Posts Tagged ‘animal within’

I The Animal

The animal in us all, including the story of the Wolf Boy and Frankenstein.

by Tony Crisp

This feature originally appeared in the Australian magazine SIN

Frankenstein

The story of Frankenstein is in part at least depicting a person suddenly awakening as a full adult, with all the difficulties of adapting to who they are and what the world does with them and they with it. In this situation, the preparation and de-briefing of childhood never took place, so the wonder and shock were deep.

Another sort of awakening is played out in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where the civilised doctor is confronted by a violent animal-self running out of control. It is a classic story because it depicts something we all meet in one form or another – the animal within! Considering that one of the great animal urges is to fight over territory, modern warfare as irrational as it is, makes one realise how important it is to meet the animal within and ease it into our ‘civilised’ self.

But there is an even older story in which an animal wakes up and realises it is a human. This story is portrayed in its incredibly varied forms by the animal headed gods of many ancient cultures, and in the animal bodied gods of mythology. The drama of such stories lie in the pain and confusion arising from having self awareness while still remaining an animal.

I believe this is one of the greatest well kept secrets, the pain we went through in early childhood when we were artificially woken up to self awareness – you know, having an ego with all the conflict and eternal anxiety, fear of death, pain of love, that goes with it. And what I mean by artificially woken up is that children never exposed to language do not attain self awareness. They remain in a guilt free world of a present day Eden where there is no right or wrong, evil or good. Apparently not even time ruins that unspoilt place of the soul.

The Wolf Boy

A headline in the Daily Star on April 17 1991, at the time the film Dances With Wolves was popular reads: “TRAGIC BOY’S DANCE IN WOLF’S LAIR.” It goes on to say:

A tragic orphan brought up by a pack of wild wolves will never be able to live like a normal man, say doctors. The boy who REALLY danced with the wolves was aged about seven when he was found 29 years ago in the wastes of Southern Russia by a team of oil explorers. He howled like a wolf and savagely bit one of the oil men who christened him Djuma – the Wolf Boy.

Professor Rufat Kazirbayev said doctors had battled to re-educate him to act like a normal human being – but failed.

So where is the being who existed before we learnt to talk? Does it hide in dark corners of our mind keeping out of sight? Perhaps it only comes out at night when we dream. In fact most of us meet this animal not only in the dark hours of our sleep, but also when events surprise us and for moments we drop the circus training we went through as a child. Even if the meeting is wonderful as in the following dream, it is still difficult to accept our own potent untamed self. Maybe because it wants us to be so honest and passionate.

When the horse saw me it ran to me and become very excited and loving, rubbing against me and licking me with a very long tongue.  I was both pleased and slightly threatened. Threatened because it was so intense. At one point though we rubbed against each other with a degree of sexual pleasure.

The Many Brains

Some recent studies of the brain by Paul  Maclean suggest that anatomically we have in fact more than one animal in us. Our brain, like an ancient dwelling that has been added to over the millennia, has three levels. The oldest, the brain stem (medulla), is like the brain of very ancient creatures, the reptiles. In us it deals with just what it does in them – flight and flight, reproduction, territory and ritual behaviour. From this comes rigid behavioural response to an event. Next is the part of the brain we share with other mammals such as cats and rats, the limbic system (cerebellum). Maclean sees this as dealing with the fine sense of caring for young, social relationships such as heirarchy in animal groups and fine survival skills. Overlying these two like a mantle is the cerebrum, the large part of the brain that gives us the potential for human characteristics such as highly developed language and reasoning skills.

The skills and information linked with the cerebrum add to and extend the impulses from the other two ‘older’ animal brains we have. So usually we modify and augment our internal animal. But occasionally the cerebral influence gets distracted or knocked out by drugs, such as alcohol, or exhaustion. Then our animal can live through us again without having to hide in the obscurity of sleep. At such a time we might make love for the first time in our life with total passion, sensation and abandonment of guilt. A sudden extra awareness as if with sharpened senses might arise, enabling us to precisely read another persons body language and non-verbal communication.

But there is a darker side too. A young man of usually gentle behaviour, whose work in his home town in USA, was to spray peoples lawn with a powerful weedkiller, abruptly murdered one of his clients. He had suddenly, and quite out of character, wanted to urinate while working. Instead of finding a toilet he had peed in the customer’s garden. She had come out and complained to him, whereupon he killed her.

Findings show that one of the chemicals in the weedkiller produce a diuretic effect making one want to urinate. It also acts on the brain, and possibly inhibits the cerebrum and cerebellum. If that is so, what the young gardener was left with was his reptilian responses without moral judgement.

So if you want to say hello to your natural self, better not walk alone into that garden of Eden where it dwells, free of morals, words and time. Better take your cerebrum with you.

Crazy As a Jaybird – Sane Reasons for Some Crazy Behaviour

If I am violently sick whenever I eat rice pudding, does it mean I’ve got a screw loose? Does it mean I’m crazy if as soon as I have fallen in love I immediately start to destroy the relationship? Am I on the verge of madness if I get an uncontrollable panic attack every time I hear the tune Lonely Ballerina?

Most of us have some really crazy behaviour or feelings. But it doesn’t mean we have anything wrong with our mental health. This may seem like a contradiction, but weird behaviour may mean our mind is working efficiently and according to plan. All it means is that at some time in our life connections have been made that produce behaviour that in the present circumstances seems completely irrational.

If we experience apparently crazy responses to events, then we may even think of ourselves as neurotic. But what does that mean?

One summer I was standing on a beach with my children. Our family dog, Merlin, was relaxed happily nearby watching us. The sun was getting lower and to catch some of the waning heat I moved to a large rock nearby and leaned back on it. Immediately Merlin looked anxious. He got up and looked at me, obviously disturbed. Then unable to take the panic he was feeling any longer, he bolted from the beach. Despite urgent and forceful shouts for Merlin to stop, sit, come back, he disappeared at top speed, with me after him, worried about roads he would run into. I eventually caught him a mile further along, heading home.

Why would my leaning on a rock spook Merlin? Was he crazy? No he was completely sane, and fortunately I fully understood what he was doing. As soon as he bolted I remembered a similar time two years earlier when he had rushed from the same beach like he was running from hell. It was winter and two of my young sons and I had cleaned up the rubbish deposited on the beach by winter storms. We had piled it together and made a bonfire. To add to the fun I had shown my sons how, if you put empty aerosols on the fire, they exploded with a thunderous explosion. To avoid danger we had used the large rock as cover, and at the time I had leaned on it in much the same way as I had that summer afternoon. After three such explosions Merlin could take it no longer and fled. So my once more leaning on it had triggered the old fear that explosions were about to start again. That was too much.

Pavlov pointed all this out to us long ago, but somehow we have failed to connect it to our own neurotic behaviour. Nevertheless, most of our own strange feelings and actions have the same sort of basis as Merlin’s panic – namely, past experience that is frightening or painful, and that caused us either to link something like a smell, colour, place or person with fear or pain, or that evoked a powerful feeling decision.

For instance when I left my first wife and was living with my present wife, we shared a lovely country cottage in a small hamlet. Although beautiful, the few months I lived there were an emotional hell because I was away from my children, and because of the pain of the divorce. I then moved to be nearer my children. But we had left some beehives at the cottage, and so six months later we started driving back to collect them. On the way I started experiencing severe stomach pains. The suddenness of this, and the fact I couldn’t find any physical cause for the pain made me investigate my feelings. As soon as I did this it was obvious that a part of my nature that was usually unconscious, was just like Merlin. The cottage was a place of torment – why were we going back? More to the point, how could it stop us going back? How could my inner Merlin avoid that pain again?

As soon as I understood the cause, I spoke to myself just as I might have spoken to my dog, or a disturbed horse – ‘Look, it’s okay. We aren’t going to stay at the cottage. We are going to collect the bee-hives and leave. You will not be pushed into that pain. As I did this the pain slowly melted and did not come back’.

Unfortunately many of the events that have caused us to link a place or smell with pain have been forgotten. They occurred in our infancy, perhaps even at birth, and are pre-verbal. Bernard, a manwho during a therapy session was sure he had relived the moments following his birth, told me that as he felt what it was like to be a new born baby, he experienced what he called an instinctive expectation of being greeted by warmth and welcome. This wasn’t provided by his parents. The greeting seemed harsh, as his birth had complications for his mother. The absence of warmth and welcome led to a feeling of not wanting to emerge, of wanting to ‘stay in the egg’, as he put it. This feeling response – conditioned reflex – of not wanting to get involved in the new environment of life outside the womb had persisted unconsciously all his life, causing him to be an introvert who did not want to be involved with other people except as necessity dictated.

Bernard had always explained his tendency to withdrawal as his natural character. He had never thought of it as neurotic behaviour. This is often the case. We rationalise what pushes from unconscious sources. It is only when such behaviour becomes very disturbed, or continually thwarts our attempt to love, or create, or lead a life free of depression or panic, that we might begin to re-label our behaviour. An important point to remember is that at the time of it original occurrence, the links or decisions we make are rational and perhaps a very important part of surviving. For instance Merlin’s flight from what may have felt like a real danger was rational. But his running from me leaning on a rock wasn’t rational any longer. It was now conditioned-reflexive behaviour. This is also true of my stomach pains and Bernard’s tendency to withdraw.

Unfortunately it isn’t easy to recall the experiences of our infancy. Without such memory we might not be able to re-evaluate our behaviour with real insight. But a quicker and more direct route of change is to walk in the direction the neurotic feelings forbid. Conditioning places a hidden barrier between our will and certain actions. Fish kept in a tank with a glass divider placed half way at first bump into the invisible glass. Then to avoid the pain they no longer approach the divider. It becomes a habit, a conditioned reflex. If the glass is removed, they still avoid the area. To live a life beyond the ‘removed divider’ we must move through the barrier, even though our habits will shout out danger, fear, pain!

The first time we do this will be difficult. The second time a fraction easier. And each time after will become less potent until we have created a new habit. A woman, Polly, who had the habit of turning to chocolate every time she needed her mother’s affection, turned this around in a few days. Her mother had never been affectionate, and so Polly had found a substitute in chocolate. This was not something she was conscious of as an adult. To change, when she felt the immense desire for chocolate, she had allowed herself to experience the longing without acting on it. Within hours the longing for her mother emerged from it’s unconscious hiding place. She was able to see the connection, and also realise that the hope for affection from her mother was not likely ever to be fulfilled. So the longing could be directed elsewhere from chocolate or her mother.

Try it. Move across the boundary!

Behavioural Modification Therapy

Modifying the behaviour of other human beings has a long history. Whatever can change the way we feel and act can be a means of altering behaviour. Methods as widely separate as religion, political torture and brain washing, can be thought of as behavioural modification techniques. A major demarcation can be seen in the use of such techniques with people – there are those who want them applied, and those who have them applied against their will.

As a form of therapy or aid to mental and social health, behavioural modification has been practised in every culture in all periods of history. Rituals in which individuals or groups felt more in harmony with each other, or which induced a feeling of cohesion against a common enemy, can be thought of behavioural modification.

In more recent times, although the age old techniques are still used, an enormous amount of research has been undertaken to define exactly how human beings, and of course animals, can be changed or manipulated. After all, such information is incredibly important to religious and political organisations, and to businesses that wish to induce people to buy their products. This has given rise to such varied approaches as physical and mental intimidation, brain surgery, brainwashing, electric shock therapy, drug use, subtle advertising and propaganda, the use of suggested fear to sell or induce and psychotherapy.

In modern psychology, the term behaviour modification means something specific. Ivan Pavlov developed the foundation for modern approaches through his work with conditioned reflexes in dogs. Apart from showing that a dog could be conditioned to salivate when a bell was rung, Pavlov experimented further and performed experiments in which a dog was trained to salivate when the image of a circle was projected on a screen, but when an ellipse was shown it was not trained to have any response. When this was established the shape of the circle was gradually changed toward and ellipse. As the circle was changed the dog showed signs of agitation and lost the response to salivate. The disturbance experienced by the dog was seen as an ‘experimentally induced neurosis’. See: Example under  brain levels.

In 1920 these methods were tried on human beings. The American psychologists John Watson and Rosalie Rayner worked with an eleven-month-old baby who showed no fear while playing with a white laboratory rat. By producing a loud noise each time the baby touched the rat, the baby was conditioned to experience a fearful response when the rat was present.

Having learnt how to artificially create fears in children, Mary Cover Jones experimented with reducing fears already established in children. The two methods she found most effective were 1) Linking the feared object or situation with a new stimulus capable of arousing a positive response. 2) Putting the anxious child with children who showed no fear of the object or situation.

Later, people like Joseph Wolpe, Hans Eysenck, and M. Shapiro, used and developed these methods. This was mostly in connection with people with disabling fear reactions. The ideas of B. F. Skinner who led the behavioural movement in psychology, played a leading role in some approached to modifying human behaviour. Different approaches evolved, and some of these became well known enough to have particular names – systematic desensitisation; aversion therapy; and biofeedback.

There are usually five steps in behaviour modification.

1. Defining what the individual needs to improve their problem.
2. Putting together a method that changes undesirable behaviour and aids the development of desirable responses.
3. Using the program according to the principles of behavioural modification.
4. Careful observation and recording of results .
5. Changing the approach if it aids improvement.

See: aversion therapy; desensitisation therapy.