No More Learning

The development during ontogeny of a set of systems of the kind described in humans, as well as in individuals of many other species, is attrib- uted to the action of natural selection, namely to individuals well endowed with the potential to develop such systems having survived and bred more successfully than those less well endowed, in other words to Darwinian evolution. Since a disposition to show attachment behaviour in cer- tain circumstances is regarded as an intrinsic
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? ? ? part of human nature, reference to it as 'depend- ency' is not only misleading but seriously inap- propriate because of the word's pejorative overtones.
Once attachment behaviour and other forms of biologically determined behaviour are conceived in forms of control theory, the problem of the purposiveness of behaviour is solved without abandoning the concept of causation. Further- more the distinction between causation and func- tion, sadly neglected in traditional psychoanalytic theory, becomes explicit. Activation, in which emotional arousal and expression play a critical part, and subsequently termination and change of emotional state are caused when a system con- structed in a particular way receives information of particular sorts. Of the various consequences to which activation leads, the one postulated as its biological function is the one that, evidence suggests, has led to the system having evolved during phylogeny. In the case of attachment be- haviour the function postulated is that of dimin- ishing the risk of the individual coming to harm.
At this level of analysis the question of whether an individual is aware of what he is doing, let alone why he is doing it, has no relevance, in fact
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? ? ? no more relevance than has the question of whether an individual is aware that he is breath- ing and, if so, realizes why he should be doing so. Biological systems serving vital functions, wheth- er at a behavioural or a physiological level, must be capable of operating automatically. Neverthe- less in the case of a human child awareness of what he is doing, and more particularly aware- ness of the conditions that will terminate his be- haviour, soon emerges, certainly by the end of his first year, and is a factor of great importance. For, once it is clear that a child is aware of the condi- tions that will terminate his behaviour, we begin speaking of intention, of his desire to achieve a certain goal, of his being satisfied and happy when he does so and frustrated, anxious, or angry when he fails, of satisfaction bringing pleasure and frustration the reverse.
At this point I wish to emphasize the sharp dis- tinction between conditions necessary to termin- ate a certain form of behaviour, commonly re- ferred to as its goal, and the biological function the behaviour serves. In the case of attachment behaviour in childhood, whereas we commonly expect both mother and child to be aware of the conditions necessary to terminate it, for example,
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? ? ? a certain degree of proximity, we do not expect awareness of function. The same holds in the case of eating and sexual behaviour. Most of us are aware that eating food will assuage our hunger and we find pleasure in eating; but only the soph- isticated are concerned with its nutritional func- tion. Similarly sexual desire can be assuaged without awareness of reproductive function. In both cases all but the sophisticated are concerned only with an urge to behave in a certain way and with the pleasure anticipated and received on reaching the terminating conditions (or goal), not with the biological function that the behaviour may serve. Often, in fact, when we feel emotion- ally impelled to act in a certain way that is readily explicable in terms of biological function, we con- coct 'reasons' for doing so that bear little or no re- lation to the causes of our behaviour. For ex- ample, a child or adult, who in order to reduce risk is biologically disposed to respond to strange sounds in the dark by seeking his attachment fig- ure, gives as his reason that he is afraid of ghosts. This is analogous to the 'reasons' for his beha- viour concocted by someone who is, without knowing it, acting on a post-hypnotic suggestion.
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? ? ? The distinction I have drawn between the func- tion served by a certain form of behaviour and our knowledge of, and our striving to reach, the conditions that will terminate that behaviour is one of the criteria that distinguish the biological realm from the psychological. Another is the dis- tinction between, on the one hand, the behavi- oural system, postulated as a biological given, to- gether with some (though not all) of the condi- tions that activate and terminate it, and, on the other, our awareness of the urge to reach a cer- tain goal and our effort to find means to do so.
Earlier I remarked that, in understanding indi- vidual development, it is as necessary to consider the environment in which each individual devel- ops as the genetic potentials with which he is en- dowed. The theoretical framework best suited to this purpose is that of developmental pathways proposed by the biologist, C. H. Waddington (1957).
Within this framework human personality is conceived as a structure that develops unceas- ingly along one or another of an array of possible and discrete pathways. All pathways are thought to start close together so that, at conception, an individual has access to a large range of pathways
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? ? ? along any one of which he might travel. The one chosen, it is held, turns at each and every stage on an interaction between the organism as it has developed up to that moment and the environ- ment in which it then finds itself. Thus at concep- tion development turns on interaction between the newly formed genome and the intrauterine environment; at birth it turns on interaction between the biological constitution of the neonate, including his germinal mental structure, and the family, or non-family, into which he is born; and at each age successively it turns on the personality structures then present and the fam- ily and later the wider social environment then current.
At conception the total array of pathways po- tentially open to an individual is determined by the make-up of the genome. As development pro- ceeds and structures progressively differentiate, the number of pathways that remain open diminishes.
A principal variable in the development of each individual personality is, I believe, the pathway along which his attachment behaviour comes to be organized and further that that pathway is de- termined in high degree by the way his parent-
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? ? ? figures treat him, not only during his infancy but throughout his childhood and adolescence as well. A principal means by which such experi- ences influence personality development is held to be through their effects on how a person con- strues the world about him and on how he ex- pects persons to whom he might become attached to behave, both of which are derivatives of the representational models of his parents that he has built up during his childhood. Evidence sug- gests that these models tend to persist relatively unmodified at an unconscious level and to be far more accurate reflections of how his parents have really treated him than traditional opinion has supposed. Within this framework aberrations of behaviour and neurotic symptoms are conceived as due to the interactions that have occurred and that may still be occurring between an individu- al's personality as it has so far developed and the situation in which that individual now finds himself.
Let us pause here for a moment. In thus far sketching the conceptual framework I favour, I have doubtless said enough for you to see a num- ber of points at which it differs from the tradi- tional one. For example, the theory of motivation
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? ? ? advanced differs radically from Freud's theory of psychic energy and drive, and the theory of devel- opmental pathways differs in similar degree from his theories of libidinal phases, fixation, and re- gression. Furthermore the concept of attachment behaviour sees it as distinct from and of a status equal to that of eating and sexual behaviour, and as a characteristic present throughout life. Where lie the origins of these differences?
During the formative period of Freud's thought he was deeply interested in biology and con- cerned to formulate psychological theory in terms consistent with current biological thinking. This led him to explore the ideas of Darwin and other evolutionists of the period. At that time, the turn of the century, Darwin's theory of variation and natural selection as the agents of evolution was far from being the dominant theory it is today. On the contrary, Lamarck's theories regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics and the influence that an animal's 'inner feeling of need' was thought to have on its structure were popular. So also was Haeckel's biogenetic law which, claiming that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, overlooks the fact that selection pres- sures operate at all phases of the life cycle and
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? ? ? that new species often spring from the immature forms of earlier ones (neoteny). Freud, we know, was deeply influenced by both Lamarck and Haeckel and he commends their ideas repeatedly to his students. 1 The outcome was that much of his metapsychology and all his developmental psychology came to be founded on principles long since abandoned by biologists.
If, therefore, psychoanalysis is to become the natural science based on sound biological prin- ciples that Freud intended, there are compelling reasons for drastic changes in some at least of its basic assumptions. The framework I am advan- cing, based on neo-Darwinian principles and cur- rent work in developmental psychology and hu- man information processing, is one such attempt.
Although psychoanalysis is avowedly a devel- opmental discipline, it is nowhere weaker, I be- lieve, than in its concepts of development. Many of the most influential of them, for example, that of libidinal phases, stem straight from Haeckel. Thus in his Introductory Lectures of 1916-17, Freud emphasizes that the development of both ego and libido are to be understood as 'abbrevi- ated recapitulations of the development which all mankind passed through from its primeval days'
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? ? ? (Freud, 1917, 354), whilst the development of the libido is also seen in terms of phylogeny and the various forms taken by the genital apparatus in animals. In a case study published about the same time, he attributes a person's ideas of 'ob- serving parental inter-course, of being seduced in childhood and of being threatened with castra- tion . . . [to] an inherited endowment, a phylogen- etic heritage'; and he claims also that the Oedipus complex is among the 'phylogenetically inherited schemata' (Freud, 1918, 97 and 119). All these ideas are repeated in his final work, e. g. Freud, 1939, 99.
Now it may be that few analysts today would subscribe to Freud's original formulations; yet there can be no doubt of their pervasive influence not only on what is taught but on the prevailing assumptions of how our understanding of emo- tional and social development is best furthered. Thus pride of place continues to be given to re- constructions based on what is observed and in- ferred during treatment sessions, coupled with a persisting, if weakening, reluctance to give seri- ous attention to the enormously important work now going on in the field of developmental psy- chology. Since in many previous publications I
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? ? ? have drawn attention to the relevance of this work, I need say only that I believe all the devel- opmental concepts of psychoanalysis will have to be re-examined, and that most of them will in due course be replaced by concepts now current among those who are studying the development of affectional bonds in infants and young children by means of direct observation. The understand- able reserve with which many clinicians have viewed this type of work in the past would, I be- lieve, be dispelled, were they to become familiar with the observations and ideas of such present leaders in the field as, for example, Mary Ainsworth (1977), John and Elizabeth Newson (1977), and Colwyn Trevarthen (1979).
Ignorant though many analytic theorists ap- pear still to be of the value or even the very exist- ence of these studies, there are, I am glad to say, an increasing number of analytic therapists who draw on them in their treatment of patients. Let us turn therefore to the clinical field and consider the account given by a Californian analyst of his treatment of a woman patient, many of whose problems he attributes, I believe rightly, to events following her parents' divorce and the long peri- od during her fifth and sixth years when she was
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? ? ? in an institution. This account2 not only illus- trates the kinds of distressing personal problem to which experiences of these sorts give rise, in- cluding intense ambivalence, but serves also to pose questions of how issues of defence and affect are answered within the conceptual framework I am proposing.
The problems for which Mrs G came for analysis were that she felt irrit- able and depressed and filled, as she put it, with hate and evil. In addition she found herself frigid with her husband, emotionally detached, and wondering whether she was capable of loving anyone.
Mrs G had been 3 years old when her parents divorced. Her father left home and her mother, who began working long hours, had little time for her daughter. A year later, when Mrs G was 4, her mother placed her in an orphanage where she remained for 18 long months. Thereafter, although she was back with her mother, family relationships continued to be dis- turbed and unhappy. As a result Mrs G left home during her teens and, before she was 21, had already been married and divorced twice. Her present husband was her third.
In the early phases of the analysis Mrs G was extremely reluctant to re- call the painful events of her childhood; and when she did so she broke down into tears and sobbing. Nevertheless her analyst encouraged her to reflect on them further and to do so in minute detail since he believed this would help her. At the same time he paid at least equal attention to her re- lationship with himself in which, as would be expected, all the interper- sonal difficulties she had had in other close relationships recurred.
Amongst much else in her childhood that was painful, Mrs G recalled how sad she had felt on being parted from her pets when she was sent away to the orphanage. Sometimes she dreamed about her time there with feelings of being overwhelmed. She recalled feeling very small among the many children, how there were no toys, the harsh treatment meted out and how she had sometimes misbehaved deliberately in order to get smacked [which at least meant she was given some attention--J B].
After four years of analysis Mrs G's financial difficulties led to the de- cision to end treatment in six months' time. Inevitably the emotional con- flicts she had in her relationship with her analyst became more acute. She now dreamed and daydreamed more openly of him. From the first she had
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? ? ? realized that parting would be painful. Separations had always made her angry and, as she put it now, 'anger makes me sad because it means the end. . . . I'm afraid you'll leave me or kick me out or put me away. ' The ana- lyst reminded her of how she had felt when sent to the orphanage. Strug- gling to think of herself as self-sufficient, she explained: 'I'm clinging on to me . . . I'm taking care of me all by myself. '
A few months later, as termination approached, she linked how she felt about her analyst with how she had felt earlier about her mother: 'I don't want to release my mother--I don't want to let her go--she's not going to get rid of me. ' By this stage of her analysis her active yearning for love and care had returned together with her anger at those who had denied it her.
The radical change that had occurred in this woman was confirmed in other episodes. For example, during the early days of the analysis her cat had died but she had felt indifferent about it. As she had then explained: 'If I let it hurt me, I'd be saddened by everything. One will trigger off the rest. ' But now, towards the end of the analysis, when another cat died, she wept.
Although therapy had restored this patient's feeling life and had resul- ted in her becoming able to make improved relationships, including that with her mother, a follow-up five years later showed, as would be expec- ted, that she remained vulnerable to situations that arouse anxiety and sadness, such as separation and loss.
Let us examine the change that had occurred in this woman, whose condition might be described clinically as schizoid (Fairbairn, 1940), or as false self (Winnicott, 1960, 1974), or as narcissistic (Kohut, 1971). Before the analysis she had felt emotionally detached and had wondered whether she was capable of loving anyone; a loss left her feeling indifferent. Now she had become aware how deeply she longed for love and care, and how angry she felt at not being given it; and a loss led to tears. Thus, in situations where they were
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? ? ? missing before, responses laden with deep affect now appeared.
To account for such a change traditional ex- planations tend to use an hydraulic metaphor: af- fect has been dammed up and has now been dis- charged. The dam is regarded as a defence against an exessive quantity of excitation that is in danger of overwhelming the ego. Other explan- ations invoke processes postulated to occur in earliest infancy, for example, fixation in a phase of narcissism or a split in the ego resulting from the projection of a death instinct.
An explanation of this woman's condition that I believe to be much closer to our present know- ledge of the early development of affectional bonds and consistent with what we know about human information processing runs as follows: as a result of the intense pain caused her during her early years by the prolonged and probably re- peated frustration of her attachment behaviour, experienced as frustration of her urgent desire for love and care, the behavioural system(s) govern- ing her attachment behaviour had become deac- tivated and had remained so despite her wishes to the contrary. As a result the desires, thoughts, and feeling that are part and parcel of attachment
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? ? ? behaviour were absent from her awareness. The deactivation itself can be understood as due to the selective exclusion from processing of any in- formation that, when processed, would lead to activation of the system.
The selective exclusion postulated, which, as recent experimental work shows, is well within the capabilities of our cognitive apparatus (Dixon, 1971; Erdelyi, 1974) and which I term de- fensive exclusion, requires constant cognitive activity at an unconscious level. The fact that the behavioural systems remain intact and capable in principle of being activated, and so may on occa- sion show brief or incipient activation, can ac- count for all those phenomena that led Freud to his ideas about a dynamic unconscious and re- pression. In fact, the defensive exclusion that I postulate is no more than repression under an- other name, a name more in keeping with the conceptual framework adopted here.
The process of therapeutic change in this pa- tient can then be understood as due to the pa- tient, thanks to the relatively secure base provided by the analyst, developing sufficient courage to permit some of the information hitherto excluded to go forward for processing.
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? ? ? This includes both information stemming from the present situation, for example, evidence of the analyst's genuine concern to help his patient and the conflicting thoughts, feelings, and beha- viour that that arouses, and also information stored in memory, for example, memories of the very painful events of childhood and the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour aroused by them. As a rule information from the two sources is recovered as a chain in which information from the present, especially the transference, altern- ates with information from the past, with each link leading on to the next. Once the relevant in- formation becomes accepted, of course, attach- ment behaviour is reactivated, together with the urges and desires, thoughts, and feeling that go with it. In traditional terms, the unconscious has been made conscious and the repressed urges and affects released.
Not infrequently, as with this patient, an ana- lyst has the task of drawing a patient's attention to memories he believes of importance and en- couraging her to reflect on them instead of turn- ing her back on them. In doing this an analyst is guided, of course, by whatever theories of person- ality development and psychopathology he may
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? ? ? espouse. This is a point at which analysts of dif- ferent schools diverge. For some the events thought to be important might refer to feeding and weaning and fantasies about them during the earliest months of life; for others to toilet training or witnessing the primal scene during the second year; for others again to Oedipal situations and wishes during the third or fourth. In the case of Mrs G the analyst drew on his knowledge of re- sponses of young children to events surrounding a prolonged separation from mother during sev- eral of the early years.
It is well recognized that not every child who has been in an institution for 18 months during his fifth and sixth years develops psychologically along the kind of pathway followed by Mrs G. In her case other factors almost certainly entered in. In considering what they might have been, I am influenced by remarks Mrs G made during the fi- nal phases of the analysis, for example, her fear lest her analyst should 'kick her out' or 'put her away' and her memory of how determined she had been that her mother should not 'get rid' of her. This suggests that as a method of disciplin- ing her daughter the mother may have repeatedly used threats to send her back to the institution,
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? ? ? threats we know from other evidence are far from rare and that not only have a terrifying effect on a young child but are likely also to generate intense hatred in him. The better an analyst's knowledge of childhood conditions likely to lead to disturbed development, the better can he understand and help his patients.
Inevitably a patient's spontaneous or guided recollections of his childhood are of only suggest- ive value as evidence bearing on theories of per- sonality development. What a patient tells us about his childhood and especially what an ana- lyst subsequently reports his patient to have said are probably influenced as much or more by the analyst's preconceptions as by anything the pa- tient may in fact have said or done; this is why I regard the systematic study by direct observation of children developing within different patterns of family care as indispensable for progress. Yet I also believe that observations made during ther- apy still have considerable research potential, al- though that potential will not be realized unless studies are conducted along far more systematic lines than have hitherto been usual and data ob- tained during therapy are constantly compared with data derived from other sources.
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? ? ? The research strength of the therapeutic situ- ation lies not in what it tells us about the patient's past but in what it tells us about disturbances of personality functioning in the present, especially, I would claim, disturbances in a person's capacit- ies to make secure attachments and the condi- tions in which these disturbances become ameli- orated. The case of Mrs G can be used as an intro- duction to a research proposal, since there is much both in the personality disturbance she presents and in the course of her analysis that we have reason to believe are fairly typical.
Drawing on case reports already in the literat- ure it would be possible to make a number of generalizations which could then be treated as predictions to be tested in further therapeutic work with patients showing similar clinical fea- tures. All such predictions, which would be con- ditional on the particular pattern of therapy to be followed,3 could be couched in terms of what can be observed at first hand. They would include statements about how a patient would be expec- ted to behave towards the analyst, the topics he would be expected to talk about or, in particular, avoid talking about, the affect he would be expec- ted to show or not to show, and in what
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? ? ? situations. Of special interest would be changes in behaviour, topic, and affect that would be ex- pected to occur in relation to certain types of cur- rent event, both those occurring in the patient's everyday life and those occurring within the ana- lysis. Events of the latter sort would include how the analyst behaves, what he says, and how he says it, with particular reference to interruptions in the analysis due to holidays, sickness, or other circumstances. Tape recording of sessions to avoid biased reporting would, of course, be necessary.
By following the procedures proposed it would be possible over a period of time to gather com- parable bodies of data from two sources.
One body of data would be gathered by means of dir- ect observation of the development and pattern- ing of affectional bonds during infancy and child- hood in children experiencing different types of care. The other would be gathered, also by direct observation of changes in the patterning of affec- tional bonds, during the course of a certain type of therapy. Provided that the conceptual frame- works used in making both sets of observations and the questions each set addresses are the
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? ? ? same, findings could be compared and develop- mental hypotheses tested.
This is but one way in which psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge about personality develop- ment and psychopathology might move towards becoming the natural science Freud always inten- ded it to be.
The conceptual framework sketched here serves, I believe, to accommodate a substantial proportion of the data that psychoanalysis has se- lected as within its domain and already guides productive research programmes (e. g. Parkes and Stevenson-Hinde, 1982). The framework has the advantage of being compatible with evolutionary biology and neurophysiology and promises great- er economy and internal consistency than do tra- ditional ones. Nevertheless what its strengths and weaknesses will prove to be cannot be known without extensive testing of its powers to solve problems not yet studied, which include, for ex- ample, those of sexual development and devi- ation, and a far more intensive examination than has yet been possible of its usefulness in solving the problems already given attention.
Finally let us consider the issues raised by those who maintain that psychoanalysis is not
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? ? ? and never can be a natural science. Their argu- ment, we find, stems from the belief that scientif- ic method is inseparable from logical positivism and reductionism. Although confidently and of- ten dogmatically held earlier this century, this model of science is now discarded and its place taken by a philosophy of evolutionary epistemo- logy (Popper, 1972; Latakos, 1974). This holds that all knowledge is conjectural and that science progresses through new theories coming to re- place older ones when it becomes clear that a new theory is able to make sense of a greater circle of phenomena than are comprehended and ex- plained by an older one and is able also to predict new phenomenena more accurately. 4 This same method is held to be applicable in all theoretical or generalizing sciences, whether they deal with physical, biological, or social phenomena. Fur- thermore, since to understand phenomena at any one level of complexity demands concepts appro- priate to that level, the notion that complex phe- nomena must be explained in terms of concepts appropriate to a lower level of complexity, namely reductionism, is now recognized as falla- cious. How these new ideas apply to our field is
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? ? ? ably discussed by Holt (1981), Blight (1981), and Radford (1983).
Invaluable though scientific method is as a way of obtaining relatively reliable knowledge, resolv- ing differences of opinion and making useful pre- dictions, its limitations are nonetheless consider- able. One is that science deals in generalities but has little to say about singular specific events. This is a vital distinction, as the physicist, Weis- skopf (1981), points out. In the physical sciences it does not matter since physicists and engineers have no interest in the future of any particular atom or molecule. Once we move to the biological sciences, however, it does matter because biolo- gists are frequently interested in individual or- ganisms, all of which differ. In certain of the hu- man sciences, moreover, the individual example is the very essence of the case. History, for in- stance, whether it deals with societies or persons or ideas, is always concerned with an appallingly complex sequence of highly specific interacting events which no amount of science can enable us to explain adequately, let alone predict. Thus the distinction between the natural sciences and the historical sciences is not that they use a different method of obtaining knowledge but that the
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? ? ? problems that they strive to understand and the criteria they adopt are quite different. One is con- cerned to formulate general laws in terms of probabilities, the other to understand singular specific events in as much detail as possible. The distinction is central to the whole argument.
Under the label 'psychoanalysis', it is clear, two complementary disciplines are striving to live and develop. In so far as we are trying to under- stand the general principles accounting for per- sonality development and psychopathology, ne- cessary, for example, if we are to know what forms of child care tend to produce what sorts of personality formation, we adopt the criteria of the natural sciences. And we do the same when we are trying to understand the essential features of effective therapy. In these fields we are dealing with statistical probabilities. In so far as we are concerned to understand the personal problems of a given individual and what events may have contributed to their development, necessary if we are to help him (though far from sufficient), we adopt the criteria of the historical sciences. Each approach contributes to our understanding; but, as I have pointed out in the previous lecture, only
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? ? ? if we are clear-headed about what belongs to each, shall we be able to make progress.
1 For Freud's adherence to Lamarckian ideas see volume 3, chapter 10, of Ernest Jones's biography of Freud (Jones, 1957). For the influence of Haeckel's bio- genetic law see James Strachey's long editorial foot- note to his translation of Freud's Moses and Monothe- ism (SE 23,102) and especially Frank Sulloway's en- quiry into the origins of Freud's metapsychology (Sul- loway, 1979).
2 The account given here is derived from the contribu- tion by Thomas Mintz to a symposium organized by the American Psychoanalytic Association on the effects on adults of object loss during the first five years of life (Mintz, 1976).
3 The technique of analysis adopted by Mintz appears to have much in com-mon with that adopted in the Un- ited Kingdom by Donald Winnicott; see the account by Guntrip (1975).
4 The criterion of falsifiability on which Popper formerly laid great emphasis is no longer given so much prominence; though the constant comparison of theoretically derived predictions with an ever increas- ing array of observed data remains central.
5
VIOLENCE IN THE FAMILY
In the spring of 1983 I was invited to give the thirty-first annual Karen Horney Lecture by the Association for the Advancement of Psychoana- lysis at the conference it was holding in New York City. A principal reason why I selected viol- ence in the family as my theme was that re- search using the perspective of attachment the- ory was beginning to throw a shaft of light on a tragic but puzzling problem which, until recent years, had gone almost completely unrecognized by all those in the mental health field, not exclud- ing myself.
INTRODUCTION
It seems to me that as psychoanalysts and psy- chotherapists we have been appallingly slow to wake up to the prevalence and far-reaching con- sequences of violent behaviour between members of a family, and especially the violence of parents. As a theme in the analytic literature and in
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? ? ? training programmes it has been conspicuous by its absence. Yet there is now abundant evidence not only that it is much commoner than we had hitherto supposed but that it is a major contribut- ory cause of a number of distressing and puzzling psychiatric syndromes. Since, moreover, violence breeds violence, violence in familes tends to per- petuate itself from one generation to the next.
Why family violence as a causal factor in psy- chiatry should have been so neglected by clini- cians--though, of course, not by social work- ers--would be a study in itself and cannot be entered on here. But the concentration in analytic circles on fantasy and the reluctance to examine the impact of real-life events has much to answer for. Ever since Freud made his famous, and in my view disastrous, volte-face in 1897, when he de- cided that the childhood seductions he had be- lieved to be aetiologically important were nothing more than the products of his patients' imagina- tions, it has been extremely unfashionable to at- tribute psychopathology to real-life experiences. It is not an analyst's job, so the conventional wis- dom has gone, to consider how a patient's par- ents may really have treated him, let alone to en- tertain the possibility, even probability, that a
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? ? ? particular patient may have been the target for the violent words and violent deeds of one or both his parents. To focus attention on such pos- sibilities, I have often been told, is to be seduced by our patients' prejudiced tales, to take sides, to make scapegoats of perfectly decent parents. And in any case, it is asserted, to do so could be of no help to the patient, would in fact be antithera- peutic. It was indeed largely because the adverse behaviour of parents towards their children was such a taboo subject in analytic circles when I was starting my professional work that I decided to focus my research on the effects on children of real-life events of another sort, namely separa- tion and loss.
Of course, Karen Horney, in whose honour we are meeting today, did not share those prejudices. On the contrary, she is quite explicit in attribut- ing many of her patients' problems to the adverse influences they had met with as children. As she writes in the opening pages of her book, Neurosis and Human Growth (1951), these adverse influ- ences 'boil down to the fact that the people in the environment are too wrapped up in their own neuroses to be able to love the child, or even to conceive of him as the particular individual he is
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? ? ? . . . '; and she goes on to list some of the many ways in which, unfortunately, parents can exert a harmful influence on their children. But I know well that these views were not always well re- ceived by her colleagues.
Today the scene is changing--though still far too slowly. For example, no one with eyes to see can any longer doubt that all too many children are battered by their parents, either verbally or physically or both, nor that all too many women are battered by husband or boyfriend. Moreover, our horror that parents can behave so is nowadays mitigated by our increasing knowledge of the kind of childhoods these parents have themselves had. Whilst horror at their acts is in- evitable, greater understanding of how they have come to behave in these violent ways evokes com- passion rather than blame. So far from wishing to scapegoat parents we wish to help them. So far from refusing to see that parents sometimes en- gage in horrific behaviour, we seek ways to suc- cour the casualties, old as well as young, psycho- logical as well as physical. Above all we seek ways of preventing violent patterns developing in new families. Let us hope that the policy of head-in- sand has had its day.
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? ? ? CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
In seeking to understand the more extreme ex- amples of violence in the family it is useful to consider first what we know about the more mod- erate and everyday example of members of a fam- ily getting angry with each other. Young chil- dren--and often older ones too--are commonly jealous of the attention mother gives the new baby. Lovers quarrel when one thinks the other is looking elsewhere--and the same is true after marriage. Moreover a woman may get very angry with her child if he does something dangerous, like running into the roadway, and also with her husband if he risks life or limb by taking unne- cessary risks. Thus we take it for granted that, when a relationship to a special loved person is endangered, we are not only anxious but are usu- ally angry as well. As responses to the risk of loss, anxiety and anger go hand in hand. It is not for nothing that they have the same etymological root.
In the situations described anger is often func- tional. When child or spouse behaves danger- ously, an angry protest is likely to deter. When a lover's partner strays, a sharp reminder of how much he or she cares may work wonders. When a
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? ? ? child finds himself relatively neglected in favour of the new baby, assertion of his claims may re- dress the balance. Thus in the right place, at the right time, and in right degree, anger is not only appropriate but may be indispensable. It serves to deter from dangerous behaviour, to drive off a rival, or to coerce a partner. In each case the aim of the angry behaviour is the same--to protect a relationship which is of very special value to the angry person.
This being so, it is necessary to be clear why certain specific relationships, often called libidin- al relationships, should become so very import- ant in the lives of each one of us.
In his attempts to solve this problem Freud looked to the physics and biology of his day. Li- bidinal relationships, he proposed, were con- sequent on the individual's needs for food and sex. Subsequently, to account for some of the more puzzling manifestations of anger, he stepped outside biology to propose a death in- stinct. These hypotheses, framed in terms of the accumulation and discharge of psychic energies, led to a metapsychology so remote from clinical observation and experience that a great many analytically oriented clinicians have, implicitly or
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? ? ? explicitly, abandoned it. To the resulting vacuum one reaction has been the development of a school of thought that has decided not only to di- vorce psychoanalysis from biology but to dis- pense altogether with scientific method and in- stead to espouse hermeneutics. Another and op- posite reaction has been to explore the principles found useful in modern biology, principles totally different from those of Freud's day, to see wheth- er they are more in tune with our clinical obser- vations and might therefore be used to construct a new metapsychology, or conceptual framework as it would now be called. That is the course that I and a number of others are following.
The specific relationships, threats to which may arouse anger, are of three main types: rela- tionships with a sexual partner (boyfriend, girl- friend, or spouse), relationships with parents, and relationships with offspring. Each type of re- lationship is shot through with strong emotion. In high degree indeed, a person's whole emotion- al life--the underlying tone of how he feels--is determined by the state of these long-term, com- mitted relationships. As long as they are running smoothly he is content; when they are threatened he is anxious and perhaps angry; when he has
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? ? ? endangered them by his own actions he feels guilty; when they are broken he feels sad; and when they are resumed he is joyful.
In helping us understand why the state of these relationships should have such a profound effect on a person's feeling life, two branches of modern biology--ethology and evolution theory--are ex- tremely illuminating. Not only do all three of the relationships in question have counterparts in a wide range of other species but all three are in- timately concerned with the vital biological func- tions of reproduction and, especially, the survival of young. It is therefore more than likely that a human being's powerful propensity to make these deep and long-term relationships is the result of a strong gene-determined bias to do so, a bias that has been selected during the course of evolution. Within this frame of reference a child's strong propensity to attach himself to his mother and his father, or to whomever else may be caring for him, can be understood as having the function of reducing the risk of his coming to harm. For to stay in close proximity to, or in easy communica- tion with, someone likely to protect you is the best of all possible insurance policies. Similarly a parent's concern to care for his or her offspring
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? ? ? plainly has the function of contributing to the child's survival. That success in the maintenance of these long-term relationships should usually bring satisfaction and contentment, and that fail- ure should bring frustration, anxiety, and some- times despair are, on this reading, the prizes and penalties selected during evolution to guide us in our activities.
It is within this evolutionary perspective that I believe we can understand how angry behaviour between members of a family can often be func- tional. For, as I said earlier, in the right place, at the right time, and in right degree, anger can serve to maintain these vitally important long- term relationships. But, as is very obvious, anger can be overdone. My thesis is simply that a great deal of the maladaptive violence met with in fam- ilies can be understood as the distorted and exag- gerated versions of behaviour that is potentially functional, especially attachment behaviour on the one hand and caregiving behaviour on the other.
There is now a considerable literature on the nature of the child's tie to his mother, tradition- ally referred to as dependency and now conceived in terms of attachment and careseeking. But in
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? ? ? general terms, attachment behaviour results in one individual, usually the one who is less able to cope, maintaining proximity to, and/or commu- nication with, another individual, seen as better able to cope. This behaviour is elicited especially by pain, fatigue, or anything frightening, and also by the caregiver being or appearing to be, inac- cessible. Although conceived as being in part pre- programmed, there is now abundant evidence that the particular pattern in which attachment behaviour becomes organized during develop- ment is much influenced by how it is responded to by a child's principal caregivers, in the huge majority of cases his mother and father. Briefly, it seems clear that sensitive loving care results in a child developing confidence that others will be helpful when appealed to, becoming increasingly self-reliant and bold in his explorations of the world, co-operative with others, and also--a very important point--sympathetic and helpful to oth- ers in distress. Conversely, when a child's attach- ment behaviour is responded to tardily and un- willingly and is regarded as a nuisance, he is likely to become anxiously attached, that is, ap- prehensive lest his caregiver be missing or un- helpful when he needs her and therefore
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? ? ? reluctant to leave her side, unwillingly and anxiously obedient, and unconcerned about the troubles of others. Should his caregivers, in addi- tion, actively reject him, he is likely to develop a pattern of behaviour in which avoidance of them competes with his desire for proximity and care, and in which angry behaviour is apt to become prominent. I shall say more about this later.
One further point about attachment behaviour I wish to emphasize is that it is a characteristic of human nature throughout our lives--from the cradle to the grave. Admittedly it is usually less intense and less demanding in adolescents and adults than it is in earlier years. Yet an urgent de- sire for love and care is natural enough when a person is anxious or distressed. It is therefore most unfortunate that, due to misleading theory, the pejorative adjectives 'infantile' and 'regressive' are now so widely current in clinical circles. They are words I never use.
Whilst the systematic study of attachment be- haviour, and especially the conditions influencing how it develops, has been in progress for twenty years, the systematic study of caregiving, or par- enting, and how it develops is only in its begin- nings. The approach I regard as the most
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? ? ? promising is again an ethological one. This as- sumes that in humans as well as in other species parenting behaviour, like attachment behaviour, is in some degree preprogrammed and therefore ready to develop along certain lines when condi- tions elicit it. This means that in the ordinary course of events the parent of a baby experiences a strong urge to behave in certain typical sorts of way, for example, to cradle the infant, to soothe him when he cries, to keep him warm, protected, and fed. Such a viewpoint, of course, does not im- ply that the appropriate behaviour patterns manifest themselves complete in every detail from the first. Clearly that is not so, neither in man nor in any other mammalian species. All the detail is learned, some of it during interaction with babies and children, much of it through ob- servation of how other parents behave, starting during the parent-to-be's own childhood and the way his parents treated him and his siblings.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
In considering what is now known of the indi- viduals involved in family violence, and the cir- cumstances in which it takes place, I start with women who physically assault their children and,
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? ? ? next, with the effects on the children of such as- saults. My reason for doing so is that in these two areas the research findings seem most adequate. And in the light of those findings we can proceed to consider what is known about men who batter wives or children, a problem area just as import- ant but at present less well researched.
The findings of the many studies of women known to have battered their children show con- siderable agreement (see review by Spinetta and Rigler, 1972). Though probably commoner among families of lower socio-economic status, child abuse occurs also in middle-class families where it is likely to be hidden behind a fac? ade of ultra-respectability.
On the surface abusing individuals vary from being cold, rigid, obsessional, and censorious to being passive, unhappy, and disorganized. Yet emotionally they have much in common. Among features reported as especially frequent among abusive mothers we find the following: prone to periods of intense anxiety punctuated by out- bursts of violent anger, they are said to be im- pulsive and 'immature'. Although their 'depend- ency needs' are described as exceptionally strong, they are extremely distrustful and consequently
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? ? ? unable or unwilling to make close relationships. Socially they are isolated. Having no one else to turn to, many of them seek care and comfort from one of their own children whom they treat as though they were much older than they are (Morris and Gould, 1963).
As regards childhood experience many re- searchers have noted that most of such women have had a miserable childhood and, as one pair of researchers put it, 'have been deprived of basic mothering' (Steele and Pollock, 1968). An appre- ciable minority were themselves battered as chil- dren. 1
To anyone thinking in terms of attachment the- ory the notion at once suggests itself that these woman are suffering from an extreme degree of anxious attachment and consequently that exper- iences of long or repeated separations and/or of being repeatedly threatened with abandonment would be a common feature of their childhoods. In a relatively small study these hypotheses have now been tested by Pauline DeLozier (1982), working in Los Angeles. Her samples consisted of 18 working-class women known to have assaulted their children physically and 18 others from the same socio-economic class, and matched for age
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? ? ? (most in their thirties) and number of children, who had not done so. All subjects were given a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire to complete and were tested on the Hansburg Se- paration Anxiety Test (Hansburg, 1972). In the latter a series of pictures depicting scenes either of a child leaving his parents or of parents leaving the child is shown and the subject invited to de- scribe what she would feel and do in the situation concerned.
The results of the Separation Anxiety Test showed, as expected, that most of the abusing mothers were extremely sensitive to any type of separation situation, even the most everyday and commonplace, with responses indicative of high levels of anxiety and/or anger. The responses showed, in addition, that, while these women yearned for care, all they expected was rejection.