No More Learning

Only very slowly and as his cognitive capacities develop does a child begin to distinguish natural or cultural clues from real danger and to learn methods of his own for calculating risk. During the same phase of growth all his behaviour is becoming organized increasingly in terms of goal-corrected plans, and
123
-151-
with it his fear behaviour. As a result of these linked developments his fear behaviour is becoming, as it is said, more 'rational' and 'realistic'. Thenceforward, during later childhood and adolescence, and into adult life, his capacity to assess real danger and to respond appropriately is likely steadily to improve.
Nevertheless, important though these new developments in the organization of fear behaviour may be, the bias to respond with fear to both the cultural and the natural clues persists. Indeed, not only throughout childhood but throughout adolescence and adult life as well the natural clues and their derivatives remain among the most effective of all the stimulus situations that arouse fear. Even the most courageous is not immune to fear on seeing some extraordinary apparition or a sudden rapid approach, or on hearing some piercing scream or finding himself alone in darkness in a strange place.
In intellectual circles both the persisting bias to respond to the natural clues and the value of that bias are all too often overlooked. As a result much human fear comes to be seen in a false perspective. For example, Arnold ( 1960), rightly impressed by the role of appraisal in the regulation of behaviour, goes so far as to assert that 'genuine fear develops only when the child is old enough to estimate the possibility of harm'. Elsewhere, in discussions of fear in human beings, there is commonly to be found the assumption, more or less explicit, that whereas fear of real danger is a healthy and often desirable response fear of anything else is childish or neurotic. Throughout psychiatry that assumption has for long been powerful and persuasive. It is found not only in the psychoanalytic tradition from Freud himself onwards (see above, Chapter 5) but in other traditions of psychiatry also (e. g. Lewis 1967). It is a main reason why the fear of separation from a loved figure is still so often, and so erroneously, held to be both neurotic and childish.
A principal thesis of this work is that the assumption that mature adults are afraid only of real danger, plausible though it may seem, is profoundly mistaken. Naturally enough an adult man, or woman, does what he, or she, can to calculate the prospects of real danger and to take the necessary precautions. Yet to make those calculations is often far from easy, and on some occasions would take dangerously long to do. By contrast, to respond to the natural and cultural clues is quick and simple. To respond to the natural clues, moreover, especially when two or more people are present together, provides, as described
-152-
in the previous chapter, an efficient, if crude, system for minimizing danger and maximizing safety. No wonder, therefore, that alongside the more sophisticated measures for calculating danger, adult man continues to respond, at least tentatively, to each one of the natural clues and, when faced with compound situations, to respond especially strongly. Thus, in adult man fear behaviour comes to be elicited by clues that derive from at least three sources:
-- natural clues and their derivatives
-- cultural clues learnt by observation
-- clues that are learnt and used in more or less sophisticated ways in order to assess danger and avoid it.
Behaviour based on clues of the first type develops very early and is apt to be referred to as 'childish' and 'irrational'. Behaviour based on clues of the third type develops much later and
124
is commonly referred to as 'mature' and 'realistic'. Behaviour based on clues of the second type is intermediate: whether it is referred to as childish or mature, rational or irrational, turns on whether the onlooker shares or does not share the cultural norm reflected in the behaviour. For example, fear of ghosts is judged realistic by an observer from one culture and as childish by an observer from another.
A true evaluation of behaviour based on these three distinct types of clue is held to yield a picture very different from the popular one. Behaviour based on clues of the first and second types no less than behaviour based on those of the third is plainly consistent with normal development and mental health. In a healthily functioning individual, indeed, responses to clues of all three types are present; they can occur simultaneously or sequentially, and be either compatible with one another or in conflict.
In this chapter we consider the role of behaviour elicited by each of these three types of clue. Because so much attention has already been given to the natural clues we begin by considering the more sophisticated methods of assessing and avoiding danger.
Real danger: difficulties of assessment
Psychiatrists often speak as though it were easy to assess real danger. This is not so.
Both in ordinary life and in clinical practice there are two distinct types of problem. One is the difficulty that each of us has in assessing what is and what is not a real danger to his
-153-
own interests. Another is the difficulty that each of us has in assessing what is and what is not a real danger to another person.
Difficulties are met as soon as we try to define what we mean by 'real danger', whether to self or to another. There are a number of problems. One concerns how widely each of us draws the boundary of where his interests lie. A second concerns our understanding of what can, or cannot, cause injury. A third concerns the very varying ability of individuals to protect themselves and their interests: whereas a strong man might well be able to protect himself in a certain dangerous situation, a weaker one, or a woman or a child, might not.
We start with the problem of where each draws the boundary of his interests. Plainly, any situation that might lead to our own injury or death is classifiable as dangerous. The same would be agreed for anything that threatens injury or death to members of our family and to close friends. Beyond that, definition becomes more difficult. How widely do we extend the circle of friends and acquaintances whose safety we are concerned about? To what extent do we identify ourselves with the safety and wellbeing of the institution in which we work or the recreational club to which we belong? How do we rate threat to personal possessions, to house, and to favourite haunts?
Experience shows that a human being is constantly made afraid and anxious by threats of damage to a circle of persons, possessions, and places some way beyond himself and his body. For that reason it is necessary to include within the concept of real danger threat of injury or damage not only to the person himself but to the whole of his personal environment, as it is defined in the previous chapter.
125
All too often the need to include within the boundary the whole of an individual's personal environment is not recognized or, even if the principle is recognized, the nature and extent of the personal environment of a particular individual are not properly known. As a result, what is truly a danger for that person may go unnoticed by an onlooker.
Furthermore, not only is the nature of threat strictly relative to the person concerned but, as already remarked, means of protection are so too. Strong and competent people are able to protect themselves in situations in which weaker and less competent ones cannot.
Even when a definition of real danger is agreed, however, there remain great difficulties for each of us in assessing it.
-154-
For example, for an individual to calculate accurately when and in what degree he and his interests are endangered requires him to have a comprehensive knowledge of the world about him and to be able reliably to predict results. How many of us are qualified in these respects? It is easy to talk of real danger, but very difficult to estimate it.
It is indeed easy to forget that what is held to be publicly and permanently real is never more than some schematic representation of the world that happens to be favoured by a particular social group at a particular time in history. To some people during some periods to be afraid of ghosts is realistic. To other people during other periods to be afraid of germs is realistic. In matters of reality we all stand in danger of being arrogantly parochial.
That, however, is not to assert that everything is subjective, that there is no reality. The difficulty in using reality as a criterion lies, not in there being no reality, but in our imperfect capacity to comprehend it. That a child has an imperfect capacity to comprehend what is or may be truly dangerous is usually taken for granted. That the capacity of an adult is greater often by only a small margin tends to be forgotten.
To assess a risk of danger accurately requires us to take into account simultaneously a number of factors. Consider, for example, how we calculate the risk of being attacked by a particular dog. The ordinary dog, it will be agreed, is a harmless and amiable creature. Yet some dogs are dangerous to some people sometimes. What then are the criteria to be applied? On reflection we realize that they are numerous and complex. An accurate forecast rests partly on the sort of dog it is, partly on the situation in which we encounter it, partly on its behaviour and partly on how we estimate our own strength. Thus, we need to take into account the dog's age and sex, its breed, and perhaps also its probable training. Simultaneously, we should take into account whether the dog is on its home ground or elsewhere, whether with or without its master, and whether, in the case of a bitch, it has puppies. At the same time we should consider whether the dog is familiar with us, how it greets us, and how effective we judge ourselves to be in countering threat with threat and protecting ourselves should it attack. It is in fact a complex appraisal requiring considerable knowledge of dogs and accurate perception of the current situation. No wonder many adults as well as children despair of making it and behave as though all dogs are dangerous until
-155-
126
proved safe. Others, simplifying the situation in an opposite direction, may make the opposite assumption.
Consider again the difficulty of estimating accurately the danger of food-poisoning. To do so requires intimate knowledge of the food's origin, who has handled it, whether or not it has been cooked and the capabilities of various organisms to survive heating to various temperatures and for varying lengths of time. No wonder the ordinary housewife bases her behaviour on a limited number of culturally derived clues and practices.
In his capacity to assess and forecast real danger a child is of course even worse placed than an adult. Not only is he likely to be ill informed but, as Piaget has repeatedly shown (see Flavell 1963), his capacity to take into account more than a single factor at a time grows only slowly. It is fortunate that a child responds so readily to the natural and the cultural clues. Were he not to do so he would soon be dead.
'Imaginary' dangers
Assessment of danger always takes the form of a forecast. Sometimes the dangerous situation foreseen is judged to be imminent, at other times to be remote. In either case the likelihood of the situation's eventuating is of every degree. Dangerous situations that almost every adult in a society forecasts as 'probable present no problem. It is those situations that almost every adult forecasts as highly improbable or even impossible that are the challenge. Scoffingly, fear arising from such forecasts is dubbed 'exaggerated' or 'imaginary'; in more sober vein it is termed 'inappropriate'. For long, fear exhibited about such possibilities has constituted one of the principal riddles of psychopathology.
Yet, once the difficulty of making accurate forecasts of danger is grasped and once it is realized that if living beings are to survive there can be no great margin for error, the so-called imaginary fears come to be seen in a different and more sympathetic light. That children, still with a very imperfect model of the world, should at times gravely underestimate a danger may at times alarm us but is no surprise. That they should as frequently make an error of the opposite kind, foreseeing danger when we foresee none, is, when viewed in this perspective, no surprise either. Thus, when the bathwater goes down the plughole, how is a toddler to know he will not go down too? When, later, he hears tales of robbers and red indians intercepting coaches or robbing mail-trains, how is he
-156-
to know that he and his family may not be the next victims? The very great difficulty a child has in appraising at all accurately the degree of danger in which at any moment he may stand accounts, it is argued, for a much larger proportion of the so-called imaginary fears of childhood than is often supposed.
Sometimes 'imaginary' fear arises because of a simple misunderstanding, as when a small boy of six and a half, acting as a photographer's model, ran hurriedly off stage each time the photographer was about to press the button. Not until the next day was it revealed that, as soon as he heard the word 'shoot', he had run for his life. A similar type of misunderstanding led a boy of twelve, referred for stealing, to insist on having a sixpence in his pocket when he came to the clinic. The mystery was solved after some weeks when it transpired that he
127
believed the clinic to be a penal establishment, and that he had plans that if incarcerated he would escape, and he would then need the money for his bus fare home.
At other times 'imaginary' fear is a consequence of generalizing from too small a sample. If granny can die today, perhaps mother or father may die tomorrow. If a mother's first infant has died, is it surprising that she fears her second may die also?
The examples so far given are of erroneous or disproportionate forecasts of danger that arise from inaccurate or inadequate data. Until the source of an individual's erroneous forecast is known, his tendency to fear a particular situation will appear to another person to be absurd; it will also persist. Once the source is known about, however, the tendency is quickly seen by the other person to be far from unreasonable, even if misguided; and there is then a chance of its being corrected or modified.
In other cases fear of a situation that it may seem ridiculous to an outsider to fear can be explained in other ways. One source of such fear that has been greatly underestimated in the clinical literature is a forecast of danger that is in fact well based but remains inexplicable to an outsider because it is derived from information of the greatest secrecy. An example is seen in a child or adolescent one of whose parents is given to uttering dire threats -- of suicide, leaving home, even murder -- during emotional outbursts that, though real enough at the time, may be infrequent and in general out of character. While child or adolescent, not unnaturally, takes the threat seriously, the notion that such threats could ever be made may be discounted
-157-
or even denied by the parents. The key role that such family situations can play in accounting for the greatly intensified degree of separation anxiety suffered by some patients is considered in later chapters.
Another source of apparently unreasonable fear is a forecast of danger that derives from an individual's knowledge, conscious or unconscious, of certain desires of his own; for example, hostile wishes directed against someone he loves. Here again, to be afraid ceases to be unreasonable once the facts are known.
Yet other sources of fear that is or appears to be ill based lie in processes of projection and rationalization, to which brief attention is given in the next chapter.
In Chapters 18 and 19 further attention is given to some of the so-called irrational fears of anxious children and adults. These few paragraphs are intended to show only that the theoretical approach adopted can encompass without difficulty clinical problems of the greatest concern to every practising clinician and that a biological perspective in no way negates Freud's profoundly important discovery that fear can arise, not only from forecasts of how the external world and the people in it may behave, but also from forecasts of how we ourselves may possibly act.
Perhaps the most fundamental lesson to be learnt by anyone who wishes to understand the situations that other people fear is that forecasts of future dangers are as often as not strictly individual. Though forecasts of some sorts of event are public and shared with others, forecasts of other sorts of event are intrinsically private and personal. In particular, forecasts of how our personal relationships are likely to fare are not only of vastly more concern to
128
ourselves than to anyone else but are based on past experience and present information that are ours and ours alone. Thus, as regards the future, each one of us has his own personal forecasts of what good and what harm may befall. This is the private world of future expectations that each of us carries within. This theme is resumed in Chapter 14 in which attention is given especially to a person's forecasts of how his attachment figures are likely to behave and the immense influence these forecasts have on his propensity to be anxious or confident.
Cultural clues learnt from others
For long it has been suspected that children tend to 'catch' fears from their parents. Nevertheless, the extent to which there
-158-
is a correlation between what is feared by children and what by their parents is still little understood, and it is only during the past decade or so that the basic tendency to learn through observation has been the subject of systematic attention.
As a result of research it is now well established that learning through observation plays a significant part in the behavioural development of many species of bird and mammal ( Hinde 1970). In the case of humans, Bandura ( 1968), a leading exponent of social learning theory, claims that virtually anything that can be learnt through direct experience can be learnt vicariously through observing how others behave in particular situations and, especially, what the consequences of their behaviour are for them. In this way innumerable skills can be acquired. Observational learning provides a powerful means for the cultural transmission of which situations are to be avoided and which can be regarded as safe.
People concerned with children sometimes speak as though they thought it would be better were a child not to be influenced in what he fears by imitating 1 his parents. A moment's reflection, however, shows that on the contrary this is a wise provision of nature. Just as members of a band of non-human primates extend the range of the stimulus situations they avoid through imitating the behaviour of other animals (see Chapter 8), so do humans. Admittedly the consequence could on occasion be that some harmless situation was treated through several generations as though it were dangerous; yet more often, we may suppose, the tendency to imitate results in a young individual's being inducted quickly into the traditional wisdom of his social group and thereby avoiding hazards that might otherwise prove fatal.
Furthermore, to learn through imitating encompasses in the case of fear behaviour far more than learning to fear situations formerly not feared. It can equally well have an opposite effect. Thus the fear-arousing properties that a situation has for a child or an adult can be much reduced, or even extinguished, by his witnessing another person deal with the situation without fear and without harmful consequences. The restriction of the situations that arouse fear in an individual is discussed in Chapter 13.
____________________
1 There is a growing tendency in scientific literature to restrict the term 'imitation' to cases in
which a new motor pattern is developed. In what follows, however, the term is used in an everyday sense to denote that an individual observes the ways in which others respond to particular stimuli and then responds similarly, even though no new motor pattern is
129
involved. -159-
Reports of studies in which the degree to which situations feared by children are correlated with situations feared by their parents are unexpectedly scarce. Four can be quoted. In a study of seventy pre-school children, aged from two to six years, and their mothers, Hagman ( 1932) found significant correlations between the children who feared dogs and the mothers who feared dogs, and also between children and mothers who feared insects. A correlation was also present, though of lower degree, between children and mothers who feared thunderstorms. Not unexpectedly, when a child's fear of a situation was shared by his mother, the child was more likely to continue to be afraid of that situation than was a child whose mother was unafraid. In a comparable but better-controlled study, Bandura & Menlove ( 1968) also found a significant correlation between pre-school children who were afraid of dogs and parents (one or both) who were afraid of dogs. The third study concerns fear of dentistry. Shoben & Borland ( 1954) found that a most important factor in determining whether an individual will react with fear to the prospect of dental treatment is the attitude and experiences of members of his family. The fourth study concerns a hundred pre-school children evacuated with their mothers from a bombed area during the second world war. John ( 1941) reports a correlation of 0? 59 between the intensity of fear a child was reported to have shown during the raids and the intensity of fear his mother was reported to have shown. (Although the primary source of information was in most cases the mother herself, the existence of independent evidence for a few cases led the investigator to give the finding credence. )
Though the extent to which the situations that arouse fear tend to run in families and communities needs much further investigation, the ease with which fear of a previously neutral stimulus can be acquired vicariously is now well documented. For example, experiments in which the sound of a buzzer comes to arouse fear in a subject after he has observed that it is followed by an apparently painful shock to another person 1 are reported by Berger ( 1962) and also by Bandura & Rosenthal ( 1966). To observe another person apparently undergoing a shock whenever the buzzer sounds is found by many to be a most disagreeable experience. In Bandura's experiment some of the observers tried to decrease their discomfort by concen-
____________________
1 In these experiments the model who is observed is not in fact exposed to shock. Instead he
acts as though he has received a shock, e. g. by suddenly flexing his arm, dropping his pencil and wincing.
-160-
trating on other things. One remarked: 'When I noticed how painful the shock was to him I concentrated my vision on a spot which did not allow me to focus directly on either his face or hands. ' That the observers came also to respond to the stimulus with fear (as measured by their galvanic skin response) is therefore hardly surprising.
In the experimental situations described it is demanded that a subject observe what is going on. In real life we are free to observe or not as we wish. Though few systematic records are available, it seems probable that whenever we are in a strange or otherwise potentially
130
dangerous situation we commonly make a point of observing how others are responding and take our cue from them, especially when we believe them to be more experienced than we are ourselves. Children certainly do so. In the study referred to above (p. 160), Hagman ( 1932) conducted a series of simple experiments with his sample of pre-school children. He reports that, at the moment a feararousing stimulus was presented, nearly half the children looked tip at the adult who was with them. Schaffer ( 1971), it will be remembered, reports the same behaviour as early as twelve months (see p. 102 above).
Plainly this is a large area and very inadequately explored. It is also complex, since it is well known that the correlation between situations feared by children and those feared by adults is far from perfect. For example, a mother who is afraid of dogs and horses can have a daughter who is as bold as they come. Conversely, a father who is conspicuously unafraid can have a timid son. Many factors are evidently at work.
One point to which too little attention has so far been given in this exposition is that individuals learn to fear situations of certain types much more easily than they do others. This takes us back to the natural clues.
Continuing role of the natural clues
Already in this and the preceding chapter it has been emphasized that throughout our lives we tend to respond with fear to the natural clues -- to strangeness, sudden change of stimulation, rapid approach, height, being alone -- and to respond especially strongly to compound situations in which two or more natural clues are present together. Fear of animals and fear of darkness, both so common, are, it seems likely, to be explained by the fact that animals and darkness frequently constitute sources of two or more of the natural clues.
-161-
Fear of Animals
During the first eighteen months of life few children show fear of animals. Thenceforward, however, fear becomes increasingly easily aroused by animals so that during the third, fourth, and fifth years a majority of children are likely to show fear, at least on some occasions. Although thereafter the tendency for animals to arouse fear diminishes, it continues to be extremely common both in older children and in adults. (These findings were presented above, see Chapter 7).
On occasion, of course, a child may be threatened or even attacked by an animal, but it is unlikely that such events account for more than a very small proportion of the children who develop fear of animals. All the evidence suggests that in great part the readiness of children to develop such fear can be explained by the fact that animals are so frequently a source, simultaneously, of at least three of the natural clues that arouse fear, namely rapid approach, sudden movement, and sudden noise. This is well illustrated by an observation by Valentine ( 1930) who was among the first to study the ontogeny of human fear responses.
Valentine reports that one of his sons first showed fear of a dog at the age of twenty months. On this occasion a dog tripped over the string of the little boy's toy horse and yelped. In so doing it presented, of course, a combination of approach, sudden movement, by tripping, and sudden noise, by yelping. At this the little boy cried and thenceforward was afraid of the dog.
131
In that episode the dog belonged to a neighbour and so was presumably familiar to the child. On many other occasions, however, an animal behaving in this kind of way is a stranger. Whenever it is so, yet another natural clue is added to the constellation. Small wonder, then, that fear of animals is so widespread.
Not only do animals frequently present simultaneously several of the natural clues but there is reason to believe that they may present also some additional stimulus properties that increase the likelihood of a child's learning to fear them. Being furry is possibly one; a wriggling movement probably another; certain visual patterns may be still others.
Valentine had been struck by the ease with which young children seem to develop a fear of animals in comparison with fear of other things.
He therefore conducted a little experiment
-162-
with one of his daughters, Y, 'an exceptionally healthy, strong and jovial youngster', aged at the time twelve and a half months ( Valentine 1930). In a first test the little girl, seated on her mother's knee, was given a pair of opera glasses which were then placed on a table in front of her. Each time she reached for them a wooden whistle was blown as loudly as possible behind her. Each time, she turned round quietly as if to see whence the noise had come. In these conditions the whistle aroused no fear. When the same afternoon, however, the same experiment was conducted, this time with a woolly caterpillar in place of the opera glasses, 'at once Y gave a loud scream and turned away from the caterpillar. This was repeated four times with precisely the same effect. ' Later the same day, while seated on her mother's knee and with no whistle being sounded, Y vacillated between showing interest in the caterpillar and turning away from it. When her brother picked up the leaf on which the caterpillar was crawling the little girl seemed to gain confidence and went to seize it (an example very probably of observational learning). From these experiments Valentine draws three conclusions. In the situation described:
--sight of opera glasses and sound of whistle together were not alarming, nor was there reason to think that either singly would be
--sight of the caterpillar aroused interest which alternated with slight fear
--sight of caterpillar and sound of whistle together were alarming.
From observations such as these Valentine suggests that there is a much readier bias to develop fear of objects like caterpillars than fear of objects like opera glasses. 1
The extreme ease with which monkeys and apes develop a fear of snakes is remarked on above (Chapter 8, p. 130). The same is true of humans. As already reported in Chapter 7 (pp. 109-13), in the experiments conducted by Jersild & Holmes ( 1935a) between one-third and a half of the children aged between two and six years showed marked fear of the snake. A comparable finding is reported by Morris & Morris ( 1965).
____________________
1 A defect of this experiment was that during the second test when the caterpillar was
presented and the whistle blown Y was seated on her father's knee, not her mother's. It is therefore possible that a change in the person caring for her was responsible for the results.
-163-
132
In a children's television programme in England children were invited to compete for a prize by proposing future programmes. To qualify, however, they had to name the animal they liked most and the animal they disliked most. Altogether nearly twelve thousand children aged from four years upwards replied. Of the animals most disliked the snake was an easy first: it was named by 27 per cent of the children. Spiders came next, given by under 10 per cent; then lions and tigers, together, were named by about 7 per cent. Up to the age of nine years, at least one child in three expressed dislike of snakes. At all ages slightly more girls than boys expressed the fear.
It seems likely that to the development of a fear of animals in general and of snakes in particular several factors make an interlocking contribution. First are several of the common natural clues, including often strangeness. Second, there may also be certain specific natural clues, for example crawling or wriggling. Third, there is the behaviour of others. Because of their appearance and behaviour, including their vocalizations, animals arouse simultaneously both lively interest and incipient fear. In such conditions the behaviour of a companion is likely to have a maximum effect, tipping the balance either towards decreased fear and approach or towards increased fear and withdrawal.
Fear of Darkness
Every study shows that fear of darkness is as common at every age as fear of animals and that during ontogeny it runs a roughly parallel course. In all likelihood the development of fear of darkness is to be explained in a comparable way to that of fear of animals; though the natural clues concerned are usually not the same ones.
In conditions of darkness the two natural clues that are apt to be present together are strangeness and being alone. During darkness visual stimuli that, if viewed in daylight, would be recognized as familiar are often ambiguous and difficult to interpret. Endless examples come to mind: the pattern of movement of light shining through bedroom curtains; the shapes of the trees in a wood at night; the shadowy recesses of a dimly lit cellar. In each case the visual stimuli available are barely adequate for accurate perception and it is therefore as easy to perceive something unusual as something familiar. In addition, without visual cues, sounds are far more difficult to interpret accurately or with confidence. Thus in conditions of
-164-
darkness much seems uncertain or strange and in consequence alarming.
Yet, mere strangeness would probably of itself arouse comparatively little fear were it not so regularly accompanied by being alone. Sometimes a person is in reality alone; sometimes, because his companion is unseen, he may merely feel himself to be. In either case the situation is compound: it combines sights and sounds that are not easily interpreted and the situation of being alone.
Freud, it is interesting to note, was greatly struck by the way in which darkness leads a child to feel alone, and it is an observation of a small boy's behaviour in the dark, together with inferences from it, that lies at the heart of his theory of anxiety. This is therefore a good point at which to compare Freud's theory with the one presented here.
133
In Three Essays ( 1905b, SE 7: 224n) and again in the Introductory Lectures ( 1917b, SE 16: 407) Freud tells the story of a three-year-old boy. He recounts how he once heard this child
calling out of a dark room: 'Auntie, speak to me! I'm frightened because it's so dark. ' His aunt answered him: 'What good would that do? You can't see me. ''That doesn't matter,' replied the child, 'if anyone speaks, it gets light. ' Thus [comments Freud] what he was afraid of was not the dark, but the absence of someone he loved . . .
Reflection on that episode, Freudtells us, led him to the view that the prototypic situation that gives rise to anxiety in children is simply separation from mother. Neurotic anxiety, he then argues, can best be understood as a persistence beyond childhood of the tendency to be anxious when alone, though fear of being alone often masquerades as fear of something else, for example of the dark. In all these regards the theory advanced here is very close to Freud's. Where the two differ is that Freud did not recognize that strangeness is intrinsically frightening or that both strangeness and being alone can usefully be regarded as two members of a class of natural clues to increased risk of danger. As a consequence he held that to be afraid when alone (and also when confronted by any of the other natural clues) is irrational and neurotic; whereas in the theory put forward here to be afraid in such conditions is held to be in general adaptive.
-165-
Fear of Being Alone
Repeatedly in these chapters it is stressed that being alone is one of several natural clues to increased risk of danger and that it occurs very commonly as a component in a compound situation. Not only does it occur in combination with other natural clues, moreover; it can occur equally well with cultural clues and also in situations realistically assessed as being dangerous. Thus, throughout life, being alone is a condition that either stimulates fear or greatly intensifies fear aroused in other ways. Concomitantly, being with a companion greatly reduces fear. In no conditions is the reassuring effect of the presence of companions more evident than during and after a disaster.
Behaviour in disaster
The role of a companion in reducing fear in children is very obvious and it is also readily acknowledged by children. Adults, by contrast, are less likely to acknowledge it. During and after a disaster, however, people are less reticent ( Baker & Chapman 1962).
When the impact of disaster comes members of a family commonly cling together:
When sirens scream of approaching disaster, minds turn to loved ones. If they are near enough mothers run to protect their children, and men seek their families. They huddle together and support one another through the stress, and when it is passed they resume and nurse those they love ( Hill & Hansen 1962).
Wolfenstein ( 1957) describes how a woman who had been with her fifteen-year-old daughter when a tornado struck recounted her experience:
134
And she said, 'Mother, its coming -- a cyclone. ' And I said, 'Mary, I'm afraid it is. But,' I said, 'we're together. ' And she said, 'Mother, I love you and we're together. ' I shall never forget those words. And we -- our arms were around each other, and I said, 'Whatever happens, Mary, let's cling together. '
Whenever members of a family happen to be apart at the time of impact they are unlikely to rest until they have found each other; then, again, physical embraces are the rule. 'Just
-166-
being together is deeply important following impact even in loosely-knit families' ( Hill & Hansen 1962).
Survivors agree that to be alone during a disaster is extremely frightening, whereas the advent of a companion, however inadequate, is likely to transform the scene. Wolfenstein refers to another episode, one in which, following an explosion, two injured men were trying to crawl out of a burning factory. Describing their experiences, one of the men, who had suffered a broken leg, explained:
Then Johnny and Clyde came along. I said, 'Johnny, help us -- we can't walk. ' His arms were broken and he said, 'I can't help you, but I'll stay with you. If you can crawl, I'll guide you. ' Talk about cheer! That helped me more than anything -- just when he said, 'I'll stay with you. '
Not only is there a strong tendency for members of a family or other social group to remain together during the height of a disaster but the tendency is likely to persist for days or weeks after it is over. This heightened tendency to attachment behaviour is commented on in a number of reports.
For example, Bloch, Silber & Perry ( 1956) studied the effects on children of a tornado that struck a town in Mississippi, affecting in particular a cinema in which children were attending a Saturday afternoon programme. Altogether, information was obtained during the succeeding weeks from interviewing the parents of 185 children between the ages of two and twelve years.
About one-third of the children were reported to be showing signs of increased anxiety, which typically took the form of clinging to or remaining close to parents and wishing to sleep with them. They were made anxious by noise and also tended to avoid situations associated with the tornado. Children aged six to twelve were more disturbed than younger ones. A possible reason for that was that more of them had probably been in the impact zone. Another possible reason, though it is not commented on by the researchers, was that the older the child the more likely was he to have been away from his parents. Boys were as much affected as girls.
Experiences that were significantly associated with increased anxiety were the child's presence in the impact zone, personal injury, and the death or injury of a family member. Not unexpectedly the reaction of children reflected the reaction of parents. In nine cases parents described themselves as having
-167-
135
'gone to pieces' and, instead of having supported their child, as having sought help from him. Eight of these children were disturbed and, about the ninth, the mother could not be induced to talk. Further discussion of the contribution to a child's anxieties of parents who invert the relationship by requiring their child to care for them will be found in Chapters 18 and 19. Many cases diagnosed as school phobia and agoraphobia can be understood as being caused by such inversions.
Reports on the effects of the Mississippi tornado of 1953 ( Blochet al. 1956) and of the Los Angeles earthquake of 1971 ( Time, 8 March 1971) both make it clear that, after a disaster, parents are almost as eager to retain their children close to them as the children are eager to remain close to their parents. Since these responses are adaptive, it is unfortunate that the concept of regression is so frequently invoked to explain them. Investigation shows that, in run-of-the-mill cases as well as in those that follow a disaster, behind behaviour dubbed regressive by clinicians there exist situations that, once known about, explain at once why a child or an adult should cling relentlessly to another member of his family.
-168-
Chapter II
Rationalization, Misattribution, and Projection
All round the house is the jet-black night;
It stares through the window-pane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light, And it moves with the moving flame.
Now my little heart goes a-beating like a drum,
With the breath of the Bogie in my hair;
And all round the candle the crooked shadows come, And go marching along up the stair.
The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp, The shadow of the child that goes to bed --
All the wicked shadows coming, tramp, tramp, tramp, With the black night overhead.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, A Child's Garden of Verses
Difficulties in identifying situations that arouse fear
When a person is afraid and claims that something in particular, for example thunder or a dog, has made him so, doubt is often expressed whether he has identified the right stimulus situation. This is especially likely to happen when fear is shown or reported by children and by emotionally disturbed adults. Among psychoanalysts there is a long tradition of claiming that what a person is really afraid of is something very different from what he claims to be afraid of. Indeed, psychoanalytic theorizing about anxiety and fear reflects a prolonged hunt for some primal danger situation that is thought to arouse a primal anxiety or fear. 1 Arising out of that tradition, also, is the practice of invoking the process of projection whenever a fear appears not to be appropriate to the situation presenting.
136
In the approach adopted here, no less than in the traditional ones, misattribution is held to be very common. The difference in the present approach lies in the explanations it offers of why misattribution should occur. The concept of a primal danger
____________________
1 See Chapter 5 and Appendix I.
-169-
situation is dispensed with, and projection is given a much smaller role as an explanatory principle. A solution is found in the relationship that the natural clues bear to danger and safety.
The very fact that fear is first aroused in human beings not by any rational appraisal of danger but by stimulus situations that are no more than clues to an increased risk of danger invites misunderstanding and misattribution; for, as has been made clear, a natural clue is in no sense inherently dangerous. Because that is so, however, and because in Western culture (and perhaps also in others) a human being is expected to be afraid only of real dangers, there is a strong bias both in the frightened subject and in an onlooker to attribute the fear response to something other than the natural clue. For example, since it is thought absurd for anyone to be afraid merely of thunder, the fear is 'explained' as a fear really of being struck by lightning. Similarly, since it is thought absurd to be afraid merely of a dog, the fear is 'explained' as a fear really of being bitten by a dog.
Rationalizations of these sorts are no doubt very common. They are commented upon by all who have made a study of fear, irrespective of theoretical orientation. For example, Marks ( 1969) suggests that a child's fear of monsters in the dark may be no more than a rationalization of his fear of the dark, 'a genuine rationalization of an irrational fear on the same lines that any post-hypnotic suggestion is rationalized'. The Newsons ( 1968) point out that such rationalizations are often and easily encouraged by other children, or even by adults, who tease a child about what he might meet when in the dark on his own. Jersild ( 1943) calls attention to the fact that when a child is already frightened, from whatever cause, he 'may formulate his fear in terms of an imaginary or anticipated danger', such as criminal characters or bogeys or some other sinister circumstances he has encountered or, more probably, heard or read about.
Though simple rationalizations of this kind are probably common, even commoner perhaps are mistaken or biased attributions stemming from the special properties of compound situations. In compound situations, two or more stimulus conditions, by being present together, have the effect of arousing far more intense fear than would any one were it to occur separately. In such a case there is a marked tendency to single out one component of the compound situation as the one that arouses the fear and to ignore the other(s). For example, a
-170-
person is alone in the dark and hears strange noises. Whereas in fact all three conditions -- being alone, being in the dark, and hearing the strange noises -- may well be necessary to account for the fear aroused, in all likelihood attention is focused solely on the strange noises and the other components of the situation are almost ignored. Furthermore, from there it is only a short step to rationalize the fear, aroused in fact by what is little more than a
137
combination of two or three natural clues, and to claim that what is feared is burglars or ghosts.
Which one of several components present in a compound situation is fastened on as the fear- arousing one and which are neglected needs examination. Presumably, the component selected is usually the one that most readily lends itself to being interpreted as indicative of real danger. If that is so, being alone would habitually be neglected, or at least given a subordinate position. That is, in fact, very close to what Freud believed to happen, though he expresses his views in terms of libido theory and not of attachment theory.
In 1917, at the end of a discussion of the psychopathology of phobias, Freud summed up his position:
Infantile anxiety has very little to do with realistic anxiety, but, on the other hand, is closely related to the neurotic anxiety of adults. Like the latter, it is derived from unemployed libido, and it replaces the missing love-object by an external object or by a situation ( 1917b, SE 16: 408)
Since Freud regards the unemployed libido as constituting an internal danger, his formulation is that fear of an internal danger is replaced by fear of an external one. An alternative rendering of his position would run: when a child or an adult is afraid of some external object or situation, what he is really afraid of is the absence of someone he loves.
In Chapters 18 and 19, in which misattributions are discussed further, reasons are given for believing that many intense fears attributed to all sorts of common situations and termed phobias are best understood as being aroused in compound situations, a main component of which is the expectation of being separated from a principal attachment figure. The famous and theoretically influential case of 'Little Hans', who was afraid of being bitten by a horse, appears to be a good example ( Freud 1909, SE 10). Evidence is presented (Chapter 18) for believing that fear of separation played a much larger part in this case than Freud at the time realized.
-171-
Misattribution and the role of projection
In some psychoanalytic traditions the concept of projection has been used very extensively in an attempt to explain any fear that is not readily intelligible as a response to a real danger. Since the term is itself used in several ways the resulting theory is often confused.
One usage of projection is to denote our propensity to perceive an object in terms of some preconceived notion, in other words to 'project onto' the object characteristics we suppose it to have, even though they are not apparent to the sense organs and may in fact be absent. In so far as this process is integral to all perception, it is normal. Although as a rule the resulting percept is reasonably valid, on some occasions seriously false percepts result.
A second usage is to denote the process whereby a person (male of female) attributes to another (male or female) some features of his own self, especially some aspect of himself that he dislikes or is afraid of. This process must, almost inevitably, lead to false and unfavourable attributions being made about the other person and his motives.
138
There are two reasons for confining the term projection to the second usage. One reason is that another term, 'assimilation', introduced many years ago by Piaget, is already in wide currency to denote our propensity to perceive any object in terms of some model we already have, even though that model may fit the object imperfectly: the new object of perception is said to be assimilated to the existing model. The second reason is that in the various psychoanalytic traditions the most frequent usage of the term projection is to denote our propensity to attribute our failings to others and to be blind to them in ourselves, to see motes in the eyes of others and to be blind to beams in our own.
Using the term in its second sense, we find that the process of projection is invoked extremely frequently by psychoanalysts to explain how it comes about that children and adults should be so afraid, as we know they are, of the wide array of situations that are not intrinsically dangerous. This trend in theorizing has been carried furthest by Melanie Klein who has postulated that the process of attributing to others undesired and frightening features of the self occurs on a major scale during the earliest phases of normal development, with far- reaching effects on later personality. During his first year of life, in the Kleinian
-172-
view, an infant regularly attributes to parent figures impulses that are in fact his own and then introjects (namely creates working models of) parent figures already distorted by these misattributions. In this view, then, the reason a child develops working models of hostile, rejecting, or unresponsive parents ('bad introjected objects') is not so much because of any actual experience he may have had of being unsympathetically or adversely treated by them as principally because, almost from the first, his perception of his parents is gravely distorted by his own prior projections. Since the death instinct is a special aspect of the self that Klein believes is always projected during the earliest months, she is led to a theory of anxiety she sums up in the following sentence: 'I hold that anxiety arises from the operation of the death instinct within the organism, is felt as fear of annihilation (death) and takes the form of fear of persecution' ( Klein 1946). It will be clear that this blanket application of the concept of projection is alien to the present approach. Not only is the Kleinian system of thought rooted in a non-evolutionary paradigm that bears no relation to modern biology, but in clinical work it has the effect, inimical to good practice, of directing attention away from a person's real experiences, past or present, and treating him almost as though he were a closed system little influenced by his environment. Another unfortunate effect of applying the concept of projection in this uncritical way is the danger of bringing a useful concept into disrepute. Let us therefore consider the problem afresh. Not infrequently a person is afraid that someone else intends him harm, but to another's eye this expectation seems misplaced. In such circumstances, as we have seen, psychoanalysts are very apt to postulate that the person who is afraid is projecting onto the other hostile intentions that are in himself but that he denies exist. Though there can be no doubt that this can happen it probably happens much less often than is supposed. In fact a situation of the kind described is explicable in at least four ways; and it is necessary to examine the evidence in each case before deciding which explanation, of which two or more together, is most likely to apply:
1. The subject has rightly detected harmful intent in the other person and in so doing has been more sensitive to the situation than the onlooker.
2. The subject during childhood has learnt that significant
-173-
139
people are often hostile when they claim to be friendly, and is therefore apt, through a process of assimilation, to suppose that figures met with in later life are hostile also when they are not. 3. The subject, aware that he is no friend of the other person and even that he is disposed to do him harm, not unnaturally expects his ill intent to be reciprocated.
4. The subject, unaware of his own ill intent, maintains that, whereas he is friendly to the other, the other is hostile to him.
Of these four possible explanations only the process postulated in the fourth can properly be called projection when the term is used in the restricted sense of attributing to others unwelcome features of the self. That the process can be a source of misattributions is not in doubt. How large a proportion of misattributions have this sort of origin is a matter for inquiry.
The case of Schreber: a re-examination
The urgent need for fresh thinking in this area of psychopathology is shown by the findings of a re-examination by Niederland ( 1959a and b) of the case from which all psychoanalytic theorizing about paranoia and paranoid symptoms derives. Freud's original study of the Schreber case, based solely on the patient's published memoirs, appeared in 1911 ( SE 12: 9- 82). Although he later published other papers on paranoia, according to Strachey ( 1958) Freud never modified his earlier views in any material way.
Daniel Paul Schreber was born in 1842, the second son of an eminent physician and pedagogue. By 1884 he was serving as a judge. He then developed a psychiatric illness from which he recovered after some months. He resumed his legal post but after eight years fell ill again. This time he remained in an asylum for nine years ( 1893-1902) towards the end of which he wrote his memoirs. In 1903, shortly after his discharge, they were published, and soon became a subject of psychiatric interest. A principal theme concerns a number of bodily experiences that were extremely painful and humiliating to him. These experiences he construed as 'miracles' performed by God by means of 'rays':
From the first beginnings of my contact with God up to the present day my body has continuously been the object of divine miracles. . . . Hardly a single limb or organ in my body escaped being temporarily damaged by miracles, nor a
-174-
single muscle being pulled by miracles, Even now the miracles which I experience hourly are still of a nature to frighten every other human being to death. 1
Freud's analysis of Schreber's delusions of persecution takes account of no material except that of the memoirs. Freud notes that Schreber's feelings towards God are intensely ambivalent, being on the one hand critical and rebellious and on the other reverential towards someone of whom he stands in awe. Freud calls attention also to the frankly homosexual attitude Schreber sometimes adopts towards God, including Schreber's belief that he had a duty to play the part of a woman for God's enjoyment. From material of this kind Freud postulates that delusions of persecution are attempts to contradict the proposition 'I (a man) love him (a man)', and to replace it by 'I do not love him -- I hate him', and, finally, by 'I hate him, because he persecutes me'.
140
An internal perception is suppressed, and, instead, its content, after undergoing a certain kind of distortion, enters consciousness in the form of an external perception. In delusions of persecution the distortion consists in a transformation of affect; what should have been felt internally as love is perceived externally as hate.
To this process Freud gives the name projection SE 12: 63-6).
In his re-examination of the case Niederland ( "1959"a and b) draws attention to the fact that Schreber's father held extraordinary views about the physical and moral education of children and published a number of books describing his methods.