Even in Kyoto

After reading some really compelling arguments on the subject, I have just one question: in what contexts can disconnects arise between one's physiological state and emotional/psychological state?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/08/can_smiling_make_you_happier_maybe_maybe_not_we_have_no_idea.html

It seems like there are a lot of potential contexts. It's interesting to think about cases where this is normal and healthy and cases where it might be pathological.

Edited to add: I think this article is also relevant:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/how-brain-scientists-forgot-that-brains-have-owners/517599/s

My attention span for subjects in cognitive psychology has traditionally been limited by impatience over heuristics. It's an arena where humans can't help being subjective, and it's easy to get tangled up in this subjectivity to a point where one becomes blind to alternative ideas and evidence and ways of thinking. Kahneman is continuing to do a sensitive job of covering important gaps in how humans think about, interpret, and respond to the world around us. I have a feeling that I will wind up pulling out some excerpts to savor further.

In the meantime, here are two things that popped up yesterday, both touching on how scientific thinking can be transformed over time. They highlighted one of the most important things that Kahneman has done, from a philosophical standpoing: when Kahneman has encountered resistance to his ideas and evidence, he has made a concerted effort to work with those who have an opposing viewpoint to figure out how to reconcile different perspectives.

In contrast, for years now I have been observing some Huge Arguments in sociobiology that have largely just exasperated me, over the evolution of eusociality. At one point, a couple of years into graduate school, a group of us got together as a small class to work through the relevant ideas and math for the sake of understanding group selection. It wasn't easy, but with the help of a couple key people, we reached a point where we all felt like we had a good sense of the mechanics, even if we hadn't reached the stage where we had ideas on how to structure and test hypotheses on the subject. That was sufficient for me; my main interests lie elsewhere.

But the evolution of eusociality is obviously a Big Question for sociobiologists, so of course some prominent figures in the field have had longstanding interest in being involved in answering the question. When Wilson and Nowak's paper appeared in the journal Nature in 2010, it created quite a stir, but as this blog post so aptly puts it, "Reading the protracted back and forth between the challengers and defenders of kin selection is like watching a tennis match in which the ball abruptly changes shape, size, colour, and direction every time it crosses over the net."

In this case, there may be hope in the long term, but the tennis match has left its mark on interpersonal relations in the field of sociobiology, which I think is something of a shame.

Yesterday I also encountered a piece about an emeritus faculty member from Berkeley, Marian Diamond, who is the subject of a new documentary because of her influential career spent studying the human brain. The brief video snippet in the article also provides commentary about how Diamond faced resistance to the ideas she was interested in pursuing. But it sounds like a worthwhile documentary project in that she was eventually able to convince people that longstanding notions about how the brain works were wrong. I also like her perspective on five things that promote brain health (diet, exercise, challenge, newness, love). To some extent, this all actually wraps back around to Kahneman, who in the most recent chapter of Thinking, Fast and Slow has pointed out that humans do a much better job of generalizing from anecdata than we do of applying general statistical information to specific cases. It will be easier to follow Diamond's story than it would be to follow a history of neuroscience.

So I've been reading and pondering a book that was loaned to me not too long ago by my mother. Getting the Love You Want is an interesting relationship book, both for what it contains, and what it does not (so highly heteronormative). In a nutshell, its goal is the promotion of "the conscious marriage," defined as "a state of mind and a way of being based on acceptance, a willingness to grow and change, the courage to encounter one's own fear, and a conscious decision to act in loving ways."

There are a lot of elements to unpack. I'll touch on the omitted subjects first, mostly to remark that with the way the book is written, it doesn't necessarily come into any direct conflict with alternative relationship structures except in how it stresses the importance of "closing your exits" to create a critical degree of security in the relationship at hand (boiling down to making time for the relationship instead of avoiding it). Sexual in/compatibility isn't directly addressed, either.

Laying those elements aside, I'm still left pondering several aspects of the book's approach to marriage. It is based around some rather Freudian notions, in addition to a specific concept of individual development and relationship progression. Specifically - it posits that we have all experienced unmet childhood needs, which have deeply shaped our personas and affect who we are attracted to, date, and marry (generally, significant others who resemble our parents or caretakers in key ways). These things don't rise to the surface until an intermediate relationship stage is reached, when the interplay of those combined unmet needs leads to conflict and a power struggle. For the relationship to progress beyond the stage of the power struggle, it can be helpful to go through a series of exercises to identify those suppressed unmet needs, cope with the emotions that arise upon their identification, and develop concrete methods to ask for, give, and receive these things from one's partner.

I feel like the Freudian aspect is one that a person could take or leave, depending on one's perspective on developmental psychology. There's clearly a lot that happens in terms of emotional development when one is young, but it seems to me this basis leads to the creation of a "just so" story. On the flipside, we are all sample sizes of one, and I don't think there's any serious harm that would come from taking this perspective unless it was used deceptively. And deception just wouldn't really hang in this whole framework - at that point, it isn't much of a relationship anymore. And if it helps a person pinpoint his or her hangups, well, that's useful, regardless of the source of those hangups.

The "development" aspect of the book kind of made me rock back for a minute, because it made me realize a longstanding implicit assumption of mine - the notion that a human's lifetime is a developmental experience (emotionally and intellectually). This notion is highly ingrained, tied to a concept of lifelong "spiritual development" (which can occur whether one is religious or not). I operate under an assumption that a life-long developmental process is a fundamental aspect of the human experience. The thing to ponder is, what would be an alternative to this perspective? I don't think it's the notion of being "stuck" - that just brings you back to the context of development. Humans aren't simply random, either - memory comes into play, somehow. And regardless, I *do* think the book is correct that one's personal development is intimately tied to one's relationships with others, even though the book has defined the nature of those relationships a bit narrowly. Working through this line of thinking has been helpful in figuring out why I put emphasis on long-term relationships (best friend, family members) in thinking about my own identity and priorities.

Food for thought, at least.

I also suspect that, regardless of whether one accepts the underlying theories or not, the prescribed set of activities will nurture a relationship in concrete, pragmatic ways, by creating structured opportunities to talk about and practice good, kind, and loving behavior. Will I sit down and do them? I'm not sure yet. But I can't help thinking about them anyway.

There's also a section in the book on figuring out how to express and deal with anger in constructive ways. I hadn't thought about the subject so directly before, but it touches on the notion that it's important to be able to express and experience the full range of one's human emotions.

-

While work is busy, I have grabbed the closest fluffy read I could find, Gnarr, about the Icelandic comedian who unexpectedly launched a political career, starting a new political party, the Best Party. After that, I am going to read The Book on Forgiveness, and then I think Nonviolent Communication. I suspect these two will be thought-provoking as well.

So, today Nature has put out a special issue on depression. I'm unsure as to what most of you folks will be able to access, but if any of the content looks particularly interesting or relevant to you and is paywalled, find a way to get in touch with me and I'll see what I can do. Longtime readers will be fully aware that I think it's important to push back against the social stigmas against psychological disorders, and learning more about conditions like depression is part of my agenda in this direction.

I especially appreciate the piece on cognitive behavioral therapy, because while I've known that it's often effective, this summarizes the state-of-the-art with regards to knowledge of how to treat depressive disorders, so I can speak with somewhat better authority on the subject. It's so interesting to think that the process of working with another human being to analyze and change thought patterns can have such a tremendous positive influence on one's life. Words have real power.

One of the absolute best parts of my current job has been the opportunity to work with our collaborator. He's one of those people who will tell you he's not particularly smart, but then he turns around and has keen insights and provides helpful, focused feedback on multiple fronts. I suspect that he feels that it's necessary to declare up front that smarts haven't gotten him where he is because a lot of people probably declare to him that he's smart. But really, a key attribute that makes many people successful is NOT smarts* (and oh, let's not get into the subject of how differently people attribute the successes of men vs. women). A willingness to be stupidly and stubbornly persistent can really, really help, as can an ability to work hard (ugh, I'm not doing well on that front lately), and knowing when and how to ask for help. Also good social skills (yes, it IS all about relationships), and the ability to respond thoughtfully.

When I interact with someone like him, I start to think, yes, there are ways to not just survive, but to have a huge positive impact on the lives of others. We human beings still have a lot to learn about how to be good humans, and yet we have also come a long, long ways.

Let's remember that, now and again, especially when we start to feel beaten down by world events or personal events. Forge on.


*I think I might have already written about this sometime in the past six months, but I can't seem to dredge up the post. Sigh.

So, I've started reading the book, and it has been good, so far. The first sections have reminded me of some of the things I've read on a bicycling blog written by Kent Peterson. After some searching, I still couldn't pull up the original entry that came to mind, but the overall ideas were related to elements discussed in this entry. The original was about the time Peterson spent as a software engineer/manager, where I think he declared something along the lines of, "Well, I didn't really manage things, so much as listen to people and tell stories."

Transitions works along those lines; I wasn't expecting it to contain so many stories, but there you have it - they're a useful framing technique for sharing insights. I think my starting expectations were based on the idea that self-improvement books are formulaic (is that part actually even true?), so I expected Transitions to be formulaic and dry and tedious, too.

The first chapter discusses the idea that there are three major components to transitions: endings, beginnings, and that uncomfortable segment in the middle between the ending and the beginning. Here's an excerpt I've been thinking about, although overall I have a feeling I'll want to make note of many passages as I read (oh, and someone has already gone through this library book with a pencil and "helped" me with that project, heh).

Looking back over your ending experiences, what can you say about your own style of bringing situations to a close? Is it abrupt and designed to deny the impact of the change, or is it slow and gradual? Do you tend to be active or passive in these terminal situations? That is, is it your initiative that brings things to term or do events just happen to you? Some people learn early to cultivate a subtle sort of receptivity to coincidence, or they become skilled at inviting others to covertly act upon them when change is in the wind.

Such people are characterized by a kind of blamelessness in regard to endings. They had no choice, they seem to say. The situation was beyond their control. In that first class on transition, we had several blameless ones, and they irritated everyone. None of us were feeling quite like the captain of our fate, but most of us acknowledged having played some part in the transition we were experiencing. Not the blameless ones, though, and particularly not one man whose wife had recently left him. ("She just walked out - no warning, no nothing - just left me.") He resented the idea that his own style might be one of inviting endings. He figuratively showed us his hands. ("See-clean.") And like someone who shouts "I didn't do it" when the police arrive, he called attention to himself and made everyone suspicious. He never caught on to what the others meant, and he finally stopped coming to class - another ending that he couldn't help - when one of the women insulted him by calling him "emotionally accident-prone." Rule number three: Although it is very advantageous to understand your own style of endings, there is some part of you that will resist that understanding as though your life depended on it.

After a quite brief respite, I'm back to reading about agriculture. Yesterday, as a little reward to myself for surviving my committee meeting, I went to the library and picked up a copy of The Gift of Good Land by Wendell Berry. I think my father had recommended the book some time ago. But I was too tired to do more than read the Foreword. Berry's writing has been inspirational for a lot of the thinkers I admire; hopefully my reaction will be similar.

I keep thinking about expressions of one's life's work recently. I've been toying around with the idea that one's life-work could culminate in a single thing like a book, as though the entirety of something can be captured in a set of pages. Book-writing is often seen as an academic capstone. But I am particularly trying to answer the question of what I would write if I were to write a third-person narrative about myself, and you can be certain that it wouldn't be academically driven.

The "tag cloud" of this journal style is perhaps one way of viewing myself externally and getting an idea of what subjects are most important to me--more frequently used tags are in larger print. In contrast, many people keep blogs that cover a particular theme, whether it's cooking or politics or bicycles, and perhaps by thus focusing they attract a broader audience (for better or for worse).

But the messy tension of talking about everything all together is important--could it be succesfully included in that third-person narrative? I might risk boring more audience members by doing that, though. Perhaps it would be equally interesting to couple the views of an external observer with my proposed external perspective of the internal. Thus my narrative complexifies [sic] itself.

What it all gets down to is that I won't be writing this hypothetical book any time soon. Now I return you to your regularly scheduled program.

figment80 and I talked recently about the difficult realization that certain relationships/friendships that we have been trying to maintain weren't worth it. For example, she feels like she has been putting a lot of her energy into some of her friendships with her colleagues, but that energy wasn't reciprocated. I have also been questioning certain things that contribute to the quality of my friendships. Then a conversation with A reminded me of a couple more things from my good old Social Psychology textbook related to self-disclosure in relationships that has helped me articulate what feels wrong.

(Aside: When I took Social Psych, I thought that a lot of the material we learned about was really common-sense, and I didn't feel like I got a lot out of the class. But as time goes by, I have come to realize how much I learned in the class and how well this knowledge helps me articulate aspects of my beliefs/behaviors.)

Basically, self-disclosure is the process of revealing intimate aspects of onself to others, and it can be a pretty intricate dance in any relationship. A couple of things tend to lead to more self-disclosure: we disclose more when distressed, we disclose more to those with whom we anticipate further interaction, and we disclose more if we have a secure attachment style. Lastly, disclosure leads to further disclosure; when someone reveals a part of themselves to another, the other often reciprocates. But this isn't an instantaneous process; if a person discloses too soon, they may seem indiscreet and unstable. It also seems to me that if reciprocation is missing, things won't end well, either. Some people are better than others at nurturing self-disclosure. These are people who are known as "growth-promoting" listeners (Carl Rogers 1980): they are genuine in revealing their own feelings, they are accepting of others' feelings, and are empathic, sensitive, reflective listeners.

Self-disclosure can have a huge number of positive benefits. It can be gratifying to open up to another, and have them open up to us in return; it's a trust-building process. Swann and Predmore (1985), for example, found that having an intimate friend with whom we can discuss threats to our self-image seems to help us survive such stresses. Also, true friendships are special relationships that help us cope with our other relationships.

I am extraordinarily grateful for all such friendships in my life, and am saddened whenever this process falls apart.


References:

Rogers, C.R. (1980) A way of being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Swann, W.B., Jr., and Predmore, S.C. (1985) Intimates as agents of social support: Sources of consolation or despair? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42: 1025-1035.

Textbook:
Myers, D.G. (1999) Social Psychology, 6th edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill College.