I stumbled on this lecture, which is very timely find.
Category: Lectures
Gabor Mate explains Sensitivity, Creativity and Pain in a Traumatizing Culture: dialogue with Sia
Sia talks to Gabor Mate about her psychotherapeutic journey. In this interview, we get a sense of what psychotherapy for Sia is about, how it helps us transcend our fear of feeling difficult and often painful emotions.
Sia reveals her personal challenges suffering from somatic symptoms like Hashimoto’s, and addictions.
I enjoy this interview because it also reveals how Gabor is able to hold Sia’s emerging emotions throughout the dialogue.
Sia is an example of a kind of client who has had quite a bit of work done. The tendency is to “talk about” experiences rather than “being in” the experience. He tells us how he is not as interested in labelling and seeing phenomena as disorders, and his disdain for medical doctors who are not able to inquire about childhood.
By interrupting her deflection from points of painful feelings, giving space to emerging experiences he finds connection with her, and we also find connection with her watching the video. In a way, Gabor invites Sia to show her face and not hide it.
Interestingly, towards the end of their dialogue, as they thanked each other, Sia said, “…that almost made me cry, but that would hold up the interview…so… I kept the… for later…” This is possibly the replay of the trauma which she mentioned at the beginning of the video, where she recounted having cried as a young child and her caregivers were absent.
Notes: Sapolsky on Chaos and Reductionism
Bibliography
Sapolsky, R., & Balt, S. (1996). Reductionism and Variability in Data: A Meta-Analysis. Perspectives in biology and medicine, 39(2), 193-203.
Sapolsky: The Biological and Psychological Link to Major Depression
Depression is crippling, pervasive, prevalent and worth studying. Depression is also a major cause of disability.
The focus of this article /lecture : What has biology, what has psychology got to do with depression?
What is depression? Depression is suffered by people who don’t recover from major setbacks.
Symptoms of major depression: a biological disorder with genetic predisposition with early childhood influences. Sapolsky means this because we can compare people who stay positive
- *Anhedonia: the inability to feel pleasure,
- *grief & guilt severe to take on “delusional quality” (unable to see things in positive light and choose to dwell on negatives).
- *self injury
- *psychomotor retardation… too exhausted to do stuff.
- *not able to cope / heal.
Vegetative symptoms of depression:
- *trouble sleeping: wake up early and not able to go back to sleep.
- *Different way of being alseep
- *decreased appetite
- *overactive stress response: increased metabolic rate / muscle tone
- *rhythmic patterns of depression (cycles / seasonal)
What goes on in the brain with major depression?
15:30 Neurotransmitters. In depression, implicated are
- * Norepinephrin (NA): Drugs which are MAO inhibitors inhibit deactivation of NA. Tricyclic antidepressant, increase effect of NA. Blood pressure drug that decrease NA, patient gets depressed. Lack of NA has something to do with anhedonia. NA has effect on pleasure sensation. Antidepressants of this sort takes long to work on depressed people.
- * Dopamine : has something to do with anhedonia
- * Serotonin: SSRI Prozac works on serotonin re-uptake. Helps with Psychomotor retardation / obsessive sense of grief.
- * Substance P (neurotransmitter) is about pain. When drugs supress substance P, depressives get better.
23.30 Neuroanatomy: Lymbic system, Cortex.
Depression is rumination, and the body responds to it, as if there were a real danger / setback. “What depression is is the body getting too many sad thoughts and the body going along with it. The brain stimulates the body to activate the fright-flight mode.
Sapolsky mentions the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, implying that it is a part responsible for depression. This part, when severed from the rest of the brain, also removes pleasure sensation.
One can see here the balance between the vegetative-somatic controls and cognitive centers of the brain. In depression, the cognitive centers become “depressed” while the active somatic control contribute to the tension felt in the body.
Hormones involved in depressive episodes:
- *Thyroid hormone. Hypothyroidism is also associated with major depression.
- *Female hormonal cycles. Ratio of estrogen to progesterone.
- *Stress hormone: adrenaline, glucocorticords/cortisol 36:00 — depletes Dopamine.
Biology, however is not enough.
39:00 Freud on melancholia. The difference between mourning and melancholia (Freud , 1922). Mourning allows one to recover. Melancholia is the rumination and wallowing, which is depression. Absence of mourning leads to guilt, followed by aggression turned inward to the self. Depression is described by Sapolsky as such.
How does one explain the biological with Freudian ideas?
42:00 Experimental Psychology
Psychological stress is pathological extremes of learned helplessness, loss, lack of control. One has no possibility to release the stress, by doing something, or talking to someone who is willing to listen.
E.g. loss of parents before 10 yrs of age, there is more tendency of suffering major depression.
Stress is the intersection of the bio and psychological. Depression seem to be genetically linked, but there also other components that are equally relevant.
47:00 Serotonin re-uptake genes? No empirical proof to show that “relevant” genes alone leads to depression. Childhood experiences have as much to do with incidence of major depression (Ogilvie et.al 1996).
Glucacorticoids regulate the function of this gene. Hence stress has an influences (Caspi et al 2003).
In the study of Mayberg et.al. which treated patients with deep brain stimulation, the patients, following treatment, describe their experiences as :
“All patients spontaneously reported acute effects including “sudden calmness or lightness,” “disappearance of the void,” sense of heightened awareness, increased interest, “connectedness,” and sudden brightening of the room, including a description of the sharpening of visual details and intensification of colors in response to electrical stimulation. ” This is similarly described when individuals are effectively treated with psychotherapy (see the student say, “the colors are bright”, to which Perls call it the mini satori in this video of therapy session with Fritz Perls) and also described in psychedelic experiences. Many meditative exercises also provide for this change of experience.
Bibliography
Caspi, A., Sugden, K., Moffitt, T. E., Taylor, A., Craig, I. W., Harrington, H., … & Poulton, R. (2003). Influence of life stress on depression: moderation by a polymorphism in the 5-HTT gene. Science, 301(5631), 386-389.
Freud, S. (1922). Mourning and melancholia. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 56(5), 543-545.
Ogilvie, A. D., Battersby, S., Fink, G., Harmar, A. J., Goodwin, G. M., Bubb, V. J., & Smith, C. D. (1996). Polymorphism in serotonin transporter gene associated with susceptibility to major depression. The Lancet, 347(9003), 731-733.
Sapolsky, R. (2009). Stanford’s Sapolsky On Depression in U.S. (Full Lecture). Youtube. url: https://youtu.be/NOAgplgTxfc
Tretter, F., Winterer, G., Gebicke-Haerter, P. J., & Mendoza, E. R. (Eds.). (2010). Systems biology in psychiatric research: from high-throughput data to mathematical modeling. John Wiley & Sons.
Christopher Bollas on Mental Pain
Bollas: Psycho-Pharmaceutical use, like war, can impair empathic feelings.
This is not an article against the use of psycho-pharmaceuticals. Antidepressants, antipsychotics etc. use save lives and alleviate suffering but have side effects. The individual is left to choose: work through mental suffering by talking to someone, or use a medication but numb out the possibility to feel human empathy. Ultimately the use of these drugs leads us to dependency and destroys our ability to interact with others in a contact-ful way. The result is existential loneliness.
Christopher Bollas, in the Q&A session of this lecture recorded in video below, gave a thought provoking opinion on how psycho-pharmaceuticals like antidepressants, anxiety drugs, and pain killers reduces a persons capacity for empathy.
Empathy and Your Loved Ones
Empathy is what make a person human. It helps us to have relationships and build bonds of love with others. If one of your loved ones –spouse, children, siblings, etc.– suddenly loses his/her empathy, you have lost that bond with that person, because this person is no longer able to relate to you as another human being. At best, to this person, you are but an object. He/she is not able to feel for you or care for you.
Taking painkillers, according to Bollas, does just that: strips off the empathic nature of a person. He cites an interesting article of a study written byFrom painkiller to empathy killer: acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces empathy for pain, to illustrate this fact.
Bollas says that taking psycho-pharmecuticals is not the same as taking medicine for physical ailments. If one has a problems related to the mental state, talking to another person is the cure. The challenge is to find someone who would care to listen without judging or controlling you. Such a professional is called a psychotherapist.
ADHD Diagnosis Robs Children of their Capacity for Empathy
People do have the right to take medications to alleviate their suffering. Bollas is, however, concerned by people giving medications to children for psychological disorders. Children have no rights to decide if they want to be incapacitated in a way that they can no longer feel emotions. Not feeling emotions free us from unpleasant feelings, and it also causes us to live in a lonely paranoid world stripped of feelings of being loved. The person may have people loving him, but he cannot feel the love. In turn he will not be able to love back, and end up losing relationships.
When children get diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder), the child is suffering NOT because of the disorder itself. The child is reacting to stressors in his life and environment that causes him suffering. In fact, it is the parents who suffer as a result of the child’s behavior, and many are desperate for the fix… which they can get through diagnosis of ADHD. The drug erases that child’s ability to feel the suffering, and wipes out his ability to feel empathy as well.
Bollas believes that the children are victims of stress put on them by society’s expectation and the educational system.
War Kill the Humane Part of the Soldier
Military training and work… boot camp turns you into a killer. In combat, you also kill people. If you keep doing it, you’re going to be shattered. It is called ptsd. this is the consequence of sending people to war. When you send people to war, you kill off the the humane parts of the personality. At war, if one is empathic or thinks too much one becomes a danger to one’s unit.
“(W)e need to continue a kind of a political cultural anthropology that consistently deconstructs our social delusions in a way that we as societies continue to cover up our own destructive processes, because most societies have parts that are extremely destructive.”
Bibliography
Bollas, C. (2016). Christopher Bollas: Mental Pain. Video on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Frb4wMifw Townsend Center for the Humanities.
From painkiller to empathy killer: acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces empathy for pain. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 11, Issue 9, 1 September 2016, Pages 1345–1353, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw057 Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/11/9/1345/2224135
Projective Identification
Otto Kernberg explains what Projective Identification
Projective Identification is one of the primitive defensive operations that goes together with splitting and primitive idealization and omnipotent control.
It is a primitive form of projection of attributing to others what one cannot tolerate in oneself. It is characterized by combination of attributing to somebody else what the person is experiencing but cannot tolerate. While they are still capable of maintaining empathy of what they experience but cannot tolerate. There is also a tendency to induce behavior in the other in effort to control the other person to absolve themselves.
Basically it is an insidious method of inciting emotions, which one cannot come to terms with in oneself, in another person. This as a means to control the other person.
A possible example of such an occurrence is someone who is insecure and envious of another. This person creates situations whereby he/she incites envy and/or competition in the other person.
It could also someone controlling a group. A manager may have a paranoid ideas of the team being disloyal to him, begins to behave in ways to incite feelings of mistrust between the members of the company.
Extra Notes (see Video attached) on Child abuse and projective identification:
Identification of the aggressor : being a ghost to chase the ghost away, stockholm syndrom (Anna Freud’s). Ferenczi’s idea of identification with the aggressor: The abused child behaves in the way the abuser wants to protect himself from the abuser, by appeasing and complying.
The child introjects the abuser’s feelings: he feels both innocent and guilty. There is a clash of feelings. The abuser, to make himself feel less guilty induces the guilt on the child victim. The parent / abuser projects the impart feelings (also known as projective identification, a term Melanie Klein coined later on) on the child. He induces guilt on the child. The child introjects the shame and feels guilty.
The client should be allowed to express their criticism on the therapist, or they will turn on themselves. These negative feelings are not just negative transference. When the clients can voice their critic in therapy, it is a breakthrough. It is a break from the childhood pattern.
Projective Identification: The Fate of a Concept (The New Library of Psychoanalysis)
Otto Kernberg: On Narcissism
Heinz Kohut: Selfobject
This is an introduction to Psychoanalysis, Self Psychology, Heinz Kohut 1913-1981.
There are following therapist-client interaction:
- Mirror selfobject: the client uses therapist as someone who praises him, like a mother. The patient is addicted to mirrors due to not having a mother that glows at them.
- Ideal selfobject: Idealizing the father. Transference to the therapist that idealizes the therapist. Many therapist cannot tolerate this.
- Twin-ship selfobject: Identifying with the therapist. Seeing eye to eye.
- Adversarial selfobject: Bump up constantly against each other. Self definition is promoted because there is acceptance.
- Abstract selfobject : Belief in God, Posterity, or Past relationship sustain self-esteem.
Kohut also introduces Disintegration of Selfobject –> leads to emptiness, self aggression, addictions, emptiness depression.
Dealing with addictions:
How does Analysis repair disruptive cycle of emptiness…? What has happened that led you to do this? Going to stripclubs, etc… What set you off this time?Make patients addicted to therapist / therapy. That is a way to help patient get rid of the addiction.Some people are also addicted to anger. They use anger to hold them together. What is really valuable in psychotherapy (Interpersonal Schools of Psychotherapy
“Sustained empathic enquiry.”
Decentering: Look at pattern from patient’s perspective. Try to set aside feeling attacked. Sometimes the patient’s perspective is psychotic. But it is still his/her perspective! So we take it for what it is.
Disruption- Repair Cycle
Kohut’s theory of cure: when there is a disruption, try to understand, what happened to the patient. The patient feels ultimately understood. Repairs the disruption.
Transmuting internalization takes place.
Reestablishment in the disruption. The more he is able to be empathic to himself. He is able to build his own selfobject.
Like Kleinian, Self-Psychology works with the internalized selfobject.
Kernberg 
Summary
How this relates to Gestalt Therapy Theory
The opposing view of Kohut and Kernberg is a reminder that analysis is a way of researching what goes on in the human mind. It is an attitude of seeing, and not a end to understanding “facts”. This makes psychotherapy sciences much more real and dynamic than natural sciences.
In Gestalt therapy, the narcissist is “not able to feel anything”, and thus has found a way to deflect from him/herself any stimuli from the environment. It is a safety mechanism he/she learned as a child. Most oftently the child has good reasons to shield him/herself from perceived or real danger. This deflection mechanism becomes automatic, and the adult is not aware of his/her own situation, because the not feeling is second nature.
The disadvantage such persons have is that he/she does not enjoy relationships and often feel threatened / miss- trusting and always aggressive (active or passive) towards others.
Gestalt therapist realize that when a behavior is not in awareness, it is impossible to talk to the client about it, and expect the client to experience a shift in his/her “nature”. Much of the work has to arise from non-verbal communication and feedback from the therapist.
Jane Tangney: the Difference between Shame and Guilt
In the lecture below, June Tangney explains the results of her research in this area.
What is the difference between shame and guilt?
Shame is also extremely painful relative to guilt. Shame is a feeling of being defective, a sense of being small, exposed, powerless. Shame can last for short or long periods of time. When one feels shame, one tends to want to isolate themselves.
Guilt is different. It comes with remorse, and people who feel guilt are typically drawn to taking reparative action, rather than isolating themselves.
Link between Guilt and Empathy
Empathy is a state of feeling the other’s feelings, and it brings us to altruism.
@ 24:00 Guilt and empathy are connected. Tangney’s team of researchers have found correlation between propensity for the feeling of guilt and people’s ability to step into somebody’s shoes (to be empathic). Meanwhile the other more self-absorbed, pseudo-empathic responses are related to shame.
When a person talks about a shame related feeling in a situation, there is less concern for the other and more focus on the self. When the feeling is that of guilt, the concern is for the other’s feelings.
Shame, Anger and Aggression
Shame in Family Conflicts
There is therefore correlation with studies of shame in family conflicts and domestic violence.
People prone to guilt are more likely to live a more “moral” life.
Shame and Guilt are not Equally “Moral” Emotions
On the condition that we do not mis-interpret shame with guilt, the findings show that guilt feelings do not cost the person psychologically (as otherwise thought). This means that so long as we do not judge ourselves, but judge the deeds instead, we are in a better situation to cope with the psychological aspect of having done something deemed as inappropriate.
Proneness to shame, on the other hand has been linked to vulnerabilities to depression, anxiety, eating disorder etc.
This also brings to attention how society treats incarcerated people.
Adapting to a more Guilt-Prone style and less Shame-Prone style
Research showed no real inter-generational link in shame and guilt proneness.
Longitudinal studies show that teenagers that are in the guilt proneness fare overall better than their shame-prone peers.