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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 20:47:28
CHAPTER 2
INNATE REFLEX RESPONSES AND IMPULSESUNTHINKING BEHAVIOR
Jerry and Carolyn were a middle class family with one child. He held a management position in a construction company and she was a homemaker. She had a drinking problem. One day they had an argument and she wanted to leave, even though she was drunk. He tried to stop her by blocking her from leaving through the door to the garage door. She simply went out the back door, got in her car in the driveway and left. She called the police and reported that he had tried to imprison her. When he was arrested, he was shocked to find that this was a felony offence.In the first chapter we explained that unmediated inborn reflex responses motivated destructive impulsive behavior like Joe trying to block his wife Carolyn from drinking while driving. Most people report that the impulsive behavior was not thought out; it just popped into their head to do what they did. Very often they were sorry later. These are simply stimulus-response behaviors we are born with. It is some of these impulsive behaviors that get us into trouble in our daily lives. Seldom do these behaviors bring about the outcomes we expect. Yet we engage in them over and over again. Sometimes our impulsive behaviors motivate us to act toward others in a foolish way; sometimes they simply motivate us to think to ourselves in an unwise way.
Examples of impulsive behaviors would include arguments that go nowhere, yelling at each other, complaining when nothing can be done to change the situation, protesting, threatening physical violence, putting other people down, emotional abuse of others, putting ourselves down for mistakes, telling people off, lecturing, giving unwanted advice, gossip, lying and a host of other behaviors that basically disrespect ourselves and others. The more severe forms of impulsive behaviors would include addictions, physical violence, sexual abuse and criminal activity. We are not saying that at times people do not engage in these activities without thinking about the outcome before hand. We are saying that very often we do engage in these behaviors without considering how others are going to respond to them. Nor do we realize where some types of thinking are going to take us emotionally.
As we stated in the first chapter, we have come to the realization that these impulsive behaviors are the result of a number of unmediated innate reflex responses. They are, by definition, immature behaviors. We have found that people can and often do eliminate these reflex responses and, when they do, the impulsive behaviors are replaced by outcome thinking. We have also discovered that we can teach people with impulsive behaviors a cognitive strategy that mediates the reflex response and eliminates the impulsive behavior. Before the reflex response is mediated, outcome rational thinking is very difficult if not impossible in those situations that elicit the automatic impulsive behaviors.
In discussing impulse driven behavior it is important to distinguish the two types of impulse that can motivate behaviors. We can and do train ourselves to respond in certain ways when we perceive certain cues. The flashing of a red light in the car ahead of us cues us to hit the break. In these cases we have thought through the wise response and act impulsively in a useful way. The impulse driven by inborn instincts are different. These are vestiges of our childhood; we just respond without ever considering the consequences of the behaviors they motivate.
In order to understand the source of these impulsive behaviors let’s look more closely at some of the behaviors of a newborn infant. Any healthy infant that is uncomfortable in some way is going to cry. This is not a learned behavior; it is simply a reflex response to the experience of some discomfort. As we stated in the first chapter, when the baby feels uncomfortable, the dissatisfaction reflex response motivates it to cry. This phenomenon is seen in all mammals. In animals we would say that this response is instinctual but the idea that humans are born with instincts has fallen out of favor in academic circles. But it is obvious that the humans have an instinct to cry when uncomfortable. They also display a number of other instinctual responses.
While it is impossible to check the conscious thinking of a newborn infant, I believe we can safely say that the crying of the newborn infant is not motivated by any plan to gain the attention and help of the parents. Of course, the crying child hopefully does gain the attention and help of its parents; however, there is no conscious cognitive strategy to achieve that outcome. I would conjecture that there is no conscious intention to achieve the assistance of parents. I would identify this phenomenon as a genetic wisdom common to all mammals.
As the child develops, we can follow this innate response. It will continue to motivate the impulse to cry until the reflex response is mediated or extinguished. As the child learns language, much of the crying behavior converts to complaining or protesting behaviors. We can follow this crying/complaining behavior right through early childhood, middle childhood, adolescences and adult life.
We can note that children who have a problem they need help with do not usually ask for help. What they do is present a problem to the parents in a complaining voice and that usually elicits assistance from the parent. For example, the hungry child will complain, “I’m hungry!” instead of making the request, “Will you get me something to eat?” They will say, “I’m cold!” instead of “Will you get my coat down for me?” As they move into the young adult years they may come home and complain to their parents, “I lost my job, lost my apartment and now I don’t have a place to stay!” instead of “Can you let me live with you until I find another job?” One of the hallmarks of this rescuing behavior is that the complaining will often elicit rescuing behavior from someone. The outcome of this is that the complainer often feels manipulated or controlled by the helper. It is as though the complaining adult, like the newborn infant, has no intention of getting assistance. The complaining behavior is motivated by an impulse that is elicited at the sense of some discomfort or dissatisfaction.
As we follow the phenomenon of the crying/complaining reflex response into the older years, we can check with the conscious intention of people who complain. Marriage counselors often encounter couples with a common problem. One partner, let’s say the wife may complain to her husband about some problem with the children. In response the husband will make suggestions to his wife as to how to solve this problem. When this happens the wife may feel unheard and rejected. What she wants from him is sympathetic understanding; she is not asking for a solution to her problem. Her dissatisfaction with some situation motivates the impulse to complain and is not a thought out strategy to get his help in solving the problem she presents. She often sees his suggestions as an effort to control her. This can be painful for the wife and confusing to husbands.
IMPERATIVENESS OF IMPULSIVE BEHAVIORS
If the problem is impulsive behaviors then why don’t we decide to always consider the outcome before we act? That’s a good question that we have thought about a great deal. Telling people to look at the outcome of their actions before they act does nothing to help them get rid of the impulses; it is a waste of time. In my study of the conscious mind, I find that the impulses that motivate us to repeatedly engage in foolish behaviors are enforced by uncomfortable visceral feelings. These uncomfortable feelings in our bodies give us the sense that we must follow the urge to do the thing that pops into our heads. They impart a sense of have to or imperativeness. To avoid the visceral discomfort, we simply obey the impulse. These visceral sensations become strongly associated with the behaviors they motivate, putting a strong negative value on not acting on the impulse.Since the visceral sensations are feelings within our bodies that we do not will, it is usually thought by the person that the situation has power over them. Our perception of something in the environment makes us feel bad as though it is in charge of us. It is as though we have to respond to some law that comes from outside of ourselves. This phenomenon can significantly reduce ones self-respect. “The devil made me do it!” is more than something Junior made up as an excuse for not obeying the rules.
Not all of the motivating impulses we feel in life motivate us to do something foolish. The visceral feelings we identify as hunger motivate us to eat. The sensations we identify as thirst motivate us to drink. If we hold our breath for several seconds we will feel a strong impulse to breath. When we feel chilled or overly warm, we are motivated to find a more comfortable temperature. All of these urges have survival value; they motivate us do things that are necessary for us to stay comfortable. These are impulses that have value by helping us to stay alive. At the same time there are other impulses that motivate us to do things that cause trouble for others and ourselves. Yet, in some cases the impulses that motivate us to do foolish things can be as intensely demanding as the ones that actually save our lives. The question is, how can this be?
THE SOURCE OF IMPULSIVE BEHAVIORS
We think we can find the answer by looking closely at the conditions of the newborn baby and how it is going to interact with its parent. The infant is born with a set of instinctual emotional response behaviors that give it the ability to communicate its needs to its parents. We see in the infant a number of innate or instinctual stimulus-response behaviors. None of these are learned, the human brain comes pre-wired at birth to respond to certain stimulus with a specific motor response. The sucking reflex is an example; this is an innate response common to all mammals. When the lips of the newborn are stimulated with a touched, the motor centers of the brain are activated to produce a sucking motion of the lips. Thus, when the lips of the infant are placed on mothers breast, the sucking motion results in a flow of milk into its mouth. Initially, the child has no expectation that it is going to be fed, it just responds in an instinctual manner. Later, this innate response is mediated and the child learns that sucking reduces hunger. From that point on, sucking is a matter of choice depending on whether the child is hungry or not. This is not an article about breast-feeding, I am using the sucking reflex to illustrate the nature of innate reflex responses; they are not learned initially and they are not accompanied by a conscious intention to produce the outcome that results. Also, they can be mediated or extinguished.IMPERATIVE BELIEFS
When the dissatisfaction reflex motivates us to engage in foolish behavior over and over, we may make an effort to block ourselves from such behaviors by constructing an imperative belief. We do this by deciding that the impulsive behavior is something terrible. As an example addicts in recovery routinely view relapse as something terrible. The domestic violence offender will view hitting his wife as something horrible. All of this is an effort to control his or her impulse driven destructive behaviors. This strategy does work for a time but eventually, as the person continues to complain about things they dislike, the pressure builds up until they again engage in the destructive behaviors.It is not unusual to see the pairing of impulses with an imperative belief. When this happens the person will cycle like a swinging pendulum between the destructive impulsive behavior and the attempt to block it with an imperative. We have come to refer to the temporarily blocked impulse as a sleeper. It is as though the imperative has temporarily made the impulsive behavior dormant. However, eventually the pendulum will swing back the other way and the impulse to engage in the destructive behavior will overwhelm the imperative.
We have found by getting the person to view the destructive behavior as something foolish rather than terrible, they will be better able to look at the outcome of the behavior before they engage in it. The very fact that they make a behavior something terrible can block them from looking at where the behavior will take them at the time they feel the impulse.
THE DISSATISFACTION REFLEX RESPONSE
Let’s look again at the dissatisfaction response we described in the first chapter. Nature provides an instinctual communication between child and parent. When the infant is uncomfortable in any way, the motor centers of the brain of the infant stimulate the muscular motions of the body that produce the behavior we call crying. This innate crying reflex response serves to alert the parent that the child needs attention when the child is uncomfortable or dissatisfied in some way. It is doubtful that the child experiences any conscious intention to bring help from the parent, like the sucking reflex, it just happens that way. Like the sucking reflex, the crying reflex has survival value. Later, the crying reflex may be modified to include the sense that crying will bring help and satisfaction from others. However, it doesn’t appear that the crying reflex is totally extinguished like the sucking reflex during early childhood. In some people, we see the dissatisfaction reflex continuing to be stimulated by dissatisfaction through childhood, the teen years and into adult life. After the child has attained language we see the crying reflex as a complaining behavior as well as crying. Both indicate dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction reflex response produces an impulse to complain. As a rule, the complaining or protesting behavior serves to disturb the peace of his or her listener just as the crying of an infant can disturb the peace of the parents. In contrast to the complaining child or teenager we do see children and teenager who have learned to simply ask for things without complaining or crying. Like the sucking reflex, the dissatisfaction/complaining reflex can be extinguished.OTHER REFLEX RESPONSES
There are a number of innate reflex response that produce impulsive behaviors. These are similar to the dissatisfaction in some ways but differ in others. These include:
1. The fear reflex response which include
a. Separation anxiety
b. Fear of territorial invasion
c. Fear of evil
d. Fear of not being loved
e. Fear of not being understood
f. Fear of the foolishness of those in charge.
g. Fear of danger
h. The fear of deprivation
i. Phobias
i. The fear of death
ii. The fear of enclosed spaces
iii. The fear of elevated places
iv. The fear of some creatures
2. The anger reflex response
3. The startle reflex response
4. The care-taker reflex response
5. The urge to display or show offWhile all of these responses are not apparent at birth, we believe they are innate because they all invoke visceral tensions to convey a sense of imperativeness. The visceral contractions are not learned, they are an inborn response to certain situations. All motivate impulsive responses have survival value in some situations normal to the helpless child. Most of the behaviors motivated by the impulses are troublesome in adult life. We will discuss these in more detail later in the article.
With infants and small children, we are not able to inquire as to the conscious sensations that accompany the dissatisfaction response. However, since the impulse to complain survives into adult life, we can investigate the reports of individuals as to the sensations that accompany complaining behaviors. What we find is that when the dissatisfaction reflex has not been extinguished, the perception of dissatisfaction is accompanied with some visceral discomfort. The individual doesn’t usually associate their visceral discomfort with the visceral sensations: they are associated with the situation the person doesn’t like. They would say, that situation makes me feel uncomfortable. Yet, when we inquire, subjects report that visceral tensions do accompany these events.
Let’s look again at the several experiences that accompany the reflex responses.
1. Uncomfortable visceral sensations
2. Generally the visceral sensations give the person the feeling they are helpless to help them selves, They have the sense that someone else must bring them satisfaction by changing in some way. Just as the innate crying reflex response of the child serves to motivate the parent to bring help, the complaining adult expects someone else to bring satisfaction
3. There is the sense that the person can only tolerate being denied satisfaction—getting what they want--for a limited period. As time goes on and they don’t get what they want, they become increasingly desperate. They report the feeling that, if they can’t get what they want, they will go crazy. This phenomenon can result in extreme overreactions. Examples: a husband sulks for three days because his wife scolds him; a man gets drunk because his employer wrongly punishes him; a mother slaps her daughter for spilling milk.
4. Just as the crying of the infant can disturb the peace of the parent, the dissatisfaction reflex response of adults usually serves to disturb the peace of other important adults in his or her life. Often the dissatisfied person will report that they had no intention to disturb any one. As an example, an unhappy husband may throw things when he sees a messy house. Yet he is surprised when he finds that this frightens his wife. The mother who slaps her daughter for spilling milk will later apologize profusely for hurting her child.
5. The dissatisfaction reflex response and the accompanying visceral response result in an inadequate self-image that fails to reflect the fact of ones strength and intelligence to accept unwanted situations.
6. The reflex responses block ones ability to accept unwanted situations without condemning or complaining. The act of condemning blocks aesthetic thinking which is the source of wisdom and logic.While the reflex responses themselves are innate, we have the ability to link them to new things we believe we must have in life; we also have the ability to unlink the reflex responses from those situations they have become linked to. We have recorded in our brains a list of things we believe we can’t tolerate doing without. We also have a list of things we believe we mush have. We can add things to these lists and we can remove items from the lists. But when we perceive not having something that is on that list, we are going to experience one of the reflex responses. As each unwanted event occurs an immature person may increase his or her sense of desperation at being denied safety from the feared situation. What is so interesting about this phenomenon is that the immature person will not give up wanting what they can’t get. We find that they resist even considering giving up wanting what they can’t get. At the same time, the mature person is able to do this.
THE VISCERAL DUMP AND THE AS-IF LOOP
In his book, DESCARTES’ ERROR, Antonio Damasio expresses his belief that it is body states that determine our emotional state at any one time. This includes both the level of contractions versus relaxation of the muscles of the body and certain chemical states present within the brain. He describes the neuronal process that causes the visceral contractions we experience in crisis situations. In our brain we have this filter of sorts that lists all of the things we believe we can’t tolerate. When we perceive one of these situations, the amygdala, a small organ in the brain, is activated to release neurotransmitters into the blood stream. These neurotransmitters activate the smooth muscles of the body (visceral muscles) to contract. Sensors in these muscles then send back messages to the brain regarding the level of contraction or relaxation of these muscles. The meaning centers of the brain interpret these signals as uncomfortable or bad. Since the focus of our attention is on the situation that elicited the sense of crisis, the sense of badness of the visceral sensation is associated with the situation rather than the visceral discomfort. Damasio refers to this process as a “visceral dump.”The actual release of the neurotransmitters into the blood stream will ensure the ongoing visceral discomfort for some time. For most adults, visceral dumps are rare. We don’t need a house to fall on us in order to get a sense of good and bad. In most cases in everyday life, in order to gain a sense of what is safe and what is not so safe, we only need to produce an image of the visceral contractions in our conscious minds to tell us something is wrong or unsafe. It is as-if the amygdala had released its messengers and the uncomfortable visceral contractions had actually occurred. In fact, we are only experiencing an image of the uncomfortable contractions. The body is bypassed entirely in the as-if loop in that the visceral muscles don’t actually contract; we only image the sensation of their contractions. When this happens, we can move in and out of emotional experiences quickly.
While the effects of a visceral dump are more severe than the as-if loop, both block outcome thinking. When an unmediated reflex response gives us an impulse to act in a certain way, it feels to us that this can be the only possible response. That is why we have come to call this imperative thinking. That is why we sometimes see ourselves and others repeatedly engage in foolish behaviors that fail to achieve our goals.OTHER INNATE REFLEX RESPONSES
FEAR RESPONSE
It appears that infants have an innate fear of a number of situations. They will avoid high places and perhaps hairy, crawling creatures. When they can’t avoid such situations, they display the visceral contractions and crying that later accompany the emotion we call fear. The fear response is accompanied by an impulse to avoid the things considered dangerous. When danger can’t be avoided, the visceral tightens and it feels to the individual like the danger is in charge of how they feel. The same sense of ones time limited ability to tolerate a danger is also present. Therefore, avoiding the danger is felt to be imperative. Where the dissatisfaction response is accompanied by feelings of helplessness, the fear response can be accompanied by a sense of the imperativeness of avoiding danger. However, a person in fear often overlooks the fact that one can live with some danger and greatly reduce the danger through logical cautions. In fact one can better avoid danger out of respect for danger than fear for the danger.Respect for danger is much more useful than the fear of danger. Respect is a positive emotion; it lacks the visceral tensions that give one a sense of desperateness and gives the person the freedom to think of a variety of ways to avoid harm when that is possible. The fear reflex is eliminated when a person can see objectively that being afraid itself does nothing to reduce the danger, that dangers can be avoided better without fear. And when dangers can’t be avoided, nothing is gained by having a knot in your tummy, a dry mouth or sweaty hands.
SEPARATION ANXIETY
Separation anxiety is one of the innate fears. It does not appear at birth because at that point the child has not constructed the concept Piaget referred to as object permanence. Before object permanence is achieved, the child only senses that those things it perceives are in existence at the time of perception. Anything not being perceived doesn’t exist. Mother only exists when I am able to see, hear or feel her. Sometime between the 6th and 8th month, the child learns that objects continue in existence even when they are out of sight, sound and touch. Only after the child is able to comprehend that mother is something separate from myself does the possibility of separation from the parent become a problem for the child. Even though it is not present at birth, I would consider separation anxiety innate because it involves contractions of the visceral muscles and the same peace disturbing reflex response. I doubt that it is learned by some deprivation of love or care; it is an innate response to the possible separation from a caretaker. Separation anxiety has survival value for the child after the child is mobile because it motivates the child to stay close to the parents.The infant soon learns that mother comes and goes and that short-term separation is bearable. It becomes a problem again when the parents wants to leave the child in the care of a stranger, usually during the toddler stage. As soon as the child learns that it can trust the new caretaker to satisfy its needs, the anxiety disappears. Because children at that age have no ability to report their thoughts and feelings, we can’t know if the child is experiencing a fear of the loss of a trusted caregiver or if this is an innate fear of separation from the caregiver. What we do know is that when an adolescent or an adult experiences the separation anxiety, the anxiety is not based in a logical sense of danger. Just the thought of separation will elicit the fear.
Separation anxiety reflex can become a problem in adolescence and adult life when a person continues to be psychologically dependent upon another person. An adult can transfer their dependency from their parents to a spouse or significant other. Once the relationship has formed, any threat of separation will elicit the peace disturbing behavior. This is true regardless of the person’s ability to take care of them selves both psychologically and physically. The person who is frightened at the loss of a significant other will act out in a way that tends to drive the other person away rather then in a logical way that would keep the person in their life. The person with a caretaker’s reflex response may remain with a psychologically dependent person out of pity rather than out of respect.
An adult or adolescent can eliminate the impulse to disturb the peace at the threat of separation by discovering that they are capable of taking care of them selves and making a decision that they will take care of them selves. It is messages from the visceral muscles that inform a person that they are not able to care for them selves. The objective view of oneself turns off the visceral messages and makes it possible for a person to discovery that they are capable of providing for their own physical and emotional needs. It is normal at any age to feel a sense of loss when we lose a loved one. We overcome the sadness and sense of loss when we give up wanting the love one to be back in our lives on a daily basis.
THE TERRITORIAL INVASION RESPONSE
The territorial invasion reflex response is usually mistaken for anger because the emotion elicits ferocious behavior. While the behavior looks like anger, when I discuss this sensations that accompany this emotion with people I find their experience is significantly different then their experience of anger. Anger is elicited by the perception of injustice or insult; the territorial invasion impulse is elicited by the perception of an invasion of territory. It may happen when a person feels cornered; it might occur in a father when someone is intruding into his relationship with his child. It is not uncommon for a spouse to consider the thinking of their partner as their territory. The feeling is more one of fear rather than anger and is accompanied with increased perspiration and a dry mouth. It appears that its purpose is to drive the invader away rather than harm them. This differs from anger that is accompanied by images of harming the protagonist. With anger, there is no fear of harm or loss.I have often referred to the response to territorial invasion as ferocious fear. It can be accompanied with a dry mouth that is more associated with fear than anger. Also, the person reports feelings of fear. There is tightness in the chest as the shoulders bow back. To overcome the tightness in the chest, the person has to bellow as they speak. The loudness of the voice and waving arms can be frightening to those around. If the intruder backs off, the person usually calms down. On the other hand, moving toward the person may elicit a violent response.
PHOBIAS
There are a number of fears that we might call phobia. This includes the fear of elevated places, the fear of enclosed spaces, the fear of some creatures such as dogs, cats, reptiles, the fear of water, the fear of bugs or the fear of the dark. It appears that people can develop phobias in life when a given situation is temporally liked to some other frightening situation. Phobias can be extinguished by using the objective view of oneself in the frightening situation.THE FEAR OF NOT BEING LOVED, UNDERSTOOD OR PROTECTED BY AN INTELLIGENT CARETAKER
Children seem to instinctively have the knowledge that they are going to be taken care of because they are special in some way to their caretaker. Thus any sign of anger, fear or disgust from their parent towards them is frightening to them. This is why it is so important for parents to overcome their visceral responses to their children’s behavior. The ability of the parent to accept some danger to their children helps the child overcome their fear of the danger. When this happens, children can better learn to make themselves safe out of respect for danger rather than fear of danger.Children also display a sense of fear at not being understood. It appears that this innate response can have survival value in that there are situations in which the survival of the child depends upon the parent’s ability to understand the plight of the child. However, in adult life this innate fear can result in arguments and conflict as each person in a relationship struggle to make him or herself understood by their partner. Probably one of the real values of psychotherapy is the ability of the therapist to hear and respond none judgmentally to the concerns of the client. It is also why reflective listening can be so comforting to an upset person.
Children also display another reflex response that can be confusing to parents. A parent may allow a child to engage in behavior that results in some hurt to the child. In response the child may respond in anger toward the parent. It is as thought the child expects the parent have the intelligence to disallow them to engage in dangerous behavior. I assume that his response is just another of those reflex responses. This response often results in too high an expectation from adults of their leaders in that they become upset when their leaders make mistakes.
THE REFLEX CARE GIVERS RESPONSE
We see in all mammals an instinctual behavioral response in the caring of offspring early in the life of their young and humans are no exception. We can see the emotional communication between parent and offspring in both humans and animals. The expression of discomfort from the offspring elicits the caring reflex in the parent. We humans can identify those feelings and we can rightfully assume that other mammals also experience something similar to our feelings of love and the need to protect and nurture our young.A couple of things make the human experience different from other animals. For one thing, humans have an extended period in which the young remain largely helpless and dependent upon their parents. We also can note the difference between the care givers impulse, which is motivated by visceral tensions, and the more esthetically motivated feelings of caring for the well being of our children. When the parent hears the cry of the child, they may feel some visceral tensions. Those tensions are relieved as soon as the parent formulates a plan to provide for the needs of the child and is confident that the plan will take care of the child. In those cases in which the parent is not able to make the child comfortable, the tensions will persist. The visceral tensions that are associated with the caregiver’s impulse convey a sense of imperativeness to making the child comfortable. This can be a problem when it is not possible for the parent to make the child comfortable for some reason.
Parents can eliminate the impulsive visceral tensions by realizing that the tensions them selves do nothing for the child. In fact the parental tensions are a communication of danger to the child. Once the impulsive behaviors are eliminated, parents can rely on their love for the child to motivate them to care for the child in a wise and loving way. Once the caregiver’s impulse is eliminated, the parent will care for the child out of the beauty of that behavior rather than the need to relieve their own tensions. When the caregiver’s impulse has been eliminated, the parent will be able to accept the discomfort of their child at those times when the discomfort can’t be relieved.
One doesn’t have to have children to invoke the caregiver’s impulse. We see the caregiver’s impulse in children as early as the age of 3. Even very young children will display feelings of empathy and the impulse to take care of a hurting parent or sibling. Such displays of love and concern are always heart warming. Neither is the caregiver’s impulse limited to family members; our hearts can go out to the perception of anyone in need.
Eric Berne observed the caregiver’s impulse in people and labeled those folks with compulsions to help others as rescuers. AA refers to such folks as enablers or co-dependents. When psychotherapists and clinical psychologists are in training, they are taught to turn off the instinctual caregiver’s response. If they are not able to do this, the needs of the client will determine the behavior of the clinician rather than a logical, thought procedure. Psychoanalysts refer to this process as counter-transference.
The caregiver’s impulse, like the other reflex response, has its value in the survival of the human specie. However, like other forms of genetic wisdom, it is a blunt instrument that is unable to make fine distinctions. The caregiver’s response we see in animals appears to disappear as soon as the young are able to take care of their young. At some point the mother chases her cubs or pups away to fend for them selves. It is obvious that this doesn’t always happen in humans. Parents continue to experience strong feelings of love and intense interest in the welfare of their children long after the children have grown up. While this may be motivated by a reflex response, it can also be motivated by love and caring for a loved one. This is explained, I believe by more than the caregiver’s impulse. The caregiver’s reflex response is accompanied by visceral tensions. In contrast when a person is motivated by love, there are no visceral tensions.
In addition to the instinctual impulse to give care to others, humans also have something I refer to as an aesthetic response. The aesthetic response is the human response to the perception of beauty; it helps us to distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly. Not only do we humans respond with pleasure at the perception of beauty, we also value creating beauty and being personally beautiful. In addition to valuing physical beauty, we are able to perceive some behaviors in ourselves and others as beautiful and others as ugly. One thing I notice as I observe human behavior and people’s reports of their conscious experience is that we all have these two distinct value system. One is the instinctual impulse that I am discussing in this article and the other is the human aesthetic response to beauty and ugliness. Further, I notice that when people respond to the instinctual impulses, they do not respond at all aesthetically. In fact, we see some very ugly behavior produced by this impulse. My observations also tell me that logic and reason is based in the human aesthetic response system. That is to say that logic and reason are those propositions that fit together aesthetically. What doesn’t appear to fit aesthetically we experience as illogical.
In almost every case when a person is responding to the impulse to take care of an adolescent or another adult, the recipient of the care will feel disrespected. A trivial example is a friend of mine who tells me to drive carefully as I am leaving. Now, I understand that this comes out of her concern for my well-being but at the same time, does she not know that I am going to drive carefully with or without her advice. The well-adjusted teenager who knows how to take care of herself on a date is going to resent the parental advice to be careful about getting sexually seduced. The 15-year-old kid who is experimenting with marijuana thinks he knows more about pot than his parents and sees their fears as disrespect for his intelligence.
What is most detrimental about the caregiver’s reflex is that often it results in tensions in a parent when their child cries. I have worked with mothers whose joy of raising children was marred by tension and apprehension each time they heard their baby cry. The discomfort of the parent is not the major problem here. Children always perceive the tension of the parent; it is a part of the emotional communication between parent and child. The mother’s tension is a danger signal to the child and given that signal, the child is going to remain upset. The parent who has eliminated his or her caregiver impulses is going to be a much better parent.
THE INNATE ANGER REFLEX RESPONSE
Anger is the innate emotional response to the perception of injustice or insult to a person. I doubt that infants feel anger in the way they do at an older stage. Their agitations are the result of intense dissatisfaction. Early in the second year the child begins to develop a sense of respect for them selves as differentiated from their respect for others. They respond to the perception of disrespect to them selves from others with emotional pain. The anger response gives them the impulse to get even with those who have hurt them by disrespecting the other person in someway. This impulse differs from the dissatisfaction reflex in that it is accompanied by a conscious desire to bring hurt to the other person. In the very young child, the desire is to bring physical hurt to the hurter. The toddler who feels offended will push, hit, scratch or bit the one who has offended them. In older children and adults, the desire may be a desire to bring emotional pain to the hurter by calling names or making threats. Their sense of self has been damaged and they seek to gain self-respect by bringing hurt to the other person. The anger response turns off both feelings of fear and hurt. In some cases, the angry person may only require visions of hurting their protagonist in order to relieve their visceral tensions. Others may require a commitment to bring some harm to the other person.I can see this innate reflex impulse as helping a small child gain the respect of older children. The older children may gain respect for them selves by teasing the younger child. The anger impulse will motivate a small child to fight a much larger child. The neurotransmitters that accompany the anger response appear to turn off emotional pain, fear and physical pain. As a rule, the older children soon learn that teasing the smaller child brings on a battle they can’t win. Hurting the younger child will not stop him or her and will get the older child into trouble with adults. The anger response can serve to gain the respect of bigger children. However, in adolescence and adult life, threatening to fight a peer seldom gains the respect of the peer, it only elicits hostility. A wise person may back off out of either prudence or fear, not respect.
The elimination of the anger reflex comes when the person discovers that their respectability is based in the fact of what they are and what they can accomplish, not in the opinions and behavior of others. Any person’s disrespectful behavior is a reflection of the person who is acting disrespectful, not the person who is being insulted. An angry person in a position of authority may frighten subordinates to act in a respectful way toward them. But fear of the power of the authority to bring harm is not respect for the strength and position of a person.
I have found many people who don’t want to eliminate their anger because they are under the impression that others treat them with respect out of fear of their anger. They tell me that if they gave up being angry, others would walk all over them. Yet such people are unable to tell me of anyone they treat with respect out of fear of their anger. The anger impulse blocks a person from seeing the logical inconsistency of their thinking.
SELF CONCEPT
I have given a great deal of attention to the importance of self-concept in determining human behavior. The person who perceives them selves as strong and intelligent is not going to become upset by circumstances in the same way as a person who perceives them selves as vulnerable. The immature person draws their image of them selves weak and vulnerable from their visceral sensations. When those sensations are comfortable, they feel great, when the sensations are uncomfortable their self-respect is lost. When we look at this logically, we can see that what we are has consistency over time, no matter how we might feel from time to time; we are always the same person. What we are is not determined by how we feel.The maturing process is very much a matter of discovering more accurately that we are always the same person and that we are strong and intelligent. That process seems to me to be involved in looking at oneself as thought one were observing another person. When people report the insights from the past that eliminated the fears associated with the impulsive behaviors, they usually talk as though they looked at them selves from an objective perspective. This often happens when a person is in some crisis in life.
I don’t believe that we need to come to a crisis in order to give up our going-no-where impulses. We can teach people to think in a way that will help them discover the strengths and intelligence that will effectively turn off the impulsive behaviors and the discomfort that go with them. We can do this by coaching them to look at them selves objectively and discover what they are.
SOME CONCLUSIONS
It is not my purpose in this article to cover all possible troublesome reflex responses. My goal is to show my reader what they are, their appropriate place in life and that we can rid our selves of them when they become a problem. I suspect that the widely held belief in an unconscious mind is simple an effort to explain some of the bizarre human behavior that result from reflex responses that have not been eliminated. I also want to show that mediating these reflex responses need pose no mystery. Many people discover the strength and wisdom within them selves that serves to eliminate these responses in a natural way. Some of the fears are mediated and some are not. However, it is possible to teach people a form of cognition that will, in most cases, eliminate these responses. We will discuss those methods in a later lesson.One of the qualities of the impulsive behaviors is that one doesn’t stop to logically look at the outcome of the behavior before one acts. As I pointed out before, many time a person may respond compulsively to a given situation and every time, the outcome is not what they expected or wanted. As an example, a person may be upset and feel the compulsion to go get drunk. Time and time again, the drinking will exacerbate their problem, yet it continues. As another example, a parent will scold a child about bad grades and the child gets upset and cries, yet the child continues to avoid homework and the parent continues to scold and lecture. A husband will argue with his wife about her spending beyond the budget and each time he does she gets defensive. Yet, he continues his impulsive arguing and she goes out and runs up their credit card debt. It is obvious that all of these ugly behaviors make sense to the person feeling the impulse to do them at the time but to no one else. That is because the visceral impulse turns off the aesthetic response and the person responds to the impulse without looking at the outcome of his or her actions.
One of the difficulties in eliminating these dysfunctional behaviors is the fact that the individual keeps focusing his or her attention on the problem rather than on them selves. It feels to them that the situation is in charge of how they feel and the solution is in getting someone to change the environment. They also focus their attention on their original goal and are confused with the fact that it seldom turns out the way they wanted. (expectations)
This is the end of the thread.
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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
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Script revised: February 4, 2008
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