Psychology Articles

In ordinary daily conversation when someone observes that a friend, family member or colleague “has a complex” about something, we generally mean that they seem to have a “sore spot” about the subject, or that they seem to have a recognizable pattern of reactions when certain situations or subjects arise.

These are good layman’s observations which capture two of the most central qualities of what psychologists call “complexes”

1. They are developed around psychological wounds.

2. They have a repetitive, stereotypical quality.

Carl Jung describes complexes

The first psychologist to describe and discuss this psychological phenomenon was Carl Jung. Jung wrote about what he called “feeling-toned complexes of ideas”. The phrase was later abbreviated to “complexes”.

His original description however, adds an important further detail to our understanding of the complex.

3. Complexes have a particular emotional tone or value.

Complexes can be personal or impersonal.

There are certain situations which are so common and universal in human experience that in all times and all places, human beings seem to have evolved complexes of ideas and behaviors around them.

Archetypal complexes are not personal. They arise around essential human experiences such as leadership, romantic love, death, birth, the image of the hero, the trickster, the wise man or woman, the child and many others.

Our organized emotional and behavioral responses to these concepts suggests that they are inherent or instinctive patterns of reaction in human beings.

Personal complexes have both a universal and an individual aspect

Sigmund Freud’s famous Oedipus and Electra complexes describe the universal tensions within the parent-child relationship as the child becomes aware the limits and restrictions in regards to their intimate relationship with their opposite sex parent. The intensity and problem producing quality of this universal experience will vary depending on the real life characteristics of the parents and the family situation.

Fears of losing love and support of parents, feeling inferior, feelings of competition with siblings or peers, fears of being rejected or outcast from the group are universally frightening situations that need to be defended against psychologically by all human beings.

Because complexes are organized around a particular emotional tone, they can be positive or negative.

For example:

A positive mother complex expects all older women or “motherly” figures to be loving and helpful, but a negative mother complex treats all the women who trigger it as bad, demanding or dangerous.
A complex about authority can automatically treat authority figures positively as saviors or, negatively as exploiters.

How does a personal psychological complex develop?

A personal complex is a defense system that we develop after an emotional injury. It is a set of ideas, attitudes, expectations, behaviors… and the feelings that accompany them… that we unconsciously hope will avert a similar disaster in the future.

The typical behavioral strategies developed within complexes are common strategies of human relating:

Pleasing, appeasing, avoiding, aggressiveness, competition, withdrawal and many others.The difference between using interpersonal strategies inside and outside of a complex is that once they begin to function within a complex they become automatic and stereotypical. The same response appears in every triggering situation, whether it is appropriate and helpful or not.

Several complexes can be activated at any one time.

You may function perfectly normally with most people around a meeting table at work but if you have a “sister complex” (about being competitive with your historical sister), that complex runs like a computer application under the surface and turns itself on automatically when you have to speak to a particular female colleague.

You may behave competitively with her without realizing it….even while you are being perfectly reasonable with everyone else.
You could at the same time have a father complex operating which affects your responses to your supervisor and an abandonment complex that kicks in when your ideas are rejected.
You could have an inferiority or a superiority complex also running which color your interactions with others in a self-critical or self-aggrandizing way.

It is easy to see how having activated complexes can cause no end of interpersonal strain and misery.

“Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes’. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.” – C. G. Jung (1948, para 200)

Complexes are originally well intended and aimed at protecting us from pain and danger.

But as they become automatic and autonomous they can cause no end of trouble because when a complex is activated we do not really control it.

Jung said, “An activated complex puts us momentarily under a state of duress, of compulsive thinking and acting”. (Jung CW 8 pg 96)

A well-developed complex can collect around itself enough memories, experience and feelings that it can begin to function like a partial or “splinter” personality. If the triggering situation is strong enough it can even sometimes temporarily hi-jack the ego. This state is called “identification with the complex” and in this situation the worldview of the complex temporarily takes priority. When we emerge from one of these states we may say:

“I have no idea what got into me”,”That was so unlike me”or “I don’t know what possessed me!”

These reactions capture the sense that we have responded from a part of ourselves that was not actually under our conscious control. There are even times when we cannot fully remember what we said while we were influenced by a complex, or we may have a sense of having been “watching” ourselves say and do outrageous and uncharacteristic things.

When we see another person captured by a complex we may see a noticeable change of expression, of posture or of tone of voice and say, “He was not himself.”

A complex is a distorting lens.

In order to maintain it’s integrity as a splinter personality and to carry out the protective mission which is it’s reason for existing, the filter of a complex will screen out or dismiss as unimportant any new, confusing or contradictory information and will prefer to concentrate on those situations which support it’s world view.

This is why a person who is in the grip of a complex is so maddeningly impossible to reason with and so rejecting of contradictory information offered by others.

A woman who is in the grip of a complex about men’s infidelity will never feel reassured by her husband’s claims of love and assurances that he will not leave her, no matter how many ways he proves himself.

Identify the characteristic components of your particular complexes.

As you start to examine experiences that you notice or that are pointed out to you as strange, you will probably notice that they always seem to occur in particular circumstances, such as….

When your partner is leaving for a trip
When you have been criticized for something
When you experience or suspect rejection

…or with a particular sort of person.

Trying to please or interest a “fatherly” type of man
Being jealous or competitive with a certain kind of woman.
Feeling “weak” whenever faced with an authority figure

As you become able to predict when you may be triggered, you become empowered to choose to take another kind of action or to disregard the impulses from your complex.

Two other signs that someone is captured by a complex:

The emotions expressed seem overly intense for the situation that triggered them
Language is peppered with absolutes and extremes: “always”, “never”, “Nobody ever”,”everyone always”

Recognizing the experience “after the fact” is helpful because it permits you to engage in “damage control.”

The more skilled you become at identifying your complex-driven behavior, the quicker you will be able to say “I did it again” and take action to repair the situation by apologizing, explaining or trying again in a different frame of mind.

Because complexes both fight to survive and arouse fear and resistance when we try to examine them, it is often helpful to work together with an outside person.

It is necessary to uncover and face these automatic responses because a complex can act like a poorly trained attack dog, snarling and snapping at (or inappropriately cuddling up to) friend and foe alike, causing terrible disruptions in your relationships with friends and colleagues which are based on out-dated fears, feelings and reactions.

A psychologist, counselor or trusted friend can help you identify patterns of response that are hard to recognize from inside and will support you in experimenting with alternative ways of dealing with your fears.

NB: If your therapist works in a cognitive-behavioral model (CBT) he or she may be more familiar with the term “schema” which is another way of talking about the same phenomenon.

As you begin to oppose your complexes with conscious understanding and choose effective real-world strategies to deal with the “dangers” that complexes were developed to handle, they will lose their power because they lose their necessity… and you may have the pleasant experience of having your long-standing complex-driven problems collapse like a house of cards.

Susan Meindl, MA, is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Montreal Canada. She has a special interest in Jungian ideas and practices a Jungian approach to psychodynamic psychotherapy

http://therapists.psychologytoday.com/rms/59983

While many are still reeling from the recent painful Penn State scandal, I fervently hope that this will be a tremendous learning lesson for our society. As a treatment professional of sex offenders as well as victims, I would like to address some dynamics of perpetrators and witnesses that the public in general is perhaps unaware of.

What do child molesters look like? Your grandfather, your brother, your aunt, your employee, and yes, brilliant college football coaches. No one is all good or all bad; and sex offenders are no exception. They may be extremely talented, intelligent, successful, good-looking, blessed with beautiful families and “normal” sexual outlets. They cover all walks of life: early 20’s through 70’s, all ethnicities, races, religions, IQ levels, education, sexual orientations, and all socioeconomic strata. They don’t all look like “perverts.” There is no typical profile.

In psychology, there is a basic belief that “What is beautiful is good.” Therefore, if someone who is beautiful (or does beautiful things) does something bad, it creates cognitive dissonance, a confused state of being that can block comprehension and appropriate action. It is fairly easy for us to believe that an unattractive, low-achiever could commit sex crimes against children, and we then vilify the “pervert,” even after he/she admits it and works to control it.

Many child molesters and pedophiles actually hate themselves for what they consider uncontrollable urges and would get help if they knew where to turn. Sadly, the global belief is that they cannot be helped, and most reoffend. Fortunately, this is completely false. With treatment, the recidivism rate is between 5%-13%, much lower than for non-sex crimes (US Dept of Justice; Bureau of Statistics). While there is no cure for an attraction to children, it can be managed much like substance addictions. Again, therapy and support are crucial to success.

Adults fail to intervene and report abuse for a variety of reasons, one of the most salient being denial or minimization of the offense. This is enabling, and enablers are more culpable than offenders, who can be “crippled” by their disorder. Enablers do not want the offense to be a reality, and keenly hope that it will just “go away,” particularly if it involves a celebrity or someone we really admire. The American culture all but deifies sports figures. We want heroes, and athletes and coaches bespeak health, fitness, confidence, winning, and an all- American wholesomeness that blinds some of us to their blemishes or weaknesses. While not excusing their response to the recent accusations at Penn State, Joe Paterno, Mike McQueary, Spanier, et al, I believe, were caught in this immobilizing, enabling position. While it appears that they put football before the wellbeing of children, potentially what was occurring was their inability to comprehend the severity of the crime and respond appropriately. Their actions may have been completely different and appropriate if the perpetrator were a stranger and not part of the success machine of Penn State Football.

Let us all use this tragedy as an opportunity to learn proper protocol for reporting abuse, even when an abuser attempts to exploit his/her position. Sexual abuse affects us all. This is a public health issue that can be resolved when the media and public move beyond sensationalism. Let’s offer help not only to the victims, but also to the abusers, for the best way to help victims is to help abusers. Let’s focus on accountability, responsibility, solutions, and management vs. blame, demonizing, and retribution.

Dr. Nancy B. Irwin is a Los Angeles-based psychotherapist/therapeutic hypnotist, and author of nonfiction YOU-TURN: CHANGING DIRECTION IN MIDLIFE, a collection of over 40 stories of people over 40 who made successful life transitions.

http://www.drnancyirwin.com http://www.makeayou-turn.com

It is commonly thought that what people believe will influence their mood states. This meta-belief is widely accepted in the mental health sector with competing frameworks existing for how that connection between beliefs and mood states can be therapeutically exploited for good. This article describes two well-known systems and suggests an alternative.

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy

Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy is a therapy developed by Albert Ellis (1913-2007) which was the earliest cognitive psychotherapy (1955). He developed his ABC model of mental disturbance which featured an Activating event, a Belief, and a Consequence.

Ellis presumed that between the activating event and the emotional consequence, illogical and irrational beliefs of a certain kind caused mental and emotional distress. In a nutshell, these major irrational beliefs were:

‘I absolutely must act in well in all situations and if I don’t I am a bad person and therefore deserving of punishment of some form’
‘Others absolutely must act well towards me and if they don’t then they are bad and therefore deserving of punishment’
‘Circumstances around me absolutely must go according to how I wish and desire and if not then it is terrible, awful, catastrophic and my life is hardly worth living’

It will be noticed that these three beliefs all incorporate ‘musts’ and ‘absolutes’ in their framework. Ellis believed that such extreme prescriptions for self, others and circumstances were irrational because they are god-like edicts and clearly humans are not gods. (Note: Ellis however was not a theist.)

His therapy method was confrontative and educative, helping clients to become their own therapists. For if they could understand that they were creating their own mental pain; if they could accept that they were repeating sentences like those above to themselves and so indoctrinating themselves to produce further upset then they would experience some relief fairly quickly.

However, Ellis emphasised that clients had to accept that they would have to continue to argue against the absolutist nature of these three types of beliefs if continued relief was to be felt.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive Therapy was proposed by A T Beck (b. 1921) in the early 1960s. Like Ellis, Beck also assumed that certain thoughts produced depression but unlike Ellis he developed a more collaborative method for dealing with disturbed thoughts.

Beck used a method of Socratic questioning that attempted to open up a client’s situation so that more options could be considered. For example, suppose someone was suffering depression because of failing an exam. Beck would say that it is not the exam failure that causes the depression but what the examinee is telling him/herself about it.

These thoughts could be statements such as ‘why can’t I do anything right?’, ‘I am a big failure’, ‘I am hopeless at school’, I’ve ruined my life prospects’ and a lot more besides.

Beck would tackle this situation using these three questions as set out in 1985:

What is the supporting evidence for the conclusion(s) held by the client?
What are other optional conclusions that could be reached using the same circumstances?
What will happen if the present conclusion held by the client is correct or true?

It is important to mention that Beck has developed his method extensively over decades and is open to the idea of eclectic, generic models. (Aaron T Beck is still alive and still teaching in 2012!)

Problems With Classical Cognitive Approaches

What troubles me about the advocacy of cognitive approaches for mood disorders is that people with depression are helped by other therapies that bear no relationship to cognitive ones. Doubtless, clients do feel better after cognitive-type therapies but that fact may suggest that non-specific elements of therapeutic relationships are the effective factors.

Moreover, the ‘faulty cognitions’ may not be the cause of depression but a part of the depression itself. Even that notion is questionable with some research showing that non-depressed persons have similar thoughts to depressed persons!

It should be noted that both these methods above make a common-sense distinction between the initial event and the evaluation of the event as if the ‘event’ and its perception by a person can be considered quite separately. (They also further distinguish the emotional response from the first two categories.)

Although that distinction seems valid because we know that different people can have the ’same event’ (say failing an exam) occur in their lives but not evaluate it the same way, but in that case, can we say it is actually the same event?

The abstractions of the above methods do not tally with our real experience of a failure situation. It is we who are in the situation of failure. The situation is not over there but we are in it.

An Alternative Therapeutic Approach

What if instead of trying to track down illogical or irrational beliefs therapists instead helped clients to accept the exam failure feelings as normal. So, to feel down after having failed an exam is normal because most people do.

What does cause problems and aggravates the situation is to think, imagine, act and believe that you’re unusual, stupid, deficient, imbecilic and backward to be thinking, believing and feeling the way you do about the failure. In doing that, a person judges himself to be no longer part of normal society.

Some instant relief is often felt if the counsellor talks empathically to clients and ‘normalises’ what they are experiencing.

Being told that it’s not so unusual to feel this way and to think certain things surrounding the failure could be therapeutic because it’s as if the therapist is inviting the client back into the world of normality.

Dr Ian R Ridgway is a Christian psychologist with 20 years experience in counselling and tertiary teaching. He relates the Christian faith to his vocation to assist others by developing a quality relationship built on trust and unconditional acceptance of the client (though not necessarily of all s/his behaviour). He provides an individual professional service as set out at http://psy-services.yolasite.com

If you do actually want to be sad and stay sad, don’t make any decisions that could impact on your life! It will, of course, classify you as an unhappy “Maximiser” according to research by Professor Joyce Ehrlinger of Florida State University, but at least you won’t risk making the wrong decision? It seems we all have a choice. We can choose to be “Maximisers or Satisficers.” Yet the behavioural difference between them is profound in both its nature and its results.

I have already written on the Five Levels of Happiness as a way of achieving full happiness across one’s life. But of course that involves making a whole gamut of different choices or decisions related to each and every aspect of our life. Professor Ehrlinger has concluded that many of us are capable of falling at the first fence!

Why?

Because if we are inclined to think far too much about making a decision in the first place, we are very likely to risk adopting an unhappy existence, always fretting about whether the decision is the right one or not. For example, what happens if it is wondering “Should I really go to a friend’s party? Should I change my job? Or even, should I really say yes to this marriage proposal?” One can heap deep unhappiness on ourselves by not making a choice if we live in constant fear of making the wrong decision.

And even if apparently in regard to some choice presented to us, we do bring ourselves to make a decision as a Maximiser, we can then lead a life of unending rumination, tormenting ourselves over whether it was the right move! If this describes us, then the research says we never enjoy the psychological benefits of commitment and our life becomes one overladen by grief. It could strike at the root of potential relationships or career opportunities, multiplying the feeling of unhappiness.

The opposite seems true of “Satisficers.” They have patterned a different behavioural approach altogether. They think the issue through as far as they can and then when they arrive at the final element of doubt, they are far more inclined to listen to their instincts, their sixth sense. If it says, “Do it!” Then they do just that. They are happy that if it works out – then fine, and if it doesn’t – then they will not hold it against themselves or give themselves grief over it.

In my experience of observing myself and others, I think there is another clear difference between “Maximisers” and “Saticficers.” Simply stated, “Maximisers” flirt with the danger of striving to be perfectionists and no less. Satisficers” on the other hand, are much more pragmatic about their own fallibility. And they are much more comfortable in their own skin. They also have a higher sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

For Maximisers, happiness can appear a luxury they cannot afford. But for Satisficers they are far more open to happiness. They let it in and enjoy it.

Happiness is so often there for our taking. Clearly we can kill it or accommodate for it in pretty well everything we do!

Sir Gerry Neale is the author of a self-discovery novel called Squaring Circles. It is published in paperback in the UK. It is available from Amazon (co.uk) and other booksellers

He can be reached on http://cognitivementors.blogspot.com and http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com

What is really out there? Why do we think that we think? This article explores some of the classic works on the topic.

Ross and Nisbett argue that our perceptions of ourselves and our casual attributions for our actions are not in fact complete or correct: we are not born tabla rasa, we do not consistently build basic beliefs, and we cannot predict or control the way we will act. Phychologists and sociologists provide support for this through numerous studies that show a basically consistent, unpredicted, and unsystematic patterns of behavior. Some authors begin by breaking down the idea that our opinions or reactions are as independent and systematic as we may believe. Sherif’s “autokinetic” study and the Ash Paradigm study illustrate that we often act differently when in groups (with group norms, pressure, bias, and social factors). We conform to group pressure (Ash), or, even more extremely, shift our perceptions in order to align ourselves with a group (Sherrif). The Bennington studies, which show how our beliefs about the world are deeply and irreversibly influenced by our social surroundings, illustrate that this effect is not trivial or isolated but instead can have far-reaching and self-defining consequences.

Sherif’s later studies on group dynamics similarly show us that our world perceptions (us vs. them, me vs. you, good vs. bad) can be arbitrary. Chapter three expands on this point with a social slant: Our world is constructed in a social setting and so the opinions of others and the judgments of others play a dynamic part in this construction. I.e., our world is not necessarily “warped” by others opinions but others opinions actually play a role in determining what our world looks like. The “attribution theory of emotion” and the Nisbett and Wilson (1977) cognitive process blindness theory take this one step further claiming that we do not really see the world as we think we do at all.

Ross and Nisbett impose their own interpretation on these findings. They repeatedly argue that we interpret and construct the world in a dynamic way, based on the perceptions and influences of our social surroundings, situational factors, and personality characteristics. They then claim that we are overly unaware that we are only seeing one way to interpret the world. “This lack of awareness of our own construal processes blinds us to the possibility that someone else, differently situated, might construe the same objects in a different way… People sometimes construe the same object differently because they view it from different angles rather than because they are fundamentally different people…. The divergence [exhibited in the Asch experiments] may reflect differences not in the “judgment of the object” but in the construal of just what “the object of judgment” is.” (p82). We make the false assumption that we see it as it is rather than as we interpret it. It is not clear here whether the differences in individual interpretations of the worlds are due only to different external factors (social, environmental, etc) or also to different processing factors (i.e. the mental and physical machines with which we process this information).

Ross and Nisbett do not explicitly state what I see as a major consequence, and synthesis, of both their chapters and much of the literature. But perhaps this is because I do not have and have not read their later chapters. With this caveat, Ross and Nisbett (1) begin by attempting to prove that our world is to an extent an arbitrary construction. They continue (2) by showing that it is important to us that out world be in line with others in our group or reference set (social pressure) and they end (3) with the interesting claim that we misunderstand the world in a fundamental way (with mistakes in traits, etc). To me there is a clear logical step that stands between their points (1) and (2). That (1.5) that we are, on some deep unconscious level, insecure and unsure of the ontological nature of the world and thus need to constantly adjust our view of it depending on the situation and context (see they do not take William James’ point on p. 68 seriously enough) or align ourselves with others in order to attempt to interpret it in the best/most useful way.

It helps if we assume for a moment that there is no “correct” way to interpret the world – and Ross and Nisbett I think would agree with this. Perhaps even the idea of a “correct” way to interpret the world is a non-sensical statement. All constructions are heuristics simplifications intrinsically since the world does not have, unlike our constructions of the world, imbedded causality only systematic temporal correlations. An interpretation is meant, therefore, to be useful in our world, which a deeply social and dynamic one. Why is it therefore surprising that we adjust, conform to, and closely monitor others opinions? If our interpretations are wrong, and we know they always are, there is no good reason to stick to them if they are not working. Our perception of length is clearly not functioning correctly if it derives an answer different from everyone else (since deriving an answer that is useful is our goal, not deriving an answer that is true and it is useful to have an agreed upon idea of length).

So the surprising thing is that we ever believe that we are objectively right about things or that we believe our views are “the way things are,” not that we adjust our world-views in the face of social, environmental, or situational pressure (and various evolutionary psychology arguments have attempted to explain this argument on the grounds of efficiency). Bishop Berkeley, Occationalism, and David Hume have all trodden this ground. I do not mean to make the facile claim that we should always give in to social pressure, that we should always tailor our views to match those around us, only that to explain a deviation from this behavior one need to apply to other reasons than one being “correct” or, even, more arguably, perhaps, “truth.” That our views are deeply inadequate and inefficient, as chapter four argues, is a much harsher claim leveled by Ross and Nisbett in this context.

The literature often builds up a model of perception/ internal_world-creation and the later then added a component questioning the element of causality. For example, Straw, Bell, Clausen piece questions the emergent literature on situational attributions to job attitudes in favor of a more dispositional approach. Studies, they claim lay too much emphasis on the social, the interpretational elements of a job, over-stating the role that the work environment that will determine an individual’s happiness in it. Instead, one can correlate the individual’s happiness and job satisfaction in many respects well before he/she enters the work place. Thus, it is the characteristics, attitudes, and nature and the individual who is the prime determinant of whether or not he/she is happy in the job. This research is interestingly interrelated to the previous Ross Nisbett piece, since Ross and Nisbett’s argument that the person interprets the environment lends itself to the conclusion that no matter what environment an individual is put into, he/she will largely affect the way he/she perceives that environment and thus his/her feelings about it.

In contrast to Straw, et al., Davis-Blake and Pfeffer (1989) argue that the dispositionalist argument is deeply flawed. They claim that the individual’s characteristics are dynamic in nature and therefore they change in time and are furthermore deeply affected by their environment. Therefore, one can expect that an employee, especially in the long term, will be very deeply affected by the nature and prevailing attitudes of his/her workplace. They point to the extreme cases of military training facilities, which are able to dramatically affect the psychology of an individual. Sneider (1987) returns fire with a volley that asserts that the “culture” of a firm is simply the people in it. That these people are self-selecting and will tend to attract compatible people, and that the world is a dynamic place of individuals, not forces. The last piece of the puzzle, the piece by Arvey and Bouchard (1994) builds a strong foundation under the dispositionalist camp but also shows the complexity of the problem. It addresses the nature vs. nurture debate by reviewing the literature to show that while it seems that genetics do make some difference (this lends credit to dispositionalists who would like to claim that people have characteristics, genetic or otherwise, that persist over time) environment is also a large factor (situationalists can grab onto this evidence).

This debate, first between situationalists and dispositionalists about the source of ones attitude about the workplace, and then about the source of our personality (nature vs. nurture) have serious consequences which many of the authors discuss. If we are in fact shaped by our environments, then companies might want to invest significant resources into “culture” and creating a productive workplace. But if our attitudes and productivity are a function of our personalities, then companies might want to select those people with attractive qualities for their company. This has troubling moral consequences as some authors point out.

I would like to emphasize how these points are building up a literature that focuses on central questions about why we view the world the way we do, what effects the world has on us, and what the source of our feelings, attitudes and lives are. The battle lines of the difference sides of this debate are, from this perspective, artificially clear.

If, for example, we ask the question of FREE WILL, for example, the sides dramatically shift. The dispositionalist camp splits into two, some taking a deterministic evolutionary view and others taking view that our personalities are developed early by our environment. The situationalists might point out that we CHOOSE our workplaces and thus choose the sorts of influences that will shape our character. So while we are not in total control of what we will feel about our job, our creativity, etc, we can choose what sorts of forces will affect these metrics. Aristotle, who’s view on almost anything is worth looking up, coined the phrase Akrasia, and this phrase can be applied to this bebate with perhaps some fruitful insights. It is Greek for “weakness of will”. He claimed that we are morally responsible for the consequences of a choice in the long term, even if we are not morally free at the time of our choices. The best modern example of this is if one chooses to get drunk one is responsible for one’s actions while drunk even if one does not have the ability to control one’s actions while drunk. So one is responsible for choosing the path that led to an action even if one is not directly responsible for that action. Of course, Aristotle chose the more controversial example of choosing to live a life of moral weakness and moral compromise which weakened the will to the point that one was not a good/moral person. He claimed that one was responsible for immorality not because we choose to become weak enough to do these acts. I think that these different camps might gain some insight into their nature/nurture dispositionalist/situationalist objective/subjective debates if Aristotle’s wisdom were headed more carefully.

Readings:

Ross, L. & Nisbett, R.E. (1991). The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill. Chapters 2, 3, & 4.

Asch, S.E. (1958). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In E.E. Maccoby; T.M. Newcomb & E.L. Hartley (eds.), Reading in Social Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company (pp. 174-183).

Staw, B.; Bell, N. & Clausen, J. (1986). The dispositional approach to job attitudes: A lifetime longitudinal test. Administrative Science Quarterly, 31: 56-77.

Davis-Blake, Alison & Pfeffer, Jeffrey. (1989). Just a mirage: The search for dispositional effects in organizational research. Academy of Management Review, 14: 385-400.

Schneider, Benjamin. (1987). The people make the place. Personnel Psychology, 40: 437-453.

Arvey, R.D. & Bouchard, T.J. (1994). Genetic twins and organizational behavior. In B.M. Staw & L.L. Cummings (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, 16: 47-82.

Phin Upham has a PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). Phin is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He can be reached at phin@phinupham.com

You can find more info here: Phin Upham

When, in 1995, David Chalmers outlined what he believed to be a distinction between the “easy” problems of consciousness and the “hard” problem of consciousness, Daniel Dennett was quick to point out a fundamental flaw in his reasoning. I suggest that this same flaw exists in the logic of a whole range of philosophical positions concerning philosophy of mind.

Chalmers and Dennett

The philosopher David Chalmers has argued that the problem of explaining why human beings possess subjective experiences (which he terms the hard problem of consciousness) is distinct from other problems of conscious (e.g., how the brain focuses attention or reacts to environmental stimuli), in that these second kinds of problems can be solved by elucidating the neural mechanisms by which they take place, whilst the hard problem cannot be solved by invoking a mechanism.

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett published a response to David Chalmers, in which he argued that a complete understanding of all of the “easy” problems of consciousness would provide an explanation of the hard problem.

Dennett further elaborates on his position with the following analogy, taken directly from his paper “Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness”:

“Imagine some vitalist who says to the molecular biologists: The easy problems of life include those of explaining the following phenomena: reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair, immunological self-defence… These are not all that easy, of course, and it may take another century or so to work out the fine points, but they are easy compared to the really hard problem: life itself. We can imagine something that was capable of reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair and immunological self-defence, but that wasn’t, you know, alive. The residual mystery of life would be untouched by solutions to all the easy problems.”

Dennett’s point is obvious: that “life” is merely the sum total of all the biological processes he lists. It is not some mystical, transcendent property of matter which exists above and beyond the physical processes which life demonstrates. By analogy, consciousness is not some mystical, transcendent property of the brain, existing above and beyond the physical processes of firing neurons.

I believe that this same fallacy exists in many philosophical positions, and is the root cause of much disagreement among philosophers, scientists and other commentators.

Free Will

I have previously outlined my stance on free will in my article “Free Will: Libet and the Readiness Potential”. I cannot see any logical reason why either determinism or neuroscience should invalidate the idea that humans have free will. Essentially, I am a compatibilist.

This position has perhaps best been expressed by Jack Copeland in his book “Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction”. Copeland’s writing is too long to quote here in full, but to summarise:

The idea that free will does not stand up to modern scientific analysis has become an orthodox opinion in AI. It is widely believed that neurophysiological determinism means free will is an illusion. Since each of your decisions is the inevitable outcome of preceding causes, you can never choose contrary to the way you are caused to choose. How then can you be free?

To demonstrate the fallaciousness of this position, Copeland describes two kinds of choices: “nil preference” choices and “outstanding-candidate” choices.

Imagine you are torn between two options: whether to order a chocolate cake or a blueberry cheesecake. After a moment, you suddenly and for no apparent reason choose to order the cheesecake.

This is a nil preference situation. Free choice, in this situation, consists of making a random selection between two equally preferable alternatives. Determinism (in the form of your personal tastes, past experience, emotional state, etc.) narrows down your choice to two options, while the final selection is made randomly.

In a nil preference situation, and only in a nil preference situation, choosing randomly is choosing freely.

It could be argued that if decisions arise spontaneously and randomly, then the agent is helpless to control his own behaviour. However, in a nil preference situation, behaviour is still under the control of the agent. The chooser’s deliberations produce a number of alternative schemes of action, all of which are equally preferable to the agent. The random “coin flip” of choosing is merely a tiebreaker.

However, random selection only constitutes free will in a nil preference situation. In all other circumstances, conscious deliberation leads us to pick one particular course of action. This is an outstanding-candidate situation.

There is no room for randomness here. The agent’s choice is determined by their emotions, their reasoning, their memories, etc. They choose the best possible choice given their current knowledge. It would be possible for the agent to choose a course of action which they did not consider the best option, but not without some reason.

In this situation, given the laws of physics, determinism rules. Since it is impossible to violate the laws of nature, it would be impossible for the agent to decide on an option without that choice being the result of a causal chain. In fact, if some exterior force were to cause the agent to randomly pick an option against their own reasoning, then this would be the opposite of free will.

Say that after some deliberation, I choose to learn to play an instrument. Since this choice is caused by my emotions, reasoning, and so on, it is the inevitable result of the physical processes of my brain.

Some might argue that, since I cannot violate the laws of physics, I cannot choose other than to learn the instrument. But this is fallacious. It is within my power to choose otherwise, if I have some reason for doing so. I myself am a deterministic process, and my reasoning determines the choices that I make. This, in essence, is free will.

I am able to deliberate about my future and make decisions on the basis of that deliberation. If this is not freedom, then what is?

The Incompatibilist Fallacy

I suggest that incompatibilists – those who believe that free will is incompatible with determinism, and is therefore illusory – are labouring under the same fallacy that Daniel Dennett accuses David Chalmers of falling prey to.

When I think about my options, assess my emotions, recollect past experiences, follow a chain of reasoning and then make a choice, the feeling that I have that I am consciously choosing my own actions is not an illusion. That deterministic process is itself the process of volition.

Free will or volition is merely the sum total of all the psychological processes involved in making a choice. It is not some mystical, transcendent thing which exists above and beyond the deterministic processes of brain function.

Admittedly, the waters are muddied by the philosophical position of libertarianism, according to which it would be possible to make a different choice given the exact same set of causes: something which is clearly impossible. This false libertarian conception of free will is in the same category as Chalmers’ conception of consciousness and the hypothetical vitalist’s conception of life.

However, incompatibilists take this transcendent, libertarian idea of free will, and use it to argue that there is something delusional about the idea that we are freely choosing our own actions when we deliberate and make choices. This is a fallacy.

The Self

Numerous philosophers have argued that the concept of the self is intrinsically fallacious, while many modern psychologists and neuroscientists have argued that there is no room for the self in theories of mind and brain function.

Some arguments are based on a conception of the self as a homunculus – an inner being, living within the mind, who perceives the objects of consciousness and in doing so facilitates experience. This conception is fallacious, since postulating an inner being to explain perception leads to an infinite regress (what component inside the inner being leads that being to perceive?).

Other arguments against the self focus on the fact that the self is not reducible to its constituent parts. The Brahmin and Buddhist sage Nagasena, who lived around 150 BC, compared the self to a chariot. Nagasena reasoned that a chariot is built from a number of separate components, none of which is the essence of the chariot.

Similarly, he reasoned that the self does not exist, since there is no part of a person which can be pointed to as the essence of that individual. However, we can only accept that this implies there is no self if we also agree that there is no such thing as a chariot; in fact, we know that the word “chariot” is the name for a certain structure which is irreducible to its parts.

I could lose my legs and still be myself. Similarly, I could lose my arms and still be myself. I am still myself when I am not thinking, or when I have no emotion, or when I am asleep and possess no consciousness at all.

The fact that any one aspect of myself could be removed and yet still leave my self as the whole of what remains does not disprove my existence, it merely demonstrates that a whole cannot be reduced to its parts. Nagasena’s example is a critique of reductionism, not a critique of the self; the self is merely the sum total of an individual’s attributes.

More recently, Susan Blackmore has argued against the existence of the self, using arguments much like those above. We feel as if we are conscious beings experiencing a stream of thoughts, perceptions, emotions, etc., but when we attempt to look at the “self” experiencing these things, we can only find the stream of experience itself. Hence the self is an illusion.

Others have argued that the feeling we have of being an observer of experience comes from our memories (i.e., the fact that we remember our past actions and exhibit consistent behaviour), and thus the self is illusory.

The Non-Self Fallacy

I hold that these arguments are based on the same fallacy as incompatibilism. Just as determinist arguments against free will begin with the libertarian, physics-defying, transcendent conception of free will, arguments against the self begin with the idea that “I” am somehow distinct from my brain function: either an independent observer who does the actual experiencing, or some other transcendent part of the whole.

The fact that my sense of being a singular entity from one moment to the next is derived from my memories and the fact that I am a single, physical body does not somehow mean that sense is illusory. An individual’s self is the sum total of their physical and psychological attributes, in the same way that life is the sum total of biological processes, or free will is the sum total of all the psychological processes involved in making a choice.

Conclusions

I suggest that in all of the examples above, the illusory, transcendent concepts of life, consciousness, free will and the self are all primitive relics of our historical belief in souls. The soul was believed to be the animating force that separated live things from dead things. It was also believed to be the source of consciousness.

The soul was tied up with the belief that free will was a gift from god, setting man apart from the deterministic laws of the universe, and it was also true self of a person, merely housed in their physical body until the time of death.

In explaining the physical processes behind these various phenomena, science has demonstrated that they are not the result of a soul. But we have retained an aspect of this false belief system in the idea that this phenomena are in some way transcendent. In doing so, we are forced to falsely conclude that these phenomena are illusions.

This single fallacy underlies a great deal of misconceptions in philosophy of mind, and must be abandoned if we are to genuinely understand things like consciousness, free will and the existence of the self and appreciate them for what they are: integral parts of what it means to be a human being.

Copyright © Dan Haycock 2011. For similar articles and information about Dan’s book, Being and Perceiving, visit http://www.DanHaycock.co.uk or http://being-and-perceiving.weebly.com/

Being acquainted with the philosophy of Plato, Freud might draw out ideas about the unconscious as Plato reflects on the problem of the unconscious person’s knowledge. Yes, and other topics, developed in the framework of Greek philosophy and is directly adjacent to the problem of the unconscious, whether it be dream or motivations of human activity, could not interest the founder of psychoanalysis. It is no accident, justification or excuse for his psychoanalytic postulates it, though not often resorted to the authority of Empedocles and Aristotle.

In the philosophy of the eighteenth century XVII-to the forefront of understanding the fore issues related to the understanding of the nature of the mind, the definition of the role and place of consciousness in human life. One of the main question was about whether to consider the human mind as endowed with consciousness only if you can avoid it in the presence of something like that, that does not possess the properties of consciousness, or as part of the processes that take place automatically, unconsciously and spontaneously, it should make for mental limits of human life.

In Descartes (1596-1650) deals with this question are clear: he proclaimed the identity of consciousness and mental, believing that the human psyche, there can be nothing other than deliberately running processes. The maxim “I think, therefore I am” becomes the starting point of his philosophy. This does not mean an absolute power of the mind and reducing everything to a mental conscious. Descartes did not recognize the existence of passions of the human soul. On the contrary, in his treatise “The Passion of the soul,” he attempted to understand the problem. In this treatise, Descartes not only provides a classification of the passions, but also writes about the struggle taking place between the “lower” part of the soul, which he called “sentient” and “higher” part of it – a “reasonable”. However, he believes that the parts of the soul have no fundamental differences and, therefore, the soul actually is one. At the same between the two parts of the soul, there is no struggle, because the mind is the determinant. The struggle in the soul of man is only when one and the same is the passion and the reason which has an effect on the body. In this case, human passion is like an unconscious body movement, while holding back their soul.

Against the absolute power of intelligent design made in a man Spinoza (1632-1677) believed that “people would rather follow the leadership of a blind desire, than the mind…”. In contrast to the Cartesian philosophy Spinoza proposed a provision that the inclination or desire is the very essence of man. These representations of the relationship between reason and passion, mind and instincts of man are reflected in the works of several philosophers who expressed doubts about certain provisions of the Cartesian philosophy.

One of these was the philosopher Hume (1711-1776), who opposed the restructuring of that any rational being is into conformity with the mind of his thoughts. Hume attempted to prove that, first, the mind itself can not motivate an act, and, secondly, that reason does not prevent the flow of emotions. Thus, Hume believed that, in principle, it affects the mind and can not stand each other or challenge each other priority in the management of human will, and therefore there is no need to talk about a struggle between them. In the arguments of Spinoza and Hume, there were many similarities with what was later expressed in the psychoanalytic Freud. This, above all, is that the position that human life in predetermining the role played by his unconscious desires or inclinations, than the consciousness of the mind. In addition, Spinoza treats desires and impulses of man as his most intimate, the fundamental fact entirely separate founder of psychoanalysis.

Along with the problem of the relation of mind and passions an important place in the philosophy of XVII-XVIII centuries, had the question of the relationship between conscious and unconscious perceptions, ideas and opinions, which refers to a philosophical understanding of the nature of human cognition. Descartes recognized the existence of man “vague” and “dark” perceptions that arise because of the dual origin of the perceptions themselves, because according to the Cartesian philosophy, some of them occur in the body, the other in the human soul. In turn, Spinoza distinguished between “clear” and “vague” idea.

In the philosophy of Leibniz (1646-1716), this problem was seen through the prism of the so-called “small perceptions,” “subtle perceptions.” In his view it is difficult to explain the emergence of conscious perceptions and ideas, if you do not admit the existence of something like that, that is not characterized by the property of consciousness, but still dormant in the human soul. Way of speaking about the need to recognize the unconscious and reasoning, which uses Leibniz and Freud, in many aspects is identical. Thus, if Leibniz indicates faulty connection between the processes of perception in the case of non-recognition of previous states of consciousness of the human soul, then, similarly are also constructed arguments by Freud. He proceeds from the assumption that the unconscious is necessary because of the existence of such acts of consciousness, which is required to explain the recognition of the other acts that are not conscious, because consciousness in the data, there are many gaps. Only in this case, he believes, is not disturbed psychic continuity, and it becomes clear the essence of the cognitive process, with its conscious acts.

The problem of the unconscious, clad in the form of considering the possibility of the existence of unconscious representations is reflected in the philosophy of Kant (1724-1804). Kant says that we can realize that we have the representation, though we can be not aware of it. On this basis, he distinguishes between two kinds of representations, “vague” and “clear.” Kant does not doubt, not only in the presence of a person’s “vague” ideas, but also in the existence of sensory intuitions and feelings that the sphere of “vague” ideas of a man is quite extensive, while the consciousness of the available “clear” views are not so numerous.

You can find much more information about Psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud on my psychology blog http://www.freud-sigmund.com.

Would you accept that it is just as easy to do either! Which you achieve is pretty well entirely down to you! You can control your approach to get the Best or the Worst out of people. Now will come the shouts from readers that this is rubbish because some people are always intent in bringing out the worst in others! True, but aren’t they still proving the point? Aren’t they proving it is easy to do. Just because they decide not to try to bring the best out in people, why should you give up on it!

Take complaining, (which we all have to do from time to time)! This offers a great chance to vindicate our behaviour. Suppose you have an issue with an energy supplier. You ring their call centre angry about the problem. Be honest, is the person taking the call likely to be the first or last person to have been briefed on the cause of your problem. Is he or she likely to be all set to give you the information you need? Answer: No. Is he or she paid to try to help you? Yes!

Now the crucial question – again be honest and fair – do you think he or she vowed privately while on the way to work at the call centre that day, “I am going to screw up as many peoples problems as I can today?” Realistic answer: “No!”

Believe it not, even the people working in these front line complaint roles want to do a good job. They want to achieve a result for you. They can be just as frustrated that they themselves have yet to be given an explanation.

So does blasting and bad-mouthing them help or hinder them when resolving your complaint? Of course, tell them you are very angry and desperately inconvenienced – assuming it is true – but don’t be angry with them and watch what happens!

Isn’t the reaction: ‘Oh Dear! Tell me more about it and and let me see if I can sort it out’.
Now you have a small team working on your problem.

If instead you blast them down the phone, surely all you get is a self-protective, defensive, classic job manual response for difficult callers.

Doctors, hospitals, police, airlines, telephone companies, holiday companies and many more, all employ people like you. Like you they too are busy, trying to simplify things. They have children with chicken pox or mumps, a parent ill, financial worries, or may not be feeling too great themselves.

Really! Is any of this, you ask, an issue for you and your complaint? You may say, after all the bother you have had, that there is absolutely no justification for accommodating any of this. Yelling at them is the only way, given the scale of the trouble..

So what would I say to that? OK! You choose! Adopt an approach asking for help and apologising for your aggravated state and watch how the helper’s own sense of justice kicks in. But multiply the problem by verbally assaulting the person in the call centre and who gains?.

This same simple psychology can be used with employees too. All managers work related surely have problems, disappointments and annoying issues. They too can deal with those in the part of the business that caused. There they can bring the worst out of the staff involved. It is so easy but solves nothing either.

Even more true is that some people who have caused us grief can be innocently unaware of the problem they have caused us. When told in civil manner they can be more horrified than we are as the sufferer. Yet when blasted out they can in ignorance deny it and exacerbate the whole affair.

What’s the simple ploy then? With the Psychology Simplified, just adopt a frame of mind to bring the best out in people. You won’t ever achieve 100% success but you will be astonished how it simplifies your life. More to the point still – watch your blood pressure drop!

Gerry Neale is a mentor, an artist and a writer of many articles on Psychology published on Ezine and copied elsewhere. He is the author of a recently published cognitive novel called “Squaring Circles” ISBN 9780956868824. The book is a paperback available on line and soon to be available in UK book shops. More details are available at http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk or via the publishers at http://www.pearlpress.co.uk

Squaring circles emotionally is a challenge anyway but truthfully, do we know what we are really feel and what we are don’t? Are we certain that we know exactly what in our partner really turns us on and what does not? More, do we know why we react as we do with our partner – or don’t, or why they respond to us as they do – or don’t? We see the evidence of it but not the cause. So what does cause it?

Is it odd to reflect that two people can react to one another in a particular way and they can love each other for it? Yet they can be totally unaware of it as a behaviour, or, if they are aware, can believe it to be perfectly normal. Meanwhile others witnessing them cannot and do not want to emulate it, finding the behaviour unusual.

There can be any number of behaviours performed by ourselves of which we are totally unaware, their causes residing deep in our subconscious. These can thrill, warn the heart, irritate, aggravate or downright displease our partner. They can disappoint even ourselves.

Personal behaviours in our partner will be present too, some of which they may or may not be aware. Certainly they would feel these to be unreasonable. We each live our lives on the basis that the way we live our lives is acceptable. Our own sense of Reality is as we each paint it.

Imagine in a relationship we could write out a joint list even of the offending behaviours of each of us and couple them with a preferred behaviour to neutralise the displeasure or discomfort it causes the other! Wouldn’t it lead to there being so many more peaceful households. It would be so particularly if that act in itself triggered and sustained the desired behavioural changes!

Were life so simple! Regrettably the complex force of the metaphor of “Squaring Circles” kicks in with a vengeance! The realisation of the deep-rooted tenacity with which a behaviour can become seemingly habitual and unalterable could make us look for an even more challenging description than ‘Squaring Circles’.

One can find legions of simple examples.

A house full of boys can make a mother’s attempts to keep the top on the toothpaste between users and the lavatory seat left down very forlorn missions. Over the years the children may even find it so usual to have tops left off and seats left up, that it becomes habitual and after that it is never reflected upon.

Marrying someone who had instead completely forgotten that tops are always left on and lavatory seats left down, can give rise to discovering comfort zones we never realised we had. In fact we have literally hundreds of them.

It would be an insuperable challenge if before we went to bed each night, we had to write out a list of every single like and dislike we had lest we forget them next morning. Fortunately our subconscious does this work of monitoring our comfort zones for us automatically. Yet if we ever bring to mind such a comprehensive list, we should remind ourselves that we alone compiled that list by adding to it every day, week and month of our life. We did so for one reason or another, but we did it.

Evidence is unfortunately far too strong that so many of these likes and dislikes are the sum total of what we ourselves have mandated. They are most definitely not merely evidence of the way we were born.

But one thing is for sure, to go any further we should “want” to discover more not feel we “have” to. Putting ourselves under self-imposed pressure would mean that only for as long as we willed a change in behaviour would it last. As soon as we deemed we no longer “had to,” it would stop.

In order to change, first, awareness of an inhibiting pattern or behaviour is necessary. (It may have grown to annoy us or our partner.) Second, the need must be acknowledged that we may have to reflect hard and go right back into a childhood to find the origin. Several excellent processes and non-fiction books exist to help in this self discovery.

Most important is to use one which deals effectively with the interplay necessary between the Intellect and the Emotions.

Does it produce success? Properly done, definitely. How long does it take? That depends on the awareness, desire and tenacity applied.

I wish you well.
Gerry Neale

Gerry Neale recommends a book called “You Can Change Your Life” by Tim Laurence ISBN 9780340825235. It sets out the Hoffman Process. Sir Gerry is an artist, mentor and author of a recently published cognitive behavioural novel called “Squaring Circles”. Detailed reviews and background information can be obtained from http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk and from the publishers http://www.pearlpress.co.uk

Abstract:

This article examines the difficulty of separation anxiety in adults which for women can lead to anxiety in relationships, a lack of self worth and desperation leading to suicide attempts while in men can lead to obsessive relationship behavior, over controlling and violence. How does this happen to people and how can they in a therapeutic environment learn to control and deal with their emotional responses.

Introduction:

The origins of separation anxiety (Bowlby 1956) come from when a child feels their carer (in most cases the mother) have abandoned them both emotionally and physically. In children this can be seen in their everyday behavior with such activities as increased demands on the mother and aggressiveness, clinging behavior in which the child physically holds onto the mother afraid to let her out of their site and grip. You can often see evidence in supermarkets where a child is hanging onto the mother’s skirts and will not let go. The child will throw a tantrum, when the mother is out of sight, in another isle of the store. Often these children have been let down by the mother (in the child’s view) when she had to leave home for a short period, perhaps to have a second child or illness. The child feels abandoned and even when the mother returns often reject her as a defense to protect themselves from further abandonment. This leads the child to become more self sufficient so that it does not have to rely on the mother so much. This can cause a swing between clinging behavior and detachment from time to time. Some children start to complain of imaginary illness to gain attention and control the parent’s activity this may later lead to anorexia in teenage years or OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). One of the other obvious abandonment issues in our modern world is divorce. Here the loss of one parent sets up a future anxiety over relationships with others – trust issues are at the foremost here for being also divorced in the child’s future life. Another issue is economics, where both parents need to work in order to make ends meet in a world of spiraling costs and uncertainty. Recently many couples around the world suffered financial hardship as property markets collapsed and banks needed to be rescued from tax income to survive. This situation left many families without homes, on the move, without any funds for early education and much more. For children placed with grandparents for long periods of time while the parents try to rebuild their lives and find new work and homes. The children once again can feel abandoned by the parents left with virtual strangers for periods of time.

Consequences for Adult Relationships:

The Man:

Many women will tell you the stories of men who become so obsessive with them that they are constantly checking up on them, asking where have they been, who have they seen, checking their text messages on the mobile phone, maintaining that the woman has no right to privacy and he should have all the passwords to internet social sites, (Facebook etc) and email accounts. The men check them regularly and the histories of messenger accounts (MSN. Yahoo, QQ) to see what was said in chat conversations. The man constantly questions the woman about every aspect her life – not in a caring way about how she is spending her time but in an inquisitive way that demands answers. When he is frustrated by the answers or feels she has some secret from him he turns to threats of breaking up and violence towards her. This is all equivalent to clinging behavior as a child – constantly worried his mother will leave him again. So with all women in his adult life – control is the key to reducing anxiety. Where control fails – violence follows – stalking is common (following the girl secretly). Another manifest behavior is promiscuity, if you cannot trust any girl then never keep one but go from one casual relationship to another. Often these men only love themselves and see sexual encounters as self love – the girl in fact is treated as an object and not a person. When the man feels himself beginning to attach to one girl he immediately sleeps with others to reduce his reliance on that one girl. The number one emotional driving force is jealousy, they can have many girls but all the girls can only be with him. So he is often violent in everyday situations, arguing, holding tightly to the point of pain, grabbing, slapping, holding as in swaddling (prevents the girl from disengaging the hug) and if all else fails then extreme violence and damage to the girl physically to the point of hospitalization. During sexual encounters he will often not orgasm for a long time as he is not emotionally invested in the girl, the girl may mistake this as a good lover, when in fact his aggressive love making, often violent and painful is his mentally punishing the girl – just as he would have done to his mother if he was strong enough as a child. Masturbation is common even when sex is freely available – he does not need to fantasize about a girl while touching as it is an act of self love and gratification – only rely on yourself.

The Woman:

Women in most cases not being as physically strong as men cannot resort to violence however they often pick weak men in order to control them and hurt them physically knowing the men often are too caring to fight back or are non-violent themselves. We often talk about domestic violence as the woman as victim but behind many doors there are men suffering at the hands of violent women who throw objects, slap, beat and knife men in attacks over abandonment issues. Sometimes these men lash out in frustration at being constantly abused but only to be left with enormous guilt at hurting a women they love, thus the women in return can use this outburst to further punish the man with guilt over long periods of time often leading the man to abandon a woman he has feelings for in order to escape the abuse. More often in women however they suffer more from anxiety and emotional turmoil than men do in the same situations. In relationships as adults, the child of separation anxiety, will exhibit a lack of self esteem, often believing that the man they are with somehow is only putting up with them and does not really love them, even though they say they do? They believe other women are all better looking, better dressed, more pretty than they are – they are constantly in a situation of social comparison. This means that they fear further abandonment by their husbands or partners as he will become bored, disenchanted with them and want to find a happier, easier woman to be with. They constantly ask the man for confirmation of love, with words, deeds and emotionally. Sexually they often are frigid and only agree to sex as a way of appeasing the man. During sexual encounters they are often thinking about what does this really mean – does he love me or just need satisfaction for himself from my body? During their early relationship just like men they are often promiscuous and move from man to man using sex as a way for looking for love and caring. However soon they realize that the men now only use them for sex and have no investment in a relationship (often the girl becomes known for easy sex amongst men – the slut syndrome). However they continue to use sex as a way to find a man who will not abandon them. Once in a long term relationship then sex becomes annoying to them and a nuisance. They mistake the husbands approach for sex as using her and not loving her – this can in turn cause unhappiness in the relationship as the man is frustrated by his approaches being rebuffed and eventually can lead to a breakdown and a new abandonment. However just as in the men most women will masturbate when alone but again with no fantasy attached but as a form of self relief from tension. Most women here feel they are not worthy of love from anyone (just as they perceive their mother did not love them). So they have a self prophecy that any relationship will end badly – and through their own behavior make the prophecy come true.

Treatment and Therapy:

Many patients arrive at counseling for couple’s therapy hoping to resolve their everyday issues that seem to be pulling them apart. They profess they still love each other and want the relationship to work. However in some cases in becomes apparent that one of the party is an adult separation anxiety case. It is not easy in therapy to deal with this issue; it takes a lot of background education first in order for the couple to understand where their behaviors are coming from. Transactional Analysis can be a useful technique here showing the Karpman triangle of victim, persecutor and rescuer. Many ASA clients see themselves as the victim being persecuted by just about everyone and wanting to be rescued but always rejecting the solutions to hand. In understanding this concept you can then move the client onto an understanding of Bowlby’s separation anxiety in children and how it relates to adult life. Once the concepts are accepted and understood through clarifying techniques (asking the client to explain the concepts back to you) then insight can then occur with relating their current relationship issues in the light of this newly gained knowledge. With the help of the therapist they can start to understand behavior and actions they feel where normal and now see as maladaptive behavior. From this point a switch to cognitive emotive therapy with then challenge the faulty thinking that has led to the clients self doubt, anxiety, and fears and acting out. It takes many session to treat this type of client (over 20 at least and often 60) they have multiple issues to deal with that have become habituated over time, plus they resist the change from their comfort zone to a place that at first seems unbelievable that someone can love them unconditionally. (Although this is rare even in normal relationships which often have an economic emotional balance to them – I will love you – if?) As therapy proceeds the couple may not need to come together but concentrate on the ASA client more – as they have the main issue to deal with and may find talking privately away from the partner more relaxing. Also issues of masturbation may not be known to the partner and so some confidentiality issues should be observed here. In the conclusion of therapy the client often needs reassurance over time – this can be done through short emails – they often relapse to their former condition and so further sessions are needed regularly from time to time – mostly for reassurance that everything is going to plan. For the therapist looking for positive feedback from everyday activity is important.

Conclusion:

Separation anxiety in adults is a serious condition often over looked by conventional therapists who become too concerned in the here and now situation forgetting that histories matter. It is why the failure of positive psychology, humanistic psychology and many other modern fads never address the reality of people’s development as an important concern for therapy. Although psychotherapy is often taught now as historical but not useful concept in the modern world, this is text book arrogance by modern psychology teachers who have no field experience with real clients. Transactional Analysis and CET/CBT are the most useful techniques for ASA and should be utilized. All good therapists and counselors should be eclectic, in other words, use the best from any theory if it helps your client to a better understanding of themselves and their situations, hopefully leading to a better quality of life. It is not an easy condition to treat, 20 or more session are competing with years of anxiety and self doubt – so long term treatment and follow up are often recommended to the client.

References:

J. Bowlby (1969) Attachment & Loss Vol.1 – Penguin Press (line 1 of the introduction). S. F. Myler (2011) Notes from Private Practice – Shanghai, China.

Dr. Stephen Myler is from Leicester in England, an industrial town in the Midlands of the United Kingdom. He holds a B.Sc (Honours) in Psychology from the UK’s Open University the largest in the UK; he also has an M.Sc and Ph.D in Psychology from Knightsbridge University in Denmark. In addition to this Stephen holds many diplomas and awards in a variety of academic areas including journalism, finance, teaching and advanced therapy for mental health. Stephen has as a Professor of Psychology many years teaching experience in colleges and universities in England and China to post 16 young adults, instructing in psychology, sociology, English, marketing and business. He has been fortunate to travel extensively from Australia to Africa to the United Sates, South America, Borneo, most of Europe and Russia. Stephen’s favourite hobby is the study of primates and likes to play badminton. He believes that students who enjoy classes with humour and enthusiasm from the teacher always come back eager to learn more.