[In this essay, I’m suggesting a speculative framework and not any cures for these serious disorders of the human mind and soul. At the same time, this framework — if appropriate — would guide researchers and clinicians in developing palliatives or cures. Mostly, I’m pursuing my goal of understanding the human mind as the immaterial relationships a human being forms as he responds to his own body, to his physical environments, to the entire universe, and to God. Much of the framework was implied in the explanation of Thomistic intentionality in How Brains Make Up Their Minds by Walter J. Freeman. This view of intentionality as an organic growth occurring as the organism responds to its own body and to its environments was taught by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.]
I claim, following St. Thomas Aquinas and others, that we’re bodily creatures having immaterial aspects, such as mind-like aspects, which are formed of relationships to our environments and to still greater realms of created being understood properly or understood by way of delusions. I’m using some recent research results to ask if such problems as OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), bipolar disease (used to be manic depression), and maybe even schizophrenia are due to not being able to properly orient ourselves in our environments, not being able to move about in a coordinated manner, not being able to make flesh-and-blood contact or even just not being able to establish eye contact with our fellow-creatures, and so forth. This isn’t to deny that something can be wrong inside of us, but it is to raise the possibility that psychiatric and mood disorders can be caused by problems in the neuro-muscular or skeletal systems of our bodies and also to raise the possibility that they can be caused by simple problems of coordinating our perceptive or locomotive efforts. I believe they can also be caused by delusionary expectations about our own bodies or what lies around us. These delusionary expectations can arise from our culture or from our upbringing.
This sort of a view of cognitive and emotional and social problems is entirely consistent with, perhaps a necessary conclusion drawn from, my claim that men are physical creatures whose immaterial components arise from their relationships within Creation, including their relationships with God in His freely-chosen and self-constrained role as Creator.
A mouthful and one easily distorted into literalistic forms. Let me qualify away one potential distortion. Created being lies on a spectrum from highly abstract forms — the truths manifested by God as the raw stuff of Creation — to the concrete forms of being in this universe — things and the constituents of thing-like being such as electrons and quarks. An easy way to enter into this way of thinking is to contemplate my analogical claim that thing-like being is frozen soul-stuff, where the soul-stuff lies close to that raw stuff of created being, that is, the truths manifested by God as the foundational being of Creation.
I think we do little good by talking or acting as if there were some sort of soul or mind or psyche hiding inside of that human being, whether he is as well-balanced as can be or whether he is deeply disturbed. We would do far better in understanding our own possibilities and also the troubles of disturbed human beings if we were to think of our human selves as fundamentally physical creatures which gain immaterial aspects by forming relationships with our fellow human beings, other creatures, our physical environments, the narratives in which we live, and — last but certainly not least — with the Creator who is telling these stories including the larger-scale story which is the universe as it moves towards the fulfillment of God’s purposes.
Another mouthful. Let me get to some specific examples.
I’m washing my hands for the fifteenth time without a break; I must be obsessed with germs.
In a recently published article, OCD: Compulsions Lead to Obsessions, Not the Other Way Around, we learn that there is scientific evidence that “the behaviours themselves (the compulsions) might be the precursors to the disorder, and that obsessions may simply be the brain’s way of justifying these behaviours.” Other groups of scientists may well present counter-evidence, but I’ll take this quite plausible result as being true for now. Given my understanding of the human mind as being certain sorts of relationships we establish starting with our own selves and body parts…
We can stop there for now. When we suffer from OCD, something has been disrupted in our shaping of the mind which is capable of forming the higher and more complex habits of a human being, and most likely a few other social mammals as well. We need habits. In fact, most of our behavior, including that which is labeled ‘moral’, is made up of habits — see Is this evidence against free-will? for a discussion of evidence that our bodies start moving before there is any activity in the regions of our brain associated with abstract reasoning, planning, and other faculties related to free-will.
We form habits and my claim is that we become morally healthy human beings when we form habits and inclinations so that our bodies respond properly when, say, we hear the scream of a child in danger. We fool ourselves when we think we can make the right decision when courage or resistance to temptation is needed. There is no time and we’re very likely to freeze if we try to evaluate each situation, balancing moral demands with prudential considerations. Even in lesser situations, we have not the energy to be constantly making a conscious decision to open the door for a woman with a cane or to go back a few steps to pick up a fallen object for another woman on a walker. How about getting behind the wheel of a car after having that one drink too many? With ten beers in you, you’re probably not going to be very coherent in your moral reasoning. Should we cheat a little on that light that’s already been yellow for a couple of seconds? You have a very small fraction of a second to make that decision — those higher regions of the brain don’t work so quickly.
Forming habits is something we do often and well. After all, we’re descended from creatures which survived and reproduced successfully because of good, or at least adequate, habit-formation. When it comes to habit-formation, the difference between human beings and other higher animals, such as bears, is that human beings can take conscious control of the process, guiding it towards moral purposes and then to prudential purposes as a secondary matter.
We shape ourselves by responding to our own bodies and our immediate environment. This shaping results in habits of various sorts, such as those of cleanliness. If something goes wrong, a brain-circuit is set up in our motion control systems and signals continue to flow. We stand at the bathroom sink and wash our hands over and over and over again. Our higher brain regions come into play, justifying this strange behavior by generating a fear of germs or dirt. What should happen is that our higher brain regions should come into play to censor our behavior and cut off the handwashing at a reasonable point — some say they were taught to sing the chorus to Happy Birthday three times, not 100 times. If the victims of these compulsions were to have a better understanding of the way that human beings form habits, they might be able to better deal with both the wrongly formed habit and the self-justifying obsessions.
My tummy bothers me, for the tenth day in a row, and I’m grumpy. I’m settling into this rotten mood.
There are two recent studies related to this link between stomach troubles and anxiety or depression. First, in Gut Bacteria Linked to Behavior: That Anxiety May Be in Your Gut, Not in Your Head we learn that ” [R]esearchers at McMaster University have conclusive evidence that bacteria residing in the gut influence brain chemistry and behaviour.”
First of all, this reinforces the point that we are physical creatures. In fact, those who are old enough might have known some psychiatric patients on old-fashioned anti-depressants. Those medicines were chemical sledge-hammers which dramatically altered the balance of certain brain chemicals and it turned out that those chemicals were also used for other tasks in the human body. For example, they helped to neutralize poisons in some of the foods we eat. Patients on those old-fashioned anti-depressants couldn’t eat aged cheeses and certain other foods unless they wished to risk death.
Can we respond to our bodies, to our friends, to the world, in a friendly manner when bacteria in our stomachs are perhaps causing us constant upset or perhaps putting bad chemicals into our bloodstreams?
So, it shouldn’t surprise us to also learn that Digestive Problems Early in Life May Increase Risk for Depression, Study Suggests. This article tells us:
Depression and anxiety may result from short-term digestive irritation early in life, according to a study of laboratory rats by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The findings suggest that some human psychological conditions may be the result, rather than the cause, of gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome.
When we’re constantly struggling against a digestive system which is not functioning quite right, we feel bad in a persistent way and we’re using a lot of energy. We might be thrown directly into a blackish mood or perhaps fall into one due to exhaustion. There are forms of exhaustion which are cleansing — such as serious physical activity after a long winter, but being constantly tired certainly leaves me feeling rotten. Let it last a year or more, and the rotten feeling might well have settled in.
In my case, I seem to fall into blackish moods, paranoia, when I’m suffering a problem, allergies or a sinus infection, which would be pumping up my histamine levels. Histamines can have a powerful effect on the brain, and the relationship to paranoid moods is certainly plausible. In addition, a constantly enraged immune system drains a lot of energy. Something common to allergies and sinus infections and colds puts me into those blackish moods, but I know the patterns even if I’m not sure of the exact cause. I adjust as well as I can for that pattern in my mood and that makes my life easier and perhaps eliminates some unpleasantness for those around me.
We are physical creatures, but we are called to higher moral states. This means we need to be aware of these various situations, in our own selves and in others around us, that we might provide proper moral guidance, to our own selves and to others. Once we become aware of our physical natures and the ways in which we form our immaterial aspects, mind-like or soul-like aspects, we become responsible for responding properly to our selves and to other creatures, to the world and to its Creator.
Know yourself if you would be a morally responsible creature. That means you should know your digestive system and your…posture?
I can’t position my body correctly and I’m out of sorts.
Because of a more complex situation, I’m going to provide a longer quote from this article, Bipolar Disorder and Postural Control: Mind-Body Connection Suggests New Directions for Treatment, Research:
A new study by motor control and psychology researchers at Indiana University suggests that postural control problems may be a core feature of bipolar disorder, not just a random symptom, and can provide insights both into areas of the brain affected by the psychiatric disorder and new potential targets for treatment.
Problems with balance, postural control and other motor control issues are frequently experienced by people with mood and psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and neurological disorders such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease, but research into the connections is scant.
If problems with postural control — maintaining balance while holding oneself upright — are a core component of bipolar disorder, as the study indicates, the researchers say it is possible that the motor abnormalities could appear before other symptoms, signaling an increased risk for the disorder.
It raises the question of whether therapies that improve motor symptoms may also help mood disorders, said Amanda R. Bolbecker, lead author of the study “Postural control in bipolar disorder: Increased sway area and decreased dynamical complexity,” published last week in the Public Library of Science ONE.
I included the last two short paragraphs so that the scientists who did the study and the writers at the Science Daily site not be blamed for a couple of claims I’ll be making. After all, there is greater uncertainty in this case as to whether there is a simple cause-and-effect relationship. That’s a signal to be cautious in drawing conclusions, but I’ll move forward anyway because my goal isn’t to ‘explain’ bipolar disorder but rather to support my claim that we are physical creatures which form complex networks of relationships even with our own bodies.
There might be an experiment that will induce temporary bipolar symptoms (not necessarily all of them) in a human being without that disorder being present. Perhaps a scientist could burden volunteers with something that will leave them fighting constantly to orient their bodies properly, maybe putting weights on one side of the body or putting a brace on the lower back. Maybe it could be done by way of glasses that make it difficult to keep a proper posture or even by a buzzing sound that induces vertigo.
If a man or woman, boy or girl, has a body that won’t hold a proper posture, would we expect them to have healthy attitudes? Wouldn’t they be more or less constantly tired, just as if they were suffering constant stomach problems? They’re responding to a world that’s not quite oriented properly, even if it’s their own bodies that are actually mis-positioned. They respond but the world’s not quite positioned right when they reach out to grab something or even to move toward a loved one. And finally do the pressures build up and Lord Byron, who had a club-foot which would have disrupted his posture, is writing poetry at a frantic pace.
But, his case is complicated by the regularity of the depression and the headaches which came on as winter approached. A human being is a complicated story even in his clinically diagnosed problems — which may involve relationships not easily investigated or even noticed by the clinician.
I seem to be in a story, but it’s all blooming, buzzing confusion.
What of schizophrenia? Let me first refer the reader to a multi-disciplinary discussion of two parallel phenomena, modern styles of thinking and art on the one hand and schizophrenia on the other hand: Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought by Louis Sass, a clinical psychologist who is also quite knowledgeable in the fields of literature and art and history and more.
We modern human beings are all schizophrenics, in a manner of speaking, though most of us have lost contact with reality in its wider and more abstract respects, including its narrative aspects in this world, without being aware that something’s wrong. See my blog entry, My Ends are Mad and Now I’m Also Stupid, for a discussion of the fears of Melville and other great thinkers of the 1800s that Americans are morally insane, in rebellion against a world that doesn’t quite meet with our approval — though most are in a cowardly sort of rebellion.
I could restate my major goal in my philosophical and theological work in this way: I’m trying to restore sanity to modern human beings, especially Christians, by turning their attention to God’s Creation and by teaching them they should be responding to God’s Creation, actively responding to reality and not to some self-serving understanding of reality. But let me turn to a discussion of schizophrenia as a specific clinical disease with a group of symptoms which leave the patient in a terrible state, though sometimes with a self-awareness of his or her state of absolute mess and sometimes even a humorous appreciation of the ‘craziness’ of his delusions.
If we read Professor Sass’ book and pay attention to the stories told by some of the more interesting cases, we learn of someone who was apparently insane in an obvious way though given to a certain poetical way of speech (the daughter of James Joyce), and we learn of someone who has a grand understanding of the cosmos in which he is some sort of central figure wired to each part of this universe and controlled by all those parts — or maybe he controls the universe, and we get more general summaries of those who simply construct nonsensical narratives to make sense of their lives.
The other point I’d like to raise from Madness and Modernity is the possibility, perhaps likelihood, that schizophrenia, as currently defined, developed in the industrial age, but I’d also like to note a seemingly conflicting claim by Julian Jaynes that ancient man was schizophrenic and experienced life as a narrative guided by voices in his head. (See the wikipedia article on Julian Jaynes for a discussion that seems pretty good to me and remember that Professor Jaynes is speaking about an age when human beings were being forced to live in radically new ways as human communities grew in size and complexity. This implies to me that schizophrenia is a disorder found in those who have little ability to respond to complex social patterns. Those human beings are depending upon rigidly practiced habits learned from their communities. When those learned habits are inadequate during periods of rapid change — schizophrenia becomes common.) Professor Jaynes didn’t put it in narrative terms, to my recollection of reading his major work on the subject 20 years ago, but it was clear the voices provided purpose and moral guidance — they were perceived as gods such as the ones which were some sort of manifest idealizations of human emotions and virtues in the Iliad. In fact, Jaynes thought the voices would appear as volition, the decision-maker for befuddled creatures which had not yet learned to integrate higher self-awareness and various sorts of abstract reasoning into their ‘core selves’ (my term).
We respond to what lies inside of us and outside of us by trying to create a narrative of our own lives and, usually, at least an implicit narrative that corresponds to what I call a ‘world’, an entity which — in my highly abstract way of thought — is unified, coherent, and complete. It is the universe, or some part of it, brought to moral order.
If the process of creating these narratives fails? It would certainly be plausible to get the sort of confusion and disturbance we read about in the Iliad or in the analyses of the American separation from reality we find in the writings of Tocqueville, Hawthorne, Melville, Henry James, Sr., and more recently Ray Bradbury. But it seems to be a regularly recurring element, if often in the background, of serious American fiction. It can certainly be found in my novels, most especially in the freely downloadable novel, A Man For Every Purpose, in which a man fragments in his efforts to make sense of conflicting demands upon him.
Conclusion
We shape ourselves in how we respond to our own bodies and to what lies outside of our selves. Most of all, when we speak of final purposes, we shape ourselves in how we respond to our Maker, or refuse to respond to Him.
When something goes wrong, we should remember that there is no isolated human soul or mind or consciousness which is diseased or disturbed but rather a system, in a manner of speaking, which is an organism failing to shape itself in an appropriate manner as it responds or fails to respond to its own bodily parts and to what lies outside of it. What’s wrong probably can’t be located in any one entity but rather in the relationships which the organism is failing to properly establish.