File spoon-archives/marxism-psych.archive/marxism-psych_1997/marxism-psych.9710, message 7


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



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