“My Brain Made Me Do It” – The Problem of Free Will and Choice

If we take Naturalism as a starting point, as this blog does, then the question as to when, how and to what extent we freely choose our behaviour leads us in directions that are at odds with everyday thinking.

As I previously quoted in my introductory Psychotherapeutic Naturalism post

(http://psychotherapeuticnaturalism.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html)

“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.”

Thomas W. Clark, quoted in: Fully Caused: The benefits of a naturalistic understanding of behaviour. 2008 Ken Batts. http://www.naturalism.org/Fully%20Caused.pdf

Once we see every aspect of our thinking, feeling, behaviour and physiology as part of a web of cause-and-effect, it simply doesn’t leave any room for free will in the way most people think of it. The most common everyday view is probably still the dualistic one, namely that there is a mind distinct from physical brain processes (and therefore separate from the universal network of cause-and-effect) which does the choosing. However, there seems to be no good evidential basis for this view, nor indeed is it clear that this is even a coherent, meaningful notion (I will address the issue of mind-body dualism at more length in a future blog).

Of particular interest are the findings of neuroscience. Think about this, for instance:

A pioneering experiment in this field was conducted by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he measured the associated activity in their brain (in particular, the build-up of electrical signal called the readiness potential). Although it was well known that the readiness potential preceded the physical action, Libet asked how the readiness potential corresponded to the felt intention to move. To determine when the subject felt the intention to move, he asked her to watch the second hand of a clock and report its position when she felt that she had felt the conscious will to move.

Libet found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision by the subject to flick his or her wrist began approximately half a second before the subject consciously felt that she had decided to move. Libet's findings suggest that decisions made by a subject are first being made on a subconscious level and only afterward being translated into a "conscious decision", and that the subject's belief that it occurred at the behest of her will was only due to her retrospective perspective on the event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

So the fact that we subjectively feel like we are making a choice is no guarantee that it really is the case…

But where does that leave us in relation to responsibility, freedom etc? These questions have a particular relevance for us as therapists, because issues of choice, influence, and responsibility for change are so central to the work we do. It’s clear that we do have desires, beliefs and goals, and that the process of choosing between alternative courses of action arising out of these does occur. However, it’s also clear that we have, at the very least, less free choice than we think/feel we have.

Some useful points for us as therapists might be:

We can at least assume a lessened role for free choice in human behaviour, with more attention paid to what goes on automatically outside of conscious awareness, to what we do habitually, and to the causal role of environmental stimuli.

We can remember that people can have full responsibility for their actions without necessarily having full control of them; we don’t have full control of our dog’s behaviour, but we are fully responsible for it nonetheless.

We can remember that emphasising the supposed role of willpower in achieving change is not actually particularly helpful (see also Integrative CBT blog from January 2011: http://integrativecbt.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html )

While we will no doubt continue to feel as if we have free will, we will probably have to make even greater shifts in our thinking about the issue as time goes by.

Hopefully, this is a start - for those who would like to read further on the subject, here are some suggestions:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hot-thought/201101/how-free-is-your-will

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-brain-and-consciousness/201101/mind-brain-and-consciousness

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/201101/external-supports-your-willpower

Dennett, D.C. (1985) Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Oxford: OUP.

Dennett, D.C. (2004) Freedom Evolves. London: Penguin.

Elster, J. (2000) Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction and Human Behavior. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Evatt, C. (2010) The Myth of Free Will. Kearney: Morris Publishing.

Stanovich, K.E. (2004) The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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

Standing on Solid Ground: Psychotherapy and Science

In my January blog I championed the view that all helping professions need to be based on sound first principles, particularly those which aspire to the status of “therapy”. In other words, they should be based on sound science, which can be defined as “…the organized, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses the knowledge into testable laws and principles” (E.O. Wilson 1998, p. 57, italics in the original). I also outlined some of the possible implications of Naturalism for therapists, and I want to expand on that here in relation to the scientific approach to gaining knowledge, which Paul Thagard (2010) reminds us differs from everyday reasoning “…in several important respects involving mechanisms, mathematics, social structures, systematic observations, instruments, and experimentation.”

I am suggesting that as psychotherapists we may need to take science more seriously than we currently do, and I list below what I believe to be the main practical implications of this for psychotherapists; I wonder how close any of us come to achieving these targets and working within what is called the “Scientist-Practitioner Model” in the fields of clinical and counselling psychology.

Therapy should consist, in part, of collaborative scientific exploration.

This means that the hunches, assumptions, intuitions, feelings and beliefs of both therapist and client should be explicitly clarified and jointly reality-tested. In this way, psychotherapy should be a self-correcting practice as far as is possible. There is no good reason to think that we can completely trust our feelings and intuitions (as modern psychology has clearly demonstrated; see Sutherland’s work, mentioned below) - our “gut feelings” are useful pointers, but they need to be concretely formulated and objectively tested. As therapists our gut feelings about a client can sometimes feel very compelling, but they are often just a result of our mental “filters”. The gut feelings that clients have can’t always be taken at face value either, if for instance their gut is telling them that they are no good or that there is danger everywhere. Intuitions should be tested, not just trusted.

Therapy practice should be based as far as possible on interventions which have shown their worth through rigorous testing processes.

This means that therapists should familiarise themselves with the latest “evidence-based” findings in relation to therapeutic change processes, and be open to incorporating them into therapeutic practice, if not directly then indirectly through referral or multidisciplinary teamwork. Some well-established examples are: the fact that certain antidepressants help to speed up some people’s recovery from moderate depression (NICE, 2004), and the fact that some anxiety problems, and especially specific phobias, respond much more quickly to a combination of talk therapy and behavioural experiment, than to talk therapy alone (Wells, 1997). Of course, the talk therapy that Wells is referring to here would be principally of a Cognitive-Behavioural kind, as the scientific evidence points to this being the most effective approach to date for working with anxiety problems. (For an Integrative perspective on CBT, check out my blog at http://integrativecbt.blogspot.com)

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

This means that therapists should familiarise themselves with the main well-established scientific discoveries in areas such as cognitive science, brain biology, and evolutionary psychology which are relevant to our understanding of human functioning and dysfunction. A good example of this is the work which has been done on the role of the amygdala in anxiety and arousal – a very accessible discussion of this can be found in “Flagging the Problem” by Irish GP Dr. Harry Barry.

Another important example is the work of Judith Rich Harris, who draws on up-to-date findings in behavioural genetics and evolutionary psychology to demonstrate the lack of evidence for any significant role played by nurture in personality development: “…whenever a research method is used that controls for, or is not much affected by, the genetic differences between families, the home environment and the parents’ style of child-rearing are found to be ineffective in shaping children’s personalities” (J.R Harris 2006, p.32).

Out of many other possible examples, I would finally like to draw attention to the huge amount of well-grounded psychological research which has been done on the unreliability of human judgment and decision-making. As I flagged earlier, these findings are nicely summarised in Stuart Sutherland’s entertaining and mind-opening book “Irrationality” (Sutherland, 1992). Therapists, of all people, need to know how unreliable many of our judgments are (and how we tend to stick to them in the face of evidence to the contrary), given that our clinical judgments are both so difficult and so important.

By its very nature, science will often give us different answers than our instincts will (Wolpert 2000; Pinker 1998), but that is exactly why we need it.

References, reading list:

Barry, H. & O’Keefe, S. (2007) Flagging the Problem: A New Approach to Mental Health. Liberties Press.

Brüne, M. (2008) Textbook of Evolutionary Psychiatry: The origins of psychopathology. Oxford: OUP.

Harris, J.R. (1999) The Nurture Assumption. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Harris, J.R. (2006) No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. W. W. Norton & Co.

Lane, D.A. & Corrie, S. (2006) The Modern Scientist-practitioner: A Guide to Practice in Psychology. Routledge.

Miller, W.R. & Carroll, K.M. (2006) Rethinking Substance Abuse: What the science shows, and what we should do about it. New York: Guilford Press.

NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) (2004) National Clinical Practice Guideline Number 23, Depression: Management of depression in primary and secondary care

http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/pdf/CG23fullguideline.pdf

Pinker, S. (1998) How the Mind Works. London: Allen Lane.

Sutherland, S. (1992) Irrationality. London: Constable & Co.

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

Wells, A. (1997) Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders. Chichester: Wiley & Sons.

Wilson, E.O. (1998) Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Boston: Little, Brown.

Wolpert, L. (2000) The Unnatural Nature of Science. London: Faber & Faber.

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.