Re: For anti-behaviorists
- From: Allan C Cybulskie <allan_c_cybulskie@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 03:57:24 -0700 (PDT)
On Jul 29, 12:08 pm, "John Hasenkam" <jo...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Allan C Cybulskie" <allan_c_cybuls...@xxxxxxxx> wrote in messagenews:d8a20308-25fb-45f1-92af-07c1e4217698@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
1.
Here in wonderful Australia we have had a number of high profile sportsman
struggling with bad addictions. In their professional lives they
demonstrate
extraordinary will power but cannot control their habit. What is
"willpower"?
The main issue here is that a lot of the evaluation of "willpower" in
the above examples is in relation to what YOU would find hard and need
willpower to overcome, not what THEY find difficult. And physical
addictions, of course, do have the additional physical craving that
makes them harder to overcome on will alone. I've never denied that.
But your comment here seems to miss a lot of the issues, such as how
to determine if what they do in their professional lives really
requires more will FOR THEM than the habit or addictions that they are
facing.
No, my point here is that "willpower", if the concept is to be used at all
in explaining behavior, should be "will powers". That is, you would need to
develop strategies to address the increase in willpower for that specific
behavior. Relying on single avenue approaches rarely works. We search and
struggle to find a way to change a behavior and often it can be a matter of
chance as to finding the right way forward. It can take years for people to
stumble upon the right way to change a behavior. Willpower or conditioning
or drugs or CBT are typically never adequate as single strategies.
I don't see how that follows. It's quite reasonable -- and likely --
that one would have the same level of willpower in general and yet
have that be sufficient or not in different cases because of the
details of the situation, especially how much one wants to do the
wrong thing. So, yes, in those cases one would need to reduce the
desire before willpower could work, or increase one's willpower in
general to the level where it could indeed work in that situation.
Contrary to what you seem to believe, I am not in any way advocating a
"one-size-fits-all" strategy. The place for reason and thinking in
these situations starts at figuring out what strategy will work for a
situation.
2.
It is universally acknowledged that one of the most important things a
recovering addict must do is change their social environment. One reason
why
religious groups are successful at treating addicts is because they
provide
another social environment.
Yes, but this doesn't seem to really address any point. The claim is
not that the environment can contribute to these addictions. For
example, it's a lot harder to give up drinking when you hang around
people who are drinking, since the temptation -- and the reminders of
how much you enjoyed it -- are around constantly. This falls under
the "don't make it any harder than it has to be" concept, not a
concept that social environment is determining the addiction.
We do not know what determines addiction but there are some important hints,
like Alexander's Rat Park experiments, or changes in D2 receptor density in
primates that correlates with social status, as does cortisol levels and if
a study of British civil servants is to be believed, even athersclerosis can
be impacted by social status(this being concordant with the cortisol issue).
These sorts of information provide valuable clues as to why social and
emotional deprivation(think of the chronically poor or alienated) are much
more prone to addiction. Social environment is rarely the cause of addiction
though it often is very important in sustaining and supporting addictive
habits. Some people even seem addicted to conformity. Worrying types,
surrounded by the "wrong" types of people these addicted conformists might
be capable of doing anything. As Stanley Milgram once quipped: when I began
my experiment I thought that in the whole USA I might find enough people to
form an SS squad, it appears New Jersey will be sufficient."
Saying that someone who is socially deprived is more likely to become
addicted in no way supports a claim that changing the social condition
is required. Again, all that does is support the "don't make things
any harder" idea that I proposed. And yes, support while attempting
to overcome an addiction generally is quite useful, but that's
certainly not something I'm advocating against.
4.
You can travel the world over and find many people who demonstrate great
discipline yet all will state their is some aspect of their behavior they
want to change but can't. Possibly everyone has some behavior they wish to
change but can't.
Is it "can't", or don't really want to?
If conditioning was so effective, they certainly would be able to
change it using those techniques. So why do they fail?
If people say they want to change a behavior I would rather not second
guess their motives. That's a cop out, once you start making claims like
"they don't really want to" you are basically saying the person in question
is lying to you or is completely unaware of their true intentions. Nice
slippy slope there, gone that far you can just start making all sorts of
nasty judgements about the person. No easy answers Alan, willpower is too
often invoked because it is a easy talk.
Nope, that's not it at all.
There would be no need to change the behaviour or invoke willpower if
the person doesn't, in some way, want to do that behaviour. This is
clearly the case with addictions; the addiction provides pleasure
which they desire. So, in some sense, they really do want to do the
bad habit. My comment was aimed at showing the distinction between
people who say that they "can't" change their behaviour, but really
it's because they don't want to take the known actions to eliminate it
because they don't really think the outcome is worth it. Some people
are indeed deluding themselves with "can't" when it's really "won't",
or when they really are making excuses as to why they can't do it.
None of this requires making any "nasty judgements" about people, and
the "can't" line is too often invoked by people when they simply
haven't worked up the want to quit.
5.
"Will power" is a barren concept: it provides no insight into behavior or
how to modify behavior. It is a moral hammer.
No, it's merely a description of a set of circumstances where people
take an action that goes against a great desire they have for other
reasons that they find more palatable. It is easy to always follow
your base and instinctive desires, but no one always does follow
them. To the degree that they don't is the degree that they have
willpower. And more reasoning and attention can cause increases in
willpower.
Strategies like avoiding the wrong social contexts are forced changes in
behavior not reasoning; and are far more effective than the latter.
And why do you think that choosing to avoid the wrong social contexts
-- and knowing which ones to avoid -- ISN'T reasoning? I never
advocated that those types of actions were wrong. I simply pointed
out that these things have to be done with reason and thought to be
intelligent. So someone blindly following the pamphlet and changing
their social group when their social group were teetotalers at best
and were prime examples of how to have fun without alcohol would be a
very stupid thing for an alcoholic to do to help eliminate it. And
even if the social group IS undesirable if it would require the person
to abandon long-time best friends and support networks, that could be
just as bad.
You have to apply reasoning and thought to determine what actions to
take. That's my entire point.
The vast
majority of addicts change their habits by changing their environment.
Reasoning tends to come after that. Nonetheless I take your point, being
adequately informed can act as a change agent but from what I've seen most
people conquer addiction either through medical intervention and changing
their social environment. If anything will increase willpower it is the
exercise of willpower, not thought and reason.
No, it is not always easy to follow your base and instinctive desires. We
are civilised because it works. Being civilised is not being driven by base
and instinctive desires.
We are civilized because that's generally the easiest way to satisfy
our base and instinctive desires ... and we'll have them taken away
from us if we don't act civilized.
6.
If thought and reason are so powerful then why does it so often take
decades
for people to change their lifestyle in light of overwhelming evidence
that
a,b, c, .. must be done now?
Are you assuming that they BELIEVE that overwhelming evidence?
Since the 1960's who can deny the deleterious effects of smoking?
Everyone, including doctors. It's only been in the last 10+ years
that it's become widely accepted in society. Your example proves my
point.
We all
know fast food is bad, we still eat it.
Most people don't believe it's as bad as the experts say.
There are plenty of people with
chronic medical conditions who have been told time and again by their
doctors: stop doing X it will kill you. They keep doing it.
One of the first stages of situations like this is denial. So know,
they don't know.
We all know the
right food to eat, how important exercise is. If the average person is not
aware of these obvious facts I'd be more concerned about the powers of
cognition than their willpower. Again, I don't like to second guess what is
really going on inside peoples' heads. Freud, Jung etc are dead and I'm
happy to leave them in their graves.
Other than that, your question here seems to be "If thought and reason
work, how come they don't always work?" And I think we can all see
what's wrong with that.
Nooo, what I'm saying is that the current best treatments for addiction
don't focus very much on "thought and reason", these treatments focus on
drug interventions, changing environments, creating new activities in the
person's life, and "thought and reason" is probably covered under
psychotherapeutic approaches. Psychotherapy has a wonderful history of
perpetual failure. Thank heavens, or rather Baumeister, that "self esteem"
is being thrown in the trash can.
Yeah, because psychotherapy doesn't focus on "thought and reason", but
on overly generalized statements about how everyone should work or
think.
And as I said originally, I never claimed that these things didn't
work. I claimed that without thought and reason they aren't
intelligent; you produce the right behaviour for the wrong reasons,
and that's generally a bad thing.
7.
If thought and reason are such powerful determinants of behavior then
Stanley Miligram must have rigged his experiments.
Please provide the details of these experiments that would have to be
rigged if my claim that thought and reason CAN determine behaviour is
true.
Google him. Famous experiments.
Please supply one that you find particularly relevant to this
discussion. I'm not going to go looking for things to prove your
point.
Authority figures can easily overwhelm our
thought and reason, make us do rather unpleasant things. My point is that no
one thing can determine behavior, it is usually many things causing
behaviors. What is so frightening about his experiment is that the average
person's "thoughts and reasons" can so easily be countered by a single
authority figure. Sadly this doesn't work with depressives(see below).
8.
People who struggle to give up smoking appear to have a specific allele
for
the nAchR, biology often triumphs over willpower.
Yes, but no one is arguing that that isn't the case, so I fail to see
the relevance.
The relevance is that the causes of addiction are multifacted and typically
so is the solution.
Which requires thought and reason to determine which solutions and
means will work best. Which was my entire point.
9.
Go tell a depressive person to "snap out of it" and then wait to see how
long it takes for them to jump off a cliff.
This seems to be an utter non-sequitor ... and is quite likely
incorrect. However, again, no one is arguing that biology doesn't
play a role, and I certainly never suggested that way to curing
depression (a better way would be to show them that things aren't as
bad as they think, which should eliminate the reasons for the
depression. If it doesn't, the depression likely has no actual reason
beyond biology, and the person needs medical treatment).
Most professionals will advise that telling someone to "snap out of it" is
not only futile but dangerous.
Since your comment of "telling someone to 'snap out of it'" is
horribly vague, I have no idea if that in any way relates to what I
was talking about or not.
What's your solution for the depressive person?
That depends on the person, if they have been unfortunate enough to carry a
certain allele for a 5ht transporter and experienced considerable childhood
trauma anti-depressants will probably be required. For some telling them
things are not as bad as they think may help but it can also make things
very much worse because the depressive person can then perceive you as not
understanding their problem at all. Don't try that strategy with teenagers,
you might be giving them a loaded gun.
Yes, I would use thought and reason intelligently, depending on the
situation ....
In susceptible women and probably
males simply removing tryptophan from the diet can very rapidly induce
depression(tryptophan is the amino acid precursor for serotonin). For
others, depression may be initiated by glucocorticoid resistance or
inflammatory cytokine elevations(cf "sickness behavior"). There is even
research showing that depressives resistant to treatment may be generating
autoantibodies to a thyroid hormone(T3 or 4, can't remember which), which is
preventing recovery. Depression is typically triggered by stressful events
but the downstream consequences of that are so varied and complex that if
you encounter anyone postulating a generic solution for depressive persons
just walk away in silence. Such people are not only wrong they are
dangerous. Yes, psychiatry has been guilty of that. Hell, even low
testosterone is implicated in causing depression. There can also be a
vicious biological feedback here. In sustained depression hippocampal
atrophy can become very pronounced and this may impede inhibtion of the
stress response axis, thereby initating more cort and inflammation, thereby
... . We do not really understand the neurobiology-immunology-endocrinology
of depression because there is no single explanation that suits all people.
This is a real pain in the arse problem because it means any approach to
treating depression must be very much tailored to the specific individual.
The same is true of addiction. Some people just stop(very rare), others
spend years fighting an addiction that they clearly see has ruined their
lives. Thought and reason does them no good at all. They know it all, every
day they see how their addiction has ruined their lives but still they
continue. This is extremely common in chronic addiction. In depression and
addiction the distinction between the physical and the cognitive fades away.
The physical changes can completely overwhelm any cognitive strategies and
in major depression that is almost invariably the case.
A few months ago I had a striking example of where thought and reason was to
no avail. A friend of mine was relating how a friend of hers didn't feel
quite right, as if depressed but not really depressed. I advised her to look
up in the DSM "dysthymia". Friend of friend(a psychiatric nurse no less)
said the description fitted her to a T. Dysthymia is a mild type of
depression. She saw a doc, got some antidepressants, much better. Friend
rang me months later to say that the nurse was over the moon and very
thankful for my advice. But I was completely perplexed as to how someone
with so much training could have failed to realise she was experiencing
depression. What really bugged me though was that I knew the dysthymia began
when her brother died 4 years earlier yet the bloody psychiatrist made no
attempt to address this issue. Just gave her a pill.
Isn't "just giving her a pill" what the doctor did, and what you
claimed solved the problem [grin]?
I actually flat-out said here that sometimes simple biology is the
only cause. I also claim that sometimes one needs to reduce the
depression artificially to a level where one can work through the
issues But giving a pill blindly doesn't solve the problem, because
the biology is the same for legitimate and problematic depression, and
surely we would expect someone to be depressed for a time with the
death of a loved one, say.
.
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