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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 1 of 1. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Kalamatianos on January 4, 2004, at 20:44:35
CHAPTER ONE
AESTHETIC THINKING MADE SIMPLE
Aesthetic thinking is a simple idea. It is the very common thinking process in which a person looks in their mind’s eye at the aesthetics of the outcome of a contemplated behavior before they act. In this process they can make an estimate as to whether the action they are considering is likely to achieve the outcome they wish. If aesthetic thinking were the only thinking process, things would remain simple. However, in certain situations an automatic impulsive process seems to take control of our brains. When this happens we act in a stereotypical manner that is ineffective in accomplishing our goals. Even though unwanted outcomes occur repeatedly, we are unable to change our foolish behavior. We get defensive about things we don’t need to defend; we get into arguments we can’t or need to win; we can become mean-spirited and say hurtful things to people we love; we might engage in addictive or violent behaviors and a host of other foolish behaviors that prevent the accomplishment of our goals and reduce our joy in life.The Innate Reflex Responses
We have come to believe that these impulsive behaviors are motivated by a number of inborn reflex responses that were useful to us in early childhood but are troublesome in adult life. It is this process that sometimes block us from thinking through before we act in certain situations and even blocks us from discovering the true source of our foolishness. However, we can get rid of these impulsive behaviors and the reflex responses that motivate them by aesthetic thinking itself. This requires us to learn to think about our thinking processes with a special cognitive strategy. This cognitive strategy we have come to refer to as the aesthetic view.Let us describe one of these innate reflex responses we refer to as the dissatisfaction reflex. When an infant is uncomfortable, it cries. The crying lets the parent know the child has a problem and they take care of the child’s need. In this process, the infant has no conscious intention to disturb the peace of the parent, yet that is what happens. The wisdom of crying is not a learned response or the result of a cognitive process; its source is genetic. It is a kind of genetic wisdom that is handed down from generation to generation. This inborn response is imperative to the life of the child; without it, the child’s material needs might not be met. Unlike the sucking reflex response that is also imperative to the survival of the child, the dissatisfaction reflex response does not go away in the first year of life. In chapter 2 we will discuss a number of the reflex response in more detail.
The dissatisfaction reflex response appears early in life as crying. After the child has language, the dissatisfaction reflex will motivate complaining or protesting behaviors as well as crying. The impulse to complain or condemn unwanted situation blocks the child from accepting the facts of the situation and a sense of crisis is experienced. The dissatisfied child or immature adult simply feels an impulse to complain, protest or condemn the source of their unhappiness. The dissatisfaction reflex response is accompanied with:
1. Uncomfortable visceral tensions,
2. The visceral tensions convey a sense that the person’s ability to tolerate the unwanted situation is time limited,
3. That they are helpless,
4. That someone else must change,
5. That acceptance of the facts of the situation is impossible,
6. Often there is no conscious intention of eliciting the help of others.The complaining person feels helpless just like the helpless child who is dependent upon the assistance of someone else to meet his or her needs. The longer the situation persists, the more desperate the person feels. What we have found is that it is the impulsive mental act of condemning the situation that blocks the person from accepting the fact of the unwanted situation. The sense of ones inability to accept facts that can’t be denied creates a sense of crisis. It makes the problem appear to be bigger than one’s self.
In order to illustrate how this process works let’s look at a situation a pastor described to me. One of the members of his congregation, a fine Christian woman, had a daughter who contracted a virus in her brain. This virus radically changed the teenager’s personality for the worse. The mother was very distraught at the situation, claiming there was no possibility that she could accept this terrible situation. To the mother, the idea that she could accept the situation appeared to be equal with saying she didn’t care.
Just as the crying of the newborn infant disturbs the peace of its parents, most complaining or protesting disturbs the peace of others. Often the complaining is accompanied by hostile and destructive behaviors such as throwing things or speaking loudly. These behaviors can be threatening to those around. However, it is important to note that in many cases, though not all, the upset person reports having no conscious intention to disturb the peace of anybody. This appears unbelievable, yet I find it to be common in addiction, domestic violence and other marital problems.
In the past, I believed that this phenomenon was the result of unconscious anger. More recently, I have come to understand such behavior to be motivated by impulses that are the output of an unmediated dissatisfaction reflex response. Just as the crying infant had no conscious intention to disturb its parents peace, the act of complaining and hostile behaviors of the dissatisfied person require no cognitive thought or conscious intention; it is simply an unmediated reflex response that seeks satisfaction. The authenticity of this notion can be validated by the elimination of such behavior upon the mediation of the dissatisfaction reflex.
By definition, innate responses are not learned; they are the product of the evolutionary process by which the brain was formed. They are the result of the genetic coding that determines the pre-wiring of the brain that is present at birth. However, we note that the cues that stimulate the different reflex responses can be learned and unlearned. For example, we can learn to accept the discomfort of hunger or cold temperatures without acting out. At the same time we may decide that a disrespectful jester is intolerable. We can add to and subtract from the list of things we believe we are too fragile to tolerate without condemnation.
Imperative Beliefs
The impulsive behaviors can be destructive and often result in emotional pain and turmoil. A common defense against the impulsive behaviors is the development of beliefs we have come to refer to as imperative beliefs. A good example of an imperative belief is the case of the addict in recovery. His addiction has caused him so much pain and loss that he comes to believe that any such pain in the future would by intolerable. He makes the idea of relapse something terrible, so horrible he can’t even stand the thought of using drugs again. This serves to deter his craving for drugs or alcohol for a time. However, if he continues to complain and condemn unwanted events in his life, his dissatisfaction will stimulate a craving that he will eventually succumb to. It is common to see the phenomenon of addicts who swings like a pendulum between being actively engaged in their addiction and being in recovery. This process has led to the belief by most people involved in the recovery movement that addictions are an incurable disease. It is possible to teach addicts to turn off their cravings by looking at the aesthetics of the outcome of relapse. Paradoxically, to do this, they must quit making the idea of relapse unthinkable.We also see the same alternating behaviors in other situation. A dissatisfied spouse may become so ugly their partner decides to end the relationship. The thought of divorce can be so terrible that the ugly spouse then makes being mean spirited so awful that they turn off their impulse to be sarcastic and hurtful. For a time, they put their impulse to be ugly when unhappy to sleep. But eventually, their perception of being disrespected awakens the impulse to act out and the sarcastic behavior returns. These vacillations in mood and personality can be seen in many different situations in life. .
Mediating the Innate Reflex Response
It is possible to mediate or turn off most of the innate reflex responses by using a cognitive strategy we refer to as Aesthetic thinking. We find that some people can learn this cognitive strategy in a few minutes; others may take several months. Some people are able to turn off most impulses immediately; they simple globalize the process. Others seem to require turning off the different impulsive behaviors one at a time. A few have difficulty learning the new cognitive strategy at all. We find that there can be layers of impulses that block the visual objective view of self that is required in aesthetic view.Aesthetic Thinking
We are learning that when a person has extinguished their innate reflex responses, they are able to use their intelligence to act more wisely to effectively achieve their goals. The impulsive and imperative thinking mode effectively turns of a person’s aesthetic response. We believe that it is the human ability to discern what is beautiful from what is ugly that is the bases for wisdom. What is logical is beautiful, what is nonsense appears ugly. In most cases, the folks who have had trouble conducting their affairs successfully using imperative thinking will need no help or advice in figuring out how to succeed once they turn on their aesthetic response. For example the employee who is being badly treated by an employer will go get a better job once they quit complaining and accept the facts of their situation. In addition, when they cease complaining, they discover and enjoy the many beautiful things in life they never noticed before. Most report that they now enjoy their families, their friends and their work in a way they never thought possible.
A NEW PARADIGM
In our introduction we warned our readers that in order to understand the aesthetic view required a paradigm shift. At this point we want to discuss that shift. Our readers need to be aware that our discovery of the source of anger and violence and its remedy involves a new paradigm; a totally new view of the way the mind works. Since Freud created the concept of an unconscious mind, psychologists have seen this mythical entity as the source of pathological emotions and behaviors. Endless theorists have postulated that children are forced to repress emotions and these emotions are stored in some way in the unconscious mind. Others have postulated that parents unconsciously pass on self-destructive scripts to their children. In adult life these scripts and repressed emotion can cause anxiety, depression and self-destructive behaviors. In contrast, we are saying that unmediated innate reflex responses motivate unthinking impulsive actions in adult life. The result of the impulsive behaviors can be emotionally painful and motivate foolish behavior. Our remedy is to teach the individual a cognitive strategy that will extinguish the innate reflex response. This process will be discussed thoroughly later in the book.The Freudians, the Neo-Freudians and the behaviorist have pretty much ignored the content and the processes of the conscious mind. The Freudians and the Neo-Freudians believe that the conscious mind is just a cover for the unconscious mind. The behaviorists believe that the content of the conscious mind is irrelevant to behavior. Both groups belittle the concept of free will as a form of folk-psychology.
In contrast, we view conscious phenomenon as an undiscovered aspect of the field of physics, governed by yet to be discovered laws. The mind deals totally with information and there are laws of physics governing information. These laws are similar to the laws that govern the laws of energy and force. We are very interested in the interaction between the physical brain and the conscious mind. We see that interaction as a two-way process in which the brain is able to take neural signals from the sensory organs and changes those signals into conscious experience. At the same time, the scope of consciousness acts as a matrix that holds information together in a meaningful way. On the matrix of the conscious mind we can discover new relationships between bits of information. The consciousness of that new information than has the power to changes the chemical structures of the synaptic junctions, forming new circuits that can recall the newly discovered information in the future. The brain is able to assimilate familiar information through existing neural circuits. On the other hand, novel information forces the brain to form new circuits that can accommodate the new information.
Free Will
We believe that humans do have free will. This is possible because each mind constructs a unique set of values about the many things it encounters in life. With every perception, with every thought, that occurs on the scope of the conscious mind, we experience an emotion. Because emotions have a quality or feel to them, pleasant or unpleasant, they have the ability to make value statements about the perceptions and thoughts we experience. The emotion may be very strong or it may be subtle but it is always there. If the emotion we experience, as we perceive a situation is pleasant, we place a positive value to that situation. When we experience an unpleasant emotion as we experience a situation, we place a negative value on that situation. Each mind has the ability to construct its own value system therefore each mind is autonomous. Others might influence my thinking, but in the end, it is my mind that makes the choices and decisions it makes based on my unique set of values. Those values are stored in the brain to be recalled when appropriate. We believe that this process is the base for human free will. The conscious mind does direct human behavior. Decisions made in the conscious mind can affect the chemistry of the brain that initiates motor responses. We are not neural robots as claimed by some; we are free moral agents accountable for our behavior. .Self Concept
An essential key to the shift a person makes in shifting from impulsive behaviors and imperative thinking is a change in self-concept. Each thought we entertain; each perception we experience must be appropriately oriented in time, place and person if it is going to have some coherent meaning. In our study of the conscious mind, we find there are two sources of information that can give rise to ones self-concept. In those areas of our life in which we are thinking in the immature mode, the source of our self-concept is the visceral feelings. When we view a situation that invokes an innate reflex response, unpleasant visceral sensations inform us that we can’t accept this situation. Thus, our self-concept is one of weakness and helplessness. On the other hand, when we experience a situation that we feel competent to handle, we draw information from an objective view of ourselves responding competently. When a response to a situation requires physical action, we may draw information from motile imagery as we see ourselves acting effectively. Later in the book we will describe the use of the aesthetic view that can radically change a person’s self-concept from a sense of helplessness, drawn from visceral feelings, to a sense of competence drawn from the aesthetic view. We believe that the information discovered on the scope of the conscious mind can make changes in neural circuits in such a way that the person will think of himself or herself differently in the future.One of the things we note is that the more mature a person is, the more their self-concept remains stable. The immature person’s self concept will vacillate widely in accord with the situations they face. The person who has discovered the emotional strength to accept each and every situation in life without complaint realizes that what they are is a fact of God’s creation and is unchanging with changes in the situations they face.
Education not Therapy
Here again we want to repeat that teaching the aesthetic view is not a form of therapy, it is an educational activity. In the case of a teacher teaching a child to use a pencil to write letters and words, the child is constructing new neural circuits that make it possible for the child to do this. This is similar to the teaching of aesthetic thinking. We teach the student how to construct new neural circuits that eliminate uncomfortable feeling. They construct a self-concept based in the fact of their strength and intelligence and this increases intelligence behavior. All of this happens because of the ability of the conscious mind to change the structure of the brain.Every thing we know, every thing we have learned, we first experienced on the scope of the conscious mind either by sensory perception of the external world or through an internal thought process. The things we have focused on in our study of the conscious mind is the particular types of thought processes that help a person mediate the innate reflex responses that motivate impulsive responses.
In our work with violent offenders we find that when we teach these folks a new way of looking at themselves, their violent tendencies disappear. With feelings of anger gone, they usually feel more love for those around them and generally enjoy life much more. We call this the aesthetic view because it helps individuals see and respond emotionally to the beautiful things in their lives. It also helps them make judgments based on the beauty of the outcome of their behaviors. Let me give you an example of how this works in the life of one individual and his family.
The Story of Arnold
Arnold is a Caucasian man in his late 20s with a wife and 2 children. In high school his involvement with sports kept him out of the drug scene. After graduation, he found employment and was making pretty good money. He took up partying with drugs as a form of weekend recreation; he didn’t want to miss out on anything. At first he was able to keep control of his drug use so that it didn’t interfere with his work.Being an attractive young man, he found no problems having his way with the women in the group he partied with. Eventually he got a girl pregnant and married her even thought he wasn’t in love with her; she wasn’t special to him. He continued to control his drug use so that it didn’t interfere with his work. While he didn’t particularly enjoy his marriage, he very much loved being a father to his child.
The added stress of maintaining a family began to change Arnold’s pattern of drug use. His marriage became more conflicted. Instead of drug use being a form of recreation, it became an escape from the pressures of life. Eventually, he lost his job because of his high rate of absenteeism plus the reduction in the quality of his work. To support his family he began to distribute drugs. The fighting between he and his wife became violent and he was eventually arrested on a spousal abuse charge. He was released from jail on the condition that he attended an anger management course and that he abide by a restraining order limiting his contact with his wife. He found it difficult to stay away from his family and was eventually sent back to jail for violating the terms of the court’s restraining order.
Arnold spent 8½ months in jail and during that time he took a close look at his life style. He came to realize that he could either be addict or he could be a father but not both. He made the decision to be the father and husband. When he was able to look objectively at the effects of drug use on his family, he lost all interest in using drugs. When released from jail, he was allowed to rejoin his family on the condition that he attend a batter’s class.
When he got home he was dismayed to discover that his wife had gotten pregnant during his term in jail. In spite of his anger at his wife for her betrayal, he wanted to keep his family together and accepted the 2nd child as his. While the family continued to live together, his relationship with his wife was cold and loveless. She became depressed and turned again to drugs. He found himself not only supporting the family, but also keeping house and providing most of the care for the children. He eventually asked her to leave.
In a class session, he expressed his hatred for his wife. We worked with him and he was able to turn off his anger and hatred toward her and take more responsibility for the emotional breakdown of the marriage. He was able to see how his coldness affected her.
With his anger turned off, he began feeling empathy and love for his wife. He began to see and appreciate how important and special she was as the mother of his children. He went out and found his wife on the street and apologized to her for his lack of love and asked her to come home. When she first returned, she continued to use drugs and didn’t get much involved in house keeping or childcare. Without complaint, he came home from work every day, fed the children and cleaned house. But it was not long before she gave up the drugs and started keeping house and taking care of the children. The family joined a church and their lifestyle changed. He reported to the class that he never knew that he could enjoy being with his wife and children as much as he does.
We find that stories like Arnold’s are not uncommon when a man or woman is able to find within him or herself the emotional strength and intelligence to accept injustice without anger. The book will contain a number of stories similar to Arnold’s. In some cases, the story will be told in the person’s own words. Details that are not pertinent to the story will be changed in order to protect the privacy of those not involved.
We have developed a number of protocols by which we teach our students this new way of looking at themselves. These all involve special visualization techniques that help individuals discover their inner strength and intelligence. It is the knowledge of inner strength that helps a person accept injustice instead of being angry. This grace is the lubricant that can make a relationship go smoothly in spite of disrespect, mistakes and weakness.
This is the end of the thread.
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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
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