Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 13:41:24 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu> Subject: Re: M-PSY: Re: False Memories -- quick fixes? David, On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, David Andrew wrote: > The obvious questions, which I'm sure I am not the only one > to notice are: > 1: what are purely biological reasons? For example, both me and my sister inherited from my mother, who in turn inherited from her mother (who died when my mother was a baby) a tendency to be anxious. This level of anxiety, what my mother (a clinical psychologist, incidentally) prefers to call "high-strung," has several other attendant effects, such as elevated blood pressure (even when there is no anxiety) and an inability to negotiate cholesterol, along with other things (really, the anxiety is the attendant effect). For me, diet, mild stimulants (e.g., coffee), and activity negate anxiety. My sister, who does not do these things, still experiences what my mother and I have conquered (or at least have mastered through vigilance). This anxiety has no referent, external or internal. It is a physiological effect caused by a particular organization of biological materials genetically transmitted. I spent a considerable amount of my childhood looking for referents upon which to attach my anxiety. I became afraid of a lot of things because I attached my anxiety to objects of consciousness. In fact, obviously, I needed not do that; I only made the problem worse. Once I learned my problem was simply organic, I was not only able to do away with anxiety, but also do away with a myriad of entirely manufactured fears. I now lead a near-completely anxiety-free live. > 2: if the individuals move do the external stressors still converge on the place where they use to be? Yes, they do. Shaw and McKay, for example, years ago at the Chicago School, were able to demonstrate that despite the ethnic background of immigrants moving through Chicago's zone of transition (the slums), they manifested the same social problems (depression, anxiety, etc.) that disappeared upon their departure into the suburbs. External stressors are characteristics of relations and locations. In areas where structure is characterized by high levels of poverty, crime, and attendant social problems, there are high levels of anxiety, depression, etc.. These associations are not absolute, of course; they are more probable. You may use a simple thought experiment to answer this question rather simply. If I put a person in a cage with a wild, hungry tiger, they are likely to display considerable anxiety. When I remove them from the cage, they will be be much relieved. Their fear is the rational response to a real life-threatening situation. I can be relatively certain, from a probabilistic standpoint, that other people I put in that cage will have this response. Indeed, one may argue that if people do not experience fear in such a situation, then this is the phenomenon that needs to be explained. If most people are having this response, then we have a variable that varies very little; it is, more or less, anomalies put aside for the time being, a constant. What varies? Context. So it is the difference between being inside this particular cage or outside the cage that produces the effect. Therefore, it logically follows, that PLACE is an important factor in understanding certain phenomenon, in this case, anxiety. > You are using an implicit geographical analogy which deletes any > reference to agency and implies that it is pure chance that these > stressors converge on a particular place where the person happens to be. > Surely not. There isn't anything I have said that would suggest this conclusion. First, place (geography) is not an analogy, it is a material fact. People are physically located in spatial and temporal contexts. This is not a purely chance event. The character of these locations is determined by the structure of the natural environment and the social and cultural relations, locations, interactions in which individuals are socialized and their group lives are structured. Social settings are structured by political economic relations and processes, for example. And individuals are located in situations due to structural forces. In the example above, using Shaw and McKay's landmark studies, immigrants moving through the zone of transition in inner-city Chicago was clearly the result of social forces. Immigrants were not accepted into white mainstream society, immigrants were poor, refugees, had no wealth, couldn't speak the language very well, if at all. They were relocated at point of entry to inner-cities all over the US. There they found themselves in particular class, cultural, and geographical locations that had profound effects on their lives. They reacted in fairly particular ways to their new surroundings, and their children acted in fairly particular ways growing up in these surroundings. Did all people act the same? Of course not. People act differently in similar circumstances. Some people are less afraid of the tiger in the cage than others. But most will behave in similar ways. This is the objectivist, materialist premise of scientific and historical materialism, and it pans out rather well when we go to study these matters. To say that human behavior is, to a significant degree, determined does not ignore the fact of novel social action and the effects of unique conjunctures of social forces in socially differentiated individuals. And, as I have suggested, this--novel occurrence--is what may need to be explained. But perhaps all this is beside the point? For what *I* was explaining was how one might understand the phenomenon of people acting as if they are in cages with wild, hungry tigers when in fact they are nowhere near hungry tigers in cages. And the subsequent phenomenon of psychologists creating for their anxious patients fictional hungry tigers in cages. I am saying nothing profound here, David. These comments are simply a repeating what are among the most well-supported and obvious conclusions in the social sciences. Peace, Andy --- from list marxism-psych-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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