FEAR v. ANXIETY (referring to LeDoux)

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT “ANXIOUS,” 

a book by Joseph LeDoux  

LeDoux feels that what we call “anxiety” and what we call “fear” are two different phenomena that are managed differently by the amygdala and brain connectome.  

He speaks of the “split brain” research he did with Gazzaniga, in which it was vividly demonstrated that if one side was shown something, it could name and identify it accurately.  If the other side was shown the same thing, they couldn’t name the images but derived a kind of feeling from them and explained it creatively.  Consistently, one side could say what something actually was and the other side would “explain” it by inventing a story.  This has been distorted by some theories, calling it female/male, etc. 

Our culture insists that only humans have consciousness, that consciousness is a matter of words, that consciousness (self-awareness) is “better” and “higher” and is the same as “thinking”, which to them is the management of relationships among words.  The sensorium is assigned “poetry,” which is a language of art, sometimes considered fantasy, invention.

It seems that the difference between anxiety and fear is that anxiety is a felt emotional concept, a state of being, and fear is focused on a legitimate threat to survival and suggests something to be done about it, according to the identity of the individual and the resources of the culture.  The object of fear can be named and addressed, but anxiety is a feeling that lacks a story but drives the person to look for one.  Maybe what psychotherapy does is resolve anxiety by finding a convincing object of the fear and suggest ways to resolve it.  

LeDoux feels that fear and anxiety are addressed by two different connectomes or systems: one that responds to internal felt emotion and one that responds to the sensorium, raw neural information.  Behavior can come out of either or both.

I relate this to “spirituality” which is a felt experience that is hard to name or describe (liminality, transcendence, numinous, sublime) versus “religion” which offers named entities to fear (God, the Devil, atheists, “Commies”) and a narrative in which to embed them.  Thus, I suspect that spirituality relates to the same connectomes as anxiety while religion is about named threats that a theological system can explain.

Today there are so many rational threats that religions should be booming, but the offered naming and abating are not working -- they are only effective for those who live in a world that has passed.  Some “religious” wars are about trying to restore that world.  Even in supposedly peaceful settings, there’s a craving for writing and relationship as a source of surrogate authority. There is also much felt anxiety that is going unnamed in relationships, economics, government.  We’re aware of how much is secret or not what we expected (the internet) and how many of the institutions of reassurance have been dispersed (unions, families, school).

It seems to me that spirituality is a creature of images (sensorium) we can feel, but that religion is verbal, often adversarial, and both narrative and logical but logic that takes introspection as a source rather than the sensorium.  This is at the heart of the “Western” religions.

These ideas generated by LeDoux and team seem to lead somewhere instead of shutting down discussion or new evidence.  Whatever the amygdala has to do with it (which seems hard to pin down), it would be a mistake to assume we already know.  The very long bibliography and discussion of various theories show how hard it is to resist closure.

A FIVE-STAGE ACCOUNT OF 

HOW HUMAN BEINGS DEVELOP

Keep in mind that as each new ability or understanding comes “on-line,” it then loops back to connect with everything previous and that creates new synergies that weren’t possible earlier.

I.

Human beings are self-unfolding, pulling in what they need from around them, and creating their own internal order.  The drive to do this is kindled at conception and guided by the genome, the epigenome, and the womb environment which connects to the mother’s molecular status and reactions.

So the first stage of fear/anxiety is in the mother, whether she is safe and peaceful, or aroused and frightened.  This affects not only the state of the baby -- when the fetus is old enough she will feel its movement and know how much it participates in her emotional state as expressed in the blood according to the secretions of her organs -- but also the development pathways as the baby’s organs are created and calibrated.  Adrenaline, cortisol and so on can influence gender, both whom to desire and gender identity, to say nothing of genital formation.

Once outside the womb, the baby begins develop its sensory systems, not just eyes, ears and so on, but awareness of gravity, nearness, velocity, and some estimate maybe several hundred other things related to what is outside the body/skin.  As soon as something is perceived, it is built into the “map of the world” of the baby.  At this early point the new entity forms an opinion of whether the world is trustworthy, but there are also genetic factors.  If some genes are missing, the baby has no fear.  This anomaly will not last long in an unprotective world.  The original genes were meant to promote survival by wariness.  It is also possible that an epigene might turn off this gene.  There is a named syndrome in females, who are more likely to be protected and even treasured for their fearlessness, NOT the kind that is learned, but rather innate, an innocence.

The development of emotions at this stage is unfocused and unnamed inside the person, but identified and treated differently by the care-giving persons.  Some feelings could lead to abuse, which can cause suppression of emotions with internal consequences.

II.

Once all the senses are in place and the skeletal and muscular body has developed, the adrenals activate puberty, a whole new system of hormones and organs that adds new capacities, but also new reasons for worry.  A changing body can be hard to manage and can evoke predatory attitudes from others.  Increased awareness of other people’s emotions means realizing the state of the marriage on which the family is based, the restrictions and requirements of school, and possibly larger forces like racism, or war.  

By now the impact of the world outside the skin is causing emotions the person is able to name and that the culture will treat according to its way of labeling and managing.  Suppression, soothing, rage, laughter or mocking -- these will teach the person about the world.  The autonomic nervous system, combined with hormonal signals, are felt but perhaps not named nor accurately understood.

III.

By this stage the brain is doing a lot of sorting and filtering.  The person can reflect on what they see, actively reject some things and fasten onto others.  Not until the early twenties are they able to get to the meta level of thought, understanding why things happen, what ought to be done, make introspective inquiries, consider revolution.

This is the most obvious stage, the one we are aware of and act on.  But I begin to realize how many people never step outside their cultural boundaries or even know there is anything out there.  If it intrudes or if they much leave the familiar, they are both anxious and fearful.

IV.

This level is meant to refer to the person’s ability to connect to others.  When there is a threat, to look to see whether the others take it seriously.  As personality dictates, to respond in concert or in defiance.  To assume a responsible role, like a teacher or soldier, and react according to what is one’s duty.  The body of learning from experience is enlarging all the time.  Mirror cells, empathy, bonding, team-building, there’s no way to evade being a social animal.

V.

Cosmic awareness  Transcendence.  Not everyone seems to have this direct experience of “being,” but for those who it can be “the mysterium tremendum and fascinans” that overwhelms with the power of the universe, or the “oceanic feeling” of belonging to everything reassuringly.  Not only is it a felt and emotional concept, trying to define it into a theological system will end it.

HEADED FOR . . . WHAT?

Jennifer Granick

Stand back!  Here come those four horses again!  This time their names are:   "Centralization, regulation, and globalization," Granick said, have wrought havoc on a space once thought of as "a world that would leave behind the shackles of age, of race, of gender, of class, even of law."

Wait!  That’s only three horses.  Read this story to figure out what the fourth horse’s name is.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/08/06/dream-internet-freedom-dying-warns-top-civil-liberties-attorney

Already this morning people are finding they are blocked from this blog.  I’m glad they tell me.  But worse is the plague of people who know what’s wrong, which to their minds is either due to my deficiencies (user error) or a lamentable lack of knowledge and superior judgement that they happen to have.  

Helpers, like the people who want to “help” me by coming over and getting all my property in shape: mowing the lawn, getting rid of the cats and books, and forcing me to buy a new wardrobe.  They never realize that conformity is a source of violence, unless they’re asked to put in a water meter or wear seat belts or stop driving drunk or make sure their kids are vaccinated.

So the people who wish me well set out to “fix” my problem with the Internet.  Except for the techies at 3Rivers who are employed on the premise that they will do this, if they can spare time from telling me how much 3Rivers appreciates me and advising me to “have a nice day.”  They tell me lots of irrelevant things in jargon I don’t understand.

If I wrote what I know about kittens, people would scream, because they haven’t known what happens to kittens and cats, how much they are metaphors for both that which is cute (but expendable) and that which is malevolent.  Terrible, daily, blood-soaked fates for many animals.  Cuteness and hiding are not very effective defenses.  The most vicious people on the planet are those who insist that human babies be conceived, carried to term and born.  At that point, they are abandoned: no help for food, shelter, and education.  Controllable. Commodities.

Medium.com is another place where I post.  It’s in a state of becoming, always adding and subtracting features, which is what the techies love, but I can never anticipate which feature will work when, so I just write my posts on iPages (which cannot be upgraded in the US -- I suppose it’s a legal loose end from when Apple bought it) or on Blogger (prairiemary.blogspot.com)  and then cut and paste.  Don’t tell anyone, because if they figure that out, they’ll block it.

They don’t understand why I write.  On Medium.com this post will appear as a “response” to one of Tim’s raving rippers which is classified as a “response” to some nice perky little high school assignment about why you should write short stories, even if they don’t sell.  I think that eventually Medium will have to begin censoring content.  I hope they censor the stupid.  Maybe they could start a parallel stream for the darker folks.  Maybe they could put a little black bat on those posts as a warning.

Tim writes from his gut, explosive and vulgar -- but real.  He says his alternative is to go crazy.  I don’t care why he writes -- I just love the energy and surrealism.  I write because I love the act of writing and I don’t care whether it sells or anyone reads it or I get praise.  People usually praise the wrong thing anyway.  They read as voyeurs and force readers into their fetish life.  You don’t think perky naive little females have a fetish life?  They ARE fetishes.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/if-you-give-a-mouse-a-xanax-1438978022  Last night I read this snarky little review of LeDoux’s new book, “Anxious”.  The reviewer missed the point.  The book is a sort of summary of what we know so far,  that addresses our unbalanced neglect of our pre-existing mammal processes.  The standing order of scholarship is based on writing, logic, and other white male European priorities. In that context, all is words and that’s our entitlement and superiority as humans, so why consider anything else? 

But LeDoux is a musician -- he can think in sound patterns and emotional valences.  Without words.  This is exactly what I’ve been working on in terms of the meaningful experiences we call “worship, ritual, ceremony, liturgy” in order to get beyond all the verbiage, which someone always wants to copyright.

LeDoux is a major scientist making genuine breakthroughs about how brains work.  He sent me a response worthy of Wittgenstein, who famously said that sometimes words are useless to convey a concept and all you can do is point.  I sent LeDoux an email to nudge him about Stephen Toulmin, who was a good pointer.  So LeDoux, who knows this, was happy to be reminded of Toulmin, and knows that I have a vague idea of Wittgenstein, so he sends me a single emoticon.  A smiley face.

My father used to sign letters with a little drawn smiley.  When I was starting out in Browning, I drew one with a scribble of curly hair and round glasses.  I did that so much that Bob made a rubber stamp of it.  He thought it was cute and funny, though rather childlike, but I was much younger than he and did what he told me, like a rubber stamper, so his assumed concepts came through in that act, a gift.

It was education in theatre and thought that revealed this invisible subtext, and that eventually ended the relationship.  Because though he was older and admired by many, I could not explain this to him -- he didn’t want to hear it.  So much of helping and generosity is a cover for control.  So much of control is a matter of denying reality, reducing it to little cartoons, using white-out to deny suffering.  I wanted a little control.  I stopped drawing that face and threw away the rubber stamp.

The irony and tragedy is that Bob was also a musician, a jazz musician at that.  But what I saw was a man wearing himself out, shrinking his brain through age, self-abuse, bad nutrition, heart attacks, little strokes, suspicion of doctors, efforts to control.  All because he needed to be famous.  And what I saw after his death was hyenas parting him out for profit, dispersing his lifework to suit their own importance, denying and distorting him for politics.  It happens to everyone, including Charlie Russell.  So why create a body of work?

Why is Joe LeDoux doing much much more than offering Xanax to mice?  If you don’t know, just go buy an anthology of short stories instead, the ones written by perky little girls who shone in high school and still think that going to a bookstore to read her writing to an audience of three, one of whom is stone deaf, means anything at all.  After all, she’s wearing pink feather handcuffs like Helen Mirren in that movie -- what was it called?  Oh, yeah:  “Love Ranch,” about a Nevada brothel.

The fourth horse is called “Who’s on Top?”

ONE-WOMAN STUDY GROUP

At present I am reading, rereading, underlining, high-lighting, dog-earing and cross-referencing two books about the implications of the new neuro-research.  

“The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Subjective Experience” by Mark Solms and Oliver Turnbull (2002)  Intro by Oliver Sacks.

“The Emotional Brain: the Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life” by Joseph LeDoux (1996)

This is so absorbing for a number of reasons, as follows:

My understanding of religion has come to be that it is survival-based in the sense of Ray Rappaport’s basic understanding of survival being between two “shores” of dynamic behavior. “Religion” is a thermostat-like category of guiding beliefs recommending the main channel of culture and warning against the dangers of the edges.  It is also a way of reconciling the contradictions between the survival of the individual and the survival of the cultural group.  (It also carries and conserves cultural evolution.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/books/review/art-of-darkness.html?_r=0

How nonconformist can a person be without the culture legitimately destroying that individual?   Conversely a recent Pico Iyer essay (link above) asks just how unconventional, anti-social, iconoclastic, or offensive can a writer be in the interest of enlightenment?

This vid is not on that subject but is a good intro to his thought.  http://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home?language=en)  It points to the death of nations as a sort of religious patriotism.

On the other hand, how can a cultural group demand the death or criminalization of an individual who doesn’t really endanger the group or whose “crime” is simply a convenient opinion of the group.  (“Islam is bad.”)  When is it legitimate for one group to try to destroy another group, killing many individuals in a genocide?  How is it that small terrorist groups think they can persuade the global culture to change by killing individuals?

Isis

Quite apart from religious institutions interwoven with national cultures, I am interested in the “spiritual” which I approach through Victor Turner’s idea of “liminality” and Eliade’s definition of hierophany, the felt sacred.  What is it that happens in the brain?  Can it be caused at will?  How does this relate to formal religious institutions, which can be interpreted as a form of theatre.  I’m composing a “handbook” of ideas.

On a personal level, family matters have involved brain trauma that affected behavior I’d like to understand.  As well, I sometimes find my own dynamics surprising to myself (!) and I’m beginning to watch for signs of aging that might mean changing strategies.

U of Chicago Div School population

On a social level several groups hold my interest.  One is the loose community of Blackfeet and other residents of the rez.  (53 years duration) Another is the small and rather arrogant denomination of Unitarian Universalists who ordained me (39 years).  To what insights and obligations should I respond?  This last keys into the U of Chicago Div School, which addresses cultural religious methods and universals.  The Div School, so far as I know, has not addressed neurotheory.  A subset is the rising concern about who should BE a minister.  (Should I have been ordained?)  

The most recent compelling demographic is discarded and abused boys (7 years duration).  This is also the most urgent group since so many are being damaged and killed.

As a thinking strategy, I am opposed to dichotomies, unless by interacting they create a range of results.  Thesis-antithesis= a panorama of possibilities.  I didn’t know until this morning that Kinsey posited SIX possible positions between exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality.  (I was reading a discussion of Charles Blow’s bold and provocative new book, “Fire Shut Up in my Bones.”)  Only six?  I would suggest hundreds when one considers a range of situations, a range of personalities, a range of genital and genetic possibilities.  

Neuro-research, whether it is studying brain lesions or behavior algorithms, at least interacts with everything because it is our instrument.  In fact, Solms says explicitly that the brain is the organ that evolved to manage the interface between the insides of creatures and the outside environment, what I call “in-skin” v. “out-skin.”  That’s its job and whatever in the brain helps that constant reconciliation and readjustment is going to keep the creature surviving between the banks of flowing life.  The instrument must grow as it works, and -- in fact -- that’s what it does, with the larger result being the growth and survival of the culture.  The planet moves -- it is a dance.

What’s particularly interesting about neuro-research, apart from the excitement of always finding new little brain bits with special processing abilities, is that it is demonstrable on a computer screen.  One ends up with a map instead of philosophical categories based on introspection.  Sometimes behavior that has seemed learned or automatic reflex turns out to be quite different in the way it works in the brain.

Like the shift from thinking of species in terms of the way they look and act to focusing on the internal codes of their DNA and how they unfold from previous species, this new way of looking at human thought and action demands new definitions for old words, as  well as entirely new words.  Emotions that are not what we thought they were or that are lumped together, turn out to need a whole new reframing.

For instance, to tie this post together, one of my nuclear family's problems was unpredictable violent behavior after trauma to the pre-frontal cortex.  Brain research lays out the terrain this way:  there are different KINDS of aggression that go through quite different pathways.  Solms describes the RAGE (including anger) SYSTEM.  (There is no “rage button” but rather a sequence of interactions.)

This form of arousal is usually “frustration-based when goal-directed actions are thwarted.”  . . . “The RAGE system is associated with only one of them: so-called “hot” aggression.  The “cold” type of aggression, associated mainly with predatory behavior, has little to do with feelings of anger or rage: rather, [rage or hot aggression] has to do with appetitive seeking and is therefore driven by the dopaminergic system described above.”   (Underlining substitutes for Solms’ italics in the original.) This was my father, my brother, and my husband: hot-heads who expected much of themselves -- more than they could deliver -- in part because the family expected (sometimes demanded) a lot from them.  After their brain damage they were always a bit disabled in their ability to think and perform.  They couldn’t understand why. They became frustrated and the energy exploded.  (My father stopped when we kids became too old to spank.  My husband stopped as a result of his second divorce.  But then the same forces turned in on them with bad results: depression, high blood pressure.)  

Solms says, anger/rage “has to do with appetitive seeking and is therefore driven by the dopaminergic system.”  That is, this ancient kind of rage comes from desire for basic survival -- like seeking for food or defending territory or belonging to family.  For instance, those wild demonstrations of emotion that chimpanzees can make by whooping and slashing the air with branches.  A subset is “irritability” that arises with constant small frustrations (road rage) but rarely the major challenges that the system evolved to meet.

On trial for cold-blooded murder

Then comes Solms’ really chilling message.  “There is a third variety of aggression associated with male dominance behavior.”  Wiki defines it this way:  “Dominance in the context of biology and anthropology is the state of having high social status relative to one or more other individuals, who react submissively to dominant individuals.”  Frustration has nothing to do with it -- they are successful in reaching their goals simply by menacing, being Alpha.  

Solms goes on:  “Neurobiologists classify this type of aggression with the ‘social emotions,’ . . .The fact that aggression has at least two different neural substrates must have some important implications for psychopathology (for forensic psychology and psychiatry).”  I will be searching for more research about this.  I see it as the basis for abuse of children and women by high-ranking men (including Euro-big shots); as torture-based terrorism by men focused on “respect”; as stud-behavior in herds; and as the felt entitlement of killers of all sorts.  It fascinates us, not just because of the danger, but also because dominant persons are magnetic, in the way that lions attract satellite carrion-eaters.  

Michael Douglas portraying Gordon Gecko

But a true dominant has to really BE recognizably dominant, not just controlling or demanding or even violent.  It has nothing to do with species except that among humans it can be complex.  There are not many true dominants.  Sometimes they are described as “cold” and “amoral,” but I’ve met a few animals that were wired that way as individuals -- not as a species.  Testosterone may have something to do with it, but it’s not just sexual.  Think Gordon Gecko.  Think God and Lucifer.