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Open Questions on the Correlation Between Television and Violence
by
Jonathan Vos Post
March 12, 1995
Keywords: Aggression, Arousal, Catharsis, Disinhibition, Psychology,
Sociology, Media, Movies, Multimedia, Television, Violence, Virtual
Reality
Hypertext Table of Contents
Introduction
Comparisons of Four Major Theories of Television Violence and Aggression
(1) Arousal
(2) Social Learning
(3) Disinhibition
(4) Aggression Reduction
Early Arguments about Television
History and Catharsis
What is Aggression?
Hitting Dolls; Hitting Children
Adult Effects Arguable
Other Media -- and Multimedia
Cultural and Inter-cultural Considerations
Conclusion
References
Introduction
How and why does mass media influence people? In particular, how and why
does television violence cause aggression (if indeed it does)? The social
psychology point of view includes the "arousal theory", the "social
learning" theory, the "disinhibition" theory, and the "aggression
reduction" theory, all of which will be defined and discussed in this
paper. There are other theories such as the "social comparison" theory
and the "modeling precision" theory which are excluded from consideration
here due to limitations of length. Yet no one theory has predominated,
and the debates on media and violence, in particular, have heated up over
the years. This paper presents an integrated, albeit brief, examination
of the key questions and the difficulties in answering them scientifically.
There is a
"general consensus among social scientists that television violence
increases the propensity to real-life aggression among some viewers,"
and yet, paradoxically,
"there is presently little evidence indicating that violence enhances
program popularity" (Diener & DeFour, 1978).
Top government studies insist that "violent material is popular" (Surgeon
General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior,
1972). Differing conclusions may be viable. One leading social
psychologist flatly states that
"evidence suggests that violence on television is potentially dangerous,
in that it serves as a model for behavior -- especially for children"
(Aronson, 1995, p.265).
How can there be such a difference in the basic conclusions of credible
scientists performing valid scientific studies? Why are there so many open
questions in this important area? This paper does not resolve the
unresolved problems of television and violence, but examines some of the
definitional matters, contextual issues, and boundary conditions that make
the relationship between television and violence so difficult to quantify.
Comparisons of Four Major Theories of Television Violence and Aggression
(1) Arousal
P. H. Tannebaum is the leading exponent of the "arousal hypothesis,"
which holds that exposure to television violence increases aggression
because violence increases excitation, or "arouses" viewers (Tannenbaum &
Zillman, 1975).
"Increased aggression follows when it is appropriate as a response,
which is almost always the case in television-and-aggression
experiments. The implications are threefold:
(1) television violence may stimulate classes of behavior other than
aggression; (2) classes of content other than violence may stimulate
aggression; and (3) many effects demonstrated in laboratory experiments
and in real life may hinge on the point on the curve of increasing
arousal at which the editing of a film sequence leaves the viewer
[due to censorship or 'off-stage' conventions for death and sex].
The hypothesis is supported by studies demonstrating that humorous,
erotic, violent, and other classes of content hypothesized to be arousing
increase physiological measures of excitation among college-age
subjects; that exposure to humorous, erotic, and other classes of
arousing visual portrayals lead to greater subsequent aggression on the
part of college-age subjects than less excitatory fare; and that both
physiological arousal and level of behavior will vary depending on
whether a film sequence ends on an exciting note or concludes with
blander depictions. Tannenbaum is an advocate of testing hypotheses in
order to construct theory, a proponent of rigorous laboratory
experimentation in order to infer cause and effect, and a skeptic over
whether violent content per se is responsible for the increased
aggression observed following the viewing of television violence"
(Comstock & Lindsey, 1975, p.26).
(2) Social Learning
Bandura is the leading proponent of "social learning" theory. His
central proposition is that ways of behaving are learned by observing
others, and that this is a major means by which children acquire
unfamiliar behavior, although performance of acquired behavior will depend
at least in part on factors other than acquisition (Bandura, 1973).
"One of the many testable hypotheses derived from this theory is the
proposition that children will learn from observing portrayals on
television as well as from observing the actions of live persons.
Findings from a wide range of laboratory experiments support this
proposition. In many of the experiments, the television stimuli have
consisted of some form of aggressive behavior, and the dependent
variable has been the recording of imitative aggression in play.
Subjects typically are young children, often of nursery-school age.
What has been clearly demonstrated is that children can acquire
aggressive ways of behaving from television and will exhibit these
aggressive responses in play behavior.
Bandura, like Tannenbaum, believes in the testing of hypotheses in
order to construct theory and in rigorous laboratory experimentation in
order to infer cause and effect. However, unlike Tannenbaum, his focus
has been on the acquisition of behavior. His social learning theory,
which has been one of the most refined and well-tested theories in the
social sciences, has been one of the two most influential sources of
research on television and aggression. It is far from limited to
acquisition, but encompasses the attributes of the individual, the
observed stimuli, and the environment likely to facilitate or
inhibit performance of observationally acquired responses"
(Comstock & Lindsey, 1975, pp.26-27).
(3) Disinhibition
Berkowitz has been the leading investigator of the "disinhibition
hypothesis," which posits that television violence in certain
circumstances will result in increased interpersonal aggression because it
weakens inhibitions against such behavior (Berkowitz, 1962).
"The findings so far suggest that such circumstances include those in
which the television violence is rewarded, those in which cues similar
to those in television portrayal appear in the environment, and those in
which the environment contains a target who has previously provoked or
harmed the viewer.
Like Tannenbaum and Bandura, Berkowitz believes in testing hypotheses
in order to construct theory and in rigorous control in order to infer
cause and effect. However, unlike Tannenbaum, he has been interested in
the direct contribution of television violence to the performance of
acquired behavior. And unlike both Tannenbaum and Bandura, his most
recent research has involved naturalistic field experiments on the
effects of television violence of subsequent interpersonal aggression"
(Comstock & Lindsey, 1975, p.27).
(4) Aggression Reduction
Feshbach is conventionally identified as a proponent of the "catharsis
hypothesis," but this misstates a complex situation. It would be more
accurate to identify him as a proponent of an "aggression reduction
hypothesis" which holds that under certain conditions exposure to
television violence will reduce subsequent aggression (Feshbach, 1961).
"One such condition is said to occur when viewers are deficient in the
ability to invent aggressive fantasies, the entertainment of which
Feshbach hypothesizes is helpful in self-control of aggressive
impulses. Television violence, it is argued, supplies material for such
fantasies, thus reducing aggressive behavior. Another condition is said
to occur when the television violence creates aggression anxiety, which
leads to the inhibition of aggressive impulses.
There is very little support in the scientific literature for the
original, pure 'catharsis hypothesis' which held that television
violence would reduce subsequent aggression by lowering aggressive drive
through vicarious participation in aggression. Initial findings which
appeared to support such a view have come to be viewed instead as
reflecting the effects of aggression anxiety" (Comstock & Lindsey, 1975,
pp.27-28).
Feshbach, like Tannenbaum, Bandura, and Berkowitz
"believes in the testing of hypotheses in order to construct theory and
in rigorous control in order to infer cause and effect. However, quite
unlike the previous three, he has focused on the circumstances under
which television violence leads to a reduction in subsequent aggression"
(Comstock & Lindsey, 1975, p.28).
We will consider this theory later in the context of Aristotelian
analysis of drama in general.
Early Arguments about Television
The social psychology of television has been analyzed since before
television became the dominant broadcast medium. Carl Hovland expressed
the opinion almost 50 years ago that
"while we do not today have a 'psychology of communications' we now have
all the essential ingredients -- the research techniques, the concepts
and hypotheses, and the problems -- to permit developing a genuine
science of communications in the coming decade or two"
(Schramm, 1948, p.65).
He laid out the task of analysis as consisting of three aspects:
"(1) the cues (or stimuli) transmitted by the communicator; (2) the
responses made by the communicatee; (3) the laws and principles relating
these two classes of events" (Schramm, 1948, p.59).
In Hovland's pioneering analysis, the problem from a theoretical
standpoint is
"how can stimuli ... bring about various desired changes in response?"
(Schramm, 1948, p.61).
He emphasizes learning theory, and what is now called "persuasion
theory" in that the communicator has the explicit intention of changing
comunicatee behavior. Three examples:
"One objective is to arouse drives, as when an advertiser wishes to
arouse a taste for his brand of cigarette. Some communications have as
their objective the teaching of new habits. A recipe column in the newspaper may
attempt to teach the housewife how to bake a cake. Finally, other communications
may have the function of weakening other drives or other already acquired
habits, as in the counselling situation the therapist communicates in
terms of allaying fears or breaking bad habits" (Schramm, 1948, pp.61-62).
At the same time, Hugh M. Belville, Jr., the director of research for the
National Broadcasting Company, attempted to predict "the challenge of the
new media" (Schramm, 1948, pp.127-141) with a consideration for students
and researchers about television, FM radio, and "facsimile broadcasting"
(fax). Belville claimed that
"in 1947 television rounded that corner behind which it had lurked for
so many years; 1948 will bring this medium sharply into focus as the
world's greatest means of mass communication" (Schramm, 1948, p.127).
Belville shot down the analogy that
"by adding sight to sound, television has done the same thing for radio
that the addition of sound accomplished for silent motion pictures"
(Schramm, 1948, p.129).
and offers the novel concept that
"the viewer gets a feeling of 'being there,' of immediacy which gives to
telecasts authority and significance possessed by no other medium of
mass communications" (loc.cit).
Today we would describe "being there" as an attribute of "telepresence"
and Virtual Reality, but those notions were unimaginable in 1947.
Instead, Belville gave examples of political impact:
"No one who saw the telecast of President Truman's short message to
the Congress on the Greek-Turkish Aid Program, and who viewed the grim
countenances of Mr. Truman, the Cabinet, and Congressional leaders,
could have escaped the fact that this was indeed a dramatic event which
marked a radical change in the whole course, not only of American
foreign policy but of history itself" (loc.cit.).
John E. Ivey, Jr., director of the division of research interpretation of
the North Carolina Institute for Research in Social Science, outlined the
challenge of television to social psychology researchers in
"Communications as a social instrument" (Schramm, 1947, pp.142-155). He
claimed that
"The psychologist and social psychologist have been able to simulate
social situations in the laboratories. However, they have not yet had
enough experience in testing hypotheses, and developing theory, growing
out of studies of real life situation" (Schramm, 1947, p.144).
Ivey listed three areas of communications research, five factors which
condition this problem, and six investigative problems associated with
securing the desired response from the communicatee. He then presents
five sample hypotheses, perhaps the most relevant to this paper of which
is
"The intensity and variety of communication forces operating in a
community would demonstrate differentials according to: (a) socio-economic
strata within the community; (b) nature and complexity of
social organization in the community; (c) rural-urban differentials in
social and cultural characteristics; (d) regional characteristics within
a society; (e) value systems shaping the form and content of social
action in the community" (Schramm, 1947, p.154).
Ivey finally warns, ominously, that
"The technological revolution we are now going through will far outstrip
our ability as groups to go through social change .... Then the
consensus which is essential to social organization will be lost and,
therefore, our civilization will be lost" (Schramm, 1947, p.155).
History and Catharsis
We must acknowledge that the relationship between violence and media, and
the arguments as to their mutual influence significantly precede the
existence of television. Some 2,500 years ago the same essential
questions were asked about drama acted by live actors in theatrical
presentations.
Aristotle suggested that drama was effective and desirable because of
"catharsis." This meant that the audience becomes psychologically
involved with the story on stage, even though they know it is only
fiction, and that when aggression climaxes among the actors, there is a
"catharsis" or release of pressure in the audience, which is pleasurable
to experience and leaves them cleansed, uplifted, and less likely to act
violently themselves.
Sigmund Freud agreed with this idea, and said that
"Unless people were allowed to express themselves aggressively, the
aggressive energy would be dammed up, pressure would build, and the
aggressive energy would seek an outlet, either exploding into acts of
extreme violence or manifesting itself as symptoms of mental illness
.... But there is no direct evidence for this conclusion"
(Aronson, 1995, p.258).
In citing Feshbach and the "aggression reduction" theory, we are in
essence extending an ancient hypothesis into the realm of modern media,
but numerous experts other than Feshbach agree with Aronson that there is
little scientific evidence for this appealing and conventional view.
Aronson cites studies on catharsis in sports activities by William
Menninger (Aronson, 1995, p.258), L. Berkowitz (op.cit., p.259), Arthur
Patterson (loc.cit.), and Warren Johnson (loc.cit.) which
"could find no simple, unequivocal findings to support the contention
that intense physical activity reduces aggression (loc.cit).... [and] no
consistent evidence to support the notion of catharsis" (loc.cit).
Similarly, Aronson cites Dane Archer and Rosemary Gartner (op.cit.,
p.264) as showing that a nation's being at war does not have a cathartic
effect on reducing aggressiveness at home, but actually encourages
domestic violence. It stands to reason that if no consistent correlation
can be established between actual physical aggression in socially
acceptable forms and resulting hostility or socially unacceptable
aggression, then how can we expect to find such a correlation with merely
simulated or fictional aggression?
Indeed, Aronson insists that
"in a classic series of experiments, Albert Bandura and his associates
demonstrated that watching violence on television also failed to yield
cathartic effects. Quite the contrary; simply seeing another person
behave aggressively can increase the aggressive behavior of young
children (Aronson, 1995, p.265)."
What is Aggression?
Besides the ambiguities in linking violence on television with actual
aggression, it is not clear what we really mean by "aggression." Aronson
points out that the same term is used regarding the Boston Strangler, a
football tackle, a "go-getter" insurance salesperson, a little girl who
"clobbers" her brother, a "passive aggressive" husband sulking in the
corner of a party, "a child who wets the bed, a jilted boyfriend who
threatens suicide" or a student persistently struggling with a math
problem (Aronson, 1995, p.249).
Aronson tries to distinguish between behavior that harms or does not harm
others, and applies the term "aggression" only to "behavior aimed at
causing harm or pain" (Aronson, 1995, p.250), and then further tries to
subdivide aggression into an intentional end-in-itself "hostile" type and
a goal-oriented "instrumental" type (loc.cit.). But this does not help us
solve the problem of violence and television, because we still have no
widely-accepted, clear-cut, and scientific definition for either the
aggressive acts on television or those purportedly caused by television
upon its audience.
In addition to uncertainties in the definition of aggression, there is no
agreement on whether aggression is instinctive as opposed to learned, and
whether or not it can be "good." Aronson cites the 18th century
Rousseau's "noble savage" concept that we are aggressive only because of a
restrictive society (Aronson, 1995, p.251), and Freud's position that we
are innately brutal and aggressive and can only constrain that through
society's law and order (loc.cit.). The issue of learning is crucial to
the "social learning" theory of Bandura.
Aronson cites Anthony Storr as saying that humans are uniquely aggressive
among all animals, to the point of wanton destructiveness unmatched by any
mere brutes (Aronson, 1995, pp.251-252). Zing Yang Kuo is given as a
supporting researcher, who raised cats that are always friendly to rats,
rather than being programmed from birth to stalk and kill (Aronson, 1995,
p.252). John Paul Scott is said to conclude that "there is no inborn need
for fighting" (loc.cit.), and Konrad Lorentz is cited as proving exactly
the opposite through ethological observations of aggressive fish in
natural environments and in aquariums. Lorentz argues not only that
aggression is innate, but that it is inherently good, in that it
"is an essential part of the life-preserving organization of instincts"
(Aronson, 1995, pp.252-253).
Hitting Dolls; Hitting Children
Thus, even if it could be proven -- as it has not yet been -- that
television violence increases aggression in the audience, that would not
allow us to conclude that television violence has a "bad" effect on
people. The Bandura experiments involve children watching TV tapes of
adults knocking around a plastic "Bobo" doll, and then the children
imitate this behavior. As Aronson puts it,
"Who cares what a kid does to a Bobo doll?" (Aronson, 1995, p.265).
Aronson cautions, however, that George Gerbner and his associates have
spent over 25 years analyzing prime-time and Saturday morning TV.
"They have found that violence prevails in eight out of every ten
programs. Moreover, an average of five or six violent incidents occurs
each hour. And what about cartoons, the favorite television fare of
most young children? They contain the most violence -- roughly eighteen
acts of aggression every hour. The most recent evidence suggests that
by the time he or she is twelve years old the average child will have
witnessed 100,000 acts of violence on TV" (Aronson, 1995, p.265).
Liebert and Baron are said (loc.cit.) to have shown that cops-and-robbers
TV shows led to more aggression against other children than did exciting
sporting events on TV. Ross Parke supposedly saw the same effects from
exposure to seeing
"just one movie, and that the increase in aggressive behavior was most
pronounced in those boys who were initially lower in aggression"
(Aronson, 1995, p.266)
William Josephson supposedly saw the same kind of increased aggressive
acts between youngsters who watched police violence films, as opposed to
exciting bike racing films, and later played floor hockey (Aronson, 1995,
p.267). Yet, exactly in opposition to Ross Parke et.al., Josephson saw
increased aggression among those children who were initially higher in
aggression. So even very similar experiments which seem on the surface to
produce similar results (i.e. viewed violence causing real violence
between child viewers), there are still great differences in results, as
to the extent that aggression was already more or less innate in children,
and as to whether the violence was learned by the less-violent or
triggered in the already-violent (as in Tannenbaum's "arousal hypothesis").
Adult Effects Arguable
Because we are protective of our children, and because it is children who
watch the most television and (presumably) the most of the violent
cartoons, these studies have focused on children. But Aronson points out
similar effects as reported among adults. He cites the 1993 movie The
Program, in which college students lay down on the center of a highway to
prove their courage, and then two actual students got killed in New Jersey
and Pennsylvania doing the same thing (Aronson, 1995, p.267). Aronson
doesn't mention it, but the film was actually re-edited to eliminate this
scene, to prevent "copy cat" casualties. To me, this suggests that
unscientific "anecdotal" appearances of a relationship between media and
violence are more likely to lead to real-world changes in the management
of media, perhaps because the public is confused by and skeptical of
scientific analyses.
Anecdotal evidence is given by Jerry Mander based on informal recordings
of about 2,000 conversational and written descriptions of television. The
15 phrases most frequently used, he claims are:
(1) "I feel hypnotized when I watch television."
(2) "Television sucks my energy."
(3) "I feel like it's brainwashing me."
(4) "I feel like a vegetable when I'm stuck there at the tube."
(5) "Television spaces me out."
(6) "Television is an addiction and I'm an addict."
(7) "My kids look like zombies when they're watching."
(8) "TV is destroying my mind."
(9) "My kids walk around like they're in a dream because of it."
(10) "Television is making people stupid."
(11) "Television is turning my mind to mush."
(12) "If a television is on, I just can't keep my eyes off it."
(13) "I feel mesmerized by it."
(14) "TV is colonizing my brain."
(15) "How can I get my kids off it and back into life?"
(Mander, 1978, p.258)
Aronson himself waxes anecdotal with his touching story of his own son
crying after having napalm explained to him during a Vietnam War telecast
(Aronson, 1995, pp.247-248). But while such stories and repeated phrases
themselves may motivate researchers such as Aronson, and the public at
large even more so, such anecdotes are not in the context of social
psychology experimentation, and cannot influence our formal conclusions.
Less emotionally than his napalm story, but even less plausibly than his
story about The program, he (Aronson, 1995, pp.267-268) talks about the
Killeen, Texas, cafeteria mass-murder of 22 people by a crazed gunman with
ticket stubs to the film The Fisher King which has a lunatic shooting and
killing people in a bar. The cause and effect is not plausible here. As
described in great detail in the definitive study of the "Luby's Cafeteria
Killings" in Killeen, America's worst mass murder, there were actually 23
dead in five minutes, not 22 (Karpf & Karpf, 1994). This is a minor
difference, but shows to me the importance of following chains of
reference from secondary to primary sources. The killer's favorite TV
show was the non-violent Discovery Channel show about military aircraft,
Wings.
More to the point, the murderer George Hennard was at least as much
influenced by Steely Dan's 1976 rock & roll song "Don't Take Me Alive",
marijuana, disciplinary problems in the Coast Guard, experiences with
foreign prostitutes, lax attention by local police and the F.B.I. when he
stalked women, and -- significantly -- an obsession with an actual
mass-murder.
The killer was not so much pushed over the edge by a movie as already
over the edge and an obsessive collector of information about James
Huberty's previous record-holder for American mass murder, in 1984, at a
San Ysidro McDonald's; and about newspaper accounts of serial killer Ted
Bundy (Karpf & Karpf, 1994). This incident -- like so many anecdotal
examples -- is a case of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. That is
to say, just because one event (a mass killing) occurred chronologically
after another event (viewing a movie), it is not valid to presume that the
first event caused the second event.
Other Media -- and Multimedia
Aronson refers (Aronson, 1995, p.269) to the systematic research of David
Phillips about the significant increase in the number of incidents
following publicized prizefights. The more publicity, the more the
increase in subsequent homicides. After white boxers lost, more white men
but not black men were murdered; after black boxers lost, there were more
murders of black men but not white men. But this was for publicity in
general. TV as such was not to blame, but radio or newspapers as well.
This brings us to the issue of which media have the greatest impact.
Television may have displaced film and radio in number of per capita hours
of audience per violent incident broadcast. But children today may be
more influenced by video games in arcades and computer games at home.
Here, they are active participants rather than vicarious spectators.
Might it not be worse than watching any existing television show for a
child to play Mortal Kombat and rip out a simulated opponent's heart, or
slice off a video-image man's head? There is no question that such
graphically violent games are popular. Mortal Kombat II has been
estimated to have sales of $200-400 million (New Media, 1995).
Beyond that, what of Virtual Reality, a medium in which you not only see
and manipulate images, but have the 3-D experience of being inside the
simulated environment? In Pasadena, you can strap on a VR helmet and
chase real people through a simulated world, firing "deadly" laser guns
all the while. Fitting in with our earlier discussion of Belville
(Schramm, 1948), this sense of "being there" would intuitively have a
greater effect on aggression than would watching any film or television
show. Again, there is no conclusive data that I can find in the
literature.
Cultural and Inter-cultural Considerations
There is nothing specially violent about modern American television
compared to some alternatives. After all, Shakespeare's first play, Titus
Andronicus featured a woman who was raped, had her hands chopped off, and
had her tongue cut out to keep her from naming the rapist. She wrote his
name by holding a stick in her wrists and writing in the dirt. She got
revenge on the criminal by grinding up his children. This kind of
violence -- 400 years old -- makes a modern "dark comedy" violent film
like Pulp Fiction or Shallow Grave more evidently part of a long-term
cultural context.
Ivey presented a sample hypotheses that
"the intensity and variety of communication forces operating in a
community would demonstrate differentials according to: (a)
socio-economic strata within the community; (b) nature and complexity
of social organization in the community; (c) rural-urban differentials
in social and cultural characteristics; (d) regional characteristics
within a society; (e) value systems shaping the form and content of
social action in the community"
(Schramm, 1947, p.154).
This is still a profound challenge to social psychology experimentation
on television and violence. It is very difficult to construct adequate
laboratory controls against bias due to socio-economic strata, nature and
complexity of social organization, rural-urban differentials in social and
cultural characteristics (to which we would today add suburban as the
dominant category by population), regional characteristics, and value
systems. And yet without such controls, and appropriate methodological
choices, the experiments will reveal both the biases of the experimenter's
favored theory and the complexities of human and cultural variation. Any
successful attempt to filter out value systems, in particular, might
through hidden or unacknowledged biases eliminate an essential concern
about television violence and aggression in the real world of drugs,
gangs, recession, and post-cold-war anxieties in the United States today.
And what of inter-cultural differences? Japan is reputed to have more
sex and violence on television, and in comic books, with no effort made to
shield them from the view of children. And yet Japan has a far lower rate
of rape and murder and crime in general than the United States. Hence we
may surmise that the effect of media on aggression is, even if real,
highly susceptible to cultural conditioning.
Conclusion
How and why does mass media influence people? In particular, how and why
does television violence cause aggression (if indeed it does)? This paper
has briefly surveyed the social psychology point of views including the
"arousal theory", the "social learning" theory, the "disinhibition"
theory, and the "aggression reduction" theory.
We have found broad areas of agreement, and equally broad areas of
disagreement, ambiguity, and confusion. In presenting an integrated,
albeit brief, examination of the key questions and the difficulties in
answering them scientifically, we have also touched on Aristotle's 2,500
year-old catharsis theory as modified by Freud; early predictions from
media theorists of the 1940s; complexities in the definition, the
innateness of, and the values of aggression; the differences between real
aggression towards people and laboratory aggression against dolls;
anecdotal descriptions of television and their weaknesses in explaining
specific acts of aggression (including America's worst mass murder);
overlapping concerns with other media such as radio, film, fax, video
games, computer games, and Virtual Reality; and cultural and
inter-cultural considerations.
No absolute conclusion can be reached from such a survey. However, the
issues are important. Not only because television violence is a reality,
and aggression is a fact of life, but because an effective social
psychology understanding of the relationship between television and
behavior may help to not only reduce socially unacceptable aggression, but
may actually enable us to increase socially desirable effects.
As Stanley Cavell puts it in "the fact of television" :
"I suppose it is a tall order for the repetitions and transiencies of
television, the company of its talks and events, to overcome the anxiety
of the intuition the medium embodies. But if I am right, this is the
order it more or less already fulfills, proving again the power of
familiarity, for good or ill, in human affairs; call it our
adaptability. And who knows but that if the monitor picked up on
better talk, monitored habitually the talk of people who actually had
something to say, and if it probed for intelligible connections and for
beauty among its events -- who knows but that it would alleviate our
paralysis, our pride in adaptation, our addiction to a solemn destiny,
sufficiently to help us allow ourselves to do something intelligent
about its cause"
(American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 1982, p.96).
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Quill, 1978, p.158
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the Mass Media, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1948
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Family Dynamics and the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis
by
Jonathan Vos Post
May 14, 1995
(c) 1995 by Emerald City Publishing
All rights reserved. My not be reproduced without permission.
May be posted electronically provided that it is transmitted unaltered,
in its entirety, and without charge.
Keywords: Blaming, Descartes, Family Dynamics, Loss, Newborn, Parent,
Philosophy, Psychology, Psychosocial, Psychotherapy, Sibling, Sociology,
Tragedy
Keynames: Gustav Mahler, Edvard Munch, Kaethe Kollwitz, Thomas De Quincey,
Jack Kerouac, Bertha Pappenheim, Nietzsche, Goethe, Oscar Wilde, Lenin,
Van Gogh, Heinrich Schliemann, James M. "Peter Pan" Barrie, Elvis Presley,
Lenin, Hitler, Empress Catherine the Great, Ho Chi Minh, Joseph Stalin,
John Lennon
Introduction
The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis is an American bastion of
classical Freudian practice, far from the mainstream of modern marital and
family psychotherapy. Yet a selection of recent papers from The Annual of
Psychoanalysis, a publication of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis,
reveals a moderation of dogmatism in the direction of modern family
therapy.
Four examples indicate this broadened philosophy:
(1) "Child Sibling Loss: A Family Tragedy", George H. Pollock, M.D.,
Ph.D. (Chicago), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a publication of the
Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.14, 1986, pp.5-34;
(2) "The Dreams of Descartes: Notes on the Origins of Scientific
Thinking", Alan R. Dyer, M.D., Ph.D. (Durham, N.C.), The Annual of
Psychoanalysis, a publication of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis,
Vol.14, 1986, pp.163-176;
(3) "An Outcome Study of the Psychosocial Adaptation of Children at Risk:
Protective Factors in the Severely Ill Newborn", Irving Philips, M.D. (San
Francisco), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a publication of the Chicago
Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.15, 1987, pp.215-244;
(4) "Blaming the Parent: Psychoanalytic Myth and Language", F. Diane
Barth, M.S.W., C.S.W. (New York), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a
publication of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.17, 1989,
pp.185-201;
To be sure, these four papers are not definitive examples of the Chicago
school, nor do they represent a complete and consistent philosophy, but it
stands to reason that the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis would have
some degree of editorial bias in the direction of their own faculty
consensus, and that a significant number of dissenting publications within
their own Annual would suggest a more broad and modern understanding of
family dynamics and the therapeutic process than Sigmund Freud would have
expounded, or that the Chicago professors would have traditionally
promulgated.
1. "Child Sibling Loss: A Family Tragedy"
George H. Pollock, M.D., Ph.D., was (at least in 1986) the President of
the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and hence may be considered a
representative speaker for the philosophical position of its faculty. At
Perspectives on Sibling Loss, a conference celebrating the opening of the
Othman-Cole Center for Sibling Loss of the Southern School, co-sponsored
by the Barr-Harris Center, Institute for Psychoanalysis of Chicago, and
Department of Psychiatry, Northwestern University Medical School, June 8,
1985, Dr. Pollock presented an interesting survey of this issue, itself
well within the boundaries of Family Therapy1.
Dr.Pollock begins by quoting a tale which was also the introduction to a
book by H.S. Schiff2 which has as its conclusion: " 'The prince, no fool,
had realized that some things are beyond describing. No matter how
eloquent the words, their impact can fall flat when not accompanied by a
similar experience.' And so it is with bereaved parents."
Harriet Sarnoff Schiff was herself a bereaved parent, her son having died
at the age of ten. Dr.Pollock agrees with Schiff's "perspective of the
parent who has lost a child -- an unexpected crisis, as parents are
supposed to die before their children -- she indeed poignantly but
carefully addresses the issue of the loss of a child, and how it affects
the mother, the father, and the siblings." [Pollock, pp.6-7].
In particular, childhood loss is a tragedy for each person in a family,
but with meanings that can differ from individual to individuals. For
example, for the mother "it can give rise to guilt, severe melancholia, a
lifelong bereavement" [loc.cit.]. For the father, it may be similar or
different from the mother. For both parents, there is the additional
burden of having to deal with their own pain and yet comfort the living
children. For siblings, the reactions can vary, from lesser impacts to
lifelong significance. For grandparents, "the response can vary from
great despair to quiet contemplative mourning" [loc.cit.].
Pollock's focus is on the sibling, but he stresses again and again how
the surviving sibling is confronted by the reactions of the parents and
other siblings as well as their own responses when the death occurs. The
children can feel "unloved, alone, ignored during the bereavement period,
or they may become overprotected, overinvested with care and
apprehension. The children may feel pushed aside, ignored, abandoned at a
crucial time" [loc.cit.].
Pollock does not, but could have, reference the classical Japanese story
of the travelling poet-monk who repaid the hospitality of a family by
writing them the following poem:
Grandfather Dies.
Father Dies.
Son Dies.
When the family is outraged by the insult they see in this poem, the monk
explains calmly that his poem reflects the proper state of nature, and
that if you put the three lines of the poem in any other order, the result
is tragedy.
Pollock contends that "not all children and adolescents emerge from this
family tragedy with psychopathology or distorted personalities. Some
become very creative and deal with their mourning for the dead siblings in
a positive way" [op.cit., p.8]. He cites Gustav Mahler, Edvard Munch,
Kaethe Kollwitz, Thomas De Quincey, Jack Kerouac (dead brother Gerard),
Bertha Pappenheim, Nietzsche, Goethe, Oscar Wilde, Lenin, Van Gogh,
Heinrich Schliemann, and (in depth) the famous Scottish writer James M.
"Peter Pan" Barrie3. He does not, but might well have in a less academic
context, also cited Elvis Presley, whose twin brother died at birth.
Pollock also cites Solnit4 as writing that "sibling experiences are
always significantly shaped by two interacting, profound dynamic forces...
there is first, the nature of the mutual relationships of parent and
child; and second, the child's developmental capacities and preferences
that are formative in sibling relationships and experiences."
Pollock also lists (I summarize below) Patterson and McCubbin's5 list of
the sources of stress when there is a chronic illness in a family who have
a chronically ill child:
1) Strained family relationships
2) Modifications in family activities and goals
3) The burden of increased tasks and time commitments
4) Increased financial burden
5) Need for housing adaptation
6) Social isolation
7) Medical concerns
8) Differences in school experiences
9) Grieving
Pollock concludes "that children can experience various kinds of losses
that include events other than death: prolonged hospitalization, divorce
with split custody, abandonment, separations during war and other disaster
experiences, migrations to countries resulting in family breakups"
[Pollock, p.21].
In listing famous people who reacted creatively to the death of a
sibling, Pollock suggests that "in the case of Lenin, I found a partial
identification with his [political assassin] executed [by the Czar]
brother set the adolescent on a path that had a powerful impact on the
history of man" [Pollock, p.32]. He underlines this conclusion with a
reference to Hitler "who lost three siblings before he was born; the death
of his brother Edmund at age six, when Adolf was eleven, may have had a
serious impact on his later fascination with death" [op.cit., pp.32-22].
In another paper, Pollock6 gives a list of revolutionary and utopian
leaders who lost parents or siblings while young, including Empress
Catherine the Great (1729-1796), who lost a lost a brother when she was
thirteen and a sister when she was sixteen; Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969),
whose mother died when he was ten, and lost a younger brother when he was
fifteen; and Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) who survived when three siblings
died, perhaps due to an alcoholic abusive father.
It is a chilling thought, that creative but twisted responses to the
deaths of siblings may have led to the death of tens of millions of people
to the Nazis and the Soviet Union. I personally agree with the final
quote by Pollock: "as John Lennon has pointed out, 'Life is what happens
while we are busy making other plans.' "
2. "The Dreams of Descartes: Notes on the Origins of Scientific Thinking"
Alan R. Dyer, M.D., Ph.D. claims that dreams by RenŽ Descartes (born
March 31, 1596), which themselves resulted from family dynamics, led to
the basis of a new philosophy, the scientific method, which fundamentally
shaped the modern world itself.7
The dreams in question were on the night of November 10, 1619, and
Descartes himself made the claim that they led to the scientific method.
Various authors cited by Dyer have attempted to analyze the symbolism in
these dreams in terms of verified biographical details of Descartes. For
example, Schonberger8 has offered a Kleinian interpretation; von Franz9
has offered a Jungian interpretation; Feuer10 has offered a classical
Freudian interpretation involving sexual anxieties; Hanson11 has offered a
Freudian interpretation in terms of narcissistic dynamics. Freud himself12
cautioned psychoanalysts about such studies made without access to the
associations of the dreamer, and noted that Descartes' dreams were of the
type he called "from above," meaning that they included thoughts that were
close to the dreamer's consciousness and might be had while awake.
Dyer [p.163] extends Freud's warning by citing not only the lack of
biographical information or even associative material, of which Descartes
provided a great deal, but in trying to connect the dreams to the
philosophy which Descartes claimed emerged from those dreams. Dyer holds
that we should look fully at the dreams' context, including history and
philosophy, to understand the anxieties and problems with which the
dreamer struggled when both asleep and awake.
These problems confront the modern world, and Descartes philosophy is
satisfying to us because of its bold claim for certain knowledge, and yet
frustrating in its impersonality. Dyer [p.164] summarizes the importance
of this subject as follows:
"Yet the appreciation of Descartes' genius is ambivalent, for the price
of that liberation was the split of the material and spiritual worlds
with the result that Man (as a person) was to be impersonally studied by
the methods of understanding physical objects in space and time.
Descartes' dualistic division of the world into extended things (res
extensa) and thinking things (res cogitans), claiming the former for the
province of science, and leaving the latter as the province of religion, has
left much uncertainty about the legitimate status of attempts at knowledge of
thinking things: psychoanalysis and other psychologies, social sciences, the
humanities, and medicine insofar as it concerns itself with more than just the
extended body."
Dyer paradoxically says that "neither Descartes' dreams nor his
philosophy can be fully comprehended if we employ the Cartesian outlook of
detached analysis. Cartesian epistemology must itself be reexamined in
the light of the more comprehensive understanding of mental processes
which we now possess" [p.164]. Freud is said to have "corrected the
Cartesian error" by "candidly looking at the childhood origins of
primary-process thinking as an indispensable foundation on which the more
rational secondary-process thinking is built."
Descartes was preoccupied with the questions "How can one know?" and "How
can one be certain?", which were both previously taken to be religious
questions left to ecclesiastic authority, and subsequently taken to be in
the domain of science. Descartes did not directly confront the massive
authority of the Catholic Church. Indeed, he declared [op.cit., p.165] a
kind of psychological independence from his own parents, and by extension
from God:
"As for my parents, from whom it appears that I derive my birth, this
does not mean that it is they who made me and produced me in so far as I
am a thinking thing, since all they did was to put certain dispositions
into this matter in which I judge that I, that is to say my mind, which
alone I take now as being myself, is enclosed..."
Descartes also declared his independence from his senses, which the
Scholastic world at that time held were the guides to the intellect which
in turn was the basis of knowledge. He expresses his predicament, his
so-called "dream problem" of having "been deceived in sleep by similar
illusions" and so was determined to "close his eyes, stop his ears, and
turn away his senses from their objects" and start completely anew with a
method derived from consciousness itself.
I can't help but see a parallel to the traumatized child protagonist of
the Who's rock opera Tommy who (by witnessing his mother's sexual
unfaithfulness and her being surprised by his father returning from World
War II) becomes blind, deaf, and dumb; then achieves enlightenment while
playing pinball; then tries to enlighten others by similarly restricting
their senses.
This paper is too short to list Descartes' dreams, recorded in a
manuscript called the Olympica, no longer available, but which was used by
his biographer Baillet13 who preserves the text of the dreams. But Dyer
[p.169] stresses how Descartes' mother suffered from a lung disease, RenŽ
claimed he inherited his sickly disposition from her, that his mother died
in childbirth May 13, 1597 when he was just fourteen months old, and three
days later her third and last child also died. As we have seen from
Pollock1, the death of a sibling (and/or parent) has a powerful effect on
a child, who copes in complex ways. As a sign of RenŽ Descartes coping,
Dyer quotes Vrooman as commenting that Descartes wrote incorrectly that
his mother "died a few days after my birth from a lung ailment caused by
some sort of grief."
Related to the deaths of mother and sibling, Descartes was raised by a
devoted nurse, his maternal grandmother, and (from age ten) in a Jesuit
school whose methods young RenŽ hated. In Dyer's words [p.169]:
"Descartes' life, his philosophy, and his dreams all reveal conflicts
between a desire for certainty and security and a desire for independence
and solitude, between a submission to authority and a defiance of that
authority (his father, his school, the Church and its traditions) and
between a fascination with his emotions and a rationality devoid of
emotional content. Descartes' dreams reflect elements of classical
[Freudian] sexual conflict and oedipal struggle. There are often
compelling suggestions of hatred of the father and of authority and the
fear of retaliation, even of castration ... a sense of keen anxiety and
tension; confusion and fear...."
Dyer recounts how Descartes was steered away from profligacy and a
predilection for gambling by his close friend, the mathematician
Mersenne. Descartes follows the fourth-century Latin poet Ausonius who
provided a strategy for his rebellion by "wearing the mask" of devout
Christianity and confining his work to the "innocent" fields of
mathematics and science. Descartes rightly believed that a direct
confrontation with Church authorities would result in the destruction of
either himself or them, and probably felt that his mother's and sibling's
death were somehow caused by his (age fourteen months) first steps towards
independence.
Yet his solution becomes the twentieth century's problem. Shall we seek
intellectual freedom at the expense of personal, moral, and emotional
wholeness? Such liberation from dogma is at best a compromise, since the
origins of scientific thought require the repudiation of infantile
thinking and yet paradoxically maintaining them in the Cartesian
worldview. Modern science depends upon scientific revolutions14, and yet
we do not pretend that challenges to scientific ideas will result in our
own demolition.
Dyer [p.172] concludes that Descartes was not himself a Cartesian
"because he was a human being, and no human being, except in psychosis,
could maintain the denials of sensory experience and of affectionate life
which Cartesianism requires."
Revisionist epistemologists such as Kuhn14, Polanyi15, and Popper 16,
have shown [Dyer, p.173] that "scientific knowledge does not build so much
on reductionistic analysis as it does on the integration of perceptions of
complex [social, historical, and psychological] realities. Polanyi
stresses the rehabilitation of trust in ones' own perceptions as a
fundamental step in the establishment of knowledge. Science proceeds not
by a repudiation of sensory experience, but by a reliance on it."
Dyer sees these contrasting approaches to knowledge in terms of the
infant-mother relationship (dyadic symbiosis) which Descartes would have
suddenly lost when his mother died (thus producing extraordinary
self-doubt about his existence and relationship to nurturing figures) and
the child-mother-father relationship (triadic social reality processing).
The Cartesian philosophy, a basis for science and the modern world, is
thus an incomplete attempt to describe knowledge as a solitary process of
grappling with a world of which one is not a part. This way of viewing
the world is a psychological defense mechanism against painful affects.
How amazing, if true, that our scientific world stemmed from a troubled
fourteen-month-old dealing with the loss of his mother!
3. "An Outcome Study of the Psychosocial Adaptation of Children at Risk:
Protective Factors in the Severely Ill Newborn"
Irving Philips17 finds many methodological faults in retroactive analysis
of data reported by adults or observed by mothers, in the study of child
development. He quotes Freud as having also recognized these problems.
Many inferences are made about mother-infant interaction from
retrospective data, but there are better sources of data in the medical
study of premature infants born with serious medical and surgical
problems, as for example studied at the Intensive Care Nursery of the
University of California, San Francisco.
Neonatology as a science has blossomed in the past two decades.
Hyaline-membrane disease is successfully treated; surgical complications
are corrected; a higher achiever rate for lower-birth-weight-infants has
been achieved; distressed neonates are vigorously treated by isolation in
incubators, perceptual stimulation reduction, intubation to achieve
positive pressure oxygenation, intravenous feeding or gavage, frequent
measurements and laboratory tests, transfusions, and other interventions.
Many such infants are extremely deprived of normal mother-infant
contact. The normal affectional bonds are not achieved at birth, and may
be much delayed. The unity of the mother-infant dyad is disrupted. And
yet many of these infants survive, allowing us to see if they made
adequate adaptation in the face of such early privation of affectional
bonds.
Philips cites animal experiments, such as the famous results on the
effects of isolation of the rhesus monkey18; and the studies of Ribble
(1943), Spitz (1965), Spock19 (1946), Erikson (1950) and others on the
importance of early mother-child care, the effects of early separation,
the mother-infant dyad, the crucial first two months, and even, according
to Klaus and Kennel20 the necessity that the mother and father have close
contact with their infant in the first minutes and hours of life, in order
for development to be optimal. Infant separation and isolation can injure
language acquisition, affect mental retardation, provoke cognitive
disturbances, and correlate with mental subnormality.
Philips summarizes the studies of children at risk, most of which deal
with those reared in families with a mentally ill (schizophrenic or
depressed) parent. He cites the summary by Erlenmeyer-Kimling21 as well
as the "reports of children raised in compromised backgrounds who have
achieved an expected level of competence. There are reports on
invulnerable children or 'superkids' ... who displayed unusual talent and
creativity" such as those by Grunebaum22 and Cohler23. But he found no
studies of psychosocial adaptation that follow children over time who have
been seriously distressed at birth and separated from maternal care for
long periods.
So Philips asked the Director of the Intensive Care Nursery of the
University of California, San Francisco, to select ten children, eight
years of age or older, who had been separated from parental caretaking,
had suffered severe and intense privation for at least two months, and had
nonetheless achieved a most favorable psychosocial outcome. Most of these
children had been oxygen dependent for six weeks or longer, and were
hospitalized in intensive care for at least two months. All were
separated from their mothers for at least six weeks, many had multiple
hospitalizations, and all had multiple complications, both medical and
surgical.
The parents were interviewed to determine the course of the child's
development, and these retrospective data were further elaborated by the
child's clinic chart based on periodic visits. An appraisal was made from
four perspectives: the child, parent(s), family functioning, and school.
This overlaps the core concerns of Family Therapy, in my opinion.
There is no room in this paper for details, nor for Philips' speculations
as to Biological Factors and Psychosocial Factors that might account for
the results of this important study. What matters in the context of this
paper and this class is the basic result [p.225]:
"There is little question that full-term delivery of a healthy infant
and early contact with the maternal caregiver are preferred in human
development. Yet the children who are the subject of this paper have
demonstrated that the human infant can indeed survive early deprivation
and achieve normal psychosocial adaptation. They experienced
separation, isolation, pain, respiratory and cardiac distress, sensory
deprivation, surgical manipulation, and other untoward experiences
inflicted over protracted periods of time, and yet 8-14 years later,
despite the adversity, they had not only survived the experience but
had also achieved a psychosocial adaptation indistinguishable from that
of their more favored peers. They had disastrous beginnings and favorable
outcomes. Developmental theory or ethological experiments would
dictate otherwise. There may be many biosocial explanations."
This study has emphasized that (1) the human organism can not only
tolerate the harshest privation and not only survived but become
indistinguishable from more favored peers; (2) for these children, early
opportunities for bonding did not occur and were long delayed, questioning
the assumption that such bonding must occur early to avoid poor
psychosocial adaptation; (3) The most important variable in good
adaptation is the ability of the family to provide care to modify early
privations and develop interactions that support development during
maturation; (4) The extreme stress and trauma of these children did not
result in any measurable behavioral or psychological impairment.
This study seems important to me. Rather than focusing on pathology, it
focuses on the greatest mystery of all: how people find health and
happiness against all odds. This highly optimistic possibility should be
at the core of Family Therapy.
4. "Blaming the Parent: Psychoanalytic Myth and Language"
F. Diane Barth24 worked in a residential treatment center with a severely
disturbed girl who both infuriated and charmed the staff with her standard
response to criticism. Whenever the girl was chastised for inappropriate
behavior that the staff thought the girl could control, the girl whined "I
can't help it. It's the way my mother made me." In therapy, she took the
same position, always blaming her mother or a hallucination as responsible
for the girl's actions. It made the staff laugh when they were most
annoyed, but it also encapsulated her basic difficulty with life. She had
no sense of personal agency, of personal power to have an impact on her
environment. Yet at the same time she saw herself as a helpless victim,
exploited by others, she herself was exploiting those others so that they
responded with feelings of helplessness and hostility towards her, thus
perpetuating her experience of other people as hostile and potentially
dangerous.
Barth cites numerous psychoanalysts who regard the sense of personal
agency as an important component of the sense of self, and thus of mental
health. But although the girl in question was psychotic, her behavior
illuminates the way many analysts and analysands alike fall into the trap
of "parent-blaming."
When Barth supervises candidates in analytic training, those candidates
often see family dynamics in terms such as "the patient is repeating a
pattern of interaction which occurred with his or her mother (or
father)." When Barth asks what purpose the repetition has for the
patient, many candidates (no matter how old or sophisticated) are taken by
surprise.
Some then explain this in terms of "the repetition compulsion, or a need
for the familiar, or an attempt to master a painful experience. Even
these dynamic explanations tend to be based on a belief that analysands
are caught in a pattern of repeating early experiences for the purposes of
mastery or defense, and that such behavior is necessary because of the
damage caused by failures in the parents' ability to provide what the
child needed."
Yet even though these candidate psychoanalysts agree that "psychodynamics
evolve from an intricate interplay between actual experience and the
meaning such experience has for the individual," they still almost always
imply a belief that someone -- either the analysand (classical Freudian
drive-conflict theory) or the parents (many contemporary theories) -- is
AT FAULT in the development of the individual's dynamics.
As Schafer25 points out, this language interferes with psychoanalysis by
promoting an attitude of passivity on the analysand, and a superficial
understanding of psychodynamics by the analyst.
I hereafter skip over the detailed examination of the literature by
Barth, and the many secondary references which could be cited, and
summarize the key ideas.
(1) The concept of the child as a passive victim of parental behavior is
contrary to the findings of current infant research.
(2) Parent-blaming is one end of a continuum with intrapsychic factors at
one end and environmental factors at the other.
(3) Freud struggled with this conflict throughout his writings.
(4) Much of the criticism directed against Freud and his followers come
from Freud's final lack of adequate recognition of the impact of actual
interaction with important people on the development of the human psyche.
(5) Psychoanalysis has moved away from a meta-psychology of
drive-structure conflict and towards one that integrated drive theory
with, or abandoned it for, ego psychology, object relations, interpersonal
relations, and the development of the self.
(6) But this brings a risk that we leave a theory that blames the child
for his neurosis and embrace a theory that blames his parents.
(7) Blaming parents, like blaming instincts, is reductionist and not
explanatory.
(8) This mistake can slip in through the assumption that a "healthy"
mother gladly and automatically meets all the child's needs, and so an
adult with emotional difficulties must have had a mother who did not do so.
(9) Many analysts today believe that "good-enough mothering" requires
"perfect attunement" between parent and child. But the concept of "good"
and "bad" internalized objects has been misunderstood by many as "good"
and "bad" parents.
(10) Language is the tool of analysis; analytical language must thus be
cleared of undesirable consequences.
(11) The belief that a perfect parent is humanly possible, is itself a
fantasy.
(12) The belief that nobody should have a child unless they are a perfect
parent, is completely unrealistic.
(13) Theory is important, but tends to reduce complexity -- sometimes too
much.
(14) The historical "truth" of an individual changes over time; memory is
unreliable; hence a single childhood incident is less important than a
general atmosphere and ongoing experience of relating and being related to.
(15) The adult often understands (or misunderstands) childhood
experiences from the child's perspective, and cannot capture the "actual"
reality of childhood experiences.
(16) Hence the adult cannot be understood simply on the basis of
childhood experiences, even experiences of abuse.
(17) Interpersonal experiences and subjective elaborations of these must
both be understood, with the help of the analyst.
(18) Most analysts consider developmental history only as a metaphor.
(19) The past is constantly being constructed and reconstructed through
the analytical work.
(20) Different theories are useful for explaining different patients, or
even for the different times in the course of one patient's analysis.
(21) Different theories explain why different people react to similar
experiences (i.e. abuse) in different ways.
(22) Almost all abused children develop fantasies to explain the parents'
behavior, and perhaps to avoid conscious awareness of parents' murderous
intent.
(23) But it is not enough to say "you are this way because you were
abused" or "because your mother or your father drank."
(24) Parent-blaming is an attitude, not a theory.
(25) "Given the reality that human perfection does not exist, analytic
theory needs to take into account the possibility that 'good enough'
parenting is indeed good enough, and psychoanalysts need to beware of
language and theory implying that only perfect is good enough.
7. Conclusion
The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, although a bastion of classical
Freudian practice, is (based on examining four particular papers) not
really so far from the mainstream of modern marital and family
psychotherapy. Reading these papers carefully reveals a moderation of
dogmatism in the direction of modern family therapy.
(1) "Child Sibling Loss: A Family Tragedy", by George H. Pollock1 showed
a nuanced relationship between the development of a personality and the
family and societal stresses surrounding the death of a sibling. Examples
such as Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, and Hitler suggest that Family Therapy
for a handful of dysfunctional families might have prevented tens of
millions of tragic deaths by war.
(2) "The Dreams of Descartes: Notes on the Origins of Scientific
Thinking", by Alan R. Dyer7 looks at a philosophy said to be derived from
one night of dreams, shows that those dreams must be examined in a family
dynamic context, and suggests that the modern scientific world partly
derived from a troubled fourteen-month-old 399 years ago dealing with the
loss of his mother.
(3) "An Outcome Study of the Psychosocial Adaptation of Children at Risk:
Protective Factors in the Severely Ill Newborn", by Irving Philips17,
experimentally rejects a considerable modern literature on development and
ethology. It strongly suggests that humans can not only tolerate the
harshest privation and not only survive but become indistinguishable from
more favored peers, despite absent or late opportunities for bonding, so
long as the family provided good care and develop interactions.
(4) "Blaming the Parent: Psychoanalytic Myth and Language", by F. Diane
Barth24
wisely criticized the common psychoanalytical attitude that blames the
parents for the child's problems. Barth suggests, in an almost Confucian
way, the need to "purify the language" to avoid these errors of theory and
practice.
To be sure, these four papers are not definitive examples of the Chicago
school -- I have not read widely enough even to define the Chicago school
-- but these four papers in the key publication of the institution in
question suggest a more broad and modern understanding of family dynamics
and therapy than Sigmund Freud would have expounded.
I found the same sort of support in two other, even more recent papers:
(5) "Fatherhood and the Preference for a Younger Child", Helen R.
Beiser26; and
(6) "Edgar Allan Poe, James Ensor, and the Psychology of Revenge", David
S. Werman27, but this paper is already twice the requested length, so I
shall stop here.
Freud and his followers seem weirdly naive and unrealistic compared to
the wonderful range of modern Family Therapy practices, but it is clear to
me that these modern perspectives have enlightened the most conservative
repositories of Freudian theory.
Psychopathology is still a mystery, but the greater mystery of the
Dynamics of the Healthy Family and the healthy individual shed light upon
even that dark abyss.
8. References
1. "Child Sibling Loss: A Family Tragedy", George H. Pollock, M.D., Ph.D.
(Chicago), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a publication of the Chicago
Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.14, 1986, pp.5-34;
2. Harriet Sarnoff Schiff, The Bereaved Parent, New York: Penguin Books,
1978;
3. James M. Barrie, Margaret Ogilvy: By Her Son, London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1896;
4. A.J. Solnit, "The Sibling Crisis", The Psychoanalytic Study of the
Child, 38:281-284, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983, p.283;
5. J.M. Patterson & H.I. McCubbin, "Chronic Illness: Family Stress and
Coping", in Stress and the Family, Vol.2: Coping With Catastrophe, ed.
C.R. Figley & H.I. McCubbin, New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1983, pp.21-36;
7. "The Dreams of Descartes: Notes on the Origins of Scientific Thinking",
Alan R. Dyer, M.D., Ph.D. (Durham, N.C.), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a
publication of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.14, 1986,
pp.163-176;
8. S. Schonberger "A Dream of Descartes: Reflection on the Unconscious
Determinants of the Sciences", Internat.J.Psycho-Anal., 1939, 20:43-57;
9. M.L. von Franz, "The Dream of Descartes", in Timeless Documents of the
Soul, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968, pp.55-136;
10. L. Feuer, "The Dreams of Descartes", Amer. Imago, 1963, 20:3-26;
11. J.H. Hanson, "RenŽ Descartes and the Dreams of Reason", in The
Narcissistic Condition: A Fact of Our Life and Times, New York: Human
Sciences Press, 1977, pp.15-178;
12. Sigmund Freud, "Some Dreams of Descartes", Standrad Edition, 1929,
21-199-206, London: Hogarth Press, 1961;
13. A. Baillet, Vie de Monsour Descartes, Paris: Table Konde, 1946;
English text available in Feuer (1963) and Dyer (1986);
14. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962;
15. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical
Philosphy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952;
16. Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, New York: Basic Books,
1959;
17. "An Outcome Study of the Psychosocial Adaptation of Children at Risk:
Protective Factors in the Severely Ill Newborn", Irving Philips, M.D. (San
Francisco), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a publication of the Chicago
Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.15, 1987, pp.215-244;
18. M. Rutter, Qualities of Mothering: Maternal Deprivation Reassessed,
New York: Aronson, 1974;
19. Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, New
York: Duel, Sloan & Pearce, 1946;
20. M.H. Klaus & J.H. Kennell, Maternal Infant Bonding: The Impact of
Early Separation or Loss on Family Development, St.Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1976;
21. L. Erlenmeyer-Kimling, "A Prospective Study of Children at Risk for
Schizophrenia: Methodological Considerations and Some Preliminary
Findings", in Life History Research in Psychopathology, ed. R. Wirt, G.
Winokur, & M. Rolf, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 4:23-46;
22. H. Grunebaum, B. Cohler, C. Kauffman, et.al., "Children of Depressed
and Schizophrenic Mothers", Child Psychiat. Hum. Dev., 1978, 8:219-228;
23. B. Cohler, H. Grunebaum, C. Kauffman, et.al., "Social Adjustment Among
Schizophrenic, Depressed, and Well Mothers and Their Children", 131st Annual Meeting of
the American Psychiatric Association, Atlanta, 1978;
24. "Blaming the Parent: Psychoanalytic Myth and Language", F. Diane
Barth, M.S.W., C.S.W. (New York), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a
publication of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.17, 1989,
pp.185-201;
25. R. Schafer, A New Language for Psychoanalysis, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1983;
26. "Fatherhood and the Preference for a Younger Child", Helen R. Beiser,
M.D., (Chicago), The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a publication of the
Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.17, 1989, pp.203-212;
27. "Edgar Allan Poe, James Ensor, and the Psychology of Revenge", David
S. Werman, The Annual of Psychoanalysis, a publication of the Chicago
Institute for Psychoanalysis, Vol.21, 1993, pp.301-314;
*** The End ***
Extending Life, Enhancing Life
Book Review
by
Jonathan Vos Post
May 14, 1995
(c) 1995 by Emerald City Publishing
All rights reserved. My not be reproduced without permission.
May be posted electronically provided that it is transmitted unaltered,
in its entirety, and without charge.
Keywords: Sociology, Aging, Gerontology, Sociocultural
Introduction
This book report is about Extending Life, Enhancing Life: A National
Research Agenda on Aging.1 The authors (more than 150 contributed) are
the Committee on a National Research Agenda on Aging, Division of Health
Promotion and Disease Prevention, Institute of Medicine (operating under
Congressional charter of the National Academy of Sciences). The editor is
Edmund T. Lonergan, and the publisher is the National Academy Press,
Washington, D.C.
This book was published in 1991. Including index, it is 152 pages long.
The theme follows the sub-title literally: an "agenda" is a "list of
things to be done." This book, an extension of earlier studies such as
Our Future Selves2 in 1978, and Toward an Independent Old Age3 in 1982.
It offers a limited number of general research priorities for the coming
decades. To carry out this program, the committee recommends a
significant increase in the funding of approved research grants on aging,
expansion of training of faculty in age-related studies, widening of the
scientific infrastructure base, and additions to present centers for the
study of aging.
The central concept is that increased fundamental research on aging holds
the most promise to improve the lives of an ever-increasing number of
older Americans. It is now the task of the leaders of this country to
join with an informed public, and make it happen.
Outline
The book has a 39-page Executive Summary on background, a National
Research Agenda on Aging, Cross-cutting Issues, Recommendations for
Funding, Implications for Funding Agencies, and Concluding Comments.
There is then a 6-page Introduction as Chapter 1; a 10-page Chapter 2 on
Basic Biomedical Research; a 14-page Chapter 3 on Clinical Research; a
16-page Chapter 4 on Behavioral and Social Sciences; a 19-page Chapter 5
on Health Services Delivery Research; a 12-page Chapter 6 on Research in
Biomedical Ethics; a 16-page Chapter 7 reviewing Resources Committed to
Research on Aging; and two appendices covering acknowledgments, Liaison
Teams, Experts Providing Information, Directors of various Centers and
various Pharmaceutical research companies, and background documents.
The relationship to the subject and interests of Social Gerontology are
mostly in Chapter 4, and so that is where this book report will
concentrate.
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Chapter 4 of this book emphasizes that "recent behavioral and social
research has advanced our understanding of the aging process, the health
and well-being of older adults, and the experience of growing older in our
society." It summarizes a review of this research as having three main
conclusions:
(1) Socioeconomic contexts are an important influence on aging processes;
(2) Significant variability in aging exists among individuals and between
social groups;
(3) Skills, behaviors, and competence can be modified in old age.
Since length of life has increased, the age structure of populations have
dramatically changed. In combination with changes in social policy and
family structure, this forces us to learn more about the nature of aging
today and the likely effects on future generations.
The essential goal of aging and health research must be to "compress and
diminish the duration of morbidity, disability, and suffering during the
extra years provided by increased life expectancy; and to enhance both
productivity and the quality of life during that time." But life
processes are complex, so much of this research needs to be
interdisciplinary. It should also be longitudinal and cohort sequential,
working within existing knowledge, methodology, and resources.
For example, behavioral and social studies can help to explain the
response to clinical intervention, or to the factors that access older
persons' to participation in health care services. This book emphasizes
traditional approaches to research in such areas, but admits that
long-term payoffs from less-established but promising areas of research
should not be neglected.
There are three themes on how individuals age, experience aging, and
respond to aging:
(1) The dynamic interactions of older individuals and sociocultural
contexts;
(2) Differentiation among older individuals and in the aging process
itself; and
(3) Modifiability through interventions to improve the quality of aging.
Three approaches are outlined to scientifically study sociological and
behavioral factors in aging:
(1) Refinement of measurement and analytic instruments;
(2) Cooperation and coordination by different disciplines in large-scale
investigations using carefully selected, culturally representative panels
to be followed longitudinally and cohort sequentially; and
(3) Application and evaluation of research findings through systematic
field studies to test the appropriateness of particular intervention
techniques.
The Dynamic Interaction of Individuals and Sociocultural Contexts
The process of aging is "highly mutable" -- that is, factors in the
social and physical environment extrinsic to the individual can
dramatically alter the course of aging. Social and behavioral
interventions might materially improve the functioning and quality of life
for older people. Successful aging has multiple determinants, and there
are also multiple causes of dysfunction and disability. To study all
these matters, research must be embedded in the broader sociocultural
context of race, ethnicity, cultural identity, and the social environment.
When we say that genetic and other biological forces affect health and
behavior within specific sociocultural contexts, this is backed up by
research in four areas:
(1) Comparative aging in different societies, cultures, racial/ethnic
groups, and other subpopulations;
(2) The influences on aging of different environments (geographic,
workplace, treatment);
(3) The effects on behavioral and health outcomes of older persons'
individual characteristics coupled with the varying opportunities and
constraints of different social milieus; and
(4) the brain/behavior relationship
A number of references4-10 suggest four conclusions:
(1) The characteristics of the setting (structural and interpersonal)
affect outcome;
(2) Personal characteristics (cognitive appraisal and coping) can
somewhat compensate for repressive controlling environments;
(3) The "fit" between personal characteristics and independence-enhancing
environments predicts a beneficial health outcome; and
(4) The social processes that route individuals toward beneficial milieus
are as important as providing a beneficial environment in the first
instance.
Research Priorities
Three major research priorities flow from these themes:
(1) Investigation of the basic social and psychological processes of
aging and the specific mechanisms underlying the interrelationships among
social, psychological, and biological aging functions;
(2) Research that addresses issues of population dynamics, including the
question of whether morbidity is being postponed commensurate with
increases in longevity;
(3) Research that examines how social structures and changes in those
structures affect aging.
Resource Recommendations
Supports for behavioral and social research on aging were estimated at
$80-$100 million from the federal government in 1989 and $10-$15 million
from nonfederal sources such as foundations. The committee recommends
budget increases of over 100% to be phased in over a five-year period.
Extra funds should be allocated to:
(1) studies of social, psychological, behavioral, and biological
interrelationships;
(2) "at-risk" populations;
(3) population dynamics; and
(4) changing social structures.
Reactions and Recommendations
I liked this book very much, and strongly recommend it to anyone
interested in the Sociology of Aging. Although some 150 people
contributed to it, it does not read as if were authored by committee. The
range of subjects addressed is comprehensive, yet the structure of the
book and its index makes it easy to find information, and the language is
very clear, even when technical terms must be used by necessity.
There was nothing that I read in it which contradicted what I've learned
in this class, or what I've experienced in my own family. I did sometimes
feel sad that the optimistic agenda for doubling expenditures in research
is unlikely in the current political environment. But as the population
itself ages, and older people are often more likely to vote than younger
people, the "at risk" population may eventually insist that the
politicians take heed of the recommendations of the greatest experts in
the field.
Entirely by chance, while reading this book and preparing this report, I
ran into a quote11 that suggests the personal value of gerontology:
"The French chemist Eugene Chevreul was born in 1786 and died in 1889 at
the age of nearly 103. No other important scientist has lived to such
an age. He remained active into his nineties, when he studied what we
now call gerontology (the science of old age) using himself as a
subject."
References
1. Extending Life, Enhancing Life: A National Research Agenda on Aging,
Committee on a National Research Agenda on Aging, Division of Health
Promotion and Disease Prevention, Institute of Medicine (operating under
Congressional charter of the National Academy of Sciences), editor Edmund
T. Lonergan, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1991
2. Our Future Selves, National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1978
3. Toward an Independent Old Age: A National Plan for Research on Aging,
National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1982
4. Toward an Independent Old Age: A National Plan for Research on Aging,
National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1982
5. D. Featherman & R. Lerner, "Ontogenesis and sociogenesis: Problematics
for theory and research about development and socialization over the
lifespan," American Sociological Review, 50: 659-676, 1985
6. G. Maddox & R. Campbell, "Scope, concepts, and methods in the study of
aging", Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, R. Birnstock & E.
Shanas, eds., New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1985
7. R.T. Campbell & A. O'Rand, "Settings and sequence: The heuristics of
aging research", Emergent Theories in Aging, pp.58-82, J. Birren & V.
Bengtson, eds., New York: Springer Publications, 1988
8. M.W. Riley, ed., Social Changes and the Life Course, Vols. 1 and 2,
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1988
9. K. Spenner, "Social stratification, work, and personality", Annual
Review of Sociology, 14:69-97, 1988
10. R. Moos, Evaluating Treatment Environments: A Social Ecological
Approach, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974
11. Isaac Asimov, Professor of Biochemistry, Boston University Medical
School, Isaac Asimov's Book of Facts, New York: Fawcett/Columbine, p.477
*** The End ***
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