Posts Tagged ‘conditioned reflexes’

Conditioned & Unconditioined Reflexes or Responses

As humans we are all conditioned by our parental and cultural influences. Even our education is a form of conditioning. See  Programmed

But at times human or animal programming is put in place either by forced training or by suggestion using our fears, hopes etc. Fear of death, of not caring for loved ones, is massively used in advertising and political propaganda. Often we see such things as natural feelings. So what is the difference between unconditioned and conditioned programming?

It is difficult to decide, but our basic unconditioned urges are the urge to survive, to eat, sleep, find a sexual partner and have intercourse, to care and be cared for, to defend our selves and family, self assertion,  also growth is an instinctive urge. But each of these is open to so much pressure from pain, from emotions, from social pressure, from child hood trauma, by the images we are presented about getting rich, getting power, getting sex, avoiding danger, that it is a very difficult area to really understand.

Although we are used to thinking of animals showing conditioned reflexes, as  with Pavlovian training, we seldom realise what a large part they play in human life. This is obvious in the problems we would face in going against social conditioning. When we move against an implicit social conditioning, we feel the pressure or pain of that – whether it is sexual, clothing, or whatever it is. If we go against such conditioning we may discover the underlying feelings and forces that have created the conditioning in the first place. Dreams often reveal to us what our conditioning is, and how it was imprinted.

Human beings in general are still largely moved by the old reptilian and mammalian urges, pushed into war, conflict and murder, territorialism and old mating patterns in ways that are far from rational – these are unconditioned responses. Most of us are urged to action by factors that are still completely or largely unconscious, arising as they do from levels of our being we know little of.

Because we have moved far away from being natural animals and have existed as humans for ages, we cannot and should not try to rid ourselves of our human programming. What we can do is to attempt to become more whole by integrating our animal selves we still carry in us, and attempt to remain in contact with our core self. See Touching Your Core;  Brain Levels and Dreams

Sometimes it might be we have problems about living, and suffer the civilised ills of neurosis, depression, sexual or eating problems or identity difficulties. See the link at the end of this feature.

Two examples of this follow.

Example: 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. My second wife and I then moved to be nearer my children. We had left some beehives at the previous cottage however, 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 think of 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 which was usually unconscious, was just like my dog, responding in a conditioned reflexive way. The cottage was a place of torment – why were we going back? More to the point, how could it stop me going back? How could it deter me from facing that pain again? As soon as I explained that we were not staying there and the painful situations no longer existed the pain went and never came back.

An important point here that needs to be emphasised is that the unconscious is not a mechanical thing but is a part of our own living mind and consciousness, and is responsive. As shown by the example above our instincts, the animal we are and meet in dream and in the unconscious can respond by being talked to – just as a animal does that trusts us. So when you suffer panic attacks and sudden unexplained pains you can talk to your animal/instincts and it can often help.

As an example of this, some years ago I was taking a large and friendly Alsatian dog belonging to a friend for a walk. We had been playing with a stick and the dog, Sultan, was still carrying the stick in his mouth. Suddenly Sultan saw a black Labrador dog in a nearby truck. He immediately went into a frenzy of rage. I had him held tightly on a lead, so he couldn’t attack the dog, but the stick in his mouth was shredded.

This would again seem like an irrational response if we didn’t know that Sultan had been attacked by a black Labrador when he was a pup. Mike’s response was just the same as Sultan’s. We need to remember that we are all animals, and we still carry the ‘R’ brain. We can however, mitigate such responses by understanding their origins and releasing or reprogramming the conditioned response.

A man exploring his dream world wrote:

Here I experienced what I suppose are the sort of nightmare images along with feelings of fear. A nightmare scenario. But as I meet them I recognise that they are simple and see them as projections of images arising from fears that we frighten ourselves with. There is a mechanism in us to project such images to keep us away from whatever may have been the source. This is exactly a Pavlovian conditioned reflex. The original experience produced pain or fear. The original experience also had some physical characteristics in terms of objects, places, and perhaps people. Any of those characteristics when met again can trigger a Pavlovian response. Psychologically the response is to say in huge letters, “Keep Away”. This is a natural and instinctive way of helping us to survive. Unfortunately it means that many people constantly avoid the source of their original conditioning and so cannot reprogram it.

The conditioning not only keeps one away from the people, places, and situations that were the original cause, but it also keeps one out of one’s own resources. And such conditioning stands in the way of former relationships, former self-expression and creativity.

So as I look at this nightmare scenario – these nightmare images – I recognise them for what they are and pass through them, seeing, as it were, the projectors that produce the images. I can see that the images project from some of my most profound childhood terrors. They can cause an eruption of all those old feelings about such things as my torture, abandonment, sex. And I look into these images to see what lies behind the outer form, and I see clearly my childhood fears that I am gradually meeting and integrating.

Now I have reached a point where I am trying to summarise where all this leaves me or leads me.

Well, it leaves me with a multitude of other questions.  I laugh here because this is such a Me trick, to end with more questions than I began with.  But let me see if I can summarise.  What have I learned?

Well, it all goes on, and on, and on.  There is never a final end to anything.  I laugh because that is the reality that we live in.  That is a part of the plan.  You think you have reached your goal and that the journey has ended, and it hasn’t.  A whole new area opens up – hopefully to your delight.  A door opens, a door closes, another antagonist comes into the arena.  Dear God, it is never ending.

So dealing with the habits that arise from conditioned reflexes is largely recognising what they are, and in doing so go through the awful images guarding them. See Life’s Little Secrets

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!

Bio-feedback

Observing internal changes is not new to the twentieth century. Practitioners of Eastern and Christian meditation techniques have been using it for centuries. They observed changes in respiration, heartbeat, and states of consciousness, and therefore had an immediate personal feedback concerning what influence their meditation or breath-control was having. They could thereby reinforce or modify it.

Using electronic equipment to give feedback allowed external observers to be sure of what changes were being produced in the body and mind of the subject. It also enables people who have not spent years in meditation practices and the development of self observational techniques to make changes in their mood and body much more quickly because of the feedback given. In essence this allows the subject to gradually gain a greater degree of voluntary control over their usually involuntary internal processes such as temperature, heartbeat and mental states. In recent years instruments and techniques have been developed that allow epileptics to reduce attacks. That means you are no longer a victim of your own unconscious responses. See Victim.

The equipment allows the subject to focus on a particular internal response, such as heartbeat or brain patterns. Using various techniques such as imagery or relaxation, the subject can be aware, through a tone, or a signal on a screen, how well they are reducing tension, slowing heartbeat, or whatever they are aiming to do. When the signal shows they are succeeding this results in a positive feedback that enhances their performance by pointing out what approach is working. Therefore bio-feedback devices are training devices that can help people learn skills connected with mental and physical control.

This modern approach to bio-feedback has its roots in the 1940’s, but it did not gain recognition until nearly twenty years later. Neal E. Miller and Leo DiCara discovered that by using a means of electrical stimulation to the pleasure centre in the brain of laboratory rats, the rats could be trained to do extraordinary feats like decrease their heart rate at will – dilate the blood vessels of one ear more than the opposite ear, or control the rate of urine formed in their kidneys. Miller was regarded at the time as one of the world’s leading authorities on animal learning abilities from his 40 years of work in the field.

Miller and DiCara concluded that because people are smarter than rats, and already have developed voluntary control over some functions, they should be able to learn such skills more easily. His reasoning was that through such techniques humans might be able to control blood pressure, even out irregular heartbeat, release spastic colon, deal with tension, without the use of drugs.

Miller and DiCara’s work was not replicated by others. But unfortunately tests with humans started before this had a negative effect on further research. At the National Institute on Ageing in Baltimore USA, Bernard Engel and Theodore Weiss had found in the late 60’s that people who suffered from epilepsy, when linked to a machine which provided visual and auditory signals were able to control the symptoms which usually led to an epileptic fit. In this way they managed to reduce the number of epileptic attacks they suffered.

Joe Kamiya of the University of Chicago worked to provide another landmark. Using subjects who had no background of mental training, Kamiya monitored their brain activity with an EEG machine, and had the subjects guess whether they were producing the alpha waves indicating relaxation. If the subject guessed correctly, Kamiya would tell them. This led to a rapid increase in the ability of the subject to produce alpha waves at will. Instead of his verbal feedback, Kamiya later built the machine to produce a tone when alpha rhythm occurred. Subjects then quickly learned that a relaxed and empty mind would produce the tone, and attempting to think about a problem would shut the tone off.

Kamiya’s experiments were the first to show how humans can learn to control internal physical and mental states. It was therefore hoped that the altered state of mind and body which produces alpha rhythms could be clearly defined. However, further experiments showed that alpha could arise in other situations than those of quiescent rest. So there has been no clear definition.

The main use of bio-feedback is in helping subjects change behaviour patterns which have a physiological basis. Of course this influences the mind and emotions through the body-mind unity. See: the slow breath; example in Buddhism and dreams; dream yoga; yoga and dreams.

In connection with dreams, the act of dreaming can itself be seen as a form of bio-feedback. Even the most modern of dream theories suggest that although dreams arise from a chaotic aspect of brain functioning during sleep, the content of dreams is still directed by factors of body, memories and personal idiosyncrasies. Other investigators such as Vasily Kasatkin have found evidence for dreams directly depicting physiological processes. Dreams can therefore be thought of as having the possibility of giving direct feedback on what is occurring in ones body and deeper levels of consciousness. When they do this they are a means of bio-feedback. But I see dreams originate from our core self – see See: the two powers; body dreams; Kasatkin, Vasily.

The vast majority of dreams however, when investigated are seen to be giving very full feedback on the structure and processes of ones identity, along with ones mental and emotional processes. Particularly they display the functioning of the self-regulatory processes active in the psyche. By working with a dream and its imagery, one gains some degree of ability to enter into the self-regulatory process and aid its functioning. For instance if one gains from a dream the insight that ones drive for love is constantly thwarted by fear of being abandoned, there is the possibility of working with that fear and altering ones relationship with it. It is from this type of action that we can be sure dreams offer a useful form of bio-feedback. (See the examples in such features as active imagination and compensation theory. See the features on what we need to remember about dreaming; self-regulation and fantasy, compensation theory, and biological dream theory.)

Considering the state of modern electronics in giving feedback on what the body and brain are doing, and what state ones ‘identity’ or sense of self might be in, dreams are by far the most subtle of feedback methods if one learns how to use them. The range of areas dreams comment on is extraordinary. But, perhaps because of the confused and injured state dreams portray as being the condition of most people’s psyche, the vast majority of dreams are about the history of hurt and fears we carry from childhood and undealt with trauma in adult life. See: processing dreams.

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.