pdf">whack-a-mole technique</a>” – you get rid one symptom (obsession or compulsion) and another pops up.</p>
<p>ERP is frequently accompanied with cognitive therapy techniques, such as <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/supplemental/Treatment-for-Postdisaster-Distress/Handout-27.pdf">cognitive restructuring</a> (identifying beliefs and providing evidence for and against them), or being told that obsessions are “just thoughts”, that they are meaningless, and that you do not want to enact them.</p>
<p>Despite the success of cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) and ERP in scientific trials, a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010440X21000018?via%3Dihub">major review of evidence</a> in 2021 questioned whether the effects of the approach in treating OCD had been overstated – reflecting the high proportion of OCD cases that are designated as “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK551808/">treatment resistant</a>”. </p>
<p>I also believe there are some crucial limitations to contemporary treatments for OCD. Exposure (ERP) techniques stem from a period in which thoughts were not being considered at all by clinical psychologists, while CBT designates the content of obsessional thoughts as unimportant. Matt, like me, has found that CBT “can only take you so far”, explaining:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Part of this was that [CBT therapists] are so committed to the idea that thoughts don’t have meaning … [They] treat your symptom and once those are gone, you should get on with your life. I didn’t find that there was a way of thinking about [my] ruminations in the context of my whole life.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Experiences of alternative treatments</h2>
<p>So much of my understanding about OCD has changed since I first wrote about it for <a href="https://www.rethink.org/aboutus/">Rethink Mental Illness</a> almost a decade ago. Thinking about the historical development and categorisation of OCD has, it turns out, given me a greater sense of ease regarding this widely misunderstood condition. I feel less bound by our current conceptual frameworks, and more able to reflect on what I think is helpful in terms of how to successfully manage my obsessional thoughts.</p>
<p>For example, despite being warned away from psychoanalysis from a young age (my mum is a clinical psychologist, and psychologists are often fervently anti-psychoanalytic!), I have found psychoanalysis incredibly helpful in becoming comfortable with my thoughts. </p>
<p>This is because CBT typically focuses on present symptoms without looking into their meaning or how they relate to your personal history, and this comes into tension with my desire, as a historian, to think about the past. In contrast, psychoanalysis locates obsessional thoughts in history – pointing to childhood as a crucial point of psychic development. I have been able to understand my obsessions as the result of a deep childhood fear concerning the death of my loved ones, from which I developed a rigid desire for control.</p>
<p>As a young teenager trying to determine what was going on with him, Matt went to the public library and took out a <a href="https://ia903102.us.archive.org/15/items/petergay1989freudreader/Adam%20Phillips%20%5B2006%5D%20Penguin%20Freud%20Reader.pdf">Freud reader</a>. He describes this as “the worst possible thing for a 14-year-old to read”, as it made him believe “that I did really have all these [murderous suicidal] impulses and all my fears are true”.</p>
<p>Despite this experience, while training to become a social worker, he “got into psychoanalysis as an alternate way to think about therapy and think about my own experience”. For him, psychoanalysis revealed the opposite to the image of “OCD as handwashing”.</p>
<p>Instead, he says, it focused on the aspects of “obsessionality that are internal”, showing him that the “mind is so powerful that it can produce a lot of imaginary fears”. It also allowed him to see “OCD symptoms as wrapped up with my whole life”.</p>
<p>Particularly profound in psychoanalytic thought is the acceptance of the complexity and unknowability at the heart of human experience. As Jaqueline Rose, professor of humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, <a href="https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/the-plague">wrote:</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Psychoanalysis begins with a mind in flight, a mind that cannot take the measure of its own pain. It begins, that is, with the recognition that the world – or what Freud sometimes refers to as ‘civilisation’ – makes demands on human subjects that are too much to bear.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of a woman with eyes closed holding her temples." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563998/original/file-20231206-17-435y0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/woman-touching-her-temples-hands-suffering-2156846349">Elena Abrazhevich/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This idea of “a mind in flight” has helped me think about my obsessions – whether my parents are really who they say they are; am I going to hurt those I love? – as part of a battle for certainty and control that is both unattainable and understandable, considering the world we live in.</p>
<p>The aim of psychoanalytic treatment is not to eradicate symptoms but to bring to light the difficult knots that humans have to deal with. Matt refers to psychoanalysis as acknowledging “a sort of messiness of the mind … I’ve found the psychoanalytic view of accepting your own messiness extremely helpful”. Rose similarly describes psychoanalysis as “the opposite of housework in how it deals with the mess we make”.</p>
<p>In the UK, psychoanalysis has been rejected within NHS service provision. And I believe this is, at least in part, a result of historical critiques levelled at it by clinical psychologists as they developed behaviour therapies to treat OCD in the late 20th century.</p>
<h2>‘A lot of emotion and sadness’</h2>
<p>While compulsive behaviour such as handwashing and checking is widely perceived as “representative” of OCD, the tormenting experience of having obsessional thoughts is still rarely acknowledged and discussed. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/21/ocd-sex-disorder-pure-rose-cartwright">shame and confusion</a> attached to such thoughts, coupled with the feeling of being misunderstood, make this an important issue to address, particularly when <a href="https://www.madeofmillions.com/articles/pure-o-an-exploration-into-a-lesser-known-form-of-ocd">misdiagnosis of OCD</a> is so high.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-for-the-history-of-science/article/visible-compulsions-ocd-and-the-politics-of-science-in-british-clinical-psychology-19481975/D431B7D6003860F9E6ABE50476BA46A4">PhD on the history of OCD</a> has also showed me the ways in which psychological research shapes how we conceive of diagnostic categories – and consequently, ourselves. While psychology’s commitment to objectivity, empiricism and visibility has provided tools that are tremendously useful in the clinic, my research sheds lights on how the often-exclusive focus on visible symptoms has at times trumped the appreciation of the complex experience of having obsessional thoughts.</p>
<p>I first met Matt in 2019 at the first <a href="https://ocdinsociety.wixsite.com/home/2019">OCD in Society</a> conference, held at Queen Mary University of London, where he was giving a presentation on the “multiple meanings of OCD”. We discussed our own experiences of the disorder, and what we thought that history, psychoanalysis and anthropology could contribute to understandings of OCD.</p>
<p>Matt was 34, and he told me this was the first time he “had ever voiced the internal stuff out loud, and heard other people talk about it”. Recalling how this made him feel, he continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I felt a lot of emotion and sadness. The isolation had been such a big part of my life that I had stopped noticing it. Then being out of the isolation was such a relief, it made me realise how bad it had been.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p><em>If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts and need support, you can call your GP, <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/urgent-and-emergency-care-services/when-to-use-111/">NHS 111</a>, or free helplines including <a href="https://www.samaritans.org/">Samaritans</a> (116 123), <a href="https://www.thecalmzone.net/">Calm</a> (0800 585858) or <a href="https://papyrus-uk.org/">Papyrus</a> (0800 068 4141).</em></p>
<p><em>In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Hotlines in other countries can be found <a href="http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-solve-our-mental-health-crisis-214776?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">How to solve our mental health crisis</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-music-heals-us-even-when-its-sad-by-a-neuroscientist-leading-a-new-study-of-musical-therapy-214924?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">How music heals us, even when it’s sad – by a neuroscientist leading a new study of musical therapy
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/unlocking-new-clues-to-how-dementia-and-alzheimers-work-in-the-brain-uncharted-brain-podcast-series-194773?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Unlocking new clues to how dementia and Alzheimer’s work in the brain – Uncharted Brain podcast series
</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eva Surawy Stepney receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH). </span></em></p>
Research decisions made by clinical psychologists in the 1970s can help explain why so many people, myself included, struggle to make sense of our obsessional thoughts.
Eva Surawy Stepney, PhD Candidate in History, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206580
2023-08-24T20:20:46Z
2023-08-24T20:20:46Z
Friday essay: ‘black bile’, malaria therapy and insulin comas – a brief history of mental illness
<p>Possibly the earliest account of a disturbed mind is recorded in a 3,500-year-old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas">Hindu text</a> that describes a man who is “gluttonous, filthy, walks naked, has lost his memory and moves about in an uneasy manner”.</p>
<p>In the Bible’s Old Testament, in the first <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Books-of-Samuel">Book of Samuel</a>, we read that King David simulated madness to gain safety: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And he changed his behaviour … and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Book-of-Daniel-Old-Testament">Book of Daniel</a>, we find a vivid description of King Nebuchadnezzar’s mental state: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ancient Greeks made early attempts to explain madness. In the 5th century BC, <a href="https://fherehab.com/learning/humors-ancient-mental-health">Hippocrates</a> viewed it as seated in the brain and influenced by four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. </p>
<p>The Greek physician Galen, who practised in Rome 600 years later, argued that depression was caused by an excess of black bile (hence the term “melancholia”, from <em>melan</em>, black, and <em>khole</em>, bile). </p>
<p>His contemporary, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aretaeus-of-Cappadocia">Aretaeus of Cappadocia</a>, colourfully described how, if black bile moves upwards in the body, “it forms melancholy; for it produces flatulence and eructations [or, belches] of a fetid and fishy nature, and it sends rumbling wind downwards, and disturbs the understanding”. </p>
<h2>A troubled mind, possessed</h2>
<p>During the Middle Ages, monasteries preserved the view of madness as an illness, and of those afflicted as sick rather than sinful. At the same time, the more sinister belief that the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25208453/">principal cause</a> of the troubled mind was possession by spirits or the devil prevailed.</p>
<p>Sufferers were taken to sanctioned healers for <a href="https://theconversation.com/exorcisms-have-been-part-of-christianity-for-centuries-107932">exorcisms</a>, a practice still carried out today in some cultures. People who failed to respond to such treatment might then seek out a celebrated expert. </p>
<p>Consider Hwaetred, a young man living in what is now England in the 7th century, who became tormented by an “evil spirit”. So terrible was his madness that he attacked others with his teeth and killed three men with an axe when they tried to restrain him. Taken to several sacred shrines, he obtained no relief. His despairing parents then heard of Guthlac, a monk who lived a hermit life north of Cambridge. After three days of prayer and fasting, Hwaetred was purportedly cured.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543694/original/file-20230821-29-c0gqfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Impenitent – Goya (1788)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over time, the role of religious authorities in mental illness dwindled, and the medical profession claimed the exclusive practice of the healing arts. Insanity once more came to be seen more as a physical malady than a spiritual taint. Even so, life for the mentally ill could be appalling. </p>
<p>During the 17th century, religiously inspired persecution of the mentally ill was justified by the clerical hierarchy, and treatment was often some combination of neglect and bestial restraint. </p>
<p>Psychiatrists Martin Roth and Jerome Kroll <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Reality_of_Mental_Illness.html?id=pCQ4AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">describe</a> the insane in this period as “miserable individuals, wandering around in village and in forest, taken from shrine to shrine, sometimes tied up when they became too violent”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-invention-of-satanic-witchcraft-by-medieval-authorities-was-initially-met-with-skepticism-140809">The invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was initially met with skepticism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A watershed: asylums</h2>
<p>The late 18th century was a watershed in the history of psychiatry. The insanity of England’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22122407">King George III</a> revealed society’s ambivalence to the mentally ill (vividly captured in the 1994 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110428/">The Madness of King George</a>). </p>
<p>In France, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Philippe-Pinel">Philippe Pinel</a> released the chains that had fettered the “lunatic” for centuries, ushering in an unprecedented phase of benevolent institutional care. </p>
<p><a href="https://dictionary.apa.org/moral-therapy">Moral therapy</a>, a form of individualised care in small hospital settings, was promoted by English Quakers at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Retreat">York Retreat</a> and gradually supplanted inhumane physical treatments such as purging, bleeding and dunking in cold water.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BHNSAK8d3qc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">English society’s ambivalence to the mentally ill in the 18th century is depicted in the 1994 film, The Madness of King George.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As populations grew and urbanised, the sheer numbers of mentally ill people in burgeoning city slums demanded action. An institutional solution emerged. </p>
<p>Asylums (from the Greek word meaning “refuge”) were built in rural settings with the best of intentions, planned to be havens in which patients would receive humane care. In the serenity of the countryside, and through carrying out undemanding tasks, they could be distracted from their internal torment and find dignity far from the bustling crowd. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Daniel-Defoe">Daniel Defoe</a>, the English writer, remained unconvinced: “This is the height of barbarity and injustice in a Christian country; it is a clandestine Inquisition, nay worse.”</p>
<p>Although conceived in a spirit of optimism, asylums tended to deteriorate into centres of hopelessness and demoralisation. They soon became overcrowded dumps. Institutions built for a few hundred people were soon holding thousands. Very few residents were discharged; many stayed for decades. Brutal oppression replaced anything that might have resembled treatment; malnutrition and infectious disease became rife.</p>
<p>In the grim environment, people were shut away and forgotten. With them out of sight and out of mind, a loss of public interest and political neglect became the norm.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543690/original/file-20230821-15-v420lw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Asylums were conceived optimistically, but more often housed oppression than treatment. Picture: The Hospital of Bethlehem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The brooding building on the hill came to symbolise the stigma and fear attached to mental illness. By the mid-19th century, critics were voicing concerns that asylums had become human warehouses that entrenched mental illness rather than curing it. </p>
<p>The combination of powerless patients, hospitals run more for the convenience of staff than for the benefit of the sick, inadequate inspection by state bodies, and lack of resources led at times to quite disgraceful conditions. Unwittingly, the spread of asylums also triggered the movement of psychiatry away from the mainstream of medicine.</p>
<p>The conditions of the asylums are evocatively described in Henry Handel Richardson’s Australian novel <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-fortunes-of-richard-mahony">The Fortunes of Richard Mahony</a>. We read of Richard’s decline, probably from syphilis affecting the brain, which at that time afflicted a large proportion of mental patients.</p>
<p>Towards the end of the novel, his wife comes to visit him in the asylum:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She hung her head … while the warder told the tale of Richard’s misdeeds. 97B was, he declared, not only disobedient and disorderly, he was extremely abusive, dirty in his habits … he refused to wash himself, or to eat his food … she had to keep a grip on her mind to hinder it from following the picture up: Richard, forced by this burly brute to grope on the floor for his spilt food, to scrape it together, and either eat it or have it thrust down his throat … There was not only feeding by force, the straitjacket, the padded cell. There were drugs and injections, given to keep a patient quiet and ensure his warders their freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-the-fortunes-of-richard-mahony-by-henry-handel-richardson-24474">The case for The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Great and desperate cures</h2>
<p>In the asylum, psychiatry turned into a modern medical discipline. The
accumulation of thousands of patients provided the first opportunity
to study mental illness systematically and to develop theories about its
causes. </p>
<p>The idea that these conditions were due to brain alterations, and especially degenerative processes, became dominant, encouraged by the discovery of the cerebral pathology associated with <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/neurosyphilis">neurosyphilis</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-causes-alzheimers-disease-what-we-know-dont-know-and-suspect-75847">Alzheimer’s disease</a>. A similar degenerative process was proposed by the great German psychiatrist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emil-Kraepelin">Emil Kraepelin</a> to cause <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/dementia-praecox">dementia praecox</a> – later renamed “schizophrenia” – leading to pessimism about the possibility of recovery.</p>
<p>But the priority for asylums was to relieve the suffering of overwhelming numbers of disturbed patients. Psychiatrists grasped for “great and desperate cures”. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_R._Rollin">Henry Rollin</a>, an English psychiatrist and medical historian, captures the intense zeal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The physical treatment of the frankly psychotic during these centuries makes spine-chilling reading. Evacuation by vomiting, purgatives, sweating, blisters, and bleeding were considered essential […] There was indeed no insult to the human body, no trauma, no indignity which was not at one time or other piously prescribed for the unfortunate victim.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Treatments were sometimes based on rational grounds. Malaria therapy, for instance, was launched as a treatment for neurosyphilis by the Viennese psychiatrist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Wagner-Jauregg">Julius Wagner-Jauregg</a> in 1917, earning him a Nobel Prize ten years later. </p>
<p>The high fever caused by the malarial parasite disabled the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/spirochete">spirochete</a> that caused neurosyphilis, but the hope that it would be equally effective for other forms of psychosis was soon dashed. The wished-for panacea was not to be.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543703/original/file-20230821-10846-x44evz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Malaria therapy, a treatment for neurosyphilis, earned its inventor a Nobel Prize.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jimmy Chan/Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/insulin-shock-therapy">Insulin-coma therapy</a> was introduced by Manfred Sakel in the 1930s in Vienna and was soon being used in many countries to treat schizophrenia. An insulin injection was administered six days a week for several weeks, producing a state of light coma lasting about an hour, because of reduced glucose reaching the brain. </p>
<p>Many years later, an investigation carried out in the Institute of Psychiatry in London, a leading research centre at the time, showed conclusively that the coma itself was of no therapeutic value. Any positive change was probably due to the staff’s painstaking care.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/girl-interrupted-interrogates-how-women-are-mad-when-they-refuse-to-conform-30-years-on-this-memoir-is-still-important-199211">Girl, Interrupted interrogates how women are 'mad' when they refuse to conform – 30 years on, this memoir is still important</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>ECT and lithium</h2>
<p>The first widely available and effective biological treatments for mental illness were developed in the asylum. The discovery in 1938 of <a href="https://theconversation.com/electroconvulsive-therapy-a-history-of-controversy-but-also-of-help-70938">electroconvulsive therapy</a> (ECT) by <a href="https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/ugo-cerletti">Ugo Cerletti</a> and Lucio Bini, two Italian psychiatrists, led to a dramatically effective treatment for people with severe depression. </p>
<p>ECT was eagerly adopted in practice, but its history illustrates a typical pattern of treatment in psychiatry: unbridled early enthusiasm is later tempered by a protracted process of scientific evaluation. </p>
<p>The same can be said of the use of brain surgery to modify psychiatric symptoms. This was pioneered in 1936 by Portuguese neurologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Egas-Moniz">António Egas Moniz</a> (another Nobel Prize winner in the field of psychiatry) and surgeon Almeida Lima, and remains controversial in psychiatry to this day.</p>
<p>A momentous breakthrough was the discovery in 1949 by <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02480-0">John Cade</a>, an Australian psychiatrist, of lithium as a treatment for manic excitement. The lithium story reveals how the incorporation of a new medication into psychiatric practice is not always smooth. </p>
<p>Several US and Danish psychiatrists had experimented with lithium in the 1870s and 1890s, only to have their work ignored until Cade’s rediscovery. It was another 18 years before lithium was shown to prevent the recurrence of severe changes of mood, its primary clinical use now.</p>
<p>Major tranquillisers were added to the growing range of psychiatric medications after being discovered fortuitously in 1953. An antihistamine used to calm patients undergoing surgery was shown to reduce the torment of psychotic patients, but without making them sleepy. </p>
<p>Shortly after this, the US psychiatrist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/14/obituaries/nathan-kline-developer-of-antidepressants-dies.html">Nathan Kline</a> discovered that a drug being tested for its effect in patients with tuberculosis had antidepressant properties — the forerunner of medications for depression. All these drugs radically transformed the practice of psychiatry. </p>
<h2>Freud, ‘talking cures’ and shell shock</h2>
<p>A very different aspect of mental health care arose in the 1890s, outside
the asylum. Concerned with neurotic conditions, the new treatment grew chiefly out of neurology but was also influenced by a scientific interest in hypnosis and the unconscious. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543695/original/file-20230821-25-qtirft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1025&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Max Halberstadt/Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sigmund Freud conceived a dynamic model of the mind in which, through the mechanism of repression, painful or threatening emotions, memories and impulses are prevented from escaping into conscious awareness. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dangerous-method-in-defence-of-freuds-psychoanalysis-5989">Psychoanalysis</a> grew to become an integrated set of concepts about normal and abnormal mental functioning and personality development, and spawned a new method of psychologically based treatment. Psychoanalysis emerged as a major theoretical underpinning of contemporary “talking cures” (psychotherapies), and its influence spread far beyond treating mental ill-health.</p>
<p>Both world wars profoundly influenced the field. The high incidence of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/shell-shock-treatments-reveal-the-conflict-in-psychiatrys-heart-29822">shell shock</a>” in World War I drove home the lesson that mental illness could affect not only those genetically predisposed, but even the supposedly robust. It soon emerged that anyone exposed to traumatic experiences was vulnerable. </p>
<p>A positive outcome from World War II was the development of techniques for screening large numbers of recruits, which revealed the substantial prevalence of emotional problems among young adults. </p>
<p>The need to treat numerous psychiatric casualties led to the development of group therapies. These paved the way for the so-called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_community">therapeutic community</a>, based on the idea that an entire ward of patients could be an integral part of treatment.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ehPcYibzUKc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Group therapy, as depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The idea of deinstitutionalisation began to gather pace in the 1960s, driven by a burgeoning civil-rights movement. <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/asylums-9780241548004">Asylums</a>, an influential book at the time by sociologist Erving Goffman, containing his minute observations of the sense of oppression experienced by patients in these “total institutions”, was one catalyst for their closure. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of long-stay patients began to be transferred to alternative accommodation and specialist care in the community, a process that is still in progress.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-body-keeps-the-score-how-a-bestselling-book-helps-us-understand-trauma-but-inflates-the-definition-of-it-184735">The Body Keeps the Score: how a bestselling book helps us understand trauma – but inflates the definition of it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What is mental illness?</h2>
<p>It is challenging to define what makes a pattern of behaviour and experience a mental disorder. Generally, such a pattern – or “syndrome” – is considered to be a disorder if it is associated with psychological distress, such as intense and prolonged anxiety or sadness, or significant dysfunction, such as a serious impairment in functioning in one or more key areas of daily life. </p>
<p>If the pattern is short-lived, relatively mild, or entirely understandable in light of the trials and tribulations of the person’s life, it should be seen as a problem in living rather than a mental disorder. Such problems may still benefit from consultation with a mental health professional despite not being diagnosable disorders.</p>
<p>This definition of what counts as a mental disorder also clarifies what is not a mental disorder. Merely being unusual or violating social norms does not mean a person has a disorder. </p>
<p>It is difficult sometimes to decide whether a new kind of behaviour is a mental disorder. For instance, should <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-youre-probably-not-addicted-to-your-smartphone-but-you-might-use-it-too-much-89853">excessive smartphone use</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/gambling-on-pokies-is-like-tobacco-no-amount-of-it-is-safe-51037">compulsive gambling</a> be counted as diagnosable addictions?</p>
<h2>Troubling cases</h2>
<p>These decisions about what to include under the umbrella of mental illness are fraught, and there have been some troubling historical cases when disturbing decisions were made or proposed. </p>
<p>In the 1850s, for example, Samuel Cartwright, a physician from Alabama, proposed a new diagnosis called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/15/arts/bigotry-as-mental-illness-or-just-another-norm.html">drapetomania</a>” to explain why African-American slaves would wish to escape their servitude. </p>
<p>He recommended slaves should be treated kindly and humanely to prevent the disorder, but whipped if this treatment failed. A more patent abuse of the concept of mental illness would be hard to imagine, and it should be noted that other physicians ridiculed Cartwright’s proposal at the time.</p>
<p>Two other controversial cases date to the last century. In the early 1970s, one of us (Sidney) stumbled across disturbing media reports that many political and religious dissenters and human-rights activists in the Soviet Union were being labelled as mentally ill and detained in mental hospitals indefinitely or until they renounced their “disturbed ideas”. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_Grigorenko">General Pyotr Grigorenko</a> criticised the privileges of the Soviet elite and publicly espoused the rights of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatars">Crimean Tatar</a> ethnic minority group. He was diagnosed with paranoid tendencies, one symptom being his “reformist ideas”, and forcibly committed to a psychiatric facility. </p>
<p>In effect, Soviet psychiatry’s definition of mental illness, and psychosis in particular, was so broad that political beliefs about the desirability of social change were recast as delusions.</p>
<p>The second case comes from the US. <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/how-lgbtq-activists-got-homosexuality-out-of-the-dsm/">Until 1973</a>, homosexuality was defined as a sexual deviation and included in the set of recognised mental disorders. Under pressure from civil, women’s and gay rights activists, it was removed from the diagnostic manual.</p>
<p>Noting such cases, whenever the boundary of a mental illness is expanded to include new diagnoses or loosen old ones, some critics will worry we are treating normal behaviour as a pathology and that we will harm people by labelling them. And whenever the boundary contracts, others will worry that people with psychological troubles are being excluded from clinical care. </p>
<p>Deciding what is and isn’t a mental illness is difficult, but has marked consequences.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/troubled-mindSees-9781922585875">Troubled Minds: Understanding and treating mental illness</a> by Sidney Bloch and Nick Haslam (Scribe Publications), published 29 August 2023.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sidney Bloch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Humans have attempted to understand and treat mental illness for centuries – from ancient Greek medicine, Middle Ages exorcisms and the rise of asylums, to modern medical breakthroughs.
Sidney Bloch, Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne
Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206979
2023-06-13T16:15:57Z
2023-06-13T16:15:57Z
A science of sexuality is still possible — but not in the traditional sense
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531198/original/file-20230609-29-7wkphc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C16%2C3760%2C2499&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A rainbow flag is being waved during Pride Parade in Saskatoon, Sask., in June 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Heywood Yu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Human sexuality has long been a subject of fascination and curiosity in the scientific community. Researchers from different fields have sought to understand why we are attracted to certain people and how our sexual orientation develops.</p>
<p>From Sigmund Freud to Judith Butler, the road to a science of sexuality is a fascinating history of ambition and culture wars, error and scientific breakthrough.</p>
<p>My recent research continues the quest to make a science out of sexuality. Two <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv19cwdnt">opposing schools of thought currently divide</a> the field: psychoanalysis and queer theory. </p>
<p>Psychoanalysts believe desire follows specific laws and follows predictable patterns, while queer theorists argue that laws have exceptions and advocate for a more creative view of sexuality.</p>
<p>My research proposes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-022-00366-1">an information theory of desire</a> that
straddles the line these two groups by arguing we should consider the object of our desire as information.</p>
<p>Psychoanalysis can help us understand how this particular kind of information is stored, while queer theory can help us understand how this information is organized and re-organized internally. </p>
<h2>Birth of psychoanalysis</h2>
<p>Sigmund Freud, originally trained as a physician, believed in the scientific basis of sexuality. He was the first to regard sex as the subject of a serious discussion. Starting in 1902, <a href="https://www.freud.org.uk/2020/05/14/freud-at-home-the-wednesday-psychological-society/">colleagues gathered every Wednesday</a> in his apartment to discuss the psychoanalytic practice he established. </p>
<p>Debates about how to study sexuality soon divided Freud’s circle of colleagues. In 1911, Alfred Adler broke away and <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/books/Alderian-Psychotherapy-Intro-Sample.pdf">turned psychoanalysis into social and cultural studies</a>. Two years later, Carl Jung broke away and turned <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27505718">toward philosophical and existential questions</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black-and-white photo of a man with a white beard, round black glasses and a hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531192/original/file-20230609-28-mm18zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud at his home in London in June 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the time, Lou Andreas-Salomé, the first female psychoanalyst, did not believe <a href="https://archive.org/details/freudjournaloflo0000unse/page/130/mode/2up?q=honesty">either separation threatened the scientific status of psychoanalysis</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The source of its vitality does not lie in any hazy mixture of science and sectarianism, but in having adopted as a fundamental principle that which is the highest principle of all scientific activity. I mean honesty.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Though Freud retained Andreas-Salomé’s loyalty until the end, he didn’t share her optimism about the uniting power of honesty and <a href="https://archive.org/details/sigmundfreudloua00freu/page/18/mode/2up?view=theater&q=loathsome">thought divisions at the heart of his movement</a> would delegitimize it. </p>
<h2>North American psychology</h2>
<p>The quest to turn sexuality into a credible science survived Freud, especially in North America. Clinically trained psychologists in the post-Second World War era <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8688-1_41">borrowed Freudian theories and employed traditional scientific methods</a> to empirically test them. </p>
<p>Dismissing Freud’s exclusive interest in individual case studies, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/000306515300100203">American</a> and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674376400900610">Canadian</a> psychologists aimed to understand populations more widely. However, this shift led to <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/socprob3&div=42&g_sent=1&casa_token=PyF5exLVo0cAAAAA:AJB84TRzpeslt3--Ri334K5VpX3FZCtPLrDboLHYfQmWGlPIjYamTZQ_0mrUKgx3VsAzm2fCIw&collection=journals">seeing homosexuals as a separate social group</a>, which ultimately gave rise to <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/medlgjr15&div=8&g_sent=1&casa_token=aOsBLK2-uLMAAAAA:q2Z3RRyS3GYeLaWsXniM5Fo86CI-07Qij9Av2NmCvqgE51HKGNG3TRMrk1RtPuz45VTNdI2wIg&collection=journals">homophobia</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2642357/?page=1">conversion therapy</a>.</p>
<p>In the United Kingdom, Freud’s daughter Anna <a href="https://lambdaliterary.org/2014/08/rebecca-coffey-on-sigmund-freuds-relationship-with-his-lesbian-daughter-anna-and-using-fiction-to-explore-the-truth/">promoted curing homosexuality</a> even though her father had <a href="https://pep-web.org/browse/document/ijp.032.0331a">denounced similar practices</a>. </p>
<p>In France, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan urged his colleagues to <a href="https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814743232.001.0001">return to Freud’s methods</a>. Consumer culture silenced similar voices in North America. </p>
<p>Psychotherapy lost its scientific motto — the pursuit of truth — and became a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/happier-9780190655648?cc=us&lang=en&">matter of pursuing happiness</a>. Keenly aware how the big screen dumbed down Freud’s psychology, Marilyn Monroe — a serious <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/tagged/health/healthy-living/marilyn-monroe--bookworm%E2%80%94highlights-from-her-library-184157109.html">reader of psychoanalysis</a> — turned down starring in a movie about him out of respect.</p>
<h2>Sexuality nowadays</h2>
<p>By the time Canada <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-1969-amendment-and-the-de-criminalization-of-homosexuality">decriminalized homosexuality in 1969</a> — and the American Psychological Association <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/23/archives/the-issue-is-subtle-the-debate-still-on-the-apa-ruling-on.html">unclassified it as a mental disorder</a> four years later — sexuality studies had shied away from its psychological origins. </p>
<p>But biological explanations prevailed. Scientists wondered <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541437">whether homosexuality ran in the family</a> and hypothesized the existence of a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v06n04_02">gay gene and its relationship to natural selection</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the politically correct turn away from <a href="https://theipi.org/all-events/#!event/2022/1/28/ebook-lecture-january-28th">“why gay?” to “how gay?”</a> in post–1970s clinical research, and the anti-psychological turn in feminism known as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/dispatchesfromthefreudwars.htm">the Freud Wars of the 1980s</a>, the prospect of a science of sexuality almost vanished until queer theorists made its case again in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Queer theory rejected <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/universitypress/subjects/sociology/social-theory/social-postmodernism-beyond-identity-politics">fixed collective identities</a> and re-emphasized <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354397073003">individual case studies</a> the same way Freud had. Instead, queer theorists viewed sexuality as <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-Trouble-Feminism-and-the-Subversion-of-Identity/Butler/p/book/9780415389556">something more dynamic</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A middle-aged individual in a black blazer and dress shirt smiles while holding a large hardcover book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531193/original/file-20230609-25-hgi9vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Philosopher and gender studies theorist Judith Butler smiles after receiving the Theodor W. Adorno award in Frankfurt, Germany, in September 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Thomas Lohnes)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Queer theorists like Judith Butler emphasized the <a href="https://archive.org/details/gendertrouble00judi/page/16/mode/2up?q=internal+external&view=theater">relationship between internal and external life</a>. They highlighted how drag artists <a href="https://archive.org/details/gendertrouble00judi/page/136/mode/2up?view=theater&q=drag">disrupt the way we assign gender</a> on a daily basis.</p>
<p>This disconnect between what we see and the meaning we give it is a chance for sexuality to break with habit and become unpredictable.</p>
<h2>The challenge of our current moment</h2>
<p>Nowadays, many regard sexuality as <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/08/8324299/2019-study-genetics-sexuality">too complicated</a> or <a href="https://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/Sex-and-Gender-Reconsidered.php">too subjective</a> to become a science. Freud’s theories are often dismissed as pseudoscience.</p>
<p>But this outlook is dangerous to the pursuit of science. According to Elizabeth Young–Bruehl, a queer psychoanalyst who practised in Toronto until her death in 2009, we have <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25670368">abandoned Freud’s depth psychology and his theory of the unconscious</a> and promoted instead superficial psychological theories.</p>
<p>Homophobia and caricatures of psychoanalysis originated with our relationship to science, not Freud’s. Though he was keen on establishing a science of sexuality, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2018.1480225">he regarded that science as historical</a> rather than experimental. </p>
<p><a href="https://biologos.org/common-questions/is-historical-science-reliable">Historical sciences</a> aim to reconstruct past events and favour the uniqueness of detail and individual cases. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23332257">Experimental sciences</a>, on the other hand, are concerned with the future and whether an event will repeat itself. </p>
<h2>Information theory of desire</h2>
<p>Why do individuals come out as gay or bisexual at a particular point in their lives, but not earlier? Why do some first same-sex experiences shape a queer identity while others do not?</p>
<p>An information theory of desire might offer insights into these questions. When queer people talk about the <a href="https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Coming-Out-to-Yourself-A-Guide-for-Self-Acceptance">defining moment when they came out to themselves</a>, it can be useful to think of self-acceptance as a kind of computing command — an input that demands a radical re-organization of someone’s information network or identity.</p>
<p>Life events become inputs, and sexual orientations and gender identities become information networks. Certain same-sex experiences may only result in partial changes to the information network, while others may lead to the complete re-configuring of someone’s identity.</p>
<p>What can we discover with a science of sexuality? Freud’s loyal friend Andreas-Salomé was right to regard honesty as the highest principle of any scientific activity. Without it, we would be dealing with incorrect inputs or information networks viewed upside down. </p>
<p>Pride Month is not just a celebration of sexuality — it’s also a celebration of science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rayyan Dabbous does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new theory of desire bridges the gap between psychoanalysis and queer theory on a quest to make a science out of sexuality.
Rayyan Dabbous, PhD student, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206824
2023-06-01T11:06:40Z
2023-06-01T11:06:40Z
Psychoanalysing Succession’s tense finale – a Freudian suspension of pleasure
<p><em>Warning: the following article contains spoilers.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sigmund-Freud">Sigmund Freud</a>, the 20th century titan of psychoanalysis, would doubtless have plenty to say about the Roy family, had the characters ever plopped down on his treatment couch.</p>
<p>The cunning ruses of the Roys are ticking timebombs of self-sabotage. Their vaulting and faltering desires mask the fundamental human requirements they are missing: love, attention, esteem and purpose. But there is another component of the Succession experience that has a complicated relationship with pleasure and desire – the viewer.</p>
<p>Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and co have shown how audiences sometimes enjoy watching the desires of society’s villains unfold. In Succession, this enjoyment stems from the clever ways show runner Jesse Armstrong and his team have balanced the characters’ psyche to reveal the human inside each monster.</p>
<p>Each character threatens dominance at the expense of another equally unlikable character. This instability divides our sympathies. Though we desire the Succession ending we want, knowing that getting it might be bad means that we long for something that violently prevents it at the exact same time.</p>
<h2>Narrative and pleasure</h2>
<p>In his 1920 essay, <a href="https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/freud_beyond_the_pleasure_principle.pdf">Beyond the Pleasure Principle</a>, Freud recalls observing a toddler throwing his toys away and then later using a string and reel to haul them back toward him, much to his pleasure. </p>
<p>This could also describe Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) relationship to his children. It calls to mind their mother, Caroline’s (Harriet Walter) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp0gvV_8C84">reflection on her ex husband</a> in season three: “He never saw anything he loved that he didn’t want to kick it just to see if it would still come back.”</p>
<p>Throughout its run, Succession has offered an intensified version of this idea. In oscillating between alliance and discord, Succession has conditioned viewers to expect the worst outcome possible for the Roy siblings at any given moment. And yet Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) boardroom betrayal of her apparently CEO-elect brother Kendall in his moment of triumph was chilling to watch.</p>
<p>This betrayal has been seeded, foreshadowed and returned to throughout the fourth series and yet its eventuality still had the power to paralyse. Viewers are increasingly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549410363202">media literate and savvy</a>. If we expected it, then why did it still affect us? And if the Roys are all so horrible, why are we so conflicted?</p>
<h2>Moments between moments</h2>
<p>Part of the success of the fourth and final series of Succession has been the way in which it explores paroxysm (sudden flurries of activity and emotion) while the narrative is paused at uncertain moments. For example, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-write-a-eulogy-lessons-from-successions-roy-family-206553">episode of Logan’s death</a> or that of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cj2cbrvl-4">Wisconsin call on election night</a>. </p>
<p>Exploring these moments between moments and stretching them out to transmit their texture and feeling, has <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/tension-and-release-and-tension-and-the-ethics-of-narrative-and-a">increasingly become part</a> of complex television like Succession.</p>
<p>In the final episode, there is extended pleasure before the pain. The reconciliation of the Roy siblings in Barbados – leading to Shiv and Roman (Kieran Culkin) anointing Kendall with “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtL4LnnZ0ys">a meal fit for a king</a>” and the shared observation of their father on video in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWCzdHG9-eE">a rare moment of lightness</a> – realigns the trio and suggests the beginning of recognition of their own traumatic past.</p>
<p>Greater weight, particularly heading toward the show’s conclusion, had been placed on restoring unity between the Roy siblings. A final moment of ecstasy was neatly ordained. Kendall would return to the site of his frequent humiliation to conquer.</p>
<p>Even the final boardroom sequence replicated this as the first three votes were in Kendall’s favour. The tide quickly turned, however, and viewers squirmed, but by now we’re used to the discomfort.</p>
<p>Complex TV shows with large ensembles often favour a general “team” which adjoins the shared fantasy between viewer and protagonist. Game of Thrones wanted justice for “the North”, The Wire wanted good police. The expert crafting toward Kendall’s success in these final minutes, despite his complicity and weakness, fed such a fantasy. But Shiv’s decision exploded it.</p>
<p>Overly neat endings risk revealing the world within television shows as utopias. Succession neatly avoided this by not showing the moment of Shiv’s betrayal in order to make it into a replacement fantasy. Instead, we swoop in during the aftermath and observe vultures pecking the carrion. Shiv is already gone, her deciding vote already placed and our pleasures are cut off mid-flight.</p>
<p>But this suspension, as <a href="https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/freud_beyond_the_pleasure_principle.pdf">Freud might observe</a>, is what we secretly enjoy the most. Desire is stimulated by what we cannot quite possess. We are left to delight in the ambiguities of Succession’s ending.</p>
<p>Jesse Armstrong has form for leaving viewers to observe his characters squirming on the head of a pin. Unlike his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzsy-haNy1E">Peep Show creations</a>, the Roy family has a clear cut chance to break the cycle that returns them to their issues.</p>
<p>Their ultimate destinies are ambiguous. Kendall remains trapped within a narrative of his own creation, psychologically devastated in sight of his personal Everest. But Shiv’s apparent reconciliation with husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and Roman’s bitter and bruised acceptance over a drink appear to be the beginnings of difficult new roads.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Brookes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Though we desire the Succession ending we want, we long for something that violently prevents us from getting it at the exact same time.
Daniel Brookes, Lecturer in Film and Television, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199202
2023-03-07T19:05:38Z
2023-03-07T19:05:38Z
What do women want? Freud’s infamous question invites voyeurism – but examining what they do is far more revealing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513077/original/file-20230302-24-k7bk7b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4361%2C2890&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joel Muniz/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ten years ago, artist Linda Fregni Nagler’s archival collection of more than a thousand studio-made portraits of infants went on show at the Venice Biennale. </p>
<p>Mostly dating from the 19th century, the pictures belong to a genre of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-hidden-mothers-of-family-photos">“hidden mother” photography</a>, featuring very young children supported by a mother whose presence is concealed in the composition, either swathed in blankets or curtains, or – with bizarre frequency – disguised as a chair. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: A Little Give: The Unsung, Unseen, Undone Work of Women – Marina Benjamin (Scribe) and What Women Want: Conversations on Desire, Power, Love and Growth – Maxine Fei-Chung (Viking)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>To modern eyes, as Marina Benjamin writes in her exquisite book of essays, <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/a-little-give-9781922585660">A Little Give: The Unsung, Unseen, Undone Work of Women</a>, the pictures are “uncanny, violent, disturbing” – particularly those in which the mother has been reduced to a dark blot, scratched, or burnt off the negative after the photograph was taken. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513075/original/file-20230302-24-hr8cj6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘hidden mother’ photographs unearthed by Linda Fregni Nagler make the invisibility of women’s unpaid labour ‘frightening and strange’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Linda Fregni Nagler/MACK Books</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The photographs stage the infant as self-sufficient and autonomous, an ideologically fraught form of make-believe that requires the viewer to “unsee” the woman crudely concealed beneath the fringed damask cloak or piece of carpet. </p>
<p>The cruder the disguise, the more the image fits the definition of uncanny; it makes the social and cultural invisibility of women’s unpaid physical and <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-emotional-labour-and-how-do-we-get-it-wrong-185773">emotional labour</a> both frightening and strange. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-to-describe-the-complexity-and-absurdity-of-motherhood-181066">Is it possible to describe the complexity and absurdity of motherhood?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Invisible labour</h2>
<p>Housework – all the “Cleaning”, “Caring”, “Feeding” and “Pleasing” (the titles of the essays in Benjamin’s book) – is an activity that makes homes, worlds and human realities. But it is also, as Benjamin writes, an “activity that erases itself”. </p>
<p>This is not just because a swept floor will soon be muddied again, or a spotless bookshelf covered in another layer of dust. Rather, as Benjamin writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the success of housework turns on its invisibility, on the quiet conspiracy of women who do it and then hide the fact of its doing, denying the physicality of their own labour. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513067/original/file-20230302-18-deh1mm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Benjamin’s essays investigate the social and philosophical dimensions of <a href="https://theconversation.com/yet-again-the-census-shows-women-are-doing-more-housework-now-is-the-time-to-invest-in-interventions-185488">housework</a>, tracing the fine filaments that bind women to a system of gender inequality. Each thread is followed compellingly through Benjamin’s own life, as the daughter of Jewish-Iraqi migrants, as a conflicted or rebellious adolescent, and as a mother to a child she calls “my teenager”. </p>
<p>The book is a careful unravelling – or, more precisely, an unthinking – predicated on a very different form of storytelling to that in Maxine Mei-Fung Chung’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/what-women-want-9781529151121">What Women Want: Conversations on Desire, Power, Love and Growth</a>. </p>
<p>Chung’s book is in the now firmly established genre of the therapist-patient memoir. Its title derives from <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dangerous-method-in-defence-of-freuds-psychoanalysis-5989">Sigmund Freud</a>’s question “What does a woman want?”, which Freud famously declared himself unable to answer, despite what he alleges was 30 years of trying. </p>
<p>One problem with Freud’s question – and, indeed, there are very, very many problems with it – is that it constructs women (or “Woman”) as a mystery to be solved. As it turns out, this creates problems for Chung.</p>
<p>Benjamin’s book takes a different tack. It zigzags between memory, discovery and reflection, taking the reader to the heart of the essay form. It is a journeying style of writing that constantly drives at its ideas without needing to be sure of their endpoints; it expects a question, not an answer.</p>
<h2>A gendered economy of care</h2>
<p>“Oh my God, a fairy has come and made magic …” </p>
<p>Benjamin’s aunt’s carer says this as she walks into the kitchen, where Benjamin, “a middle aged woman on her knees”, has spent hours squatting on the floor “skirt hitched up around her thighs”, “one hand splayed”, among the “bleach, floor cleaner, J-cloths, paper towels” and “anti mould spray”.</p>
<p>Benjamin’s aunt – frail, incontinent, and increasingly mute – sits with Benjamin’s mother in the sitting room adjacent. The author is attempting to restore “if not exactly her [aunt’s] dignity, then at least some version of order”. “I want to leave a physical marker, a totem of shiny pots and pans, a cairn”, she writes. This is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>payback for the care my aunt showered on me growing up; jumping in to take my side in my endless arguments with my mother: driving me home across London at maniac speeds on nights I’d changed my mind about sleeping over. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The author is making her <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-women-for-low-libido-sexual-sparks-fly-when-partners-do-their-share-of-chores-including-calling-the-plumber-185401">housework</a> a gift. But then, the fairy idea brings her up short. </p>
<p>It is, Benjamin writes, “a clever thing to say”. It means the author has not “debased herself” by doing menial work, amidst the “swamp mist” and “dirty grey dishcloth[s]”. In a swift sentence, punishing housework has been vanished into “fairy dust and glitter; a wand waved rather than demeaning labour”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513064/original/file-20230302-17-jdw7rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The success of housework depends on its invisibility – 'a wand waved’ – writes Marina Benjamin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pexels/Karolina Grabowska</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The essay in which this scene appears – titled “Cleaning” – delves deep into the politics of housework where one woman’s freedom or self care is frequently purchased through the work of another, and where oppression and privilege often sit alongside each other. </p>
<p>Benjamin summons the ghosts of the invisible servants that once populated grand Victorian homes. “Concealed behind walls, they moved through the many-storeyed houses they upkept using a labyrinth of back passages, narrow corridors and separate stairways”, then – at night time – were banished to the attics where they “melted into the air”.</p>
<p>The modern world parallels are striking. The vast economy of care that keeps the world turning continues to vanish under the weight of economic indices and measures of GDP. And the problem is a profoundly gendered one.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-sex-positive-feminist-takes-up-the-unfinished-revolution-her-mother-began-but-its-complicated-189139">Friday essay: a sex-positive feminist takes up the 'unfinished revolution' her mother began – but it's complicated</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Factory of femininity</h2>
<p>The gendering of housework is further explored in an essay called “Pleasing”. Here, vivid scenes paint pictures of Benjamin’s father’s couturier business, which, she says, transformed her childhood home into a “factory of femininity”; a “site of cultural reproduction” where gender inequality is manufactured from exquisite silk.</p>
<p>It is a world in which women, according to Benjamin’s mother, must work hard to “push [their menfolk] forward and have their backs, swallowing their own anger and aspirations in order to be the glue that bonds families together”. </p>
<p>Women should also be “easy on the eye”; a feat predicated on “shoving under the glossy cover of their exterior bodywork all the effort it took to get there”. And so it turns out that beauty – much like cleaning – is something that must appear effortless, for it to be appreciated as successful. </p>
<p>Benjamin’s concern is not to present <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-new-york-fashion-week-came-to-be-54389">fashion</a> as anti-woman or anti-feminist, but rather to explore the ways ideas about fashion get conscripted into ideas about women’s position in the world. Her father, for example, was a devotee of Dior’s “New Look” long after it gave way to other trends. He held Chanel’s lean, “androgenous” [sic] tweed suits responsible for creating “an army of cross-dressers as militant in the social freedoms they claimed as [Coco Chanel] had famously been”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=893&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513059/original/file-20230302-27-7fmv4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1123&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marina Benjamin’s father was a devotee of Dior’s ultra-feminine ‘New Look’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Laura Loveday/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oddly, Benjamin’s mother gets little sympathy. The author acknowledges her father’s “explosive temper”, describing him as “a volcano emitting noxious fumes”. She also acknowledges behind the scenes, it was always her mother who “exhausted herself, paddling madly […] to keep the shiny surface of our lives afloat”. And yet, her mother’s contributions to the family enterprise are comically described as “yanking her housewife’s agenda into the public sphere as far as it would go without pulling out its gendered roots”. </p>
<p>Her father receives more sympathy. “He and I had more in common than I knew”, writes Benjamin. When his business collapsed, his health imploded. Benjamin writes, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-the-patriarchy-start-and-will-evolution-get-rid-of-it-189648">Patriarchy</a>, it seems, could fell us both.”</p>
<p>Time is cyclical in this essay collection, much like the activity of housework itself. The essay “Launching” is as much about her father’s death as it is about the launching of “my teenager”. </p>
<p>The six years Benjamin’s mother spends caring for her father in the lead-up to his death gives way to the years Benjamin spends caring for her mother, “paying the bills” and “organising cleaners and tradesmen”. Increasingly it falls to the author to “bring food”, “fetch her cash, accompany her to the doctor, chiropodist and dentist – and to increasingly frequent hospital appointments” for “X-rays, ECGs, echoes, ultrasounds and lung capacity tests”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-did-turn-women-into-robots-why-feminist-horror-novel-the-stepford-wives-is-still-relevant-50-years-on-186633">'Suburban living did turn women into robots': why feminist horror novel The Stepford Wives is still relevant, 50 years on</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Uncomfortably voyeuristic</h2>
<p>Maxine Mei Fung-Chung’s book What Women Want follows a more linear trajectory. It gives an often-harrowing account of the lives of eight women who struggle with eating disorders, issues of childhood abandonment and <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-does-intersectionality-mean-104937">intersectional</a> oppressions of <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-is-still-an-everyday-experience-for-non-white-australians-where-is-the-plan-to-stop-this-179769">racism</a>, gender and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-concept-of-class-is-often-avoided-in-public-debate-but-its-essential-for-understanding-inequality-187777">class</a>: including, in one story, the extraordinary cruelty of a mother who rejects her teenage daughter’s same-sex sexuality, labelling her “disgusting”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513060/original/file-20230302-22-9cdkph.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is Marianna who desperately wants a baby, Ruth who wants to understand her stepfather’s cruelty, and Agatha who wants her son to accept her desire to embark on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-love-in-the-time-of-incontinence-why-young-people-dont-have-the-monopoly-on-love-or-even-sex-198416">late-life romantic relationship</a>. And there’s Terri, who, in the opening chapter, attempts to force herself into a heterosexual marriage with an older man, then finds herself “skyfalling” into sex with strangers and attempting suicide, before she finds a woman who is right for her.</p>
<p>And yet, there is something uncomfortably voyeuristic in these fictionalised accounts of women’s experience, although Chung says she shares the stories with her patients’ consent. </p>
<p>There’s also a sense that the oddly gendered shopping list of things her patients “want” at the end of the book – including a baby, great sex and a man to love – may not bring them any kind of permanent joy. To the wary reader, these end-goals – though deeply felt – seem destined to give way to other wants. Or the patient may well decide their trajectory had been set in the wrong direction, before veering off elsewhere.</p>
<p>The things that are wrong with society – in this book, racism and homophobia, for example – have complicated dimensions, which need to be explored on a larger social canvas than afforded by a therapist’s couch.</p>
<p>“Women are not a mystery and neither are our wants and needs”, writes Chung. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But there is a complexity attached to our desire. What I want to understand more deeply is what it is that keeps us in denial, loveless, a constant state of longing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But are women perpetually so lost and longing? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-reproducers-to-flutters-to-sluts-tracing-attitudes-to-womens-pleasure-in-australia-87852">From reproducers to 'flutters' to 'sluts': tracing attitudes to women's pleasure in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What does a woman want?</h2>
<p>In taking off from Freud’s question, “What does a woman want?” Chung appears to succumb to Freud’s infamous construction of women as “lack” and “absence”; as perpetually needy (and, for Freud, hysterical). </p>
<p>The book’s promise to liberate and empower women to “claim what we truly want” is unlikely to be realised – despite the book’s blurb assuring the reader Chung “knows the answers”. </p>
<p>Changing the world, running a multi-million-dollar business enterprise, or managing a household and raising a child are unlikely to keep anybody – women or men – happy and joyful all the time. It will almost certainly leave you tired, cranky and exhausted. But it’s probably worth a try.</p>
<p>Benjamin points out that although housework’s “hard-won order is destined not to last”, women’s “never-ceasing housekeeping is not just beginning over”. There will be tensions and cruel divisions between working and caring, between the need to “earn my living without short-changing my child”, and doubts about work that may or may not have been “pursued at too high a cost”. And there will always be a shimmery illusion of “priceless freedom” on the “far side of constraint”. </p>
<p>In some ways, the end of Benjamin’s book points the reader back to the beginning. For me, the image that lingers is a sketch that appears in the early pages: a word portrait of her aunt and mother embarking on their journey from Baghdad to London. </p>
<p>They are “dressed in white shirts and full skirts, tightly belted at the waist in the 1950s style”. They are “leaning over the railing of the ocean liner that would sweep them away from Jewish Baghdad forever, faces turned to the wind […]” And it’s the wind, the salt air filled with possibilities, that makes Benjamin’s final point – it’s not the end-point that counts, but the way of travelling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Marina Benjamin’s essays investigate the social and philosophical dimensions of housework and ‘femininity’. Maxine Fei-Chung’s book gives an often-harrowing account of eight women who struggle.
Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192507
2022-10-27T19:05:53Z
2022-10-27T19:05:53Z
Friday essay: in praise of the ‘horror master’ Stephen King
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491545/original/file-20221025-246-gpmy5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=39%2C3%2C1989%2C1358&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">idmb</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Growing up in the 1980s, the name Stephen King was synonymous with macabre, terrifying, apparently taboo (though ubiquitous) book covers. They seemed to appear everywhere: bookstores, to be sure; but also newsagents, supermarkets, cinemas, airports and libraries. They always seemed to be spinning in some library carousel, looking tattered, like they’d been borrowed 100,000 times.</p>
<p>Like a kid from a King novel, I was obsessed with the forbidden. I would spend hours staring at these book covers, thinking about the horrors that might lie within. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491563/original/file-20221025-26-d0g3w2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A giant, bloody salivating dog. A freakish pair of eyes looking out of a drain. A silhouette of a figure with an axe eclipsing someone in a wheelchair. Hell, they looked more like movie posters than book covers. I’d go to bed and imagine one of these figures coming alive and creeping towards the house from the backyard. </p>
<p>Very occasionally, this was actually scary – but mostly it was just fun. </p>
<h2>Why we love horror</h2>
<p>Why do we gravitate towards subject matter that, if it existed in the real world, would be at best supremely unpleasant? There are many theories regarding why people love horror film and literature. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s cathartic. Maybe it reflects Freud’s “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_drive">death drive</a>,” or what Edgar Allan Poe described, in a titular short story, as the “imp of the perverse,” (suggesting we all have self-destructive tendencies). Or maybe it simply reflects our fascination with extreme experiences, a desire to be overwhelmed by the sublime, which <a href="https://natureofwriting.com/courses/literary-theory-1/lessons/edmund-burke/topic/the-sublime/">Edmund Burke</a> defined as a mixture of fear and excitement, terror and awe. Perhaps horror thus manifests a desire to re-enchant the world with magic in a controlled and safe context, physically activating the body and its response mechanisms in an environment that only simulates real peril. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-nietzsche-nihilism-and-reasons-to-be-cheerful-130378">Friedrich Nietzsche</a> wrote about the collective pleasure of inflicting pain on others through punishment. Does our fascination for horror channel this? Or, as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julia-Kristeva">Julia Kristeva</a>’s theory suggests, does art help us manage our abject horror at the breakdown between self and other – most pointedly captured in our confrontations with corpses?</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491585/original/file-20221025-14-noqf9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Agnus-Dei The Scapegoat (James Tissot)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brooklyn Museum/picryl</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Literary theorist <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/girard/">René Girard</a>’s ideas are equally compelling. Perhaps we’re attracted to images of violence because of its anthropological function in the earliest periods of community formation. A victim – the scapegoat – would be chosen to bear the violence that would otherwise be destructively directed towards other members of the community. This idea is beautifully rendered in Drew Godard’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/">The Cabin in the Woods</a>, a horror film about the origins of horror films in ritual and sacrifice. </p>
<p>In a broader cultural sense, our modern interest in horror, the supernatural and the weird has grown in direct proportion to industrialisation, and the parallel shrinking of the world’s magic and mysteries (captured in the term “globalisation”). </p>
<p>In a post-sacred era of intense scientific rationalism and technological development, the aesthetics of the weird, supernatural and horrific – in all their wondrous irrationality – allow us to occupy an alternate, imaginary space removed from the horror of things as they really are: mass industrial wars of attrition, precarious states of living, pandemic disease and global warming. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-scary-tales-for-scary-times-181597">Friday essay: scary tales for scary times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>My first King</h2>
<p>When I finally had the autonomy (and my own money) to pick the books I wanted to read, it was with mixed feelings of shame and excitement that I went to buy my first Stephen King novel. </p>
<p>I still remember the suburban bookstore and the sardonic frown of its middle-aged clerk as she looked down at my ten-year-old self when I placed <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/pet-sematary.html">Pet Sematary</a> on the counter and got 12 bucks out of my wallet. I remember blushing when she intimated (or was it actually a question?) I must have been buying this for an older relative. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491567/original/file-20221025-18-b8gjq3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The novel follows what happens to a doctor and his family when they discover, in the woods, a children’s pet cemetery that reanimates whatever is buried there. It lived up to the promise of its cover, offering splashes of superlative gore, a handful of genuinely terrifying moments (the sequences involving Rachel’s sick sister Zelda still get to me) and a plethora of new words. Not swear words, mind you – any self-respecting kid knows all of these by seven or eight – but terms like “cuckold”, about which I had to consult my mum. </p>
<p>For the next two years, I spent most of my reading time dedicated to King. I quickly got through the pantheon – massive tomes like <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/stand.html">The Stand</a>, <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/needful-things.html">Needful Things</a> and <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/it.html">It</a>; more moderately sized ones like <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/carrie.html">Carrie</a>, <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/shining.html">The Shining</a> and <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/salems-lot.html">Salem’s Lot</a>; and short, explosive ones like <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/running-man.html">The Running Man</a>, published under King’s pseudonym, Richard Bachman. And then I started with the new releases (there was at least one every year – like 1994’s <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/insomnia.html">Insomnia</a>), generally available from Kmart in hardback. </p>
<p>I found in King an interlocutor who spoke with gusto and enthusiasm about all kinds of things – old age, domestic abuse, natural and supernatural horrors of the mind and closet. But, more than anything else, he seemed not only to write stories that often featured young characters, but to accurately dramatise what it actually felt like to be a kid. </p>
<p>Short stories like <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novella/sun-dog.html">The Sun Dog</a>, novels like <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/cycle-of-the-werewolf.html">Cycle of the Werewolf</a> and the monumental It – not to mention more obvious outings like The Body, the basis of the massively successful nostalgia film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092005/">Stand By Me</a> – captured the peculiar melancholic excitement, both intense and slightly wistful, of being near the beginning of life in that delirious halcyon era just before puberty sets in.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492010/original/file-20221027-8248-t25z9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen King speaking about his writing in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Lennihan/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then I grew up – and stopped reading King. Through writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jane Austen, I was introduced to prose worlds that seemed to be richer: both more concentrated and more expansive, certainly more nuanced. King gradually disappeared from my field of vision. </p>
<p>I forgot about the “gypsy” curse on Billy Halleck (the basis of <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/thinner.html">Thinner</a>) and about Arnie and Dennis from <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/christine.html">Christine</a>, as they struggle to overcome the eponymous evil car. Like one of the children of <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-remake-will-haunt-those-nostalgic-for-the-unbridled-terrors-of-childhood-83532">It</a> – who forget their childhoods, until they reunite as adults to confront them – I forgot about my horror master, erasing my childhood experiences from memory. When I was 15, as a gag, I tried reading <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/firestarter.html">Firestarter</a> and found it garish, gross, infantile. A few years earlier, King’s novel about a pyrokinetic child being hunted by a government who want to weaponise her would have seemed thrilling, maybe even insightful. </p>
<p>But the King was dead.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/suppd-full-with-horrors-400-years-of-shakespearean-supernaturalism-57129">'Supp'd full with horrors': 400 years of Shakespearean supernaturalism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Literary snobs and good writers</h2>
<p>Perhaps the only thing worse than the literary snob who looks down on everyone who doesn’t read Joyce’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-wonder-of-joyces-ulysses-79417">Ulysses</a> on loop is the literary snob of the populist variety, the one who scowls at everyone who doesn’t read the kind of fiction that ord’nary folks like. </p>
<p>When outspoken literary critic and professor Harold Bloom <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-sep-19-oe-bloom19-story.html">described</a> the 2003 awarding of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Stephen King as “another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life,” it was easy to dislike Bloom as an example of the former. Listening to King discuss his writing, it is almost as easy to dismiss him as the latter. </p>
<p>What makes a good writer? According to King, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So is King, as Bloom writes, “an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis”? King does, after all, describe his own work as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonald’s”. And there are numerous passages throughout his work – probably most pronouncedly in the words of writer Bill Denbrough in <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/it.html">It</a> – in which King expresses a serious disdain for academic knowledge and scholarship. </p>
<p>As Bloom would probably argue, consistency in style and tone, and complexity of form, are key elements underpinning any kind of aesthetic mastery. And it’s undeniable that King has produced a not-inconsiderable volume of poorly written and inconsistent work. Sometimes his novels warrant criticisms of pretentiousness, hackneyed style and tediously repetitive prose. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492008/original/file-20221027-23824-tg4woh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen King arrives at the US federal court in August before testifying for the Department of Justice as it bids to block the proposed merger of two of the world’s biggest publishers, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Patrick Semansky/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>King may or may not be a great, or even good, writer. His more self-consciously serious stuff sometimes seems intolerable to me: kitsch is only fun if the attitude is fun. And some of his work (<a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novella/rita-hayworth-and-shawshank-redemption.html">Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption</a> and <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/dolores-claiborne.html">Dolores Claiborne</a>, for example) feels heavy-handed to the point of being virtually unreadable. Never mind – these works are frequently adapted into incredibly popular and incredibly dull films. </p>
<p>In any case, the debate continues to play out, with critics intermittently arguing for and against King’s writing. Dwight Allen, for example, <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/my-stephen-king-problem-a-snobs-notes/">wrote in the Los Angeles Review of Books</a> that King creates one-dimensional characters in dull prose. In the same publication, Sarah Langan <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/killing-our-monsters-on-stephen-kings-magic/">responded</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>All of [King’s] novels, even the stinkers, have resonance. […] his fiction isn’t just reflective of the current culture, it casts judgement. […] No one except King challenges [Americans] so relentlessly, to be brave. To kill our monsters. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>King is, undeniably, a juggernaut of commercial literary production – an industry unto himself, a literary and cinematic brand – who has written a handful of genuine horror genre masterpieces throughout his career. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s in part this combination of prolific volume and intermittent brilliance that keeps me, like an addict, coming back for more. </p>
<p>Ultimately, though, I would suggest I like reading King for the same reason so many others do, a reason that accounts for his enduring popularity when better horror stylists (King’s contemporaries <a href="http://www.clivebarker.info/">Clive Barker</a> and <a href="http://peterstraub.net/">Peter Straub</a>, for example) have fallen by the wayside. And that’s his unprecedented capacity to tap into nostalgia.</p>
<h2>Returning to King-world</h2>
<p>Nearly 20 years after I gave up on Stephen King, in one of those random nostalgic moments that seem to populate his fictional world, my brother gave me <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/revival.html">Revival</a> for Christmas.</p>
<p>King’s Frankensteinian novel, published in 2014, is about the aftermath of an encounter between a young boy and a Methodist minister fascinated by electricity. After years of mainly reading what is sometimes pretentiously called “literary” fiction, and mostly avoiding anything written after the 19th or very early 20th centuries, I returned to King-world.</p>
<p>And I was dazzled by what I found there, realising what I must have known as a kid: King is a superb storyteller. Much of his work is characterised by an infectiously energetic prose style, governed by a flair for simple but satisfying plotting and a supremely inventive imagination. </p>
<p>And – yep – I was stunned by his capacity to precisely render in prose, perhaps more acutely than any other contemporary writer, the confusing, often hokey and melodramatic, but always exciting images, emotions, and sensibilities of youth. </p>
<p>I realised there’s something brilliant, and totally inimitable, about King. Despite his work’s sometimes kitsch silliness (a hazard of the horror genre), despite the not uncommon misfires – and despite the absurdly voluminous output - King is able to authentically generate an atmosphere of nostalgia that taps into something at the very core of the pleasure of reading. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/frankenstein-how-mary-shelleys-sci-fi-classic-offers-lessons-for-us-today-about-the-dangers-of-playing-god-175520">Frankenstein: how Mary Shelley's sci-fi classic offers lessons for us today about the dangers of playing God</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>It: a masterpiece of nostalgia</h2>
<p>His novel <a href="https://stephenking.com/works/novel/it.html">It</a> is a case in point: a masterclass in narrative development through a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nostalgia-for-childhoods-of-the-past-overlooks-childrens-experiences-today-183805">nostalgic</a> structure. </p>
<p>It – for anyone who hasn’t read it, or seen one of the three film adaptations – cuts between the adult lives and childhoods of a group of misfits, the “<a href="https://stephenking.fandom.com/wiki/Losers_Club">Losers Club</a>”, who collectively band together to fight the evil of their town, Derry. That evil takes the form of a shape-shifting clown, Pennywise. </p>
<p>The Losers Club battled and banished Pennywise as kids, but now “it” has come back. The club members return from around the world to live up to their childhood promise: that if “it” ever returns, they, too, will return to fight “it”. The narrative cuts between characters, en route to Derry, as they recall forgotten passages from their childhood “it’s” return has forced them to remember. </p>
<p>So, the novel is structured around a nostalgic trope: adults literally remembering and reconstructing their childhood in the present. At the same time, the town Derry is developed by King according to a quintessentially nostalgic image of the American small town, recalling peak 1950s Americana. Think <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077631/">Grease</a>: soda fountains, switchblades and quiffs. But behind closed doors, fathers abuse daughters, mothers keep their children sick, and a monster that assumes the form of whatever demon most terrifies you stalks the streets, killing and eating children. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491576/original/file-20221025-20-olrwm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The kids of It, in a scene from the 2017 film.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros/IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The narrative architecture is starkly simple, sustaining a profound sense of dread in the reader. The characters remember a dreadful past, in a present-future they wish had never materialised. Perhaps nostalgia always contains shades of the dreadful, given its suggestion that one’s future is foreclosed, that all we have are memories of a better time: memories that only exist as memories.</p>
<p>In some of King’s work – Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, for example – nostalgia acts mainly as window dressing, functioning primarily as an aesthetic. But in It, <a href="https://theconversation.com/nostalgia-can-be-good-for-you-heres-how-to-reap-the-benefits-102603">nostalgia</a> is neither incidental nor benign: it’s a way of exploring the impossibility of having to <a href="https://theconversation.com/memories-of-trauma-are-unique-because-of-how-brains-and-bodies-respond-to-threat-103725">remember trauma</a>. </p>
<p>Memory appears inevitably nostalgic, because it involves, for the characters, narrative reconstruction of childhood in the present. In the Derry library, for town librarian Mike Hanlon – the only Loser to remain in Derry as an adult (and the only one who didn’t battle It in the sewers as a child) - for example. Or for Ben Hanscom, an internationally successful architect, once the fat kid of the group, who flies back to Derry, drunk and asleep in first-class. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1235&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1235&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491583/original/file-20221025-201-dpd3mj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1235&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this way, the novel functions as a kind of treatise on narrative itself. A grab bag of clichés from the horror playbook become legitimately terrifying for the children in the novel - they’re kids after all, and the cultural worlds of kids are often constructed around clichés – from mass-produced popular figures like the Wolf Man, to figures associated with the characters’ nightmarish personal traumas. </p>
<p>It’s a “coming of age” story with a vengeance - a metatext on the horrors of youth, of fitting in, metamorphosing into adulthood, and breaking free of one’s parents - and it inherently explores the ways we use horror stories (like fairytales) to come to terms with this. </p>
<p>As Adrian Daub, revisiting the novel on its 30-year anniversary, <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/where-it-was-rereading-stephen-kings-it-on-its-30th-anniversary/">wrote</a> in the Los Angeles Review of Books in 2016:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Anamnesis — remembering — is the central structuring device of It’s parallel plots: characters have to find out what they once did, and confront what on some level they already know. […] Perhaps all the kids who devoured It in the ’80s sensed that King had made their pre-adolescent mode of experiencing the world — that unique combination of vivid clarity and forgetfulness — its formal principle. […] All the friends, events, images, and feelings that we ever-so-gently cover in sand as we stumble into adulthood can startle us when we come face to face with them again, and these are the true source of It’s terror. What else have we hidden back there, we wonder uneasily?“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In It’s truly weird (over)length, in It’s oscillating moments of genius and stupidity, in It’s ambition – as King’s horror book about horror, the horror book to end all horror books – it is an American masterpiece. It captures everything incisive, deluded, cruel and sentimental about the popular American literary imagination.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-find-it-so-hard-to-move-on-from-the-80s-59445">Why do we find it so hard to move on from the 80s?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reading as escape and connection</h2>
<p>So why is nostalgia such a powerful affect in It, and in King’s work in general? </p>
<p>I think it taps into something at the heart of the process of reading novels. We sit with a novel and retreat from the world: an intensely solipsistic act. A novel sweeps us up into a fantasy image of things (no matter how distant or close to reality) and makes us feel, in our solitude, excitement about what’s to come – but also a faint melancholy in remembering we will soon have to leave this world. </p>
<p>It’s no surprise many people cry at the end of novels: we’ve made such a personal investment, then that world simply disappears, and all we’re left with are our memories of it. In our desire to return to this pleasurable state, we may feel compelled to borrow – or buy – another book. </p>
<p>But while reading a novel feels like a private act (as opposed to going to a movie or concert), there’s also always a sense we are connected to (and connecting with) some kind of cultural and historical continuum. </p>
<p>We read Dickens in our solitude, yet imagine we’re in Victorian England, connected across 150-odd years. Time and space seem collapsed into a vibrant, active present. Dickens speaks to us, but more significantly, the zeitgeist addresses us in a moving presence – perhaps we can cheat death, after all?</p>
<p>The structure of It (and much of King’s other work) reproduces what attracts many of us to reading fiction in the first place – an escape into a present that is at the same time a kind of memory-fantasy, governed by lingering nostalgia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/491587/original/file-20221025-225-ne5qnx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">King’s work provides escape into a kind of memory-fantasy. (Pictured: Billy Crystal reads Misery in When Harry Met Sally.)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Marxist philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Bloch">Ernst Bloch</a>, literature offers a utopian space in which we can transcend and transform the past and future, captured in the figure of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimat"><em>heimat</em></a> (meaning homeland – and appropriated in opposition to the term’s German nationalist use). Literature allows us to return to a mythic-nostalgic image of "home” – which we know has never actually existed. This nostalgic space opens the possibility of a better collective present and future.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-psychology-behind-why-clowns-creep-us-out-65936">The psychology behind why clowns creep us out</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Long live the King!</h2>
<p>There are definitely better, more controlled stylists than King in popular horror fiction. But their work is somehow more forgettable. King’s perpetual presence - as ringmaster, as media conglomerate, as relentless worker – is always in performance in his work. </p>
<p>You may find his style annoying, or his narratives hokey, but you will always recognise them as Stephen King. He has a flavour, and it ties his work together, good and bad. Much of it emanates from the man himself and his sheer love of writing and reading – dare I say it, of “literature”. </p>
<p>This is evident in his publishing history, but also in the forewords and reviews, and endorsements, he writes for writers he loves. The revival of interest in noir master <a href="https://theconversation.com/jim-thompson-is-the-perfect-novelist-for-our-crazed-times-143240">Jim Thompson</a>, for example, who had vanished into obscurity, seems to be at least in part down to King’s forewords to several of his books. And one wonders how much the <a href="http://www.hardcasecrime.com/">Hard Case Crime</a> imprint, which publishes hard-boiled crime novels in the flavour of those of the 1950s and 60s, relies on the success of King’s original crime novels written for them. How many forgotten masterpieces of noir literature have been brought back into print because King publishes with Hard Case? How many books have moved because a line from King is featured on the cover? </p>
<p>No other living horror writer has enjoyed King’s longevity. There’s no one whose monsters have lingered quite as long in the popular imagination, and in the imaginations of countless readers like me. </p>
<p>The literature we read as children and adolescents has a profound effect on our cultural and personal formation, shaping our becoming as adults. King’s worlds, where children struggle to shape their futures, draw upon our own, personal nostalgia. But they also tap into a kind of nostalgia that lies at the heart of novelistic pleasure itself.</p>
<p>Horror films and novels situate us in precarious situations - we identify with victims, sense their isolation as monsters attack, and feel their glory when and if the monsters are defeated. </p>
<p>We creep through the worlds of horror, watchful, alert, before returning to the safety of our bedrooms, but we’re always a little sad when we come back: that world may have been dominated by <a href="https://mrnsmith.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/the-birds-by-daphne-du-maurier.pdf">killer birds</a>, or by hellish <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17245.Dracula">blood-sucking fiends</a>, but it was an exciting, atmospheric - and beautifully solitary – place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
No other living horror writer has enjoyed Stephen King’s literary longevity. His monsters have lingered in the popular imagination, and that of our author.
Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163195
2021-07-07T15:04:07Z
2021-07-07T15:04:07Z
Nigeria’s #ENDSARS protests: a window into how creative art can be an act of therapy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409862/original/file-20210706-19-1i1m42l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters march at Alausa Secretariat in Ikeja, Lagos State, in October 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Olukayode Jaiyeola/NurPhoto via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent disturbing events in different regions of the world poignantly reveal how the creative arts can contribute to making sense of difficult situations and stressful times. This is particularly true of performance art. </p>
<p>Performance art provides ways of seeing, thinking, expressing and mindfulness. It highlights the idea that human beings, regardless of race, class or gender, have creative forces within them.</p>
<p>In African societies, including Nigeria, the use of the creative arts as political tools of assertion in crises is not new. This includes dance, music, art and drama.</p>
<p>For example, in colonial Nigeria, the famous <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/aba-womens-riots-november-december-1929/#:%7E:text=Thousands%20of%20Igbo%20women%20organized,the%20history%20of%20the%20colony.">Aba Women’s riot of 1929</a> is still a reference point. Tens of thousands of <a href="https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/teaching-and-learning-in-the-digital-age/through-the-lens-of-history-biafra-nigeria-the-west-and-the-world/the-colonial-and-pre-colonial-eras-in-nigeria/the-womens-market-rebellion-of-1929">militant</a>, resilient, scantily clad or nude women engaged with a highly charged protest dance. They forced the colonial government to change its system of governance in southeastern Nigeria.</p>
<p>Prominent Nigerian historian <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41971233">Adiele Afigbo</a> described the women’s protest as “one of the most telling poems of resistance against colonial hegemony”. Nigerian women became politically visible to an extent that has never been repeated.</p>
<p>More recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-nigerians-rise-up-to-demand-a-different-kind-of-freedom-148105">Nigeria’s #ENDSARS</a> in October 2020 represented a similar example of public protest as art.</p>
<p>Many Nigerians see their country as a failing state. This is due to the steady downhill slide of the economy and vanishing resources, dilapidated social amenities, massive unemployment, violence, insurgencies, <a href="https://theconversation.com/nigerias-poverty-profile-is-grim-its-time-to-move-beyond-handouts-163302">mounting poverty</a> and police brutality. It also includes the highhandedness of those in power. </p>
<p>Young Nigerian youths dared bullets and machine guns and took over public spaces to assert their right to a better life. For weeks, in a unified social body, they peacefully contained the “danced” protests. </p>
<p>One can view #ENDSARS as exquisitely organised politically motivated protests, fuelled and sustained by creative art making. Not many have investigated it as an event which has made a unique contribution to the understanding and study of non-verbal psychotherapy as an emerging field of study in Nigeria.</p>
<h2>Creative art therapies</h2>
<p>In 2015, at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan I successfully defended the first clinical trial experimental research in <a href="https://punchng.com/why-im-advocating-dance-as-treatment-for-mental-illness-nigerian-scholar-gladys-akunna/">dance and movement therapy</a> as an aspect of creative arts therapy in Nigeria. My research tested and validated the effectiveness of dance and movement therapy treatment in adult inpatients suffering from schizophrenia and depression. </p>
<p>The subjects in the research learnt to trust and use art as a tool to connect to themselves. They were able to get quantifiable levels of improvement in health. </p>
<p>Similarly, Nigerians in the #ENDSARS protests intuitively embraced improvised art making for the release of pain and anguish, and for mustering strength for survival. </p>
<p>The popular adopted slogan for the protests was <em>sorosoke</em>, a Yoruba word which translates as “speak up”. Apart from its political connotation, it was also a group therapy engagement.</p>
<p>The therapeutic space of this event lasted a few weeks. During this time millions of Nigerians in large groups performed for their mental health.</p>
<p>Nigeria’s heavily burdened and impoverished population has been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJoyjIWxNeU">publicly branded</a> as “lazy” and good-for-nothing citizens with no goals or aspirations. </p>
<p>But through their many united voices and bodies they became powerful and they found voice. Hence the importance of the slogan <em>sorosoke</em>.</p>
<p>Experts in the field of mental health agree that to have a voice is as much a part of daily living as it is of therapy. It signifies self-awareness and active agency and participation in staying healthy and productive.</p>
<h2>Artmaking and the search of mental health in #ENDSARS</h2>
<p>At the turn of the 20th century, and building on earlier research, the neurologist Sigmund Freud founded <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Introductory_Lectures_on_Psychoanalysis.html?id=Sfz0l6WSqFgC">psychoanalysis</a> – or the talking therapy – as a medical breakthrough in traditional psychotherapy. His approach has since become a vital aspect of the fields of psychiatry and mental health. </p>
<p>Freud also founded other significant theories including the theory of sublimation.</p>
<p>As a theory, sublimation is central to <a href="http://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/15030">psychoanalytic theory</a> about the arts. </p>
<p><a href="https://literariness.org/2016/04/16/freudian-psychoanalysis/">Freud’s analysis</a> of literal and visual narratives of great artists was based on psychological nuances and influences of consciousness and beingness. To him, the subjective domains were symbolic communication of libidinal drive or fulfilment of these desires. </p>
<p>Beyond this, it was his critical evaluations of the experience of unconscious conflicts and their expression through the process of sublimation that laid the foundation on which the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-12112-000">psychoanalytical study of art and the artist</a> evolved.</p>
<p>For Freud, and countless other examples, including those in Nigeria, the channelling and communication of stored painful memories can be released through a work of art – a socially acceptable form of creativity. </p>
<p>Equally significant is the symbolic form – or aesthetic appearance – of the work of art which meaningfully camouflages the hideous elements of consciousness, yielding some measure of beauty, enjoyment and appreciation. </p>
<p>For instance, as an art, dance is a specific, precise, intricately organised creative activity. It is pervaded by ideals of universality and inclusive sociality that evoke emotional and aesthetic appeal and response.</p>
<p>The #ENDSARS protests are a good example of this. They incorporated and presented potent, meaningful visual, verbal, non-verbal art displays and an overall visual quality. These yielded some measure of pleasure to both the performers and spectators. These powerfully interactive and meaningful performances were densely psychotherapeutic in form and content. </p>
<p>The protests rejected the irrational continual denial of the tragic realities in Nigeria’s socio-political landscape. Rather it was a creative way for the battered bodies and minds of Nigerians to confront their harsh, unfriendly environment. </p>
<p>And it paved the way for healing, vitality and a new vista of productive life.</p>
<p>This therapeutic goal was monstrously cut short by the Lekki Toll Gate <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/nigerias-lekki-toll-gate-massacre-will-not-go-away">massacre</a>. This inflated the frightful circles of mental illness and exposed hurting Nigerians in need of psychotherapy to brutal violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163195/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gladys Ijeoma Akunna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The protests paved the way for healing, vitality and a new vista of productive life.
Gladys Ijeoma Akunna, Visiting Scholar, Department of Creative Arts Therapies, Drexel University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144523
2020-08-14T21:04:09Z
2020-08-14T21:04:09Z
It’s ‘comma-la’: Insisting on mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s name is racist
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352999/original/file-20200814-14-ehh9kj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C0%2C5256%2C3493&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks during a virtual grassroots fundraiser in Wilmington, Del., on Aug. 12.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris pronounces her name “comma-la,” but many of her fellow Americans — including Fox News host <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tucker-carlson-kamala-harris-fox-news-pronunciation-a9666476.html">Tucker Carlson</a> — mispronounce it as “kuh-MAH-luh” or “kuh-MALL-uh.”</p>
<p>When called out about this on his TV show, Carlson snubbed defensively: “So I’m disrespecting her by mispronouncing her name unintentionally? … kuh-MAH-luh Harris or KAM-uh-luh Harris or whatever.”</p>
<p>In this instance, Carlson personifies “Whatever People,” one of several types of name bunglers that are called out in an <a href="https://youtu.be/wIZtiAtlkZk?t=2m34s">MTV video</a>. </p>
<p>“If you do this, you are a bad person,” says Maritza Montañez, who describes the daily distortions of her own name as “just exhausting.” Mamoudou N'Diaye, another performer in the video, explains: “People mispronounce my name seven days a week.… If you don’t say my name correctly, it’s basically like saying, I don’t care about you as a person.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XYkZkpLQUS0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">How to pronounce Kamala.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mispronunciation as microaggression</h2>
<p>In his 2010 book <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Microaggressions+in+Everyday+Life%3A+Race%2C+Gender%2C+and+Sexual+Orientation-p-9780470594155"><em>Microaggressions in Everyday Life</em></a>, psychologist Derald Wing Sue argues that superficially trivial incidents like “the boss forgetting or mispronouncing your name” accumulate, and as such, they are “equally disruptive and harmful” as “large, overt racial or gender gaffes and overt obvious acts of discrimination.”</p>
<p>Such microaggressions are said to take a particular toll on members of minority groups. In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2012.674026">Rita Kohli and Daniel Solórzano’s study</a> of minority students across the United States, “many participants shared that the issues they experienced with their names in school caused them a great deal of anxiety, shame or feelings of ‘othering’.” For example, they report an incident in which a vice-principal bungled a Chinese American’s name before laughing at his own mistake.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He butchered her name mercilessly, shaking his head and laughing as others laughed along… It is likely he did not intend malice.… But because this student had endured years of subtle racial slights, her cumulative experience with the fumbling of her name led her to feel humiliated by his action and see her culture as inferior.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The authors conclude that name blunders are “insults/assaults,” and that, “to prevent internalized racism, teachers must own this issue regardless of the cause of a mispronunciation.”</p>
<h2>Freudian slips?</h2>
<p>Sigmund Freud infamously argued that mistakes are deliberate, in that each facilitates “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/286584/the-psychopathology-of-everyday-life-by-sigmund-freud/9780142437438/">an unconscious intention</a>.” He and his colleagues attached special significance to proper names being misspoken, misremembered, misheard, misread or misspelled. All such mishaps were psychoanalyzed as performed below the level of awareness, as subtle slights — personal names being personal, after all.</p>
<p>Neurologist and psychoanalyst <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924029036107">Ernest Jones concluded</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the general inability to bear other people’s names in mind is an expression of an excessively high estimation of the importance of one’s own name and of oneself in general, with a corresponding indifference to, or depreciation of, other people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“No alteration is too slight to have a meaning,” Jones insisted, citing the case of a foreign visitor who mistakenly referred to psychologist Edward Titchener as “<a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924029036107">Kitchener</a>.” According to Jones, this slip originated in the visitor’s contempt for Titchener and his expertise:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A few minutes before, while talking about experimental psychologists in general, he had allowed himself to make the scurrilous remark that in his opinion they should be called the pantry-cooks of psychology, on account of their menial field of work; the passage from ‘cook’ to ‘kitchen’ is obvious.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Titchener, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.40.8.942">whom Freud considered a leading adversary</a>, advocated instead for a more scientific approach to introspection and mental processes, using experimental procedures, measurements, and observations in a controlled laboratory. Titchener also warned against the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/philosophiascientiae.1133">stimulus error</a>” — failing to tease apart objective experiences from how we think, know or judge them to be.</p>
<p>Titchener’s century-old concerns are echoed in psychologist Scott Lilienfeld’s arguments that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1745691616659391">microaggression research falls short of scientific rigor</a>. Racial microaggressions are subtle acts of racism and aggression, which certainly occur, but Lilienfeld shows that their valid application to individual situations is fraught. </p>
<p>For example, Carlson’s “whatever” was decidedly dismissive and arguably aggressive (if defensive), but it was anything but subtle. Was it also racist? Critical race theorists like Solórzano et al. would probably say so. As <a href="https://robindiangelo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Anti-racism-handout-1-page-2016.pdf">Robin DiAngelo</a> puts it: “The question is not ‘did racism take place?’ but rather ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?’”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A portrait of Fox News host Tucker Carlson posing on the set of this TV show" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353014/original/file-20200814-22-1pn0fdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353014/original/file-20200814-22-1pn0fdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353014/original/file-20200814-22-1pn0fdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353014/original/file-20200814-22-1pn0fdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353014/original/file-20200814-22-1pn0fdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353014/original/file-20200814-22-1pn0fdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353014/original/file-20200814-22-1pn0fdv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fox News host Tucker Carlson mispronounced Kamala Harris’s name and then, when called out on air about it, replied: ‘Whatever.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Richard Drew)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Response to foreign words</h2>
<p>As a clinical psychologist, Lilienfeld <a href="https://youtu.be/C-fRlsZQgKM">describes this way of thinking as dangerous</a>. He says that ill intent exists to be sure, but the mental health of a racialized person is not well served by assuming the worst from most if not all awkward statements or flubs they encounter in life. Lilienfeld also worries that a racialized person who feels depressed or oppressed, perhaps due to actual racial microaggressions, is likely to perceive more racial microaggressions and thereby get trapped in a vicious cycle of negative emotions.</p>
<p>This is not to say that microaggressions only exist in perceivers’ minds. For instance, Carlson’s mispronunciation of Kamala is a textbook example of a linguistic process called “<a href="http://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.26.08jan">hyperforeignization</a>.” Roughly, speakers go out of their way to refit foreign-looking words with pseudo-foreign speech sounds and sound patterns. This process is so strong that the Japanese had to rebrand Matsuda (“MAT-soo-da”) and Dattosun (“DAT-toh-soon”) as Mazda and Datsun, respectively, in order to avoid the American hyperforeignisms “maht-SOO-duh” and “dah-TOH-suhn.”</p>
<p>Hyperforeignisms are literally “othering,” and yet, as unconscious phenomena, the intention behind them cannot be reliably established as aggressive or racist without considering independent observations and factors. For example, we also know that “male and female English names show systematic differences in sound pattern: female names are far more likely to have <a href="http://www.jstor.com/stable/4176070">unstressed initial syllables</a>.” So Carlson’s “kuh-MAH-luh” could also be understood as “hyperfeminization.” At any rate, his insistence on mispronouncing Kamala and his dismissive “whatever” confirmed the disrespect he was accused of.</p>
<p>This is precisely what makes racial microaggressions unsettling — they’re indeterminate by definition. As social psychologist Dorraine Green describes it: “<a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/01/microaggressions">There’s uncertainty about whether or not your experience was due to your race, for example, or due to something unrelated, such as the other person being in a bad mood or having a bad day.… That uncertainty is distressing</a>.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144523/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darin Flynn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Kamala Harris has always had to deal with people mispronouncing her name. It’s an example of microaggressions that members of minority groups face on a regular basis.
Darin Flynn, Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of Calgary
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131349
2020-02-09T16:53:57Z
2020-02-09T16:53:57Z
What Freud tells us about Chair Girl – and ourselves
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314303/original/file-20200209-27564-rs8eyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C48%2C3583%2C2344&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marcella Zoia, seen here leaving a Toronto court house, has pleaded guilty to a charge of mischief endangering life after throwing a chair from a balcony of a high-rise condo. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The case of Marcella Zoia — or “Chair Girl,” as she’s been dubbed by Toronto media — has captured the attention of the city for a year now. Each time Zoia makes a court appearance, the news cycle fills with pictures and videos of her walking to and from court, and #chairgirl trends on social media.</p>
<p>Journalists dissect every detail of her appearance and demeanour: the size of her sunglasses, the colour of her nails, her choice of outfit, the quantity and quality of her makeup <a href="https://www.narcity.com/news/ca/on/toronto/marcella-zoia-toronto-court-appearance-begins-as-she-enters-in-huge-sunglasses-video">and whether her lips are held in a “smirk” or “pout”</a> are all considered newsworthy. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314304/original/file-20200209-27548-bomrmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The viral video that led to the creation of #chairgirl.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On Feb. 7, Justice Mara Greene heard submissions on how the 20-year-old should be sentenced for throwing a chair off the 45th floor of a downtown Toronto condo building in February 2019 — an action that was captured on a Snapchat video that quickly “went viral” and was also shown repeatedly by mainstream media. Zoia has plead guilty to one charge of mischief endangering life, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. </p>
<p>The prosecution recommended four to six months jail time, to be followed by 240 hours of community service and two years probation with a host of conditions including, among others, alcohol counselling and a ban on social media posting.</p>
<p>Zoia’s lawyer requested the judge consider a suspended sentence. This means that she would be given a term of probation with conditions attached and a criminal record. Were Zoia to breach her probation order, not only could she be sentenced to jail for her original crime, but she may incur additional charges. </p>
<h2>Titillation and vengefulness</h2>
<p>Social media has provided the public with an outlet for both its titillation and its vengefulness. Overwhelmingly, online calls for Zoia to face severe punishment have been <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2019/02/224470/marcella-zoia-chair-girl-toronto-balcony">accompanied with disdainful references to her gender and sexuality</a>.</p>
<p>She has been referred to as “plastic-lipped, partying, and scantily clad,” a “dumb bitch,” “barely legal thot,” “fame whore,” “airhead,” “afterhours call-girl,” “as fake as her fake plastic boobs,” on so on. <a href="https://www.blogto.com/fashion_style/2019/10/toronto-chair-girl-halloween/">Her likeness even became a popular 2019 Halloween costume</a> in Toronto.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314305/original/file-20200209-27557-1vjdlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314305/original/file-20200209-27557-1vjdlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314305/original/file-20200209-27557-1vjdlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314305/original/file-20200209-27557-1vjdlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314305/original/file-20200209-27557-1vjdlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314305/original/file-20200209-27557-1vjdlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314305/original/file-20200209-27557-1vjdlqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Every time Marcella Zoia makes a court appearance, both mainstream and social media dissect every detail of her appearance and demeanour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The groundswell of public opinion on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and elsewhere has called to #LockHerUp, “throw the chair at her,” shave her head and trim her nails, tar and feather her, remove her makeup, put her in a men’s jail, deport her “back to Brazil” and otherwise “make an example” of her.</p>
<p>Strikingly, it is not only male commentators indulging in misogyny directed at Zoia; women are a vocal part of the chorus as well. <em>Toronto Sun</em> columnist Michele Mandel, for example, recently demanded that Zoia <a href="https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/mandel-chair-girl-should-lose-phone-go-directly-to-jail">“turns off her cellphone, stops preening and selfieing her puckered duck lips, and takes her ill-earned notoriety directly to jail.”</a></p>
<h2>Punish and purify</h2>
<p>Unravelling our obsession with Chair Girl can tell us a lot about the deeper social preoccupations of the day.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41214">As Sigmund Freud taught</a>, the social compulsion to both punish and purify is a mechanism that allows us to repress our deepest desires. Viewed through this lens, the figure of Chair Girl inspires both Freudian awe and aversion; she has come to embody both the “sacred” and the “unclean.”</p>
<p>In popular imagination, Zoia enjoys two markers of high, nearly untouchable, status: pornographied, elusive sex appeal and online fame (and, by proxy, the power and wealth that we assume attend these attributes). </p>
<p>In other words, the public is titillated by Chair Girl because it is dedicated to her punishment — and vice versa.</p>
<p>For some men, she represents “Stacy,” the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/4/28/17290256/incel-chad-stacy-becky">“hyperfeminine, attractive, and unattainable”</a> archetype popularized by the online incel movement, thus triggering a primitive desire to possess the female. For some women, she activates the longing to become the enchanting, prized object of sexual desire. Chair Girl has ascended to the throne of fame, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2019/12/25/chair-girl-unnecessarily-edited-out-of-drake-music-video-lawyer-says-after-cameo-causes-controversy.html">having been anointed by Drake himself</a> when he put her in his <em>War</em> video. </p>
<p>Chair Girl, however, is not a sustainable idol. She is reviled not because of her impulsive, foolish crime, but because of how it unexpectedly propelled her to instant internet stardom. In other words, people “love to hate” Zoia not because of what she actually did, but because of what they perceive her to have undeservedly gained.</p>
<h2>Instagram poses not a crime</h2>
<p>To be clear, in punishing Zoia, the criminal law is supposed to address itself to the conduct that makes up the offence: here, putting lives at risk by throwing a chair off a building. Her behaviour in the aftermath of her offence — whether posing in sexually provocative ways on Instagram or appearing in music videos — is simply not something for which the law is entitled to punish her. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/Br8ACqNBoUq","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Crown attorney Heather Keating acknowledged that posting the video to Snapchat was not a crime — Zoia maintains she did not post the video herself, and that she deleted it when she became aware it had been posted to her Snapchat account. Nevertheless, Keating was at pains to argue that merely “allowing” herself to be recorded at the time of the offence made Zoia responsible for “engineering the possibility” that the video of her crime could go viral. </p>
<p>Keating asserted that it was “ridiculous” for Zoia to claim she was unaware the video had been posted, and suggested that it is somehow in the nature of how we use our phones today that what gets recorded is intended for public consumption.</p>
<p>For the Crown, Zoia’s simple knowledge that she was being recorded was enough to increase the severity of her offence — and the appropriate sentence. A jail sentence here, Keating argued, would deter future fame-seekers from committing criminal acts on the calculation that online notoriety might be “worth” the cost of criminal sanction.</p>
<p>However, regardless of whether we accept Zoia’s account in its entirety, she simply could not have reasonably anticipated that the video would have exploded. In fact, <a href="https://www.oberlo.com/blog/snapchat-statistics">with over 210 million active Snapchat users and 2.1 million Snaps created per minute</a> (that’s over three billion per day) finding a needle in a haystack would be a surer bet than posting a video in the hopes that it would go viral.</p>
<h2>Request for harsh punishment linked to fame</h2>
<p>In this case, the Crown’s request for harsh punishment is a cipher for popular contempt. In arguing that jail time is required in order to maintain public confidence in the criminal justice system, Keating pressed hard on the fact that Zoia “went from anonymity to fame” and “turned her notoriety into a brand.” But no evidence was presented to indicate Zoia materially benefited from her fame; in fact, her lawyer argued that her notoriety had caused her to lose educational and job opportunities.</p>
<p>Social media transformed Zoia into Chair Girl, but this transformation doesn’t aggravate her crime. Her improbable rise to fame does, however, activate envy and a certain social fear of contagion.</p>
<p>That Zoia should be venerated by Instagram “likes” after having done nothing in particular to deserve this attention — the prosecution pointed out that Zoia was immature, makes choices against her own best interest and is a poor student — is something that many cannot tolerate in a society in which we all secretly desire fame and fortune.</p>
<p>The public demand to harshly punish Zoia tells us far more about society’s innermost desires and insecurities than it does her crime. The misogynistic and hateful rhetoric around her case is so severe because it reflects the fear that if society doesn’t cast Zoia out by jailing her, it might be forced to look inward, thus recognising in itself those parts of Chair Girl that it seeks to emulate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131349/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heidi Matthews does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The woman known as Chair Girl is reviled not because of her impulsive, foolish crime, but because of how her mistake unexpectedly propelled her to instant internet stardom.
Heidi Matthews, Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130247
2020-01-28T12:24:58Z
2020-01-28T12:24:58Z
Trump the transgressor: the psychological appeal of leaders who break the rules
<p>Many of today’s politicians appear to appeal to the basic human need for safety, presenting their versions of strong leadership as the best hope for order and safety in a fearful world of growing instability and risk. Much <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/02/authoritarian-leaders-people-safe-voters">evidence</a> confirms that this appeal is certainly an important factor in the political landscape. </p>
<p>But alongside this, other psychological dynamics are currently influential in a number of Western democracies – particularly in attracting people to support populist leaders and their agendas. </p>
<p>One of these – which is of particular relevance to the impeachment trial of the US president, Donald Trump – concerns the pleasure and excitement that some citizens appear to find in a leader who breaks rules and ignores taboos. These transgressions can come in various forms, such as controversial statements, unconventional lifestyles or disrespectful approaches to the political process. But they can also extend to improper activities and abuse of power – such as those detailed in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/20/what-are-trump-articles-of-impeachment">impeachment charges against</a> Trump – or anti-democratic activity and <a href="https://theconversation.com/duterte-philippines-brutal-president-must-be-condemned-but-the-west-is-guilty-of-double-standards-108385">violence</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-impeachment-need-a-crime-not-according-to-framers-of-the-constitution-130354">Does impeachment need a crime? Not according to framers of the Constitution</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Rule breakers</h2>
<p>I suggest that support for this kind of leader can be understood as “identification with the transgressor”. This is an idea modelled on the concept of “identification with the aggressor”, a term coined by the psychoanalyst <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Ego_and_the_Mechanisms_of_Defence.html?id=mXcw7gFWS2oC">Anna Freud</a> in 1936. Since then, psychologists have used the concept to understand a range of behaviours, including our tolerance of or collusion with bullies. </p>
<p>Different types of transgressive leader can appeal to transgressive parts of ourselves. Like others before him, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Anna’s father, observed that some measure of resentment towards authority and of a longing to cast aside the rules, is a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents.html?id=AW3z38T3u7YC&redir_esc=y">universal feature of the human psyche</a>. In its development since Freud, the psychoanalytic tradition has examined how this longing is a legacy of the painful process of emotional development we each undergo very early in life as we come to accept <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Trump_on_the_Couch.html?id=07lMDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">the limits placed on us</a> as requirements for membership of human society.</p>
<p>Where there are good reasons to think that normal political processes are failing, many people can feel a surge of gratitude towards a leader who breaks with some conventions with the aim of bringing more integrity and legitimacy to political life. Lech Wałęsa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, and others who led the way out of totalitarianism for countries in the Communist bloc, were certainly transgressors within the political worlds they confronted. They could be <a href="https://theconversation.com/czechs-and-slovaks-still-search-for-truth-and-love-25-years-after-the-velvet-revolution-34260">identified as a force for good</a> in a corrupt or sclerotic system. </p>
<p>But given our built-in ambivalence towards authority and rules, we can also identify with political leaders whose transgressions are driven at least in part by more destructive impulses. While promising their supporters a better world, these leaders use rhetoric that focuses on the urgent need to attack existing authorities and destroy existing arrangements, with little real attention paid to how to replace them. </p>
<p>One example is a coup leader who, once in power, has little plan for bettering their country. At worst is the leader free of most if not all moral constraint, who is contemptuous of international standards of conduct, and unconcerned by the human costs of his or her own conduct.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312061/original/file-20200127-81403-dfwyfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312061/original/file-20200127-81403-dfwyfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312061/original/file-20200127-81403-dfwyfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312061/original/file-20200127-81403-dfwyfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312061/original/file-20200127-81403-dfwyfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312061/original/file-20200127-81403-dfwyfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312061/original/file-20200127-81403-dfwyfs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump set out to break the rules of American politics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/donald-trump-rushes-forward-swings-huge-790881259">By oleskalashnik/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Impact on voters</h2>
<p>Therefore, one psychological question hanging over the US impeachment proceedings is the extent to which Trump’s support base will judge him negatively over the events at the centre of the impeachment trial. When Americans head to the polls in November 2020, how many will be inclined to enjoy Trump’s truculent dismissal of any criticism, and his capacity to brazen it out?</p>
<p>Remember, evidence of Trump’s questionable moral conduct was available to the US electorate in 2016. Following the release before the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/07/donald-trump-leaked-recording-women">election of a videotape</a> in which he boasted about groping women without their consent, 91% of those likely to vote for Trump said in a <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-gender-gap-in-views-on-trumps-2005-tape/">CBS/YouGov poll</a> that the tape didn’t change their view of him. And Trump was elected. </p>
<p>The refusal by many voters to censure Trump for his transgressions has a powerful psychological basis to it in the wish to break free of authority. This can also be enjoyed without the guilt that would, for most people, usually accompany an assault on widely held values. </p>
<p>That’s because a leader like Trump offers an opportunity to combine transgressive pleasure with the moral high ground. This emotional package is offered to those who identify with Trump’s (somewhat erratic) self-presentation as a fusion of pleasure-seeking rebel and visionary saviour, leading an insurrection against the corrupt authorities – “the swamp”. </p>
<p>The eulogistic <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/In_Trump_We_Trust.html?id=o8QiDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">book on Trump</a> by Conservative commentator Ann Coulter is one of many demonstrations of how much his supporters are energised by the wish to attack the “establishment” for their own alleged transgressions. Of course, not all Trump supporters feel this way, or support him for the same reasons. </p>
<p>This populist attack on the established elite can enable the supporters of the transgressive leader to feel that they are on a moral crusade, as well there for a pleasure kick. This could be a powerful aid to Trump in the coming election. We should expect such a transgressor figure to continue attracting strong identification and support, unless challenged by a leader who can somehow disrupt the transgressor’s psychological relationship with their support base.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Richards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Different types of rule-breaking leaders can appeal to transgressive parts of ourselves.
Barry Richards, Professor of Political Psychology, Bournemouth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109320
2019-01-21T13:15:36Z
2019-01-21T13:15:36Z
Salvador Dalí: entertainer who brought Surrealism to a mass market
<blockquote>
<p>My triumph will lie in the fact that I was able to overwhelm my period and at the same time achieve immortality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This comment made by Salvador Dalí is quoted in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/18/salvador-dali-in-search-of-immortality-review-david-pujol">new documentary about the artist</a>. As the familiar face of the longest-running art movement of the 20th century – Surrealism – Dalí was well aware of the power of his public persona. From his finely groomed moustaches to his public appearances with his pet ocelot, Babou, he cultivated an image that was instantly recognised in the worlds of art, entertainment and advertising. </p>
<p>By the time of his death on January 23 1989, Dalí had fashioned himself as a multimedia artist, writer and international celebrity. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/evxuuAB1RUA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The Surrealist movement began as a collaborative affair. In 1918, French poet Pierre Reverdy published an essay, The Image, in which <a href="https://academic.oup.com/fmls/article-pdf/XII/1/25/9796850/25.pdf">he proposed</a> a style of writing that would juxtapose “<a href="http://bluemountain.princeton.edu/bluemtn/cgi-bin/bluemtn?a=d&d=bmtnaaw191803-01.2.2&">two more or less distant realities</a>” connected by the imagination. The resulting image would not simply copy the world. Rather, it would generate a whole new reality.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254502/original/file-20190118-100292-1207my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254502/original/file-20190118-100292-1207my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254502/original/file-20190118-100292-1207my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254502/original/file-20190118-100292-1207my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254502/original/file-20190118-100292-1207my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254502/original/file-20190118-100292-1207my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254502/original/file-20190118-100292-1207my.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Salvador Dalí with his pet ocelot Babou.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Inspired by Sigmund Freud, the writer <a href="http://www.surrealists.co.uk/breton.php">André Breton</a> extended Reverdy’s idea in manifestos published in 1924 and 1929 that encouraged artists to abandon rational control of their creativity. Dreams and the unconscious would motivate a new, “surrealist”, expressive style that demonstrated “<a href="https://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm">the actual functioning of thought</a>”.</p>
<p>Dalí became the most famous exponent of these ideas in visual art. His <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dali-lobster-telephone-t03257">Lobster Telephone</a> (1936) epitomised the chance collision of objects from different realms. Audiences could imagine cradling the lobster in the palms of their hands and speaking into its tail, the crunchy texture of the exoskeleton interrupting the seamlessness of everyday experience. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254507/original/file-20190118-100273-1riaci5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254507/original/file-20190118-100273-1riaci5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254507/original/file-20190118-100273-1riaci5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254507/original/file-20190118-100273-1riaci5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254507/original/file-20190118-100273-1riaci5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254507/original/file-20190118-100273-1riaci5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254507/original/file-20190118-100273-1riaci5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dalí’s Lobster Telephone (1936).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tate Modern</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The possibilities were endless, as Dalí suggested in his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QLXDAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+secret+life+of+salvador+dali&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj337SJ7eLfAhUWQhUIHaq3Bq4Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=lobster&f=false">autobiography</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Telephone frappé, mint-colored telephone, aphrodisiac telephone, lobster-telephone, telephone sheathed in sable for the boudoirs of sirens with fingernails protected with ermine, Edgar Allan Poe telephone with a dead rat concealed within … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Lobster Telephone was not the only household item that Dalí produced. While Coca-Cola sold its product in a bottle that echoed the curves of actress Mae West’s body in 1916, Dalí turned to the star’s lips for inspiration in the mid-1930s. Working with his British patron, Edward James, on plans for a Surrealist home interior, Dalí created a luxurious settee in the shape of a mouth that promised to kiss, bite or swallow whole anyone who chanced to sit on it. A version of the work with a vivid scarlet upholstery was acquired by the <a href="https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1441053/mae-west-lips-sofa-mae-west-lips/">Victoria & Albert Museum</a> in 2018. </p>
<p>If Freud convinced bourgeois families that their lives were the stuff of Greek tragedy, Dalí suggested that world was fantastical because the individual psyche made it so. An early painting, <a href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/salvador-dali/the-enigma-of-my-desire-or-my-mother-my-mother-my-mother-1929">The Enigma of Desire, My Mother, My Mother, My Mother</a> (1929) is an erotic dream work indebted to Freudian psychology. The artist’s mother is portrayed as a monumental rock with the words “Ma mère” etched into caverns on its surface. First exhibited at Dalí’s solo exhibition at the Goemans Gallery in Paris in 1929, for 36 years it was a menacing presence in the consulting rooms of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/31/arts/dali-s-mere-sets-auction-record.html">Zürich psychiatrist</a>, until its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/31/arts/dali-s-mere-sets-auction-record.html">sale by Christie’s in 1982</a>.</p>
<p>Making one’s dreams public can, however, be a dangerous thing. When Dalí produced a painting titled <a href="https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/enigma-hitler">The Enigma of Hitler</a> in 1939, even his Surrealist colleagues were troubled. Featuring a portrait of Hitler on a tiny postage stamp beneath a dripping telephone (once again with echoes of lobster claws), the work was hardly a celebration of the fascist leader. Nevertheless, Dalí’s admission of a “pathological” fascination with Hitler prompted Breton and other members of the Surrealist group to sever ties to their colleague. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254521/original/file-20190118-100279-1qa27km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254521/original/file-20190118-100279-1qa27km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254521/original/file-20190118-100279-1qa27km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254521/original/file-20190118-100279-1qa27km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254521/original/file-20190118-100279-1qa27km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254521/original/file-20190118-100279-1qa27km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254521/original/file-20190118-100279-1qa27km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Controversial: Dalí’s 1939 painting: The Enigma of Hitler.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Salvador Dali, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dalí’s political failings were not the only reason for this falling out. According to Breton, Dalí had reduced Surrealism to popular entertainment. It is undeniable that Dalí courted a mass market for his works. Following his arrival in the United States in 1934, the artist designed magazine covers, participated in the television show “What’s my Line”, and produced advertisements for products ranging from perfume and lipstick to Alka-Seltzer. </p>
<p>By the time film director Alfred Hitchcock commissioned the artist to create a dreamscape for the finale of <a href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-dali-hitchcock-brought-surrealism-hollywood">Spellbound</a> in 1945, melting clocks, burning giraffes, and landscapes of repressed desires were a familiar visual repertoire of psychic life. </p>
<p>Dalí’s wife, Russian-born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova (known as Gala), was a crucial partner in her husband’s success. Contributing to <a href="https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/farewell-to-the-muse-love-war-and-the-women-of-surrealism-hardcover">recent scholarship</a> that showcases the active role of women in Surrealism, an exhibition at the <a href="https://www.museunacional.cat/en/gala-dali">Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya</a> reveals that Gala was more than a muse or model. She produced works in her own right, negotiated with art dealers, edited Dalí’s writings, and contributed to her husband’s creative output with works co-signed “Gala-Salvador Dalí”. </p>
<p>It has been suggested that Gala used <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-gala-dalimuse-model-and-artistwas-more-just-salvadors-wife-180969776/">tarot cards</a> to predict Dalí’s future. If so, she might have foreseen his influence on the Chicago Surrealist Group, the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, works by Mexican muralist Marcos Raya, explorations of sexuality by Sarah Lucas and the cinema of David Lynch. </p>
<p>The celebrity culture that has developed around contemporary art owes much to Dalí’s humour, visual wit and cult of personality. Despite Breton’s concerns about the merger of art and entertainment, it was Dalí who shaped Surrealism’s enduring visual presence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Spanish artist was a master self-publicist and one of the most important thinkers in 20th-century art.
Kathryn Brown, Lecturer in Art History, Loughborough University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108575
2019-01-08T11:39:16Z
2019-01-08T11:39:16Z
What’s behind our appetite for self-destruction?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252509/original/file-20190104-32148-1z0p5uh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There seems be an attractive quality to things that are ostensibly unhealthy or dangerous.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/revolver-loaded-cigarette-concept-selfdestruction-nicotine-1099376930?src=IYGKvT09mwbSvoRrsLvyfA-1-72">Alisusha/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each new year, people vow to put an end to self-destructive habits like smoking, overeating or overspending.</p>
<p>And how many times have we learned of someone – a celebrity, a friend or a loved one – who committed some self-destructive act that seemed to defy explanation? Think of the criminal <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/12-years-jail-bank-manager-2367077">who leaves a trail of evidence</a>, perhaps with the hope of getting caught, or the politician who wins an election, <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/bellingham-student-embroiled-in-rep-weiner-twitter-scandal/">only to start sexting</a> someone likely to expose him. </p>
<p>Why do they do it? </p>
<p>Edgar Allan Poe, one of America’s greatest – and most self-destructive – writers, had some thoughts on the subject. He even had a name for the phenomenon: “perverseness.” Psychologists would later take the baton from Poe and attempt to decipher this enigma of the human psyche. </p>
<h2>Irresistible depravity</h2>
<p>In one of his lesser-known works, “<a href="https://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/impc.htm">The Imp of the Perverse</a>,” Poe argues that knowing something is wrong can be “the one unconquerable force” that makes us do it. </p>
<p>It seems that the source of this psychological insight was Poe’s own life experience. Orphaned before he was three years old, he had few advantages. But despite his considerable literary talents, he consistently managed to make his lot even worse. </p>
<p>He frequently alienated editors and other writers, even accusing poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism in what has come to be known as the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=TevIJKwqWPMC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=poe+plagiarism+longfellow&source=bl&ots=3w6dR6MLhK&sig=MzGhVaXkN0dMGJT91S58rcPBt6Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjznsj-pdLfAhUq54MKHbrOBIE4ChDoATAJegQIChAB#v=onepage&q=poe%20plagiarism%20longfellow&f=false">Longfellow war</a>.” During important moments, he seemed to implode: On a trip to Washington, D.C. to secure support for a proposed magazine and perhaps a government job, he apparently drank too much and <a href="https://www.eapoe.org/works/ostlttrs/pl661c05.htm">made a fool of himself</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252510/original/file-20190104-32124-lvaic9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">According to Edgar Allen Poe, knowing something is wrong can make it irresistible.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edgar_Allan_Poe_daguerreotype_crop.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After nearly two decades of scraping out a living as an editor and earning little income from his poetry and fiction, Poe finally achieved a breakthrough with “<a href="https://www.eapoe.org/works/editions/raop.htm">The Raven</a>,” which became an international sensation after its publication in 1845. </p>
<p>But when given the opportunity to give a reading in Boston and capitalize on this newfound fame, Poe didn’t read a new poem, as requested.</p>
<p>Instead, he reprised a poem from his youth: the long-winded, esoteric and dreadfully boring “<a href="https://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/aaraafc.htm">Al Aaraaf</a>,” renamed “The Messenger Star.” </p>
<p>As one newspaper <a href="https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1921/tplgc08b.htm">reported</a>, “it was not appreciated by the audience,” evidenced by “their uneasiness and continual exits in numbers at a time.” </p>
<p>Poe’s literary career stalled for the remaining four years of his short life.</p>
<h2>Freud’s ‘death drive’</h2>
<p>While “perverseness” wrecked Poe’s life and career, it nonetheless inspired his literature. </p>
<p>It figures prominently in “<a href="https://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/blcatd.htm">The Black Cat</a>,” in which the narrator executes his beloved cat, explaining, “I…hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart…hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin – a deadly sin that would so jeopardise my immortal soul as to place it – if such a thing were possible – even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.”</p>
<p>Why would a character knowingly commit “a deadly sin”? Why would someone destroy something that he loved?</p>
<p>Was Poe onto something? Did he possess a penetrating insight into the counterintuitive nature of human psychology? </p>
<p>A half-century after Poe’s death, Sigmund Freud wrote of a universal and innate “death drive” in humans, which he called “Thanatos” and first introduced in his landmark 1919 essay “<a href="https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/freud_beyond_the_pleasure_principle.pdf">Beyond the Pleasure Principle</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252511/original/file-20190104-32130-1mvlw2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud wrote of a universal death drive, which he dubbed ‘Thanatos.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Sigmund-freud-400399_1280.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-8315.2009.00187.x">Many believe</a> Thanatos refers to unconscious psychological urges toward self-destruction, manifested in the kinds of inexplicable behavior shown by Poe and – in extreme cases – in suicidal thinking.</p>
<p>In the early 1930s, physicist Albert Einstein wrote to Freud to ask his thoughts on how further war might be prevented. <a href="http://www.public.asu.edu/%7Ejmlynch/273/documents/FreudEinstein.pdf">In his response</a>, Freud wrote that Thanatos “is at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter” and referred to it as a “death instinct.” </p>
<p>To Freud, Thanatos was an innate biological process with significant mental and emotional consequences – a response to, and a way to relieve, unconscious psychological pressure. </p>
<h2>Toward a modern understanding</h2>
<p>In the 1950s, the psychology field underwent the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/">“cognitive revolution</a>,” in which researchers started exploring, in experimental settings, how the mind operates, from decision-making to conceptualization to deductive reasoning.</p>
<p>Self-defeating behavior came to be considered less a cathartic response to unconscious drives and more the unintended result of deliberate calculus.</p>
<p>In 1988, psychologists Roy Baumeister and Steven Scher identified <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1988-35696-001">three main types of self-defeating behavior</a>: primary self-destruction, or behavior designed to harm the self; counterproductive behavior, which has good intentions but ends up being accidentally ineffective and self-destructive; and trade-off behavior, which is known to carry risk to the self but is judged to carry potential benefits that outweigh those risks. </p>
<p>Think of drunk driving. If you knowingly consume too much alcohol and get behind the wheel with the intent to get arrested, that’s primary self-destruction. If you drive drunk because you believe you’re less intoxicated than your friend, and – to your surprise – get arrested, that’s counterproductive. And if you know you’re too drunk to drive, but you drive anyway because the alternatives seem too burdensome, that’s a trade-off.</p>
<p>Baumeister and Scher’s review concluded that primary self-destruction has actually rarely been demonstrated in scientific studies. </p>
<p>Rather, the self-defeating behavior observed in such research is better categorized, in most cases, as trade-off behavior or counterproductive behavior. Freud’s “death drive” would actually correspond most closely to counterproductive behavior: The “urge” toward destruction isn’t consciously experienced.</p>
<p>Finally, as psychologist Todd Heatherton <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.121208.131616">has shown</a>, the modern neuroscientific literature on self-destructive behavior most frequently focuses on the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with planning, problem solving, self-regulation and judgment. </p>
<p>When this part of the brain is underdeveloped or damaged, it can result in behavior that appears irrational and self-defeating. There are more subtle differences in the development of this part of the brain: Some people simply find it easier than others to engage consistently in positive goal-directed behavior.</p>
<p>Poe certainly didn’t understand self-destructive behavior the way we do today. </p>
<p>But he seems to have recognized something perverse in his own nature. Before his untimely death in 1849, he reportedly chose an enemy, the editor Rufus Griswold, as his literary executor. </p>
<p>True to form, Griswold wrote a damning obituary and “<a href="https://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poegrisw.htm">Memoir</a>,” in which he alludes to madness, blackmail and more, helping to formulate an image of Poe that has tainted his reputation to this day.</p>
<p>Then again, maybe that’s exactly what Poe – driven by his own personal imp – wanted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud and cognitive scientists have all wrestled with the human tendency to behave in ways that are irrational and self-defeating.
Mark Canada, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Indiana University
Christina Downey, Professor of Psychology, Indiana University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101998
2018-08-24T10:14:53Z
2018-08-24T10:14:53Z
Do dogs have feelings?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233446/original/file-20180824-149481-uapvmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you live with a dog you just know when it’s happy or miserable, don’t you? Of course you do. Even the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763411001497">scientific community, now admits</a> that <a href="https://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol2/iss14/1/">dogs have emotions</a> – even if scientists can’t directly measure what they are experiencing. </p>
<p>People have had a close bond with domesticated dogs for centuries. In his <a href="http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/book/dictionnaire-philosophique-i-ii">1764 Dictionnaire philosophique</a>, Voltaire observed: “It seems that nature has given the dog to man for his defence and for his pleasure. Of all the animals it is the most faithful: it is the best friend man can have.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24720847?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Research</a> has shown time and time again the positive impact pet ownership can have on our lives. Indeed, a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19685978">study</a> of 975 dog-owning adults, found that in times of emotional distress most people were more likely to turn to their dogs than their mothers, fathers, siblings, best friends, or children. </p>
<p>It’s not surprising then that dogs are now the most commonly used animal in therapy. Our canine pals are being increasingly used as participants in a variety of mental health programmes – offering companionship, happy associations and unconditional love. </p>
<p>In the UK, Pets As Therapy (PAT) has more than 5,000 active PAT dogs, which meet some 130,000 people a week. In the US, the American Kennel Club has a <a href="https://www.akc.org/sports/title-recognition-program/therapy-dog-program/therapy-dog-organizations/">Therapy Dog Program</a> which recognises six national therapy dog organisations and awards official titles to dogs who have worked to improve the lives of the people they have visited. </p>
<h2>Dogs who heal</h2>
<p>Sigmund Freud is generally acknowledged as the accidental pioneer of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/canine-corner/201302/how-therapy-dogs-almost-never-came-exist">canine-assisted therapy</a>. During his psychotherapy sessions in the 1930s, a chow chow called Jofi stayed alongside him in the office. Freud noticed that patients became more relaxed and open <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703886904576031630124087362">when Jofi was present</a>, and it helped him to build a rapport. </p>
<p>But the official beginning of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=92Ct9iD1QTYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=demello+animals+and+society&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEouOUtYPdAhXSLlAKHf0LCawQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=demello%20animals%20and%20society&f=false">animal-assisted therapy</a> is generally linked to World War II, when a <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140520-dogs-war-canines-soldiers-military-healing-yorkshire-terrier-smoky/">Yorkshire terrier called Smoky</a> accompanied corporal William Lynne when visiting service hospitals in New Guinea. Her presence lifted the spirits of wounded soldiers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233270/original/file-20180823-149466-161lxn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233270/original/file-20180823-149466-161lxn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233270/original/file-20180823-149466-161lxn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233270/original/file-20180823-149466-161lxn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233270/original/file-20180823-149466-161lxn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233270/original/file-20180823-149466-161lxn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233270/original/file-20180823-149466-161lxn0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Offering a helping hand (paw).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite all this, it was not until the 1960s that the first documented case study of a dog working as a “co-therapist” was made. The US psychotherapist <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1963-01441-001">Boris M. Levinson</a> maintained that the presence of his dog Jingles added a “new dimension to child psychotherapy”. Despite opposition from peers, Levinson strongly defended the use of <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1965.17.3.695">dogs as therapeutic aids</a>. </p>
<h2>How dogs feel</h2>
<p>But while there is no question that <a href="http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/1/20150883">dogs are very good at understanding us</a>, sadly the reverse is not always so true. A classic example of this is when someone has had a little “accident” in the house and dog owners think that their pet <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635714003210">looks guilty</a>. But for the dog in question, that look is purely submission and is a way for the dog to say “don’t hurt me” rather than an admission of guilt. </p>
<p>It is very difficult for humans to convince themselves that the canine brain is not able to understand the concepts of right and wrong – but without that ability it is not possible to experience guilt. The dog who is looking guilty is simply afraid of your reaction to the situation – usually based on past experience. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233271/original/file-20180823-149475-1vulf5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233271/original/file-20180823-149475-1vulf5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233271/original/file-20180823-149475-1vulf5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233271/original/file-20180823-149475-1vulf5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233271/original/file-20180823-149475-1vulf5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233271/original/file-20180823-149475-1vulf5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233271/original/file-20180823-149475-1vulf5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Best walk ever!</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of the main difficulties that happen between dogs and their owners are caused by a humans inability to read their pet’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QPlfDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT13&dq=canine+body+language&ots=ajYEc6LaJM&sig=8z39ObMOT-PDIJzA09PgJj6R7Lo#v=onepage&q=canine%20body%20language&f=false">body language</a> correctly. Combine this with the human notion that dogs understand abstract concepts and can use reason on complex issues, and the scene is set for problems. </p>
<h2>Doggy hormones</h2>
<p>Another way to tell how animals feel is to look at their hormonal environment. Studies have shown that when dogs are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X11001322">stroked by their owners</a> they have increased levels of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006322315006393">oxytocin</a>. Among other functions, this hormone is thought to help relaxation. It helps to form bonds between mother and child – and between <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X08003206">pet and owner</a>. </p>
<p>So although we can’t know for sure how a dog feels during pleasurable activities, it seems reasonable that oxytocin produces similar sensations in dogs to those that humans experience – suggesting that they are feeling affection towards and attachment to their owners.</p>
<p>Similarly, dogs that are in unpleasant circumstances show raised levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. One of the situations that produces this stress response is being left alone for any length of time. Dogs are pack animals and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938405005433">really need to have company</a>. A solitary dog is rarely a happy dog – and this is something that all dog owners should take into account when planning their lives.</p>
<p>What this all shows is that for dogs and people to live together and work together – and for both parties to be happy about it – an understanding of each other’s emotional state is vital. Even if dogs and people don’t completely understand each other, it seems clear that each species is essential to the other’s well-being and we can help each other to be happier and healthier.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101998/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Dogs have the same hormones and experience the same chemical changes that humans do.
Jan Hoole, Lecturer in Biology, Keele University
Daniel Allen, Animal Geographer, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86497
2017-11-16T09:56:07Z
2017-11-16T09:56:07Z
Why Freud was right about hysteria
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194238/original/file-20171112-29345-14j52jy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C39%2C1059%2C625&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sigmund Freud.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5234443">Max Halberstadt/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A 35-year-old woman loses the use of her legs, suddenly becoming paralysed from the waist down. In another case, a woman feels an overwhelming compulsion to close her eyes, until eventually she cannot open them at all. After numerous tests, nothing physically wrong was found with these patients, so what caused their symptoms? </p>
<p>Conditions like these used to be diagnosed as hysteria. In fact, they would fit neatly into the pages of Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_Hysteria">Studies On Hysteria</a>, written over a century ago. </p>
<p>You might think our understanding has advanced since Freud, or, rather more fashionably, that Freud was just wrong. But this isn’t the case. </p>
<p>The term hysteria was dropped when the influence of a psychodynamic theory of mental ill health, with its concepts of unconscious mental forces affecting behaviour, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4695775/">fell out of favour</a> in psychiatry. But while they turned to more measurable features and symptoms, the condition remains in what is now called “conversions disorder”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194355/original/file-20171113-27573-7g2lp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194355/original/file-20171113-27573-7g2lp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194355/original/file-20171113-27573-7g2lp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194355/original/file-20171113-27573-7g2lp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=870&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194355/original/file-20171113-27573-7g2lp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194355/original/file-20171113-27573-7g2lp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194355/original/file-20171113-27573-7g2lp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1093&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Josef Breuer, co-author of Studies On Hysteria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2547712">Albrecht Hirschmüller/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was Freud who proposed that the memory of trauma which the patient fails to confront, because it will cause them too much mental anguish, can be <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1034856/complete-psychological-works-of-sigmund-freud-the-vol-1/">“converted” into physical symptoms</a>. What is more surprising is that cases like this are typical of those routinely seen by neurologists today. </p>
<p>For example, the case of the 35-year-old woman (Ely), noted above, is given in Gordon Turnbull’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1082467/trauma/">Trauma</a>, a book on the history and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. After X-rays for a bleed in Ely’s spinal cord came back negative, Turnbull tried a lumber puncture to extract fluid. Ely didn’t even wince as the needle went in. She seemed indifferent to her sudden paralysis. The nurses thought she was putting it on. </p>
<p>Perplexed, Turnbull’s mind “suddenly jumped to Freud”, who he recalls said that mental conflict could become physical disability. </p>
<p>On interviewing Ely, he eventually discovered that she had been raped by someone she knew. This caused the unbearable mental conflict that was “converted” into her physical symptoms. She evidently knew this, but had pushed its significance out of her conscious awareness to protect herself. She found that talking her experiences through repeatedly was cathartic – her pent up feelings were released. Two days later, she was able to leave the hospital, unaided.</p>
<p>The woman (Mary) who felt compelled to shut her eyes is one of many cases described by the neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan in <a href="https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/search?search=suzanne%20o%27sullivan%20it%27s%20all%20in%20your%20head">It’s All In Your Head</a>. Her husband was on remand for child abuse, but she refused to think this might be an important factor in her illness. Treated with muscle relaxant drugs, she soon recovered. But a month later, she was readmitted, suffering from amnesia. Brain scans and an EEG were normal, but a neighbour told O’Sullivan that her husband had been released from prison. O’Sullivan is left wondering what this patient “could not bear to look upon” or “tolerate to remember”. </p>
<p>Despite the many new technical means of investigation, researchers have very little to offer beyond Freud to account for how psychological and emotional experiences manifest in physical symptoms. O’Sullivan writes that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… for all the shortcomings in the concepts proposed by Freud and Breuer in Studies, the 21st century has brought no great advances to a better understanding of the mechanisms for this disorder. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Publicly acknowledged, at last</h2>
<p>This is acknowledged more publicly now. For example, the neurologist Richard Kanaan in BBC Radio 4’s All In The Mind <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01681ky">states</a> that Freud still “looms quite large in our repertoire of explanations”. In fact, it would be a very small repertoire if you excluded Freud. </p>
<p>Since we can use sophisticated medical testing, we now know that it is not the neurological “hardware” that is damaged, so it must be the “software”, our psychological response to the meaning of trauma, that leads to conversion disorder. </p>
<p>Freud originally studied anatomy and neurology and wrote notable papers, some of which are still considered classics today, such as On Aphasia. But it was the limitations inherent in the brain sciences of his day that led him to develop a more psychological map of the mind. </p>
<p>In a radical departure from the practice of the day, which either paraded hysterical patients around at public demonstrations – as the French neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot did – or treated them as malingerers, Freud sat his patients down and listened attentively to them. After ten years of this practice, Freud came to believe that behind every hysterical symptom, such as convulsions, paralysis, blindness, epilepsy, amnesia or pain, lay a hidden trauma or series of traumas. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194359/original/file-20171113-27607-1443dp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194359/original/file-20171113-27607-1443dp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194359/original/file-20171113-27607-1443dp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194359/original/file-20171113-27607-1443dp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194359/original/file-20171113-27607-1443dp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194359/original/file-20171113-27607-1443dp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194359/original/file-20171113-27607-1443dp8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charcot demonstrating hypnosis on a hysterical patient.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3820726">André Brouillet/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his many case examples, Freud carefully traces these initially hidden traumas. His accounts in Studies On Hysteria would still make exemplary reading for those working with conversion disorder patients today who also deserve to be listened to. </p>
<p>While conversion disorder has attracted suspiciously little academic attention, what research has been done tends to confirm Freud. </p>
<p>In 2016, researchers <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/news/records/2016/July/New-study-examines-Freuds-theory-of-Hysteria.aspx">discovered</a> that patients with conversion disorder had experienced a greater number of stressful life events than other people, and a dramatic increase in these events near to the time when their symptoms began. </p>
<p>This profile fits many of the cases described by Freud in Studies On Hysteria. For example, Katherina’s breathing difficulties and visions of a frightening face staring at her, came on after witnessing her father sexually abuse her cousin. The research also found that in some patients no stressors were identified, but one wonders if this is only because few researchers can replicate Freud’s skillful picking up of clues in his patients’ “free associations”? </p>
<p>Freud’s brilliance was in recognising that disturbing memories don’t just go away. His compassion lives to this day in the method he established for bringing them to light and reducing their negative and sometimes debilitating effects: psychoanalysis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Nicholson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Sigmund Freud understood that mental conflict could become physical disability.
Chris Nicholson, Deputy Head of Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81674
2017-08-04T04:35:08Z
2017-08-04T04:35:08Z
The Goldwater rule prevents psychiatrists diagnosing Trump from afar but some say there’s too much at stake
<p>In the late 19th century, Sigmund Freud’s colleague Wilhelm Fleiss successfully diagnosed an illness in one of Freud’s relatives, without even having met them. Freud was so impressed by Fleiss’s “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Freud-Surgery-Surgeons-Paul-Stepansky/dp/0881632899">diagnostic acumen</a>” that he went on to advocate the method in certain circumstances.</p>
<p>Freud would write that diagnosing someone without personally examining them was acceptable where the features of certain disorders, such as paranoid schizophrenia (then known as <em>dementia paranoides</em>), made the interview process counterproductive. Here, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=0b8m3UKieUcC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=a+written+report+or+a+printed+case+history+can+take+the+place+of+personal+acquaintance+with+the+patient&source=bl&ots=yykz_qKyvr&sig=Ymkhlc59l1hb55TLoZycjQElPxQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidpLCJpbLVAhUBLJQKHeElDtkQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=a%20written%20report%20or%20a%20printed%20case%20history%20can%20take%20the%20place%20of%20personal%20acquaintance%20with%20the%20patient&f=false">Freud noted</a> that “a written report or a printed case history can take the place of personal acquaintance with the patient”.</p>
<p>Now, a controversial debate about the ethics of <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SR5j5BpH2zAC&pg=PT13&lpg=PT13&dq=stepansky+freud&source=bl&ots=Mw_gSYCtVj&sig=IjpCnUaFCtp-Tm4Pb0OXdJ378cQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAgc2n7bTVAhUJS7wKHe8aBEYQ6AEIMzAD#v=onepage&q=%20distance&f=false">diagnosis at a distance</a> or <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/impromptu-man/201608/the-real-story-behind-the-goldwater-rule">long-distance diagnosis</a> has arisen in the US. It has come about as commentators have proposed that President Donald Trump suffers from <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/donald_trump_and_narcissistic_personality_disorder_an_interview_with_sam_vaknin.html">narcissistic personality disorder</a> <a href="https://qz.com/852187/coping-with-chaos-in-the-white-house/">(NPD)</a> and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (<a href="https://medium.com/@geoffpilkington/donald-trump-and-the-mysteries-of-adhd-639ec8ac47b8">ADHD</a>), among other conditions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-appeal-of-narcissistic-leaders-is-also-their-downfall-49398">The appeal of narcissistic leaders is also their downfall</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180652/original/file-20170802-11408-1bh3n42.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud believed diagnosing people without examining them was appropriate in some circumstances.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Sigmund_Freud_1926.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Health professionals have weighed in as well. Psychotherapist and former assistant professor of psychiatry John D. Gartner has been particularly vehement in his <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-27/does-donald-trumps-personality-make-him-dangerous">assessment of the President</a>. Gartner asserts that Trump suffers from malignant narcissism, a specific manifestation of NPD. </p>
<p>According to the DSM-5 — the <a href="http://dsm.psychiatryonline.org/doi/book/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596">authoritative psychiatric manual</a> — this condition is characterised by various “traits of antagonism”, including “manipulativeness, deceitfulness, [and] callousness”. </p>
<p>Notably, the DSM-5 names the condition only once throughout its hundreds of pages; and some <a href="https://ccgt.nl/teksten/malignantnarcissism.pdf">academic psychiatrists</a> say the disorder is understudied and its features largely unsettled, with no treatment yet established. </p>
<p>Despite this, Gartner is <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-27/does-donald-trumps-personality-make-him-dangerous">convinced</a> that the president’s conduct fulfils the criteria of malignant narcissism — even without having interviewed him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’ve seen enough public behaviour by Donald Trump now that we can make this diagnosis indisputably.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recently, the American Psychoanalytic Association (<a href="http://www.apsa.org/">APsaA</a>) issued a <a href="http://www.apsa.org/sites/default/files/Harriet_Associaiton_email_July_6_17.pdf">memo to its more than 3,500 members</a>, advising they were “free to comment about political figures as individuals”, and that the APsaA did not regard “political commentary by its individual members an ethical matter”.</p>
<p>By contrast, the American Psychiatric Association (<a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/">APA</a>) has long maintained a <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2017/03/apa-remains-committed-to-supporting-goldwater-rule">strict ethical stance</a> on the open discussion of public figures’ mental states. Enshrined in the so-called Goldwater rule, the APA’s prescription cautions psychiatrists against diagnosis at a distance. </p>
<p>As former APA President Herbert Sacks <a href="http://psychnews.org/pnews/98-02-20/pres.html">put it</a>, psychiatrists should avoid engaging in “psychobabble”, especially when it comes to politicians. He said that, when “reported by the media”, such diagnostic speculation only “undermines psychiatry as a science”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180500/original/file-20170801-22136-8ewtke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Goldwater rule is named after former Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, who was defeated in the 1964 election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Barry_Goldwater_photo1962_%283x4%29.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the Goldwater rule is not enshrined in Australian law, a <a href="https://www.ranzcp.org/Files/Resources/College_Statements/Practice_Guidelines/code_ethics_2010-pdf.aspx">code of ethics</a> provides guidance to Australian psychiatrists about their conduct in the media.</p>
<h2>What is the Goldwater rule?</h2>
<p>The Goldwater rule is named after an incident involving Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Having been defeated in the 1964 US election, Goldwater sued the editor of the short-lived political magazine “Fact” for defamation. </p>
<p>Just one month before the election, Fact’s front page had printed a controversial declaration: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>1,189 psychiatrists say Goldwater is psychologically unfit to be president!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fact had conducted a broad but clinically invalid survey, providing questionnaires to more than 12,000 psychiatrists whose details the magazine had obtained from the American Medical Association’s membership list. Of the 2,417 responses it received, some 1,189 psychiatrists asserted Goldwater was unfit for office. </p>
<p>In the feature article, Fact purported to <a href="https://readymag.com/flatfile/01-fact/7">quote many of the psychiatrists</a> it had surveyed, and used their words to suggest that Goldwater was a “megalomaniac, paranoid, and grossly psychotic”, and even suffering from “schizophrenia”.</p>
<p>In the trial that followed, Goldwater was awarded some <a href="https://readymag.com/flatfile/01-fact/7">US$75,000 in punitive damages</a> — enough to ensure that Fact never published another issue. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180314/original/file-20170731-728-1gj8ow9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180314/original/file-20170731-728-1gj8ow9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180314/original/file-20170731-728-1gj8ow9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180314/original/file-20170731-728-1gj8ow9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180314/original/file-20170731-728-1gj8ow9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180314/original/file-20170731-728-1gj8ow9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180314/original/file-20170731-728-1gj8ow9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fact magazine’s last issue, and the headline for which Goldwater sued.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy FLAT File magazine at the Herb Lubalin Study Center, New York.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/414/324/84727/">The ruling</a> raised disturbing questions for the APA, threatening not only the reputation of the psychiatric profession, but the future livelihoods of practitioners. In slightly different circumstances, a psychiatrist might face similar civil action, whether “<a href="http://jaapl.org/content/42/4/459">for invasion of privacy or defamation of character</a>”. </p>
<p>In 1973, some four years after the trial, the Goldwater rule was first published in the APA’s <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11643545">professional ethical code</a>. In the <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/ethics">most recent 2013 edition</a>, the rule reads as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On occasion psychiatrists are asked for an opinion about an individual who is in the light of public attention or who has disclosed information about himself/herself through public media. In such circumstances, a psychiatrist may share with the public his or her expertise about psychiatric issues in general. </p>
<p>However, it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The rule in dispute</h2>
<p>Many academic psychiatrists disagree with the rule. Some have suggested that breaking the Goldwater rule is ethical when it’s necessary to diagnose “<a href="https://www.healio.com/psychiatry/journals/psycann/2014-5-44-5/%7B77281d02-cbea-4f24-b5c3-250ec59f772f%7D/this-issue-justification-for-breaking-the-goldwater-rule-mass-murderers-diagnoses">mass murderers</a>” from afar, or when “the importance of the diagnosis of an individual … rise[s] to the level of a national threat”. </p>
<p>Others have <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27236179">criticised the rule</a> more generally, calling it “an excessive organisational response” to “an inflammatory and embarrassing moment for American psychiatry”. And one psychiatrist has recently described <a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blogs/couch-crisis/dealing-american-psychiatrys-gag-rule">the prescription</a> as “American society’s gag rule”.</p>
<p>In February this year, the New York Times published a <a href="http://www.lancedodes.com/new-york-times-letter">letter</a> signed by some 33 psychiatrists who blamed the rule for silencing them at this “critical time”. They wrote that “too much [was] at stake to be silent any longer”, and that Donald Trump’s “emotional instability” had made him “incapable of serving safely as president”.</p>
<p>The tension between the APA and its members, and between the APA and the APsaA, partly reflects the history of the two disciplines. Since the 1940s, psychiatry has increasingly focused on <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2156869313512211">medical interventions</a>, while tending to <a href="http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/1865001">neglect</a> the “in-depth talk therapies” which, despite their <a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psychotherapy/decline-psychotherapy">general decline</a>, remain central to the psychoanalytic method. </p>
<p>But the situation is still more complicated than this. After all, the methods of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts often overlap. In many practices, for instance, psychiatrists employ intuitive reasoning in the diagnostic process. </p>
<p>For some diagnosticians, the so-called “Praecox-Gefühl” or “<a href="http://pb.rcpsych.org/content/25/7/275">praecox feeling</a>” remains at the “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16778451">clinical core</a>” of diagnosing schizophrenia, despite the method’s varied <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20639689">reliability</a>. First described in the 1940s, the praecox feeling is a complex, emotionally charged <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16778451">intuitive sense</a> that a psychiatrist sometimes gets when detecting the subtle symptoms of an emergent psychosis.</p>
<h2>What now for the Goldwater rule?</h2>
<p>That psychoanalysts may wish to distinguish themselves from psychiatrists on the Goldwater rule, and vice versa, is unsurprising. In countless ways — more than can be named here — <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6881395">psychoanalysts and psychiatrists adopt different views</a> of their roles in the diagnostic process. This is the result of their different training backgrounds, histories, and professional cultures. </p>
<p>Less expected, however, is the growing feeling among psychoanalysts and psychiatrists alike, that today, more than ever, the Goldwater rule should be set aside. While neither group may wish to admit it, the Trump era may have brought psychiatrists and psychoanalysts closer together — at least on this point.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81674/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Rudge receives funding from the Australian Research Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.</span></em></p>
There’s a fierce debate about whether it’s ethical for mental health professionals to diagnose politicians they haven’t personally examined.
Christopher Rudge, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81203
2017-08-01T13:15:43Z
2017-08-01T13:15:43Z
Are your parents to blame for your psychological problems?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180535/original/file-20170801-3124-14a5fb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Talk to me about your mother.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-man-psychotherapist-lying-on-couch-630815687?src=OgSi6eNlC2MRQX4MownK6A-1-3">fizkes/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Psychologist Sigmund Freud famously proposed that our personal development is pretty much determined by events in our early childhood. While many of his ideas are now outdated, some modern psychological theories also suggest that childhood experiences <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031912-114423?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed">play an important role</a> in shaping our lives.</p>
<p>But is there really any evidence that difficult childhood experiences can cause common psychological problems such as anxiety or depression later in life? And if that is the case, will blaming our parents for it help us heal?</p>
<p>There’s no doubt that parents and other main caregivers are critical figures in a child’s development. We know that family-related early experiences have profound and long-lasting effects on children – many of which are positive. Adverse childhood experiences, however, can cause harm or distress and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jan.12329/abstract;jsessionid=F55D0092208A8DF2342A184C30C770F0.f03t01">may disrupt</a> the child’s physical and/or psychological development to some extent. Examples of such experiences include poverty, maltreatment, parental divorce or the death of a parent. </p>
<p>These experiences are extremely common worldwide. In England, nearly a half of adults <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4552010/">have gone through at least one</a>. Almost one in ten has experienced four or more such negative experiences in childhood. Studies have found links between specific experiences and various negative outcomes, with effects lasting into adulthood. For example, experiencing parental divorce, separation or loss – or living with a mentally ill carer – increases the risk of developing <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031912-114423?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&">mental health problems</a> across the lifespan. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180531/original/file-20170801-3124-lwj01v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180531/original/file-20170801-3124-lwj01v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180531/original/file-20170801-3124-lwj01v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180531/original/file-20170801-3124-lwj01v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180531/original/file-20170801-3124-lwj01v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180531/original/file-20170801-3124-lwj01v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180531/original/file-20170801-3124-lwj01v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Traumatic experiences are common.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gladskikh Tatiana/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our research group recently <a href="http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(16)32175-9/fulltext">conducted a study</a> showing that parental divorce leads to increased lifelong risk of depression in offspring. For this research, we combined data from 18 studies published in the last 35 years, with more than 24,000 participants in total. The findings demonstrate that those who experienced parental divorce in childhood were 56% more likely to have depression in adulthood than those who didn’t experience divorce.</p>
<p>It is also known that childhood adversities are often interrelated. For example, parental divorce can lead to a change in socioeconomic status for many families. Studies have shown that accumulating adverse circumstances raises the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2966503/">risk of various mental health problems</a> – and <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1334">even suicide</a>. </p>
<h2>Vulnerability versus resilience</h2>
<p>But how can a few traumatic childhood experiences have a lifelong effect? One possible explanation is that exposure to such events increases a person’s vulnerability to the effects of later stressful events. For example, divorce is a difficult experience for most adults – it’s linked with symptoms of anxiety and depression. But people who have also experienced early adversities <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891275/">suffer an even higher risk</a> of developing such conditions as a result of divorce.</p>
<p>But experiencing adversities in childhood doesn’t necessarily make people more vulnerable. Indeed some children never suffer negative consequences even in the face of severe multiple adversities – a trait psychologists call <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-true-that-what-doesnt-kill-us-makes-us-stronger-63376">resilience</a>. In these circumstances, the negative experience strengthens resistance to later stress. Resilient people get to know themselves when they go through tough times – learning how to best manage their behaviour and successfully cope with the stress in the future. </p>
<p>Just how a child reacts to stressful experiences seems to depend on a complex mix of factors that differ between individuals, including their genes, temperament and cognitive ability. Researchers are currently investigating to what extent each of these help determine whether someone develops resilience. We may see results soon. With continuing advances in human genomics, the <a href="http://pr.textrum.com/index.php?art_id=48#.WW0IyIWcHRM">complex interplay</a> between genetic and environmental factors is starting to get uncovered.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180526/original/file-20170801-22841-fti30i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180526/original/file-20170801-22841-fti30i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180526/original/file-20170801-22841-fti30i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180526/original/file-20170801-22841-fti30i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180526/original/file-20170801-22841-fti30i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180526/original/file-20170801-22841-fti30i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180526/original/file-20170801-22841-fti30i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Science is trying to work out how some children develop resilience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elena Efimova/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s important to remember that negative outcomes of childhood traumas are not unavoidable. Even in adulthood, it is still <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691610383494?journalCode=ppsa">not too late to prevent or reverse</a> outcomes – even from severe ones such as physical or emotional abuse and neglect. </p>
<p>Specifically designed selective intervention programmes for those who experience multiple childhood adversities – such as cognitive behavioural therapy or mindfulness training – can be particularly beneficial.</p>
<h2>Blame game</h2>
<p>Many people, however, find it easier to simply blame their parents for their problems. It may seem that finding a root cause for your pain can be helpful – surely it is better to blame your parents than blaming yourself. However, a large study of more than 30,000 participants from 72 countries showed that <a href="http://bit.ly/1VV2CJB">blaming parents does not help</a> people move away from the negative consequences of difficult experiences.</p>
<p>The study found that those who dwelled on negative experiences like abuse, blaming others or themselves, had a greater risk of suffering from mental health problem than those who didn’t. The study therefore suggests that psychological processes such as blaming parents can be more dangerous for mental health than the past experiences themselves.</p>
<p>If we want to overcome the burden from our past and thrive, we need to stop blaming parents and our past, and instead focus on our present and take control of our lives. Positive adult experiences, such as <a href="http://www.alzheimersanddementia.com/article/S1552-5260(07)00004-0/fulltext">regular physical activity</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3159532/">higher education</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921311/">social support</a>, have been shown to improve psychological outcomes – including cognitive function, mental health and well-being. And for severe, persisting mental health problems, seeking help – ranging from talking therapy to medication – could also be a way forward.</p>
<p>So whatever your background, don’t forget it is never too late to enhance your life with positive experiences, moving away from the long shadow of childhood adversities. A bit of work can help you unlock your inner resilience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Psychological defence mechanisms such as blaming parents can be more dangerous for mental health than a traumatic past experience itself.
Darya Gaysina, Lecturer in Psychology, University of Sussex
Ellen Jo Thompson, Psychology PhD Student, University of Sussex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74598
2017-03-24T16:57:22Z
2017-03-24T16:57:22Z
Freud’s divide between psychiatry and neurology is redundant – here’s why
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162364/original/image-20170324-12142-1u3mlvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/587851133?src=MgIeSMPvOlMGirs-suGfIw-1-64&size=medium_jpg">byArtists/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Neurological and psychiatric conditions both involve the brain, but are treated very differently. Put simply, neurologists are trained to deal with the “brain” and psychiatrists to deal with the “mind”. Neurologists and psychiatrists formally parted company in the late 19th century. Ever since the days of Sigmund Freud – who was originally a neurologist but is also the father of psychoanalysis – the way we think about brain disorders has been coloured by this artificial divide. </p>
<p>For example, motor neurone disease is treated as a purely neurological condition. The disease, which causes progressive weakness of the muscles and usually leads to death within three years, is diagnosed by a neurologist who looks for evidence of damage in motor nerves. </p>
<p>Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is considered to be a typical psychiatric condition. People with the condition are usually treated by psychiatrists using a combination of drugs and psychological support. </p>
<p>But science has a way of making us humble. How we understand the world can be completely changed by scientific discoveries. New tools, such as genetics and brain imaging, can suddenly provide the key to a completely new way of thinking about brain disorders such as motor neurone disease and schizophrenia.</p>
<p>First the genetics. We know that some conditions can run in families, suggesting that genes are important. This is true for both schizophrenia and motor neurone disease. </p>
<p>Psychiatrists have been collecting DNA from people with schizophrenia for years and have found quite a few <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-schizophrenia-written-in-our-genes-53903">genes associated with the disorder</a>. Many of these genes control how nerve cells (neurones) talk to one another, either individually at the synapse (the point at which neurones connect), or as groups or networks. So, the genetic evidence for schizophrenia suggests that it is caused in part by changes in brain networking. </p>
<p>At the same time, neurologists have collected DNA from people with motor neurone disease. They have found some genes – but not as many as in schizophrenia – that increase the risk of developing motor neurone disease.</p>
<h2>Shared genes</h2>
<p>Recently, neurologists and psychiatrists have worked together to analyse the combined genetic profiles of almost 13,000 motor neurone disease cases and more than 30,000 schizophrenia cases. They have made the surprising discovery that up to 14% of the genes associated with these two very different conditions are the same. This new research, which was published in <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14774">Nature Communications</a>, tells us that the causes of motor neurone disease and schizophrenia have something important in common. </p>
<p>The clues came from earlier studies performed by researchers at Trinity College Dublin. They studied more than 12,000 relatives from 400 families and found that people with motor neurone disease were nine times more likely than expected to have other family members with schizophrenia. They also found that motor-neurone-disease families were 16 times more likely to have a family member who had <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23836460">committed suicide</a>. Because families share the same DNA, the higher rates of psychiatric disease in family members of people with motor neurone disease suggested that schizophrenia, supposedly a disorder of the mind, might really belong with neurologists instead of psychiatrists.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/209609526" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>New technologies of imaging and brainwave analysis (EEG) have also helped. They tell us that a much larger part of the brain is affected in motor neurone disease than previously thought. This means that motor neurone disease is not just a disorder of individual motor nerves but a disorder of the way these nerve cells talk to one another as part of a larger network. This is just like in schizophrenia, which means that drugs that only work on motor neurones may not be the right approach for people motor neurone disease. Drugs that work on brain networks might be a better way to go, as with schizophrenia. </p>
<p>This link between schizophrenia and motor neurone disease shows that the divide between psychiatry and neurology is artificial. We need to recognise that brain disease has many different forms. The best way to develop new treatments is to understand the biology of what is happening. This will influence how we think about diseases. It will also affect how we train future doctors in both psychiatry and neurology.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s time neurologists invited their colleagues in psychiatry back in. That way, we can have a combined and mutually beneficial approach towards the fascinating study of the 21st-century brain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Orla Hardiman receives funding from Science Foundation Ireland, and the Irish Health Research Board, </span></em></p>
The causes of motor neurone disease and schizophrenia have something important in common.
Orla Hardiman, Professor of Neurology, Trinity College Dublin
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60869
2016-06-22T15:33:00Z
2016-06-22T15:33:00Z
Is psychology really in crisis?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127300/original/image-20160620-8861-ifipj6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I just can't seem to get my replication studies published.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=psychoanalysis&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=314294129">Photographee.eu/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Modern psychology is apparently in <a href="http://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-016-0135-2">crisis</a>. This claim is nothing new. From phrenology to psychoanalysis, psychology has traditionally had an uneasy scientific status. Indeed, the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, viewed Freud’s theories as a typical example of pseudoscience because no test could ever show them to be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability">false</a>. More recently, psychology has feasted on a banquet of extraordinary findings whose scientific credibility has also been questioned. </p>
<p>Some of these extraordinary findings include <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/100/3/407/">Daryl Bem’s experiments</a>, published in 2011, that seem to show future events influence the past. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell University, revealed that people are more likely to remember a list of words if they practise them <em>after</em> a recall test, compared with practising them before the test. In another study, he showed that people are significantly better than chance at selecting which of two curtains hide a pornographic image. </p>
<p>Then there’s Yale’s John Bargh who in 1996 <a href="http://www.yale.edu/acmelab/articles/bargh_chen_burrows_1996.pdf">reported</a> that, when unconsciously primed with an “elderly stereotype” (by unscrambling jumbled sentences containing words such as “Florida” and “bingo”), people subsequently walk more slowly. Add to this Roy Baumeister who in 1998 presented <a href="https://bama.ua.edu/%7Esprentic/672%20Muraven%20%26%20Baumeister%202000.pdf">evidence</a> suggesting we have a finite store of will-power which is sapped whenever we resist temptations such as eating chocolates. Or, in the same year, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1998-01060-003">Ap Dijksterhuis and Ad Van Knippenberg</a> showing that performance on Trivial Pursuit is better after people list typical characteristics of a professor rather than those of a football hooligan. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127306/original/image-20160620-8867-ajehxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127306/original/image-20160620-8867-ajehxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127306/original/image-20160620-8867-ajehxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127306/original/image-20160620-8867-ajehxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127306/original/image-20160620-8867-ajehxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127306/original/image-20160620-8867-ajehxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127306/original/image-20160620-8867-ajehxx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Does thinking about him really make you better at Trivial Pursuit?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=tN3OCDYxnajjaAjIbfrMCA&searchterm=professor&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=330576656">Dragon Images/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These studies are among the <a href="http://digest.bps.org.uk/2014/09/the-10-most-controversial-psychology.html">most controversial</a> in psychology. Not least because other researchers have had difficulty replicating the experiments. These types of studies raise concerns about the methods psychologists use, but also more broadly about psychology itself. </p>
<h2>Do not repeat</h2>
<p>A survey of 1,500 scientists published in <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970?WT.mc_id=SFB_NNEWS_1508_RHBox">Nature</a> last month indicated that 24% of them said they had published a successful replication and 13% published an unsuccessful replication. Contrast this with over a century of psychology publications, where just <a href="http://pps.sagepub.com/content/7/6/537">1%</a> of papers attempted to replicate past findings. </p>
<p><a href="https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2050-7283-1-2">Editors and reviewers</a> have been complicit in a systemic bias that has resulted in high-profile psychology journals becoming storehouses for the strange. Many psychologists are obsessed with the “impact factors” of journals (as are the journals) – and one way to increase impact is to publish curios. Certain high-impact journals have a reputation of publishing curios that never get replicated but which attract lots of attention for the author and journal. By contrast, confirming the findings of others through replication is unattractive, rare and relegated to less prestigious journals. </p>
<p>Despite psychology’s historical abandonment of replication, is the tide turning? This year, a crowd-sourced initiative – the <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716">OSC Reproducibility project</a> – attempted to replicate 100 published findings in psychology. The multinational collaborators replicated just over a third (36%) of the studies. Does this mean that psychological findings are unreliable? </p>
<p>Replication projects are selective, targeting studies that are cheaper and less technically complicated to replicate or those that are simply unbelievable. Other projects such as “<a href="http://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/full/10.1027/1864-9335/a000178">Many Labs</a>” have reported a replication rate of 77%. All initiatives are non-random and headline replication rates reflect the studies that are sampled. Even if a random sample of studies were examined, we don’t know what would constitute an acceptable replication rate in psychology. This is not an issue specific to psychology. As John Ioannidis noted: “<a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124">most published research findings are false”</a>“. After all, scientific hypotheses are our current best guesses about phenomena, not a simple accumulation of truths. </p>
<h2>Questionable research practices</h2>
<p>The frustration of many psychologists is palpable because it seems so easy to publish evidence consistent with almost any hypothesis. A likely cause of both unusual findings and non-replicability is psychologists indulging in questionable research practices (QRPs). </p>
<p>In 2012, a <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/MeasPrevalQuestTruthTelling.pdf">survey of 2,000 American psychologists</a> found that most indulged in QRPs. Some 67% admitted selectively reporting studies that "worked”, while 74% failed to report all measures they had used. The survey also found that 71% continued to collect data until a significant result was obtained and 54% reported unexpected findings as if they were expected. And 58% excluded data after analyses. Astonishingly, more than one-third admitted they had doubts about the integrity of their own research on at least one occasion and 1.7% admitted to having faked their data. </p>
<p>The problems associated with modern psychology are longstanding and cultural, with researchers, reviewers, editors, journals and news-media all prioritising and benefiting from the quest for novelty. This systemic bias, coupled with minimal agreement on fundamental principles in certain areas of psychology, means questionable research practices can flourish – consciously or unconsciously. Large-scale replication projects will not address the cultural problems and may even exacerbate them by presenting replication as something special that we use to target the unbelievable. Replication – whether judged as failed or successful – is a fundamental aspect of normal science and needs to be both more common and more valued by psychologists and psychology journals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60869/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Laws does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Only 1% of published psychology research papers are ever repeated. If psychologists want their discipline to be taken seriously, they’ll need to get their house in order.
Keith Laws, Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychology, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49551
2015-10-26T15:36:35Z
2015-10-26T15:36:35Z
Forensic analysis of skin dust from Freud’s couch leaves much to be desired
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99513/original/image-20151023-27592-7uodxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Trace fiber from Freud's couch under crossed polars with Quartz wedge compensator (#1), 2015, unique jacquard woven tapestry, 2.9m x 2m.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the middle of a rose garden, on a leafy road in northwest London, nestles the <a href="http://www.freud.org.uk/">Freud Museum</a> – though the petals, in October, are tumbling. The house, at 20 Maresfield Gardens, is the proud bearer of two blue plaques that adorn its frontage like war-medals: one for Sigmund Freud, and one for his daughter, Anna. Both lived at the house until their deaths in 1939 and 1982, respectively.</p>
<p>Inside, Freud’s study has been preserved intact. Everything that he owned in Vienna – prior to fleeing Nazi persecution in 1938 – was carefully imported and reassembled so that he could continue his work unabated: his books, his archaeological artefacts, his leather chair that so curiously and uncannily resembles a human form – and, of course, his famous couch.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99516/original/image-20151023-27612-gcjoqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Freud’s couch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Broomberg and Chanarin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the next few weeks, however, that couch is covered by a blanket. “Every Piece of Dust on Freud’s Couch” is an installation in Freud’s study by artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Commissioned by the Freud Museum, it runs until the end of November. </p>
<p>At one end of the room, a carousel slide projector noisily rotates a series of monochrome slides. At the other end, a blanket covers Freud’s couch. The slides – highly magnified images of fibres – are the product of a forensic team’s investigation into the dust from the rug on Freud’s couch. The dust itself, a handout informs us, is largely keratin; in other words, skin. The blanket on the couch – which initially I had taken for something left there by accident – is actually a tapestry: the woven image of a highly-magnified fibre from that couch.</p>
<h2>Freudian dust</h2>
<p>This is not the first piece of art to be generated from Freudian dust. In 1996, Cornelia Parker created a piece called “<a href="http://workflow.arts.ac.uk/view/artefact.php?artefact=861790&view=98786&block=901687">Exhaled Blanket</a>” – a slide projection of dust and fibres also collected from Freud’s couch. The academic in me cries out for a reference.</p>
<p>According to the artists, this “exercise in forensics aspires to the language of science and, like psychoanalysis, it attempts something contradictory; the objective study of subjectivity”. I’m not sure there’s anything contradictory about the aim stated, but it’s true that Freud’s great project was to legitimise psychoanalysis as a “science”. Viewed in this light, the attempt to frame the physical traces of Freud’s sitters within a forensic, scientific context, has validity.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99521/original/image-20151023-27631-16mh6e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud, 1922.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But so many questions are left unasked.</p>
<p>We are told that the dust “may include traces” of some of Freud’s most famous cases. But of course we don’t know whether the dust thus magnified is actually that of, say, <a href="http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Dora:_An_Analysis_of_a_Case_of_Hysteria">Dora</a> or the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/464701?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Wolf Man</a>, or belongs to someone or something else entirely. We are not told whether the forensic team was able to discover anything beyond being able to identify any given fibre as “cushion” or “feather”. And so the claim that the tapestry is “an abstracted portrait of one of its sitters” does not quite ring true. And although we are told that most of the dust on the couch is composed of skin, the magnified slide images are not skin: rather each slide is labelled: Cushion, Feather, Hair, Coat, Rug.</p>
<p>I could fairly be accused of pedantry for picking on such details. But if we are aspiring to the language of science, then detail is key. Minor inaccuracies, such as stating that Freud’s final years were spent in London, grate. In fact, Freud spent only 15 months in London, 12 of which were at the house in Maresfield Gardens where he died in September 1939, just weeks after the start of World War II.</p>
<p>This pedant will further admit to disliking the tired trend that insists artworks be accompanied by explanatory – yet inadequate (and inaccurate) – prose. But in the context of Freudian psychoanalysis, the misfit is even more pronounced.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99518/original/image-20151023-27580-1nl4c98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99518/original/image-20151023-27580-1nl4c98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99518/original/image-20151023-27580-1nl4c98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99518/original/image-20151023-27580-1nl4c98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99518/original/image-20151023-27580-1nl4c98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99518/original/image-20151023-27580-1nl4c98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99518/original/image-20151023-27580-1nl4c98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forensic art.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Broomberg and Chanarin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Searching for meaning</h2>
<p>Psychoanalysis seeks for meaning beneath the surface. Bloomberg and Chanarin’s work overlays meaning clumsily on the surface, obscuring what lies beneath. This “blanketing” is made manifest – unconsciously, one must presume – by the gaudy tapestry overlaying the couch. I suppose one could make the argument that Freud himself, and certainly many of his followers, did precisely as the artists here have done: superimpose their own impenetrable and subjective meaning over their complex subjects like a dense and opaque blanket.</p>
<p>Alone in an upstairs room, the actual rug from Freud’s couch is still on display. Covered in dust, it somehow has the moribund air of a viewed corpse prior to a funeral. Perhaps more so knowing that the dust covering it is largely composed of human skin.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to know to whom those human fragments belonged, just as if they were specks of ash, cremations. To know that Freud’s life and death in this house came so swiftly on the heels of war, and in the context of Nazi persecution, adds a sobering dimension to the fragments of human skin on the couch. The shadow of the Holocaust looms large.</p>
<p>This was not perhaps the meaning the artists intended, but it was the one I took away with me, into that London street, amongst the dropping October rose petals; through memory, association, and a series of unconscious displacements.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In the middle of a rose garden, on a leafy road in northwest London, nestles the Freud Museum – though the petals, in October, are tumbling. The house, at 20 Maresfield Gardens, is the proud bearer of…
Victoria Anderson, Visiting Researcher in Cultural Studies, Cardiff University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/45889
2015-08-12T06:27:32Z
2015-08-12T06:27:32Z
Unravelling the mysteries of sleep: how the brain ‘sees’ dreams
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91554/original/image-20150812-18101-th7lih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dreams and their purpose have been one of the enduring mysteries of sleep.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/sahlameche/10605814016/">diastème (Sarah Giboni)/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We’ve known for some time that our eyes move around during the dreaming phase of sleep, much like when we’re awake and looking at a visual scene. The phase of sleep is called rapid eye movement sleep, or REM sleep. </p>
<p>New research, <a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150811/ncomms8884/full/ncomms8884.html">published today</a> in the journal Nature Communications, shows brain activity during the dreaming phase of sleep is remarkably similar to brain activity when we’re awake and processing new visual images, suggesting the brain “sees” dreams. </p>
<p>While researchers have suspected this may be the case, it’s the first time investigators have been able to record brain activity from <em>within</em> the brain. </p>
<h2>A quick history of dream research</h2>
<p>Dreams and their purpose have been one of the enduring mysteries of sleep. Early dream theorists, such as <a href="http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Freud/Dreams/dreams.pdf">Sigmund Freud</a>, argued that the function of dreaming was to preserve sleep by expressing unfulfilled desires or wishes in the unconscious state. </p>
<p>More recently, researchers have investigated the function and processes of sleep and dreams by measuring the physiological signals that characterise this state of consciousness. </p>
<p>Just over 60 years ago, American sleep researcher Eugene Aserinsky stumbled across rapid eye movements during sleep almost accidentally, during an overnight sleep study recording of his eight-year-old son. His seminal 1953 paper <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/118/3062/273.extract">reported</a> “rapid, jerky and binocularly symmetrical” eye movements during periods of sleep. </p>
<p>These eye movements were also associated with increased brain activity, thus discounting the idea that sleep is a completely passive phenomenon. During REM sleep, our brains are active and behave similarly to wakefulness or light sleep. But muscle activity is suppressed so we can’t physically carry out our dreams. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://wardakhan.org/notes/Original%20Studies/Physiological%20Psychology/William-Dement-and-Nathaniel-Kleitman.pdf">pioneering 1957 paper</a>, American researchers William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman examined the relationship between eye movements and dream content. They woke participants during REM sleep and asked them to describe their dream. The researchers then looked at how their dream description related to the type of eye movements they were experiencing at the time (vertical, horizontal, or a mix of both). </p>
<p>Participants who were woken after a series of vertical movements reported “climbing up a ladder”, and “standing at the bottom of the cliff operating a hoist and looking up at climbers”, whereas one participant who was woken after horizontal eye movements reported dreaming about “two people throwing tomatoes at each other”. In contrast, those who had mixed eye movements tended to be watching people close to them with no description of distance or vertical vision. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91557/original/image-20150812-18068-1cfvfcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91557/original/image-20150812-18068-1cfvfcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91557/original/image-20150812-18068-1cfvfcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91557/original/image-20150812-18068-1cfvfcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91557/original/image-20150812-18068-1cfvfcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91557/original/image-20150812-18068-1cfvfcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91557/original/image-20150812-18068-1cfvfcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When climbing, dreamers’ eyes move vertically.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dahlstroms/5550750490/">Håkan Dahlström/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since this study, the evidence for this association between the REMs and dream content is not consistent. Individuals who have been blind from birth, for instance, have REMs but no visual dream content. </p>
<p>But in support of Dement’s finding, a <a href="http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/133/6/1737.short">recent study</a> in patients with REM behaviour disorder (where people act out their dreams due to a lack of muscle paralysis), found a strong association between goal-oriented limb and head action and eye gaze direction during REM sleep.</p>
<h2>Brain activity during sleep</h2>
<p>In everyday life, when we see things, our eyes and brain behave in characteristic ways to gather and process the information in our visual field and give it meaning. But the function of eye movements during sleep and dreaming are relatively unknown. Today’s <a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150811/ncomms8884/full/ncomms8884.html">Nature Communication paper</a> provides some insights. </p>
<p>Usually, brain activity is measured non-invasively from the scalp. But the investigators, from Tel Aviv University, recorded the activity of the brain, from <em>within</em> the brain, in patients with epilepsy. </p>
<p>Patients whose epilepsy cannot be controlled with medication have electrodes surgically placed within the brain as a clinical means to map their epileptic activity, and assess suitability for surgery as a treatment. These electrodes were implanted in the medial temporal lobe – a region that is associated with visual awareness. </p>
<p>Researchers compared brain activity of these patients across three settings: REM sleep brain activity, wakeful eye movements in darkness (no visual processing) and wakeful fixed-gaze visual processing (no eye movements). They wanted to test whether brain behaviour during sleep was more closely related to physical movement, or the processing of visual information. </p>
<p>Results showed that during rapid eye movements in sleep, the brain activity was more closely related to the brain activity during visual processing during wakefulness (without movement) than physical movements of the eyes in darkness where no visual processing was taking place. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91558/original/image-20150812-18080-1curnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91558/original/image-20150812-18080-1curnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91558/original/image-20150812-18080-1curnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91558/original/image-20150812-18080-1curnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91558/original/image-20150812-18080-1curnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91558/original/image-20150812-18080-1curnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91558/original/image-20150812-18080-1curnsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eye movements suggest dreamers’ brains were processing images rather than trying to move .</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/77682540@N00/3408864901/">Ali T/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These results suggest that the rapid eye movements that occur in sleep are linked to visual processing rather than just physical activation or movement. So, the participants may have actually been looking at a dream image, rather than these eye movements simply reflecting motor discharge in the brain. </p>
<p>While much remains unknown, this detailed processing of our dream images suggests that rapid eye movements may actually modulate our brain activity during sleep. We know that sleep is needed for rest and rejuvenation, but it’s likely to have other important functions as well. </p>
<p>In line with the earliest of theories about why we dream, are we processing content that has been consciously or unconsciously avoided during wakefulness, but somehow “needs” to be dealt with at least during sleep to maintain our psychological well-being? </p>
<p>Are the eye movements a simple byproduct of the visual processing that occurs of the images we dream? </p>
<p>Is there a psychological basis to why we need to process these images during sleep, and does this lend to better psychological outcomes in a similar way to sleep aiding physical functioning? </p>
<p>These and many questions drive the ongoing research into why we sleep, and what its precise benefits are.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melinda Jackson receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Defence Health Foundation and the Institute for Breathing and Sleep. She is affiliated with the Institute for Breathing and Sleep, and The University of Melbourne.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Schembri has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. </span></em></p>
Brain activity during the dreaming phase of sleep is remarkably similar to brain activity when we’re awake and processing new visual images, new research shows.
Melinda Jackson, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Health Sciences, RMIT University
Rachel Schembri, Post-doctoral research fellow, School of Health Sciences, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43709
2015-06-29T20:07:17Z
2015-06-29T20:07:17Z
Happiness is an illusion, here’s why you should seek contentment instead
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86670/original/image-20150629-9096-sptwtf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Feeling content means having a deep-seated, abiding acceptance of oneself and one’s worth, together with a sense of self-fulfilment, meaning and purpose. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/_theo_/4484245088/">James Theophane/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of a series, <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/on-happiness">On Happiness</a>, examining what it means and how it might be achieved in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I want to share a personal view of what it is to be happy and how it differs from feeling content. Let me begin with a clinical story. </p>
<p>They met at a party; it was love at first sight just like one reads about in romantic novels. They married following an exhilarating courtship, and since they shared an eagerness to raise a family, Jennifer soon announced the joyful news of her pregnancy. They called their baby Annie after Adam’s late mother. </p>
<p>They felt blessed; every moment since their first encounter had been nothing but pleasurable. Everyone who knew them concurred that their lives as a couple had been replete with happiness. </p>
<p>Tragically, it was not to endure. Their first setback occurred only days after Annie’s birth. She was sleeping fitfully and her colic stubbornly persisted. Jennifer felt utterly demoralised as a new mother. Her mounting sense of guilt and melancholy led to her admission to a psychiatric ward (her first ever encounter with psychiatry); the fear of her harming Annie or herself spread through the family and circle of friends. </p>
<p>And then, quite shockingly, despite the most diligent medical and nursing care, Jennifer met her death after jumping off a second floor balcony. Her family and friends plunged into deep grief; the medical professionals who had looked after her were similarly bereft.</p>
<h2>An elusive goal</h2>
<p>Having worked as a psychiatrist for over four decades and got to know dozens of men, women, and children of diverse backgrounds and with unique life stories, I have witnessed many a sad narrative, although suicide has mercifully been a rare event. </p>
<p>These experiences, in tandem with a lifelong fascination with what makes people tick, have led me most reluctantly to the judgement that while we may savour happiness episodically, it will invariably be disrupted by unwelcome negative feelings. Still, most of humankind will continue to harbour the expectation of living happily and remain oblivious that this wishful fantasy is an unconscious way of warding off the threat of psychic pain. </p>
<p>Rather than confront and demoralise those who have sought my help, I have gently but honestly responded to their plaintive yearning (“all I want is just to be happy”), by highlighting an inherent human sentiment. Namely that clinging to the fiction of being able to avoid suffering and enjoying a continuing state of pleasure is tantamount to self-deception. </p>
<p>I have offered them the hope – but not a guarantee – that they have the potential to lead a more fulfilling life than hitherto by participating in a challenging, and at times even distressing process of self-exploration whose purpose is to enhance self understanding and acceptance of the reality-bound emotional state I call contentment.</p>
<p>You may retort: “But you treat people who are miserable, pessimistic and self-deprecating, surely you must be hopelessly biased.” I would readily understand your reaction but suggest that all of us, not just those in treatment, crave happiness and are repeatedly frustrated by its elusiveness. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86668/original/image-20150629-9081-9ihrgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Most of humankind continues to harbour the expectation of living happily and remains oblivious that this wishful fantasy is an unconscious way of warding off the threat of psychic pain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha/5129669316/">Kate Ter Haar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the father of psychoanalysis <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud">Sigmund Freud</a> emphasised in his 1930 essay, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents">Civilization and Its Discontents</a>, we are much more vulnerable to unhappiness than its opposite. That’s because we are constantly threatened by three forces: the fragility of our physical self, “doomed” by ageing and disease; the external world, with its potential to destroy us (through floods, fires, storms and earthquakes, for example); and our unpredictably complicated relationships with other people (regarded by Freud as the most painful source of unhappiness).</p>
<p>So, am I simply a misanthrope? I hope not but I am inclined to agree with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbert_Hubbard">Elbert Hubbard</a>, the American artist and philosopher, who said, “Life is just one damn thing after another”. </p>
<p>We only have to think about the 50 million people who are currently displaced and unlikely to find a secure haven anytime soon, or the 2.2 billion people – including millions of children – <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview">who live on less than US$2 a day</a> to appreciate the validity of that remark. </p>
<h2>A better option</h2>
<p>Given the formidable obstacles to chasing after happiness or promoting its sustainability if we are lucky enough to come by it, what options do human beings have? I have not come across any meaningful approach to this question, even from the <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9744812-flourish">unswervingly confident proponents</a> of the contemporary school of positive psychology.</p>
<p>So, I espouse the following: given that we have the means to distinguish between happiness and contentment, we can examine how they differ and, in so doing, identify an alternative to the futile pursuit of happiness. </p>
<p>Happiness, derived from the Norse word <em>hap</em>, means luck or chance; the phrase happy-go-lucky illustrates the association. Many Indo-European languages similarly conflate the feeling of happiness and luck. <em>Glück</em> in German, for instance, can be translated as either happiness or chance, while <em>eftihia</em>, the Greek word for happiness, is derived from <em>ef</em>, meaning good, and <em>tixi</em>, luck or chance. </p>
<p>Thus, a mother may have the good fortune to feel ecstatic when responding to her infant’s playfulness, only to see it evaporate a couple of years later and be replaced by the initial features of autism. In the story we started this article with, Jennifer may have persevered had her baby slept peacefully and not been assailed by colicky pain in her first few weeks of life.</p>
<p>Contentment is derived from the Latin <em>contentus</em> and usually translated as satisfied. No multiple meanings here to confuse us. In my view, feeling content refers to a deep-seated, abiding acceptance of one’s self and one’s worth together with a sense of self-fulfilment, meaning and purpose. </p>
<p>And, most critically, these assets are valued and nurtured whatever the circumstances, or even especially when they are distressing or depressing. </p>
<p>I have had the privilege of knowing men and women who suffered grievously as children in the ghettoes and concentration camps of Nazi Europe but emerged from their nightmare to face the challenge of seeking strengths, emotional and spiritual, within themselves. With the passage of time, many succeeded in achieving a sense of deep-seated contentment. </p>
<p>What these survivors have clearly demonstrated is that accepting and respecting oneself, coupled with determining what is personally meaningful, stand a greater chance of accomplishment, even if never completed, than a relentless and ultimately futile pursuit of happiness. What’s more, contentment has the potential to serve as a robust foundation upon which episodes of joy and pleasure can be experienced and cherished.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sidney Bloch supports GetUp.</span></em></p>
Happiness might seem like a worthy goal but it will invariably be disrupted by unwelcome negative feelings. Far better to seek contentment, which can serve as a foundation for both joy and pleasure.
Sidney Bloch, Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/32732
2014-11-10T03:29:50Z
2014-11-10T03:29:50Z
Health Check: clash of the orgasms, clitoral vs vaginal
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63801/original/fh96gn5q-1415234225.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most women are just happy to have an orgasm, any old way. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ares_tavolazzi/6076535631">Ares Tavolazzi/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Controversy over vaginal versus clitoral orgasm is nothing new; it’s a debate that has consumed sexologists and psychoanalysts for the last 100 years. Now, new research has added fresh fuel to the controversy.</p>
<p>Completed by a team of Italian sexologists and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ca.22471/abstract">published in the journal Clinical Anatomy</a>, the review concludes vaginal orgasms don’t exist. Female orgasm is only possible if the clitoris is stimulated during masturbation, cunnilingus, partner masturbation or with a finger during intercourse, the researchers say. Penetration alone is not enough.</p>
<p>This latest swing of the pendulum – from the view that vaginal orgasm is the ideal that women should aspire to and anything else is second rate – is unlikely to actually affect women. Indeed, one of the more interesting threads in this whole debate is the predominance of men’s voices. Perhaps what we should be talking about is why male experts dictate the parameters of women’s pleasure.</p>
<h2>Frigidity and failure</h2>
<p>Sigmund Freud was one of the first to investigate the “dark continent” of female sexuality. He declared the clitoral orgasm “<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S115813600900173X">infantile and immature</a>”. A woman could claim sexual maturity only when she experienced a vaginal orgasm, he said, ignoring her “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3178545?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104884418903">amputated penis</a>”, the clitoris. </p>
<p>Inability to achieve vaginal orgasm meant a woman was “frigid” or “not a real woman”, claimed Freud and many of his followers. This failure was attributed to deep-rooted <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224497009550680?journalCode=hjsr20#.VDg_4fnqojI">neurotic problems</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63803/original/fygfbggz-1415234628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63803/original/fygfbggz-1415234628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63803/original/fygfbggz-1415234628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63803/original/fygfbggz-1415234628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63803/original/fygfbggz-1415234628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63803/original/fygfbggz-1415234628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63803/original/fygfbggz-1415234628.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1061&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sigmund Freud declared the clitoral orgasm ‘infantile and immature’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sigmund_Freud_LIFE.jpg">Max Halberstadt/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The pressure was on. To be “normal” and “mature”, women had to orgasm during sexual intercourse. And successive generations were diagnosed with sexual dysfunction when they failed to achieve this holy grail of sexual response. Many felt like failures; their bodies had let them down. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24939172">faking orgasms</a> during intercourse became the norm. No one wants her partner to think she is failing to be a “real woman”. </p>
<h2>Celebrating the clitoral orgasm</h2>
<p>Then US sexologists <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Human-Sexual-Response-William-Masters/dp/0923891218">William Masters and Virginia Johnson</a> came along. Observing couples having sex in the laboratory in the 1960s, they concluded women’s orgasms started in the clitoris and then extended to the vagina. </p>
<p>Any pleasure women experienced through penetration was due to the connection between clitoris and vagina. They reported “frigidity” as resulting from poor sexual technique, not women’s ambivalence about their social role. And that women were capable of multiple orgasm, while men were not. </p>
<p>Feminists in the 1960s took up this research with glee, declaring the clitoral orgasm the mark of a <a href="http://ws301spring2008.wikispaces.com/file/view/Myth+of+the+Vaginal+Orgasm.pdf">liberated woman</a>. Some went further, arguing women should eschew <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3178545?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104884418903">penile penetration</a> altogether. Now a symbol of women’s oppression, it was unnecessary for sexual pleasure. </p>
<p>The feminist argument went mainstream when Shere Hite appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1987. She had <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Hite_Report.html?id=s3OZaVn2wfkC">interviewed 1,844 American women</a> and declared the “true” female orgasm was clitoral. The female sexual revolution seemed to have been won with women speaking for their own sexual pleasure. </p>
<h2>Phallocentric backlash</h2>
<p>Then came the inevitable backlash. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of sex research attempting to establish the superiority of the vaginal orgasm, and the role of the penis in producing it. </p>
<p>In echoes of Freud, we are told the vaginal orgasm is the only way for women to achieve sexual, life and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19453891">relationship satisfaction</a>, as well as good <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681990601059669?journalCode=csmt20#.VDhAVPnqojI">psychological health</a>. </p>
<p>Women who don’t have vaginal orgasms are described as <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18331253">emotionally unstable</a>, with <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18331263">immature defence mechanisms</a> and low <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19453897">emotional intelligence</a>. Apparently, you can even identify a woman who has a history of vaginal orgasm <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18637995">by her walk</a> – it is that central to her very being.</p>
<p>So what causes a vaginal orgasm, according to these researchers? Not stimulation of the clitoris during intercourse. Rather, a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23006745">long penis</a>, which allegedly gives an evolutionary advantage to well-endowed men. Or <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19170844">long-lasting intercourse</a>, which we are told is much better than “foreplay”, with <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21143422">simultaneous orgasm</a> during intercourse being the best of all.</p>
<p>Would it surprise you if I told you this phallocentric research is all conducted by men? Would their interest in the vaginal orgasm possibly have something to do with maintaining the primacy of the penis? </p>
<p>After all, the implications of the clitoral orgasm are grave for heterosexual men. Women can pleasure themselves (or be pleasured by each other) as effectively as they can be pleasured by a man if the penis is superfluous to their ability to orgasm. A man’s <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ca.22471/abstract">fingers become more important</a>, or <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hive-mind/201312/the-myth-the-myth-the-vaginal-orgasm">his smell</a>, which some heterosexual women rate more highly than penis size. </p>
<h2>A woman’s perspective</h2>
<p>From a woman’s perspective, this whole debate is a little irrelevant. </p>
<p>Some women enjoy vaginal <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26831991_The_downside_of_Viagra_women%27s_experiences_and_concerns">penetration</a> – with penis or fingers – and gain considerable sexual pleasure as a result. Other women prefer to be <a href="http://gero.usc.edu/AgeWorks/fall_session2012/tdl/gero500/readings/Week7.pdf">touched</a>, use a vibrator, or receive oral sex. A lucky few have orgasms <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/803147">in their sleep</a>, in the absence of any physical stimulation. And some prefer to have a <a href="http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/16536/1/Hayfield%20%2B%20Clarke%20Cup%20of%20Tea%20UWE%20research%20repository.pdf">cup of tea</a>.</p>
<p>To imply that all women are the same, that we <em>should</em> have any sort of orgasm and are dysfunctional if we don’t, is the most damaging part of this controversy. </p>
<p>Regardless of how orgasm is achieved, it is, by definition, an extremely pleasurable experience. And no woman I know would rate one form of orgasm as more “mature” than another. Most would just be happy to have one, any old way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32732/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Ussher receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Cancer Council NSW, Family Planning NSW, Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, and the Community Migrant Resource Centre, for research on sexuality.</span></em></p>
Controversy over vaginal versus clitoral orgasm is nothing new; it’s a debate that has consumed sexologists and psychoanalysts for the last 100 years. Now, new research has added fresh fuel to the controversy…
Jane Ussher, Professor of Women's Health Psychology, Translational Health Research Institute (THRI), Western Sydney University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/10732
2013-01-23T19:31:52Z
2013-01-23T19:31:52Z
The science of interpreting common symbols in dreams
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19494/original/q9d6237t-1358904842.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many cultures believe that dreams tell the future, and the messages in our dreams are warnings.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gisela Giardino</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Research shows that everyone, even those who claim they never dream, actually do. But few of us can make any sense of our dreams. My colleagues and I have been working on a way to try to make sense of dreams so they can be used as therapy.</p>
<p>Why we dream is still a mystery even though cultures the world over have believed they had the answer. Many believe that dreams tell the future, and the messages in our dreams are warnings.</p>
<p>Depressives are known to experience prolonged periods of rapid eye movement sleep, which is directly linked with unconscious emotional processing and dreaming. So it’s possible that the symbols in dreams will give therapists an understanding and a solution to depression.</p>
<p>Sigmund Freud thought that dreams indicated sexual problems, but since the subconscious mind had our best interest at heart, it disguised the abruptness of the message. Freud believed that if the analyst interpreted the dream for the neurotic patient, the patient’s psychological problem would be resolved. </p>
<p>Carl Jung disputed Freud’s theory and argued that dreams serve a compensatory function – if we are too one-sided in our conscious outlook, the dream warns us of the inherent danger in our thought and behaviour so we may modify them.</p>
<p>Perhaps these great minds were partly right in their theories, with both theorists seeing only part of the problem, so that the theories are only right in certain situations. This state of affairs can have dire consequences for a client receiving psychotherapy if it turns out that she is being misled.</p>
<p>Modern mental health professionals want to work with evidence-based theories. To get psychotherapy to the point where it’s efficient and reliable requires empirical work that allows researchers to accurately gauge true effects from false ones. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=152%2C85%2C938%2C1578&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=152%2C85%2C938%2C1578&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/19485/original/v7bt6j6d-1358900343.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lance Storm</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A group of <a href="http://psychology.tamu.edu/Faculty/Rosen">US researchers</a> realised there was a strong subjective component to dream interpretation and, with the aim of establishing a more objective approach to it, they collaborated with a team of academics trained in psychotherapy who also had expert backgrounds in mythology, comparative religion and art history. </p>
<p>Together, they compiled a set of common dream symbols with their corresponding meaning words. These meaning words work as interpretations of dream symbols, and psychotherapists specialising in dream interpretation might find them useful in clinical practice. </p>
<p>Some of the more common symbols were inanimate (non-living) things such as the sun (masculine), the moon (feminine), comet (evil), and stairs (ascent). Included animals were dog (valour), snake (healing), butterfly (soul), dove (spirit), fish (transformation), and bull (power). The set of symbols also entailed concepts such as square (earth), and the numbers seven (completion) and eight (perfection).</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/stevesmith/SmithMemory/Rosen_et_al_1991.pdf">researchers confirmed</a> that very few people were able to assign a symbolic interpretation to dream symbols. More importantly, they found that people were very good at remembering a symbol or meaning-word association but only if the meaning word had a good descriptive similarity to the symbol.</p>
<p>My colleague and I <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19409052.2012.685662">followed up that research</a> using samples of mostly university students. We also made some additions and changes to the original experimental design, which included testing groups of people from different countries, ethnic, and educational backgrounds in order to show that the effects were the same for everyone.</p>
<p>We tested the strength of the symbol and word associations in three different ways, and replicated the US findings in each case. </p>
<p>In a simple memory test, where participants were first allowed to see the symbols matched with their correct meaning words, and later had to recall the words when only the symbols were shown, we again replicated the original findings. We found that participants’ average recall rate was an impressive 66%, and in some cases reached into the high 90% range. </p>
<p>We think the recall rates indicate how strong the symbol and meaning-word associations are, and the stronger the recall rate, the more reliable and accurate the associations must be. While the associations may be useful in the clinical setting, more work needs to be done before mental health professionals have a workable system for practical use. That’s because dreaming is a complex experience, and many symbols will need to be tested. </p>
<p>We also need to understand the inter-relationships and interactions that can exist between symbols, and work needs to be done on the narrative structure of dreams. But dream analysis could, in the near future, be useful in the treatment of depression. </p>
<p><em>If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner or in Australia, contact <a href="http://www.lifeline.org.au/">Lifeline</a> 13 11 14 for support, <a href="http://beyondblue.org.au/index.aspx?">beyondblue</a> 1300 22 4636 or <a href="http://www.sane.org/">SANE Australia</a> for information.</em></p>
<p><strong>This is the fourth article in our short series on depression. Click on the links below to read the other articles:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part one –</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-depression-11447">Explainer: what is depression?</a> </p>
<p><strong>Part two –</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/treating-depression-ethically-requires-more-than-drugs-8997">Treating depression ethically requires more than drugs</a></p>
<p><strong>Part three –</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/predicting-the-risk-of-depressive-disorder-promises-and-pitfalls-1097">Predicting the risk of depressive disorder – promises and pitfalls</a></p>
<p><strong>Part five –</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/genetic-testing-for-depression-creates-an-ethical-minefield-7644">Genetic testing for depression creates an ethical minefield</a></p>
<p><strong>Part six –</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-antidepressants-over-prescribed-in-australia-11788">Are antidepressants over-prescribed in Australia?</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10732/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lance Storm does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Research shows that everyone, even those who claim they never dream, actually do. But few of us can make any sense of our dreams. My colleagues and I have been working on a way to try to make sense of…
Lance Storm, Visiting Research Fellow in Anomalistic Psychology, and Personality and Individual Differences, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/9618
2012-11-14T03:37:58Z
2012-11-14T03:37:58Z
Explainer: what is dreaming?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15551/original/4bph2hvb-1347858874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Something's going on behind your eyes … but what is it, and why does it happen?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rubén Chase</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For most of human history, dreaming has been seen as a second “reality” in which altered forms of perception provide insights into ourselves and others, our fears, fantasies and motivations or even the future. </p>
<p>What <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/">Freud</a> referred to as the “<a href="http://apsa.org/About_Psychoanalysis/Interpretation_of_Dreams.aspx">royal road to the unconscious</a>” served as a source of wonderment and prophecy. So what do we think about it now?</p>
<p>What is dreaming? What does science say? And what mysteries remain?</p>
<p>In the developed world, the cultural importance of dreaming has diminished significantly over the last 100 years. In part, this reflects the increasing dominance of science in the way we understand human experience.</p>
<p>With the rise of <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/neuroscience">neuroscience</a> and <a href="http://www.simplypsychology.org/science-psychology.html">empirical psychologies</a>, the dream has become increasingly irrelevant to our current understanding of brain function. </p>
<p>Ironically, the initial shift to a modernist interpretation of dreams started with Freud, their modern champion.</p>
<h2>A spiritual vehicle</h2>
<p>Animist cultures such as in <a href="http://suite101.com/article/ancient-animism-in-shinto-a190242">Shintoism</a> and <a href="http://www.indianlegend.com/">Native American</a> spirituality often used dreams to partition the mundane aspects of our lives from the spiritual. </p>
<p>The dream was a vehicle on which they could access the animal “spirits” often associated with the totemic affiliations and custodianship required by tribe or family group.</p>
<p>In theist cultures, which believe in one or more gods, the dream was more likely to be viewed as a form of divination and a medium through which god(s) could, albeit symbolically, communicate their knowledge of culture, purpose or the future.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17591/original/vpgwtq9w-1352852465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nhoj Leunamme == Jhon Emmanue</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With the decline of psychoanalysis as a cultural trope, the dream was increasingly subject to the harsh light of science. </p>
<p>In the late 1950s, doctors <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/%7Edement/history.html">Aserinsky and Dement</a> first identified the characteristic <a href="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247927.php">rapid eye movements</a> (REM) and brain waves that enabled us to tell when an individual was dreaming. </p>
<p>For the next 20 years there was an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_neuroscience_of_dreams">incredible flourishing</a> of dreaming research. </p>
<p>Medical and psychological researchers were able to wake people while dreaming (or not) and ask them about the thoughts, feelings and ideas associated with the dream state.</p>
<p>Such studies confirmed many long-held beliefs about dreaming. Dreams were very similar to waking, at least in terms of the brain waves recorded on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography">electroencephalogram</a> (EEG) machines, which measure and record the electrical activity from different parts of the brain. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17589/original/f92gcjjs-1352851987.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">giveawayboy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet dreaming consciousness was very different to waking. It was more visual; and <a href="http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ideation">ideation</a> (the creation of ideas) was more bizarre and often illogically connected. </p>
<p>Dreaming consciousness often mixed mundane aspects of our previous waking life with strange and symbolic mental activity. </p>
<p>People woken from dreaming reported feelings and emotions that were quite different to those reported when in deep sleep. </p>
<p>People who were in deep sleep used fewer words, were less coherent in their speech patterns and were less “conscious” than those who were awakened from dreaming sleep.</p>
<p>From the late 70s until the early 2000s, dream research shrivelled to a small field populated by practitioners. It was regarded by many as a quaint anachronism marking the transition between psychoanalytic and neuroscientific conceptions of mind. </p>
<p>But in recent years the role of dreams in cognition has been reinvigorated by the discovery that the two basic modes of sleep - dream (REM) sleep and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-wave_sleep">Slow Wave Sleep</a> (SWS) – play quite different roles in how we recover from the trials and tribulations of wakefulness. </p>
<p>In simplistic terms, SWS regulates physical recovery and REM mental recovery. </p>
<p>Starting with <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/294/5544/1058.short">rodent studies</a>, depriving animals of REM sleep was associated with impaired learning. The way in which memories are laid down and learning consolidated is profoundly linked to brain activity during dreaming sleep. </p>
<p>More recently, the same phenomena have been observed in <a href="http://visionlab.harvard.edu/Members/Ken/Ken%20papers%20for%20web%20page/118natneuro_mednick_brief.pdf">human studies</a> – and these have spawned a whole new field of REM sleep research linking the quality and quantity of dream sleep to <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-sleep-perchance-to-learn-454">memory and learning</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17588/original/235jfsx7-1352851892.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rickydavid</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Back to the start</h2>
<p>Ironically, the story may yet come full circle. While the first generation of “scientific” dream research did not find a simple link between the reported content of the dream and psychological health, the next generation of dream research may well uncover a link, however subtle.</p>
<p>Many of the drugs we use to treat depression have profound effects on REM or dreaming sleep. We know the ways in which depressed patients learn and recall memories is very different to people who are not depressed. </p>
<p>Depressed people are more likely to recall negative events, experiences and emotions, and more likely to forget positive ones. We know that people who do not get enough sleep, especially REM sleep, do not learn as effectively. </p>
<p>The next 20 years promise a very new and exciting period for research into REM sleep.</p>
<p>But if we stand aside from the immediacy of the new technologies of sleep and the “science” of recent dream research we can see some broader patterns repeating in the human history of dreaming. </p>
<p>We are still looking at dreams as a different state of consciousness that merges aspects of sleep and wakefulness. We still see dreams as an aspect of mind and brain that can influence how we see and interpret the world. </p>
<p>We now have sufficient knowledge of genetics to see that our brains carry the seeds of the past and that the ways our brains operate do reflect the collective unconscious – an <a href="http://www.carl-jung.net/collective_unconscious.html">idea posited</a> by Freud’s famous student, Carl Jung. </p>
<p>We still see dreams as a source of inspiration and a canvas upon which we can create new and different possibilities, new futures. </p>
<p>One can only wonder on how we might understand and use our dreams in another thousand years.</p>
<p><br>
<em>See more <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/explainer">Explainer articles</a> on The Conversation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Drew Dawson, receives funding from a variety of funding bodies including the Rail and Bushfire CRC's, the NH&MRC and the ARC, ArtsSA, RailCorp and Union Pacific Railroad</span></em></p>
For most of human history, dreaming has been seen as a second “reality” in which altered forms of perception provide insights into ourselves and others, our fears, fantasies and motivations or even the…
Drew Dawson, Director, Appleton Institute, CQUniversity Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/5989
2012-03-27T19:12:33Z
2012-03-27T19:12:33Z
A dangerous method? In defence of Freud’s psychoanalysis
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8969/original/kzh2czgc-1332717478.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">He may not fit with modern terminology, but were Freud's concepts of the mind right on the money?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">tnarik</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychology, has recently suffered some serious knocks. His theories have been dismissed as unscientific and his achievements are now considered to be equal parts myth and fact. </p>
<p>But was the Austrian’s <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/6067635">theory of the mind</a> really so different to what neuroscience is now telling us? I would argue the differences are smaller than we think.</p>
<h2>Charges against psychoanalysis</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.freudfile.org/psychoanalysis/definition.html">Psychoanalysis</a>, the best-known form of therapy outside the clinic, is dramatically depicted in David Cronenberg’s new film, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOT-zLIHSmc">A Dangerous Method</a>, released this week in Australia. </p>
<p>While “dangerous” might be too strong a descriptor, it’s true psychoanalysis is no longer recommended for treating mental illness due to a <a href="http://www.psychology.org.au/Assets/Files/Evidence-Based-Psychological-Interventions.pdf">lack of evidence</a>. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2011.11.003">recently published review</a> was unable to find a single randomised controlled trial evaluating classic psychoanalysis and the evidence for long-term, “modern” psychoanalysis was conflicting at best.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Freud-Files-Inquiry-History-Psychoanalysis/dp/0521509904">historians now charge</a> that Freud’s signature treatment never really existed, and only attained its perceived uniqueness and cultural prominence through Freud’s “rewriting of history”. </p>
<p>Tragically, Freud <a href="http://www.frontiersin.org/psychoanalysis_and_neuropsychoanalysis/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00071/abstract">abandoned</a> a neurobiological approach to understanding the mind and mental illness because he did not believe we knew enough about the brain, in his era, to link its functioning to psychoanalytic constructs. </p>
<p>And yet, ironically, modern neuroscience may offer Freud a reprieve of sorts, by backing up at least the theory that underpinned his controversial treatment.</p>
<h2>Freud’s theory of personality</h2>
<p>Psychoanalysis, the treatment, is based on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Complete-Psychological-Works-Sigmund/dp/0393001423">Freud’s theory of personality</a>, which arose from his clinical work with patients and general observation of human behaviour. </p>
<p>According to that theory, the mind consists of <a href="http://wilderdom.com/personality/L8-4StructureMindIdEgoSuperego.html">three dissociable components</a>: </p>
<ul>
<li>the id</li>
<li>the ego</li>
<li>the superego.</li>
</ul>
<p>Freud <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/2118486">described the id</a> as the mental expression of our base instincts and bodily impulses, “a cauldron of seething excitations”. Such impulses compel us to pursue rewarding experiences (such as food and sex) and avoid punishing ones (such as pain and rejection). </p>
<p>The id even produces opposing impulses simultaneously, compelling us to both move toward and away from something, or someone. Think of fatty foods, drugs, or an attractive stranger. </p>
<p>How do we control such impulses? Enter the ego. The ego’s role in our personality – through organising and synthesising our mental processes in a coherent way – is to resolve the conflicts that arise from the id. </p>
<p>According to Freud, the ego makes us stop to think about a situation and its consequences. We can remember smoking causes cancer, and that infidelity can lead to divorce - things we, presumably, want to avoid. </p>
<p>The ego pulls us out of the moment, temporarily. Thanks to the ego, we aren’t constantly running amuck, seeking instant gratification. But its job doesn’t end there. </p>
<p>A part of the ego also imposes idealistic standards on our behaviour that compete with the id as well. This is the superego, our conscience. </p>
<p>Freud described the superego as <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/2118486">the parent in our head</a>. It is always watching us, and judging the id’s desires: “no respectable person would drink themselves stupid”; “a loyal spouse would never be even slightly tempted by another.” </p>
<p>The superego is therefore often at loggerheads with the id. The ego acts as a referee between the id and the superego, between our impulses and our ideals. </p>
<p>To achieve this task, says Freud, the ego calls on myriad mental tricks, such as <a href="http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/freud3.html">repression</a>, to keep unacceptable impulses buried in the unconscious, unexpressed. </p>
<p>According to Freud’s theory, mental illness arises when the ego is incapable of maintaining control of the id and superego, when their impulses are too strong. Freud believed this imbalance was often caused by early childhood trauma.</p>
<h2>Neuroscience of personality</h2>
<p>How might any of this fit with modern neuroscience? You’ll find no mention of Freud or the id in your typical brain-scanning study. Psychology has <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/5883366">largely abandoned</a> Freud’s theory altogether.</p>
<p>For a theory to be scientific, there <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8936549">must be some way you could prove it’s wrong</a> because <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/5883366">nothing can ever really be proven to be true</a>. </p>
<p>Science advances knowledge by disproving bad theories, not proving good theories, and Freud’s theory couldn’t offer any “disprovable” hypothesis.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/8970/original/m6284vxv-1332717540.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">A Dangerous Method opens in Australia this week.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In stark contrast to psychoanalysis, modern neuroscientific theories of personality grew out of <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005796770900690">research on animals</a> exploring the behavioural effects of drugs and lesions to different areas of the brain. </p>
<p>Among other things, such work revealed damage to certain brain regions (but not others) affected impulse control and, additionally, that <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Neuropsychology/?view=usa&ci=9780198522713">natural (genetic) variation in the functioning of these regions underlies individual differences</a> in control.</p>
<p>These days, much of the field has moved on to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroimaging">neuroimaging</a> (“live” scanning of brain activity) and the direct observation of human brain function. </p>
<p>Interestingly, this entirely different approach has also revealed three dissociable (brain) systems: </p>
<ul>
<li>an <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11301519">approach system</a></li>
<li>an <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0018131">avoidance system</a></li>
<li>an <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Neuropsychology/?view=usa&ci=9780198522713">inhibition system</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h2>The same but different?</h2>
<p>As with Freud’s id, the approach system responds to perceived rewards in our orbit, compelling us to approach them. It relates to the <a href="http://psychology.about.com/od/trait-theories-personality/f/extraversion.htm">extraversion</a> trait (sociability, goal-directedness). </p>
<p>Similarly, the avoidance system responds to punishments or threats, compelling us to avoid them. It relates to the <a href="http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_neuroticism_trait">neuroticism</a> trait (anxiety-proneness). </p>
<p>The <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.05084.x">striatum</a> (approach) and the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2005.09.003">amygdala</a> (avoidance) are key brain structures in these systems. They are evolutionarily “old” structures that reside deep within our brain - areas similar to those of lower mammals, such as monkeys and rats.</p>
<p>As with the ego, the inhibition system resolves conflict arising from within and between the approach and avoidance systems. It relates to trait impulsivity/constraint. It inhibits neural activity in these lower systems when their impulses conflict with each other, or when it detects that acting on an impulse would lead to negative consequences. </p>
<p>This allows us time to stop and think about a situation before acting, as with the ego. The <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2008.06.003">orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate</a> are key brain structures in this system, located in the evolutionarily “newer”, more advanced frontal regions of the brain. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12465670">Social rules</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2009.09.001">abstract notions such as fairness and morality</a> are processed by parts of the inhibition system, thereby resembling the superego.</p>
<p>Neuroscientific theories argue <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0107">addiction and obesity</a> are caused by a weak inhibitory system that cannot control a hyperactive approach system. Anxiety disorders such as <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Neuropsychology/?view=usa&ci=9780198522713">obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic disorder</a> are similarly characterised by a weak inhibitory system that cannot control a hyperactive avoidance system. </p>
<p>One possible cause of these imbalances is the effects of <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nrn2639">early childhood stress</a> on the brain, but it is certainly not the only cause. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00439-009-0701-2">Genetic vulnerability</a> and <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.69.1.92">lack of coping skills</a> also play an important role.</p>
<h2>Different but the same?</h2>
<p>While I’m not advocating a return to psychoanalytic theory, it’s true that, in many ways, we still view mental illness as being caused by an overwhelmed ego struggling to control a “super-charged” id. </p>
<p>The key difference is how we get there. The rigorous experimental approach of neuroscience gives us greater confidence that we are on the right track than anecdotal observation. </p>
<p>Still, in many ways, Freud got the basic structure right 100 years ago, even after he abandoned neurobiology. We should certainly keep this in mind when watching Cronenberg’s film, and whenever we catch ourselves smirking at concepts such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_envy">penis envy</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_complex">Oedipus complex</a>. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/2118486">Freud himself said</a>: “You must not judge too harshly a first attempt at giving a pictorial representation of something so intangible as psychical processes.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/5989/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Gullo receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.</span></em></p>
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychology, has recently suffered some serious knocks. His theories have been dismissed as unscientific and his achievements are now considered to be equal parts myth and…
Matthew Gullo, NHMRC Early Career Fellow, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.