Breaking the rules

It's interesting how many times (a day) I hear people excusing their breaking the rules with the excuse that their rule-breaking was justified by strong feelings. "I just got so mad I flipped him off" or "I was so upset I didn't know what I was saying" or "She/he/it made me so angry I couldn't control myself" or.....

It's as if they think they have some free pass to violate the rules of the domain or system they're in because of strong feelings, like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. The rules apply, UNLESS the person feels very strongly. Of course strong feelings make impulse control more of an issue, but do they excuse behavior? Do people think they should be allowed to break the law on the basis of poor impulse control? Is it ok to say "I killed him because I just got so mad I couldn't help myself"?

And of course it seems that we do allow this to some degree. Judges and juries are more lenient to crimes committed in the "heat of passion" than they are to "cold-blooded" or calculated crimes, although there is little difference to the victim. The issue seems to be whether we can always be expected to be responsible for our actions, under all emotional conditions. Do we believe that people can feel strongly enough that they are no longer accountable for their actions, or do we believe that people are always responsible for and accountable for their behaviors?

Years ago I had to evaluate the mental state of an elderly farmer who was accused (and who admitted to) killing his wife impulsively. He told me she had come up behind him quietly and "goosed" him, and that, startled, he spun around and slapped her, resulting in her falling, hitting her head and dying. After telling me this quietly, he thought for a minute, and said the following: "You know, I've been a good man all my life. Raised my kids, went to church regular, worked hard and made my own way. Now, one killing and all of a sudden I'm a murderer".

Aspiring downwards

When I was a young man (don't laugh, it happened) most of my group wanted to be sophisticated, elegant, educated, well-dressed, charming and polite, because we wanted to be adults, and we thought that adults were like that. We hoped that smelling good, being clean and neat would also help us be accepted (especially by girls). We thought (fools that we may have been) that this combination would be attractive to young women, and indeed to every adult with any pretensions to "class". You might say that we (mostly us lower middle-class) aspired to the manners and behaviors of the upper socio-economic classes.

Now I find myself increasingly puzzled over the apparent desire of young people who are themselves middle or upper class, moneyed, educated and sophisticated, who seem to aspire toward the manners and behaviors of the lowest socio-economic classes: the population of the ghettos, the criminals, the terribly poor (who, by the way, don't see themselves as people to be emulated). Why aspire downwards? I see well-to-do young people wearing clothes that are deliberately damaged so as to appear worn and battered. They clearly enjoy looking scruffy, the males unshaven, both sexes ill-dressed. I hear them talking gutter talk, using argot of the tenements and the ghettos, listening to and singing the primitive and crudely vulgar music of the poorest, least-educated people. Do they do this because they no longer see the "upper classes" as worthy of emulation? Have they lost any admiration for education, "class", manners, good dress? Is it a form of rebellion against an adult society, a society run by the middle and upper classes? I wonder if the constant exposure by television and newspaper/tabloid news of everything corrupt and dishonest has made young people believe that there is no longer any integrity, no morals or honor among their seniors. Now that I’m one, I don't admire us much either. On the other hand, there isn’t much news value in honesty or integrity.

In psychotherapy, what is a "cure"?

There is a conflict among psychotherapists about what constitutes a "cure". One group says that the patient is the final authority. Another group says that there is no such thing as a cure. A third group say that when symptoms of depression and/or anxiety have gone, the patient is cured. A fourth group says that until the underlying character defect that causes the patient to have symptoms is corrected, the symptoms will return under the pressures of life.

The problem with all these points of view is that they don't define clearly what the "illness" we psychotherapists treat actually is. When the patient complains of symptoms of various kinds to a physician, the physician doesn't just apply medications to relieve the symptoms. Instead, the physician looks for the cause of the symptoms, and attempts to address that. Are the symptoms of depression and anxiety like that? Do we need to look for some underlying cause to correct, lest the symptoms return?

I think reasoning by analogy is very risky business. We don't know what causes pathological anxiety or depression. We can make up plausible, but ultimately untestable fictions that account for the symptoms, but plausibility is not a sufficient foundation for any structure. The problem is, we don't know what causes anxiety or depression. We have no therapies that address "causes". However, when depression is treated as a symptom, and when the treatment is effective, as it is in 70% of the cases, the depression does NOT return. The same results apply to the effective treatments of anxiety. The patient doesn't feel bad any more. Is that not enough?

By the way, the two therapies that have currently demonstrated consistent effectiveness at symptom reduction are cognitive-behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy. No other therapy has been demonstrated scientifically to be as effective for the reduction of symptoms. But people have problems that do not manifest themselves as clear-cut symptoms, and symptom-reduction therapies are ineffective for them.

Religous arguments II

It occurs to me, after reading the comment made to the preceding blog, that part of the problem with the science vs. religion argument is the usual boundary issue: whose domain rules should be used to evaluate the issue?

Members of the religious domain want to use their rules and standards to evaluate the validity of the scientific domain; members of the scientific domain assert that their domain rules should be used to evaluate the religious domain. From the standpoint of each domain, the other domain is sorely lacking. In fact, we all tend to judge the domains of others by our own domain standards. They do the same to us. The issue that arises over and over again throughout human history is how to deal with domains whose rules and behaviors are abhorrent to us.

I'm certainly not saying that we have to evaluate each domain from within its own rule structure. It would be impossible to have law and government if each group could only be judged by its own rules. The problem is how to establish the validity of an over-arching set of domain rules. Governments do that by simple establishment of an entire nation as a domain with its own rules, or "laws", and further asserting that such laws have priority over the rules of all domains under them or subordinate to them.

In order to evaluate government domains and their rule systems, we then have to establish some further system that includes all the government domains within a new rule system that is asserted to have priority over all subordinate domains, such as governments. Few governments are willing to surrender their own rule systems to such a system (like the UN or the League of Nations). But without subordinating their own rules, they cannot be in a position to judge the appropriateness or acceptability of the rules of other governmental/national domains. So they dance back and forth across the boundary, trying to assert their right to judge without surrendering to the judgment of others. An interesting if insoluble problem.

Religious arguments

I just received a brochure from a major group of skeptics offering to teach me how to win arguments with religious believers. I concede that I am a skeptic, addicted to the scientific method, demanding evidence and consistent theory. However, I don't see the point in attempting to argue against the validity of any religious position.

In the first place, it's not ever going to be possible to convince a religious believer with a rigorously logical argument. Not only do religious people not require (or even recognize) the rules for logical discourse, their belief by definition is not based on logical reasoning or irrefutable evidence. It is based on emotion, "faith", the appeal of various aspects of the religion, family belief systems, and so on. Faith, by definition, doesn't depend on replicable evidence.

In the second place, what is the point? Who gains by weakening someone's religious beliefs, no matter how absurd they are? People who are fervent religious believers can be rational and skeptical in other areas, so they don't appear to be "weakened" by their belief system. I dislike their tiresome self-righteous tendency to treat deviance from their particular point of view as ignorant or stupid or even evil. But I don't see how, as a skeptic, I should be as intolerant and arrogant as they are.

I observe that religious beliefs give a certain comfort to people in pain and in trouble. I imagine that believing in life after death takes away some of the sting of loss and grief. Believing in some system that makes life appear to be more fair is very appealing, even though religions that attempt to do this (in spite of the evidence) have to reach pretty far to try this. We want to believe in the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the innocent, and clearly that doesn't happen in this world.

So to you religious people out there who may by chance have read this far: I'm glad you find comfort in your beliefs. I hope they sustain you in your darker hours. I only hope you don't find it necessary to punish me for not believing in your religion.

Boundary crossing

An additional thought to append to the preceding note: "Crossing a boundary" means to take the rules from one domain into another domain. Bringing gang rules into a school is an example. Sexual advances from an employee to an employer (or vice versa) is another. The issue is not so much whether we like or approve the rules but that they break or conflict with the rules of the new domain.

To "fit in", we must comply with the rules for the domain we are in. It isn't an absolute necessity that we fit in; it's just a choice we can make. If we don't like the rules in a domain, we don't have to enter that domain unless the choice is forced on us. We don't care so much, for instance, if rival gang members shoot each other. We object to their behavior breaking our domain rules when their violence spills into the public sector.

In recent years, we have begun asserting the priority of an overall set of domain rules, which we call "human rights". We assert them to have priority over all local domain rules, which justifies our entering into other domains, by force, if necessary, to impose our higher priority rule set. This comment is not intended to criticise such action, but to point out that wars break out in order to assert the priority of one or another set of domain rules as "universal". Religions, in particular, generally assert their domain rules as superior and that all conflicting domain rules be changed. The assertion of human rights as a pre-eminent set of domain rules is no different than any other assertion, religious or otherwise.

Boundaries

There's a lot of psychobabble about "boundaries" and the problems that result from "crossing them". Amidst all the smoke it's hard to find what kind of fire is burning. I've spent a lot of hours listening to people talk about the problems that were caused by other people "crossing the boundaries", and out of that I've begun to understand what they mean.

A boundary is an imaginary line that separates one domain from another. "Moving" in this sense can be physical or mental. When we move into a different domain, the rules that govern how we are expected to act change. Each domain is defined by the rules that govern residence in the domain. Examples are generally both easy and obvious. How we act in church is governed by different rules than when we are in our homes or in a bar. How we act at a party is different than how we behave at a funeral. Our behavior in an organization is governed by the rules of the organization, which can cover any aspect of human behavior. When you join the Army, you dress, act and behave differently than you are being a member of a sorority or fraternity.

So what does it mean when we speak of "crossing boundaries"? By the above definition, boundary crossing occurs when someone entering a different domain does not adhere to the rules of the new domain. Showing up at a funeral in a bikini would be an example, but examples are so numerous they become trivial. What we experience when someone moves into "our" domain and does not follow "our" domain's rules is rudeness, at the least. How serious the boundary violation is depends on how important is the rule that is being broken. Domains vary a great deal in the rigidity and vigor with which rules are enforced, some domains (like informal social groups) being relatively lenient, while others (like religious organizations) being relatively rigorous.

We see the boundary crosser as behaving disrespectfully (at least) toward us and all who are in the domain with us. We see it as a violation of our "rights" to set the rules in our domain and have them respected by others. Yet the "right" is a social custom, not some divine necessity or basic aspect of human nature.

We typically respond to anyone who "breaks the rules", who "shouldn't act that way", with anger. The public display and demonstration of our anger is expected to discourage people from not following the local rules, or even to force them into compliance. We have every reason to be uncomfortable with people who "cross boundaries', who are unwilling or unable to follow the "rules" that govern our lives, manners, dress, behavior and so on. We can't predict what they will or will not do. Our "rules" don't seem to control them or govern their behavior.

At the same time, it's important for all of us to recognize that the "rules" of a domain are essentially arbitrary and man-made. We can choose to comply with them, and that makes our social existence smoother. But compliance with these rules is a choice, not a necessity. If we choose in a particular instance not to comply, we should expect conflict and disagreeable responses, perhaps even assault.

Unhappiness, grief and depression

In an earlier post I suggested some differences between unhappiness and depression. I now think that I confused the terms "unhappiness" and "grief" by compounding them. At the time it seemed important to me to avoid confusing depression with grief/unhappiness. People generally confuse depression and unhappiness, not realizing that depression is a treatable (and curable) illness.

Grief is not a part of unhappiness, I believe. Grief is a natural healing process that provides relief from losses occurring in all of our lives. It is possible to have a happy and satisfying life even though it is visited by grief at times. Unhappiness is a different emotion, resembling depression more than grief in that it is generally not time-limited, as grief normally is. However, depression is an illness that is characterized by anger or hopelessness directed at the self, while unhappiness is the result of life problems and circumstances that are not suitable for the individual experiencing them.

We can understand grief and depression fairly easily. Unhappiness, however, can result from either circumstances beyond our control (life in a concentration camp, for instance) or from circumstances that could be changed but at a price the person believes may be too high. When our lives are unsuitable for us, we become unhappy, and the unhappiness can endure as long as conditions remain the same. However, I am also aware that many individuals have achieved a happy life in spite of terribly unsuitable and difficult life situations, and that most of us have experienced periods of happiness even during difficult times. Obviously the condition of unhappiness is not solely conditioned by external circumstances.

Unhappiness, then, is composed at the least of our awareness that our life situation is not what we need it to be. One patient described his chronic unhappiness very well: "It's like wearing your shoes on the wrong feet. You can do it, you can even walk in them, but nothing feels right and everything seems to hurt."

Sometimes it seems to me that people choose to remain in unhappy circumstances rather than face the uncertainty and risk of change. This is especially true with those who have never really been happy. When we know no other way to survive than through an unhappy life-style, we tend to avoid chance-taking. For example, I think of the many abused spouses who elect to remain in their marriage rather than risk the uncertainty of trying to survive alone, or to risk the moral judgment of one's religion, or whatever. People get "stuck" in bad jobs and bad relationships, unwilling to risk alternatives or change. Sometimes they even get stuck in lifestyles that they believe are "right" but which result in chronic dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

People can (and should) get treatment for depression. While they sometimes ask for treatment for grief, little beyond support (or supportive treatment) is necessary. In fact, psychotherapeutic intervention for grief may even be harmful in that it treats a normal human response to loss as if it were some sort of pathology.

What about unhappiness? Should we treat that in psychotherapy? In general, I believe it is useful to use psychotherapy as a tool in treating someone who is unhappy over a longer period of time. The therapeutic issue that immediately arises is whether the situation and circumstances that give rise to the unhappiness are chosen by the patient or imposed on the patient. To what degree does the person consent to the circumstances of their life? Can they find their current situation livable if they change their attitude and values? Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes, however, the answer is no, and the patient must decide to live with their unhappiness or to change their circumstances. The latter choice is rarely welcomed by partners and family members.

Frequently, if not invariably, the unhappy person has to examine their values and the choices arising from those values. Changing values and associated behaviors is not an easy task, but then neither is living with unhappiness.