"Actions do speak louder than words"

Brian Lynch

What has been fascinating in my  study of human emotions is how everything has come into question.

Like what? Such as conventional wisdom that if someone treats you badly or does not recognize your distress, they are not empathetic.

Now what is empathy? Usually, it is the concept of “putting oneself in the shoes of another.” It can be distinguished from sympathy as empathy can imply great concern for another or, and this is crucial, simply understanding the feelings of another.

For example, I can be happy and you can be happy and I can be empathetic to your happiness. We usually tend toward thinking it only has to do with “bad” feelings.

Then, what do I do with that empathy? I can be “sympathetic”, sympathy being that I “feel with you.” I care or am concerned about your feelings or I can abuse you. Yes, just because I can be attuned to your feelings, just because I am empathetic, does not mean that I care about them! It is “this guy is a sucker, let's take him!” It is an interesting and disheartening thought that to take advantage of your emotional state, it seems logical that the person must be attuned to your emotional state!

These distinctions are surprisingly recent, within less than the last two hundred years, that is the distinctions between sympathy and empathy.

So with that background, I said “we”, which is generally felt that if someone does not recognize our distress they are not empathetic. From what I just said that may be entirely not the case. I will offer several possibilities. 1), it is that they indeed do recognize our distress, but as I just said, they are after something else or 2) they are suffering from so much distress/shame/fear that they are incapable of sympathy, of expressing in word and action their concern. Or 3) they simply are not empathetic or sympathetic.

Now, why would the third possibility happen? Well, it is not settled by a long shot, but the possibility exists that some people just cannot feel sympathy or empathy. Autism, for example, seems a clear example of someone without this capacity in various degrees. A less severe form of Autism called Asburgers Syndrome is very much a problem in “reading” other people’s emotion. This is to say nothing of the origin of what we call psychopathology or sociopathy.

Given that high-order investigational tools, such as PET scans and Functional MRI have only been available for some 10-15 years it would seem logical that we might find that there is a continuum throughout humans concerning the ability to feel others' distress or other emotional states.

But that is biology. What of the environment and the phenomena of empathy?

I return then to the first two possibilities: Let’s say I tell you of my distress and you tell me to “grow up”, you get angry, or you go away.

The purpose of writing this is to point out that we just do not know why the other acted as such. It may be that they do “feel for you” but due to overwhelming “empathy” in the form of remembering their pain they simply are incapable of responding. Or they may be “after something else” which will leave us feeling manipulated. But even at this if they are “after something else” and are “manipulating” it does not mean that they do not “feel your pain” but simply something else is more in their “interest.” They simply do not have the knowledge or learning to handle their interest in you and what their needs are at the same time. And indeed their interest in you might be quite nil. Will not most of us not betray someone dear simply for a greater interest? We will as long as we feel isolated.

“Responsibility”

 of Responsibility

Brian Lynch

I have been reading several personal histories and testimonials lately of people who are in therapy or have given themselves diagnoses, often serious diagnoses.

I have written other pieces on responsibility but the logic of this particular thinking always pains me so much that I feel this can never be said enough.

It goes like this: These narratives are written when the person is in a calmer safer place and when they can reflect. They have great insight concerning their pain. They tell us their loved ones, lovers, friends, and therapist that they have great psychic wounds due to abuse, abandonment, and shame. They explain, often in detail, the havoc they have visited on everyone in their life; their addictions, broken relationships, and financial messes.

Now you may be surprised as to where I will go with this. The pain I feel is that they then ask if are they seriously ill or disturbed and their answer is “yes” then they ask if are they “responsible” for their actions and then they say “yes” too.

And I wonder about the world and my sanity and I wonder too about how many therapists repeat the same thing to these people. That is that they are “responsible” for their actions.

How is it that you can be “crazy” and “responsible” at the same time? First of all, I abjure the use of the term “crazy” unless we all admit to it. I use it therefore to make the needed point and that is one cannot make a responsible decision while unable to reason properly, a pretty straightforward thought. I say that is when we are overwhelmed by emotions.

We have good evidence that the center for feeling emotional pain is the same as the center for visceral or “gut” pain. So that is if you get “kicked in the gut” literally or figuratively your brain will light up in the same place. Now if you get kicked in the gut are you sure you are going to be in “control of yourself/” If you suffer a second-degree burn or break your leg are you going to be in control of yourself? If you receive news of a parent's death or of your wife’s betrayal? 

This week alone I have heard the line on T.V. of men in respectable professions saying they drowned their sorry in a bottle for 1-2 months after a breakup.

When we stop and analyze these statements of being “responsible” they quickly make no sense, but somehow we need to make sense of the world and so force the world to be orderly. An orderly world is one where man’s reason must prevail and if it doesn’t then we must blame ourselves, that is our nature, man’s nature. We are “weak”, “weak-minded” unfit to exist. We either attack others for being weak or attack ourselves for being weak and failing to make the right decision.

 

  People do what they do for good reasons.

Someone once told me that actually no matter how we are reacting for the “good” or the “bad”…..

we are reacting to stimuli exactly as our organism “should” be reacting at that moment.

 We are “nothing more” than our memory banks. We can only react based on what we know how to do in a given situation.

    We can not do what we don’t know how to do.

 

Either we are hopeless without redemption, we are, that is, so biologically damaged that were have to be removed from society. Or that to the best of our present knowledge one has no capacity for empathy (To be clear: not punished, but removed from society.) Or we have the capacity for empathy but have been traumatized to the point that our negative emotions continually overwhelm us in the present so we are thrown into turmoil.

 

We are reacting to stimuli exactly as our organism “should” be reacting at that moment.

 

To the observer, the two situations will appear the same. They both appear to be unable to empathize. It is important to sort them out because the latter person can be and needs to be helped. And in the end, all should be helped.

One point is you cannot be “crazy” and responsible at the same time. In both cases, the emotive side has taken over. In one case permanently and in the other momentarily. For those caught in the moment, it is a “shame” bind. It can be a setup for eternal failure. “Oh my God I did such a terrible thing and I am responsible for it!” 

The shame one feels at that moment now is as overwhelming as the original shame and rage or terror and it freezes one into inaction. One now is incapable, even now in what seems to be a calmer state, a more rational state, to have the wherewithal to apologize, pay for damages, or repair harm done in other ways.  

Why is this? I believe one reason is that deep inside one feels the truth with which this essay started that their organism could not have done anything different than it did at the time it did it and so in the most strict cosmic sense there is never any guilt or responsibility. There is at least a kind of emotional determinism. Why should I apologize for the emotional demons that control me and for whom I cannot control? I did not traumatize myself.

But the world attempts to work in the here and now: this organism does harm to that organism now and the one that has harm done to it is not expected to understand anything other than that they are hurt. They want and need reparation.

A popular phrase now is “Hurt people hurt people.”

How does society grow and begin to accommodate both of these understandings? A serious attempt is being made through the Restorative Justice Movement

(see http://www.brianlynchmd.com/TWELVE/restorativejustice.htm). When Restorative Justice is done correctly it invites all injured parties to come together on equal footing to express their narrative and understand.

It is almost an entirely new way of thinking. Humans have always argued, and since Aristotle supposedly convincingly, that we can indeed control our emotions and therefore our actions. I say it is not convincing at all and that Aristotle’s teacher Plato knew better and tells us so through his elegant defense of why we should not punish in the Republic. Now, punishing goes hand in hand with understanding motivation and the conditions that caused the harm.

As this is entitled "Responsibility" a final note on the word. We might take note that the word is made up of the words "response" and "ability." That is don't we first have to have the ability to respond? The "knee jerk" admonition of "be responsible" I hope is now seen in a new light. We would "act" better, be better, and do better if we knew how. We all need help in learning. 

"Mind and Body"

"There, there’s a place

Where I can go

When I feel low

And I feel blue

And it’s my mind……"  Beatles

Brian Lynch

A glaring problem in modern psychology and psychiatry is that we are unwilling to admit a glaring disconnect, or contradiction, in our thinking.

It boils down to the thought that there is no distinction between the “mind” and the “body.” If there is no difference between the “mind” and the “body” then at there is a lot to explain. 

That is the contradiction is that, first of all, the old “mind” “body” distinction that we like to believe in is defended and believed in so much because if there is a “mind” separated from the body then there is a “place” where we can go to be “safe” and “control” “everything.” We can invent “there in our mind” everything about ourselves; our fantasies, our hates, loves, cultures, relations, everything about ourselves. Our “mind” is our retreat.

Does the mind exist? Well of course it does as we do exactly what I just explained. But on the other hand the mind is “only” part and parcel of the “body.” Or maybe better stated the body is only part and parcel of the mind. The brain is three pounds of physical flesh and I am fond of pointing out that the rest of the body is “nothing more than a projection of the physical brain.” Everything about us is bound and determined by the brain.

But since the brain is in control of everything, it is in effect the mind and the body. 

Our problem is that often “the mind” is not as in control as we think it is. We think that we are in rational control. This is, of course, the only way it really can be. We, for the most part, are not going to jump to the conclusion that we are “wrong” about the world.

But why can this happen? This can happen because our “body”, our nervous system is sophisticated and the brain is a copy of our entire body, or as I said our body is a copy of our brain. Not just the “mind.” It is doing everything and so much can get confused. A lot of damage can be done. We can indeed think that white is black when it is white to everyone else.

There is a famous drawing called the “rat man” In psychology you show it to people and some people see a rat and some the face of a man. Reality is not the same for all of us. It is not. You cannot say the picture is of a rat or a man, it is of both.

Our emotions will often take over the more rational part of our brain and sabotage us. We are increasingly aware that the nervous system “maps” our “scripts” throughout the body. These “scripts” determine “rat” or “man.”

The only reason we can do anything is due to memory. We anticipate much of everything we do. Getting up and walking across the room is a complex task. Your body responds “instantaneously” but that does not mean it still does not “instantaneously” prepare itself to do the action. Movement does not start from zero. The action involves an “image’ of what I will do next and this image immediately follows a road map to get it done. We are “scripted” to do most everything and these scripts are laid down not in some “thought” that is not physical. They are laid down as the wiring in our house or the computer this was typed on. Most everything we do is programmed. We are indeed “knee jerk” responders.

All of this is “good” and “bad”. Without this total integration, we would be bound up in complex rituals to do anything. Scripts free up much of our capacity so we can do other things like pay attention to one another. On the other hand, if the “script” can be one that “solved” a problem early on and it turned out to be a not-so-good but temporary solution. Such as the urge to use physical violence, get high or spend money each time we feel bad.

Do Children Matter?

Brian Lynch

“Paddling in 2010? "We're too old to get spanked," she told CNN. "This is not the 1940's." Erica DeRamous

I am going to comment on a few aspects of not “child care” but children’s status. Children are people.

A friend of mine pointed out an amazingly thought several years ago that clarified so much about child-rearing. We were talking about the use of corporal punishment and child abuse in general, we were also always in a discussion about the overall uselessness of punishing anyone. Yes, I believe that punishment does not serve a purpose we need to rehabilitate people. We need to understand why people do what they do.

So is it “good” that parents that abuse their children are arrested and prosecuted? For now, it seems the answer is yes. Why? Is that not punishment? It is good because we are just not very evolved. It is because we are evolving. This is so because only a short time ago you could do anything to your child you wanted, even kill them and probably nothing would happen. Children were your property. Still, in much of the world, this is the case so for society to take any action to protect children is a great advance. Holding parents criminally responsible is an advance.

It is a simple thought if I thought you were acting “badly” and verbally threatened you or maybe even struck you I would be guilty in the first instance of assault and in the second of what is called “battery.” Why on earth are we not guilty of the same when we threaten and hit children?

Now there is just one problem when we arrest and even jail the parents of children, and what is that? Well, the children are left without their parents! We know that as strange as it may seem that the situation has to be quite bad at home before the children are better off not at home so enlightened prosecutors and social service agencies do not necessarily press for convictions and sentences but for intense intervention, rehabilitation and supervision. It does take a village to raise a child.