Trials and Themes – What Makes Humans Tick?

Evolutionary psychology sees human life, like that of any organism, as consisting of strategic attempts to maximise our success along various key axes, such as mating, care-giving, satisfying appetites etc. Along these axes, humans face a variety of unavoidable Life Challenges (what David Attenborough, in one of his TV series, calls “The Trials of Life” - his list of trials includes Finding Food, Hunting & Escaping, Home Making, Friends & Rivals, Courting, Continuing the Line). Life is a series of problems and temporary solutions along these axes, with no single overall purpose or goal.

There is no definitive list (yet) of these motivational axes, but I have put together a list for myself for practical use in the therapy context, which probably covers the main areas. The terms Instincts, Drives, Domains are often used in this context - I find it useful to call these species-specific major themes in human life “THEMAs” (Typically Human Evolved Motivational Axes). Themas can be seen as analogous to schemas, but operating at an even deeper level, in the way that they structure our lives without us being aware of the fact most of the time. Schemas operate at the level where we are not generally aware how much they structure our experience as individuals. Themas operate at the level where we are not even generally aware how much they structure our experience as a species. Although I am describing them as “axes”, which makes them sound like they are outside us, they are actually within us, arising out of a variety of psychological mechanisms/instincts/prepared learning tendencies/neural circuits which have evolved to respond to the different challenges found along these axes. They define what is important to us as members of the human species.

Apart from the basic appetites (for food, water, warmth etc), I list below what I see as the main Themas using the mnemonic “PASTMARKS”.

Parenting – Focus is on care-giving, nurture, protectiveness.

Attachment – Focus is on care-receiving, especially at an early age.

Safety – Focus is on self-protection, both physical and psychological.

Territory – Focus is on possessions, land, home, money, resources in general.

Mating - What can I say… one of the central themes of human life (and literature, film etc…)

Affiliation – Focus is on forming alliances, friendships, cliques/clubs/gangs.

Reciprocity – Focus is on keeping track of fair exchange. Connects with moral emotions such as guilt and outrage.

Kinship – Focus is on our roots, who we belong with, “family” both literally and metaphorically.

Status – Focus is on reputation, “face”, success, fame (usually at a very local level, obviously).

This area of science is still very much a work in progress, and current thinking breaks down many of these areas into further “modules” – Tooby & Cosmides (in Barkow et al), for instance, show evidence for a “cheater detection module” as one of the elements in our reciprocity toolkit. Similarly, our safety-seeking thema/drive operates via cognitive-emotional response systems such as anger and anxiety, and our mating thema can be further subdivided, as Patrick Carnes has pointed out, into various aspects of human courtship such as noticing, demonstrating and falling in love.

I find that this list does, however, cover most of the territory in a way which can be useful for therapists. Naturally, most of the problems that clients bring to therapy relate to goals which lie along these axes, though some axes are of more concern to some people than others (some may prioritise status above affiliation, for instance). And of course conflicts often arise between the various themas, and between our themas and other people’s themas…

I’ll close with some examples of the possible relevance of these axes to common issues which clients bring to therapy:

Social Anxiety: This of course may be partly rooted in Attachment problems, but probably also in difficulties with affiliation, kinship and status, and possibly mating as well.

Addictions: Again, attachment problems are commonly cited, as are difficulties in controlling appetites, and issues with experiencing safety (due perhaps to trauma).

Depression: Paul Gilbert makes a strong case for this being primarily an evolved response to loss of status and territory. Job loss is therefore a common trigger.

Relationship breakdown: While this is obviously a problem which is located on the mating axis, it can also affect pretty much all of the others (run your eye down the list and you’ll see what I mean).

Suicide: For somebody to feel that life is no longer worth living, I would assume that they must feel a distinct lack of success, or prospect for success, along pretty much all of these axes.

I’ll be coming back to the topic of evolutionary theory, and to the list of Themas, in future blogs, but there are other aspects of Naturalism that I also want to explore. Next month I will take a general look at the role of science in psychotherapy.

References

Barkow, J.H, Cosmides, L & Tooby, J. (1996) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. OUP.

Buss, D. (2008) Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Pearson Education.

Carnes, P. J. (2001) Facing the Shadow: Starting Sexual & Relationship Recovery. Wickenburg, AZ: Gentle Path Press

Gilbert, P. (1992) Depression: The Evolution of Powerlessness. Psychology Press.

Helping Homo Sapiens - Bringing an Evolutionary Perspective to the Therapy Room

One of the key elements of a fully naturalistic perspective on psychotherapy will be the integration, without reservations, of our growing knowledge of the evolved basis of human nature.

This perspective implies at least three essential points. The first point is that we do not have an “evolved-nature-plus-something-else”. Like any other organism, our characteristics as a species are fully determined by the long evolutionary process of which we are a product. This view can be described as Evolutionary Naturalism.

Of course this doesn’t mean that each of our day-to-day behaviours is directly determined by this process. As the ethologist Tinbergen pointed out many years ago in his famous “Four Whys”, any particular behaviour is based on

1. Immediate causation , responding to the proximate factors of the environment in which the behaviour takes place

2. Our individual learning/development

3. The function/purpose of the behaviour, i.e. what it is designed to achieve

4. The evolutionary history of our species, which gives rise to our evolved nature

Another way I look at this is by viewing our behavioural, emotional, physiological and cognitive responses as being the product of Three Environments:

A. Our immediate, current Environment (this matches Tinbergen’s first point)

B. Our individual histories, i.e. earlier developmental Environments, where crucial relevant learning took place (this matches Tinbergen’s second point)

C. What Evolutionary Psychology (after Bowlby) calls the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation of our species, i.e. the typical ancestral environment where the main adaptations of our species were laid down (this matches Tinbergen’s third and fourth points)

The second key point is that the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA) of our species, Homo Sapiens, was the environment experienced by hunter-gatherer tribes on the African savannas in prehistoric (specifically Pleistocene) times. Many of our main characteristics as a species were laid down then (and some long before, as we share many of our characteristics with other primates, indeed with other mammals). This means that as a species we are not necessarily always well-adapted to our current environments.

The third point goes even deeper: our evolved drives/instincts do not necessarily always serve us well in any environment (including even the EEA), because evolutionary theory clearly shows that the characteristics of any species will be primarily naturally selected for or against on the basis of gene propagation, not individual adaptation. Of course, satisfaction of individual needs is often a useful shortcut from an evolutionary point of view. For example, as humans (indeed as primates) we enjoy the feeling of achieving status within our community, and it may help us to propagate our genes, even in modern environments, but that satisfaction is often short-lived, and rarely matches our anticipation.

In fact, we are saddled with drives which sometimes serve us well, sometimes quite the opposite. It would be convenient, for instance, if once we had settled down with a partner we never became infatuated with anyone else, but of course our Mating drives/instincts doesn’t just switch off that easily. Similarly, someone who has a harsh, unloving mother could save themselves a lot of emotional pain if they could just say to themselves “My mother is a toxic person; I’ll have nothing more to do with her, because she is bad for me, and I won’t feel any more guilt or grief about it because I am better off without her”. But like all mammals, we are “imprinted on” and attached to the mother we have, whether we like it or not. We may still choose to distance ourselves, but the pain is unlikely to ever completely leave us. Kinship in general is also a very powerful instinctual drive in Homo Sapiens, so the same conflicts can arise for us in relation to abusive siblings, for instance.

I find that taking this evolutionary perspective with certain client problems can be invaluable both in terms of case formulation and psychoeducation. Anxiety disorders are a particularly clear illustration of this, as many of their main themes (contamination, fear of strangers, fear of the dark/small animals etc) make more sense when we consider the EEA of our species, where such things were actually more dangerous to us than they are nowadays. This doesn’t mean that everyone responds with high levels of fear to these perceived threats in their own immediate environment, because not everyone learns/develops all these specific fears – the point is that as a species we find it particularly easy to develop these types of fears at an early age, sometimes following on quite a small trigger (this is often called Prepared Learning), whereas we are unfortunately rather slow to develop fear/anxiety in relation to realistically more dangerous objects such as cigarettes and electrical sockets, because they were not part of our EEA.

This perspective can be helpful because it means that, along with the usual task of helping the client gain an increased understanding as to why they may have been susceptible to developing their particular anxiety problem, we can also help them to understand why human beings in general are susceptible to these problems. This understanding can be very freeing for the client, helping them to have less shame and more self-compassion in relation to their anxiety problems.

Of course, all of this can equally be interpreted in a negative way, and may seem unfair and not very hopeful, a bit like inheriting an old house with lots of problems. But a fundamental aspect of Naturalism is that it sees no reason to assume that the world was in any way made for us, nor that there is any greater plan which has our needs built into it. Therefore a Naturalist like myself is not surprised that there is no particular fairness, nor indeed any ultimate purpose or point, to our human nature and where it brings us – it is simply a given.

This is reminiscent, of course, of where Freud was trying to take us, only somewhat prematurely, as he simply did not have a lot of the relevant information. Evolutionary theory, in particular, was still very confused in Freud’s time.

I’ve mentioned here some specific “drives/instincts” which are important in understanding Homo Sapiens in and out of the therapy room – Mating Attachment, Kinship. I prefer to call them “Themas”, Typically Human Evolved Motivational Axes, because of the baggage which has attached itself to the terms “drive” and “instinct”, and I’ll look at these three and some other important ones in more detail in next month’s blog. See you then…

Some recommended reading:

Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

Diamond, The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee

Wright, The Moral Animal

Gilbert & Bailey, Genes on the Couch

Stevens & Price, Evolutionary Psychiatry

Psychotherapeutic Naturalism – A Philosophical Stance for Therapeutic Practice

To practice effective psychotherapy we need, of course, the following: excellent therapeutic relating skills, a well-grounded working model of human psychology and psychopathology, and a toolkit of relevant interventions. Underpinning all of this we also need a philosophical perspective or stance which acts as a basis for all of the therapeutic work we do. When we first train in counselling & psychotherapy, and again when we apply for accreditation, we are usually asked to write about this under some heading such as “My Philosophy of Therapy”. After more than 20 years in the field, I thought it would be useful to tease out explicitly for myself again the underlying basis of the work I do, and for my Integrative CBT perspective.

I call the stance I take as a therapist “Psychotherapeutic Naturalism” – this is in turn rooted in my overall philosophical view of life and the world: Naturalism. What is meant by this term, and why am I proposing it as a valuable for Psychotherapy?

“Naturalism is the understanding that there is a single, natural world as shown by science, and that we are completely included in it. Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world and derived from conditions that precede us and surround us. Each of us is an unfolding natural process, and every aspect of that process is caused, and is a cause itself. So we are fully caused creatures, and seeing just how we are caused gives us power and control, while encouraging compassion and humility. By understanding consciousness, choice, and even our highest capacities as materially based, naturalism re-enchants the physical world, allowing us to be at home in the universe. Naturalism shows our full connection to the world and others, it leads to an ethics of compassion, and it gives us far greater control over our circumstances.”

Thomas W. Clark, Philosopher, Director, Center for Naturalism: Encountering Naturalism: A worldview and its uses (Somerville, Massachusetts: The Center for Naturalism, 2007). http://www.naturalism.org/publications.htm

Quoted in: Fully Caused: The benefits of a naturalistic understanding of behaviour. 2008 Ken Batts. http://www.naturalism.org/Fully%20Caused.pdf

One of the interesting things about this definition is that, although it is not written with psychotherapy in mind, it refers to some of the themes that are important in psychotherapy: consciousness, choice, control, compassion.

This view that there is a “single, natural world” fully governed by cause-and-effect processes is often called Metaphysical Naturalism. An important aspect of Metaphysical Naturalism is Monism or Non-dualism. This is the view that, contrary to what Descartes proposed, there are no separate “Mind” and “Physical” substances, just a material world which includes the psychological processes taking place in some biological organisms. Naturalists take the viewpoint that reliable knowledge comes from exploring these causal relationships within the natural world – this is called Methodological Naturalism, and is equivalent to the scientific method.

“Succintly, naturalism seeks to apply the methods of the empirical sciences to explain natural events without reference to supernatural causes” (Shook, J.R & Kurtz, P., 2009).

As a Psychotherapeutic Naturalist I believe that all helping professions (and particularly those which aspire to the status of “therapy” (i.e. “treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder; the treatment of mental or psychological disorders by psychological means” - OED 11^th ed.), need to be increasingly based on unifying principles which are given wide consensus not because of personal preference, admiration of a founder, investment in training, ideological preference etc, but because they are more solidly grounded in coherent theory and objective evidence than the competing alternatives; in other words, that they have a scientific basis. Any such principles need to be consistent with the scientific findings of other, neighbouring, disciplines (in the case of psychotherapy, this refers to disciplines such as psychology, biology, anthropology, sociology etc).

There are particular areas in which science has made, and continues to make, findings which are of compelling relevance to psychotherapy. One of these is neuroscience. Neuroscientist Paul Thagard, in The Brain and the Meaning of Life, puts this view strongly, saying “…I will try to show how life can have meaning and value within the framework I call neural naturalism. Naturalism is the view that we can best address philosophical questions by taking into account scientific evidence and theories rather than by seeking supernatural sources.”

Another fascinating area of science which a naturalistic psychotherapist must take seriously is evolutionary theory, including evolutionary psychology. Taking a stance of Evolutionary Naturalism means that we see human beings as complex, highly social, language-and-tool-using apes. As therapists, we will have to come to terms with the fact that human nature consists of a set of adaptations which do not necessarily meet our needs as individuals, but have evolved to maximise the spread of the genes which underlie them. These adaptations also became established in the context of much earlier, hunter-gatherer, environments and may be less relevant to modern environments (simple examples of this are common phobias such as spider phobia and our difficulty controlling our intake of junk foods).

In conclusion, some of the possible implications of a stance of Psychotherapeutic Naturalism are:

• Therapy practice should be based as far as is possible on interventions which have shown their worth relative to other interventions through a rigorous, objective testing process (i.e. a scientific process).

• Therapy practice should be based as far as is possible on up-to-date information on human psychology and physiology.

• Therapists should take seriously the possibility that all of human nature, at least in its general outlines, may in time be open to scientific study.

In future blogs I will be exploring topics such as

• Evolutionary Psychology

• The role of science in psychotherapy

• The problems of choice and free will

• The nature/nurture debate

• Psychotherapy and psychopathology

References/Bibliography

Damasio, A. (2006). Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Vintage.

Dawkins, R. (2006). The Selfish Gene (3^rd revised edition). Oxford: OUP

Dennett, D. (1993). Consciousness Explained. London: Penguin

Hutcheon, P.D. (1996). Leaving the cave: Evolutionary Naturalism in Social Scientific Thought. Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Radcliffe Richards, J. (2000). Human Nature after Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction. Routledge.

Ritchie, J. (2008). Understanding Naturalism. Acumen Publishing

Shook, J.R & Kurtz, P. (2009). The Future of Naturalism. New York: Humanity Books.

Thagard, P. (2010). The Brain and the Meaning of Life. Princeton University Press.