My approach to healing trauma rests broadly on the premise that people are primarily instinctual in nature—that we are, at our very core, human animals. It is this relationship to our animal nature that both makes us susceptible to trauma and, at the same time, promotes a robust capacity to rebound in the aftermath of threat, safely returning us to equilibrium. More generally, I believe that to truly understand our body/mind, therapists must first learn about the animal body/mind because of the manner in which our nervous systems have evolved in an ever-changing and challenging environment.
Who are we? Where do we come from? How did we get here? These are the focal questions posed by theologians and biologists, by anarchists and zoologists, and by UFOlogists and psychologists. Each of these specialists postulates theories with diverse viewpoints of what stuff we are made of and who we really are. They all look at our humanity through very different lenses. But they’re not necessarily overtly antagonistic. While all religions are organized around creation myths, there isn’t, for example, a passionate rift between the big bang theory and the idea of biblical creation. Certainly, we do not hear of an active dissent and insistence calling loudly for the teaching of religious doctrine in place of physics and cosmography in our schools and universities. However, there is an almost violent schism lurking in our cultural zeitgeist. Let’s face it: the fight against evolution by the proponents of “creationism” and “intelligent design” is not really about the professed gaps in the fossil records; rather, it’s about whether or not we are basically animals.
Charles Darwin, in the publication of The Descent of Man, helped to locate our anatomical and physiological place among the animal kingdom. By doing this he become, today, an even more feared incarnation of what Kinsey represented more than half a century ago in his reports to puritan America. A throwback to the Scopes trial, the visceral fight against Darwinism by the American “religious right,” is about the deeply rooted negation and fear of our animal nature. Such a disavowal reflects a fundamental disconnect between “higher man” (reason and morality) and “lower (sexual) animals.” This denial of the instinctual life is also shared by strange bedfellows, many modern behavioral scientists.
The rejection of our animal nature is understandable as we have become (overly) socialized. This denial and its dehumanizing consequence, however, are summarized by the physician Max Plowman in his Introduction to the Study of Blake:
In all cultivation, native instinct is the most difficult force to remember and take into account. Just because our civilization is old, our distance from the primal centers is as the distance of twigs upon an oak from the farthest contributory roots. We have become so cultivated that we do not know we have drains until they smell. We have become so confident in the mechanical use of intelligence that we take for granted the functioning of our instincts, even to the point of thinking it immaterial whether they can find true and natural expression or not. In time the instincts rebel against our want of care for them … then there is consternation.
It seems that as we distance ourselves farther and farther from our instinctual roots, we have grown to be a species hell-bent on becoming better and better at making life worse and worse. We have been quite “successful” in distancing ourselves from our vital core. Instinct’s role in guiding and informing that which makes us both animal and, in the finest way, most human is illustrated by the following vignette.
A nature photographer stood by in abject horror as he watched a wild elephant kicking, again and again, the lifeless body of its stillborn calf. As he continued observing and photographing this gruesome scene for three hours, something truly unexpected happened. The infant stirred. Remarkably, the mother had resuscitated the calf, bringing him back to life by stimulating his heart. It was instinct and instinct alone that accomplished this miraculous task; the mind would have been quite useless.
Even in “lower” species, we are taken by the apparent intelligence of instincts in guiding complex behaviors we associate with mammals. Sitting by the edge of the emerald Vierwaldstättersee (the clear, glacial Lake Lucerne in Switzerland), the ducks and swans “proudly” parade their young chicks past the table where I am seated eating breakfast. A slight abrupt approach on my part toward the female would evoke frightening, hissing, aggressive reactions—unexpected for these otherwise staid and regal birds. As they drift peacefully by, I carefully toss out some small pieces of bread. It is curious to observe how the adults stand back, carefully monitoring their chicks while allowing them to peck and feast. Only after they have filled their fluffy bellies do the adults take some morsels for themselves. So it seems they not only ferociously protect their young from outside harm but with patient restraint show an uncharacteristic deference, protecting them from their own gluttony. When they are not parents, these gracious lily-white swans show their true colors as nasty aggressive beasts, jousting with one another for any crumbs thrown their way.
In mammalian development the instincts for protection and care were greatly extended and elaborated, flourishing with a wide range of nurturing behaviors. Then, in the evolution of primates and Homo sapiens, care of the young made a monumental jump; this involved paradigm shifts such as diverse altruistic and mutually supportive social behaviors. Then bonding, through direct physical touch and eye contact, promoted focus on one potential mating partner at a time. And that procreative connection between male and female—the one above all others—was cemented by the orgasm’s commanding neurochemical surge.* We find ourselves, consequently, rising to the perennial saga of mustering the courage to love that which time will claim for its own; love, sexuality and loss were now forever and intrinsically entwined, becoming the broad business of the world’s poetry, art, music and prose.
We humans do not hesitate to speak of the almost superhuman power of unconditional parental love; otherwise how could we explain the profound feelings and actions we take toward our newborns, with their slimy, wrinkled-prune bodies that know little else but to defecate, urinate and wail in ear-piercing shrieks of frantic discomfort? We gaze at them, listen, coo and smell; we hold and rock them; we become hopelessly and ridiculously smitten in love. And this, as any parent knows, is only just the beginning of trial by fire and infinite patience. Evolution has given us the most compelling of all feelings to direct and organize the critical acts of care and nurturance. The Darwinian emotions and behaviors of “love” have evolved, presumably, for the protection and care of the babies in a species bearing one offspring and compressing an eighteen-month gestation (arguably because of its large head) into nine. For these underdeveloped creatures to survive, special, extended, and therefore highly motivated caregiving behaviors were required. Such an enduring task demanded nothing short of love, perhaps the same emotion that drives soldiers in the heat of battle to rescue fallen comrades, pulling them to safety even at the supreme risk to their own lives. And love, in the final analysis, may be our collective antidote—the salvation for a species with such a penchant for senseless killing and carnage. Love is the glue that holds family, tribes, and—perhaps in times of need—even societies together. It is also the potion that binds the human animal to the divine through the highest religious and spiritual feelings of oneness and connection. Was I, at the lake’s edge, witnessing an early precursor to that love supreme in the primitive instinctual programs that so nonchalantly inhibited the adult birds from exhibiting their normal voracious competitive appetites so that their young could fill their bellies first?
Science is our new religion and its holy water is disinfectant.
—George Bernard Shaw
In spite of persistent rejection of our animal nature, there was a vital and rich window of time during the twentieth century when six Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded on the subject of instincts.† Darwin, a century and a half ago, emphasized just how nuanced and intelligent instincts are. In Notebook M (1838) Darwin mused, “The origin of man is now proved. He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.” In this regard it was recently demonstrated that a mere one or two percentage points differentiates the human and chimpanzee genomes (with not much more distinguishing humans from other mammals). Indeed chimps can outperform college sophomores in a fairly sophisticated math exercise, and yet psychology, purportedly a natural science, still seems to favor overlooking the reality that we are, in the last analysis, animals.
Even our sense of wonder may be shared by our nearest cousins, the apes. Jane Goodall, a leading primatologist, has suggested the existence of primal spiritual feelings in the chimps she had carefully studied over many years. Here she describes the behaviors of a troupe visiting an especially beautiful place with a waterfall and river:
For me, it is a magical place, and a spiritual one. And sometimes, as they approach, the chimpanzees display in slow, rhythmic motion along the river bed. They pick up and throw great rocks and branches. They leap to seize the hanging vines, and swing out over the stream in the spray-drenched wind until it seems the slender stems must snap or be torn from their lofty moorings. For ten minutes or more they may perform this magnificent “dance.” Why? Is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? A feeling generated by the mystery of the water; water that seems alive, always rushing past yet never going, always the same yet ever different. Was it perhaps similar feelings of awe that gave rise to the first animistic religions, the worship of elements and the mysteries of nature over which there was no control?108
Ironically, despite the creationists’ rejection of their animal roots, religious awe may be yet another confirmation of the Darwinian continuity of the species and of our profound instinctual heritage.
To many reasonable scientists, the attribution of “religious awe” to nonhuman primates would seem a stretch at best. At the very worst, it could be seen as an extreme case of anthropomorphism gone amok. However, there is a solid, empirically based tradition of studying the behaviors and emotions in chimpanzees as evolutionary antecedents to human morality. Beginning with Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s seminal work, Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns,109 and recently culminating in Frans de Waal’s beautifully written Our Inner Ape,110 a compelling case is made for certain social behaviors of monkeys and apes as precursors for various human moral behaviors, including highly refined deportment such as peacemaking. These forerunners include reciprocity of grooming, maintenance of social ranking and violence attenuation. Easy to appreciate are clear examples such as an adult chimp helping a juvenile climb a tree or zoo-confined chimps (who are known to be unable to swim) jumping into the moat in a futile attempt to rescue a drowning chimp. Such altruistic behaviors conjure images of fireman entering buildings engulfed in flames to rescue trapped families or soldiers running directly into the line of fire to rescue a fallen comrade.
De Waal’s views are based on many decades of observing aggression in primate societies. He noticed that after fights between two chimps, other chimpanzees would appear to console the loser—a behavior requiring both the capacity for empathy and a significant level of self-awareness. De Waal also describes female chimpanzees poignantly removing stones from the hands of males readying to fight so as to head off the brawl or at least to prevent them from inflicting mortal harm. Such “reconciliation” efforts may preserve group solidarity, thus diminishing vulnerability from outside attackers.
Human morality organizes around questions of right, wrong and justice. According to de Waal and others,111 it originates with concern for others and in understanding and respecting social rules. This is seen in a multitude of mammalian groups. The orchestration of such premoral behaviors requires a highly sophisticated level of emotional and social functioning. Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University, has extended these notions and regards the brain as having genetically shaped mechanisms whose function is the acquisition of moral rules based in complex feeling states.112
In the face of such robust observations, the social sciences often appear to manifest their distaste for the human-as-animal supposition, most notably by sanitizing their terminology around the concepts of instinctual behavior. In fact, the word instinct is rarely found in modern psychological literature. Rather it is purged and replaced with terms such as drives, motivations and needs. While instincts are still routinely drawn upon to explain animal behaviors, we have somehow lost sight of how many human behavior patterns (though modifiable) are primal, automatic, universal and predictable. For example, as the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground, instinctually driven people ran until their feet were bleeding. They ran for their lives like their ancestors who were chased by the predatory cats on the ancient Serengeti. They then regrouped, seeking the safety of their dens and communities, as they walked in an orderly fashion, over bridges leading to each of the five boroughs.
When we collapse in grief at the death of a loved one, we share this innate response to loss with the other highly developed mammals. Jane Goodall’s description of the matriarch Flo’s death and the subsequent self-starvation of her young male offspring in the tree above her corpse is one such example.‡ Yet another comparable instance of a grief response comes to mind with the listless pets we frequently return to after what seemed to us a short weekend away from home. Road rage and sexual fixations are disturbing manifestations of other instincts—in these cases, instincts gone awry. Grief, anger, fear, disgust, lust, mating, nurturing of young and even love (as well as all the action patterns that go with them) are universals among humans. All bear a remarkable resemblance to similar behaviors in mammals.
Charles Darwin, more than any other human being, clarified the essential connections between the human and other animal species. Aside from discovering the evolution of form and function, he further recognized the similarities of movements, action patterns, emotions and facial expressions shared by mankind and animals. Darwin’s masterworks addressed the continuity of emotional expressions among mammalian species. He was struck not only by the similarities in physiological and anatomical structures, but also by inborn, instinctive behaviors and emotions across species. In The Descent of Man Darwin writes,
Man and the higher animals … have … instincts in common. All have the same senses, intuition, sensation, passions, affections and emotions, even the more complex ones such as jealously, suspicion, emulation, gratitude and magnanimity; they practice deceit and are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and even have a sense of humor; they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas, and reason … though in very different degrees.113
The omnipresence of instincts dazzles us in mating rituals such as the stunning display of feathers by the male peacock. This provocative announcement is as successful in attracting mates as it is beautiful. These two outcomes are, arguably, one and the same. Most mating rituals begin with an initial phase of “flirting,” followed by a sequence of strutting. This strutting demonstrates not only the male’s physical prowess, but also something less tangible. For example, in certain bird species it is the male’s unique and creative use of notes, rhythm and phrasing that the female finds attractive.§ On the other hand, the defense of territories also can involve combat and killing. In fact, 70% of male monkeys in a monkey troupe never get to mate, and they die in isolation.114 Evolution is about life or death; if love fits in there, so much the better (for us).
The combination of raw instinct and artful shaping is also found in human mating rituals. Clearly, however, one must beware of what has been called “zoomorphism”—the uncritical extension of conclusions drawn from animal behavior to humans. Having said this, anyone who has seen a well-executed rendering of a dance such as the tango or samba has witnessed an exquisitely instinct-rooted mating ritual. Seen simply as formalized movements, devoid of their primal sexual rooting, the steps lose their vitality and credibility. Equally important are the unexpected and creative variations as well as the partner’s response to those surprises that make the dance simultaneously instinctual and artistic. I once watched the mating dance of two scorpions, and had to laugh at just how it resembled (including the gift of a rose—in the form of a twig) the tango in its basic structure. Imagine seeing, in a split screen, a couple passionately engaged in a tango, along with two scorpions coupled in the fervor of their mating dance. One would be struck both by the unexpected, almost bizarre, similarity as well as by the difference in the sense of nuance and variation. Let us not forget the millions of lovers the world over who, at this very moment, are gazing into each other’s eyes. With their enchantment, originality, creativity and perfection ignited, they are engaging the instinctual stepping-stones for an entire life together. Unfortunately, when this dance goes awry, there are also the instincts that drive the jealous rage of brokenhearted lovers.
For most of us, the multitude of primal impulses is generally hidden from our rational appreciation. Yet, in sharpening our focus, we can begin to discern an internal savannah, one populated by ancient instincts that manifest as coherent behaviors, sensations, feelings and thoughts. These primal reactions and responses are organized and orchestrated by “hardwired” neurological mechanisms. The assemblage of physiological processes, known as “fixed action patterns” and “domain-specific programs” (and the stimuli that release them, the so-called innate releasing mechanisms, or IRMs), are the legacy of our long evolutionary past. It is worth mentioning that the term fixed makes these behaviors seem more rigid than they really are. This is probably due to a mistranslation of the original German word for these responses, Erbkoordination, which translates, descriptively, as “legacy coordination.” This latter term infers a strong genetic component but one that is not fully determined and is subject to modification.
According to Darwin,115 emotions are accompanied by bodily changes and by “incipient” bodily action. He describes, for example, the typical bodily action that accompanies rage:
The body is commonly held erect; ready for instant action … The teeth are clenched or ground together … Few men in a great passion … can resist acting as if they intended to strike or push the man [with whom they are enraged] violently away. The desire, indeed, to strike often becomes so intolerably strong that inanimate objects are struck or dashed to the ground.116
However, Lorenz modified this view of instinctive action patterns by pointing out that “even highly irascible people will refrain from smashing really valuable objects, preferring cheaper crockery.”117 Emotion thus is associated with a tendency to specific action, a readiness for that action—but the action may be restrained, moderated or modified.
Instincts, in essence, are expressed as actions—that is to say, as physical urges and movements. In early evolution, instinctual programs were “written” primarily for the action system. Instincts, therefore, are about movement—how to find food, shelter and a mate, as well as how to protect ourselves. These responses need no learning. They are hardwired in the service of our survival. One of the most basic instincts is our reaction to large looming shadows; another, which we share with even the smallest of creatures including mammals, birds, and possibly even moths, is our innate fear of eyes swooping down from above (presumably those of an avian predator).‖ Arguably, this may be the genesis of our fear of the “evil eye,” expressed in many cultures in talisman, ritual and art.118 An example of these innate reactions was sent to me by a friend concerning an episode with their young son:
Aleksander, a usually calm, happy and peaceful child, was sixteen months old and still only crawling and standing, not yet walking. (He would start to walk at eighteen months.) He and his father went to a friend’s house to play. An adult friend was holding Aleksander on his lap and showed him a bag of rubbery or gelatinous eyeballs (the kind that that if you squeeze them, one will pop out). Aleksander did not seem to like the toy; he showed this by sharply turning away and making faces. Later, when Aleksander was sitting on the floor, a friend showed him the toy again, this time standing and squeezing the eye from above. The distance between the child and the popped eye was about four or five feet. Aleksander, in a fraction of a second, turned 180 degrees and catapulted backward, screaming and waving his hands and legs. He landed on the opposite wall crouched in the corner. Both adults were startled by the reaction and immediately went to the child. His father held him in his arms, and after a short time Aleksander calmed down.
Instinctive movements may be large and powerful like Aleksander’s reaction to the “evil eye” of a bird of prey and the other fight/flight responses. Or they can be subtler, as in the small gasping when one cries inside. Instinctual movements can also be delicate, such as in the tiny throat movements that generate our most tender murmurs and whispers for our babies and lovers.
The primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do with cognition.
It is the same as in the animals.
And this pre-mental consciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of our consciousness.
The mind is but the last flower, the cul-de-sac.
—D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
Why did consciousness ever evolve in the first place? Why aren’t we, and all other animals, just going about our business without an inkling of our internal experience? After all, who needs all the feeling and suffering that goes along with consciousness? Without a satisfactory answer, we are left with a hole in the whole Darwinian argument. Wouldn’t any behaviors or functions that are so widespread throughout the kingdoms of man and beast be there because they are a requisite of survival? To begin to address this question we need first to inquire, simply, about the presumed function of consciousness.
The Darwinian struggle for survival manifests as a continual arms race between predator and prey. The capacity for successful predation and clever evasion is a constantly evolving process. Combatants try out and refine (through genetic selection as well as through learning) diverse strategies enhancing strike capacity, camouflage and flight. They do this to ensure the right to eat and avoid being eaten. Anything that will help in maintaining an edge in the food supply war would generally be incorporated into the evolving scheme of brain and body.
Even by the Cambrian period (some 500-plus million years ago) the fossils that have been preserved paint a picture of lethal jaws by which predators could dismember their prey, as well as exoskeletons that served as protection against attack from their enemies.a In addition, the creatures of this period had prehensile limbs and appendages by which they could pursue their prey and escape from their predators. Thus the typical modus operandi of this epoch became one of predatory/prey struggle for survival.
Then, for about 280 million years, animals had begun to move in relation to physical space and gravity. Terrestrial adaptation demanded the addition of more complex behavioral repertoires. The navigation of new and unpredictable environments required creatures to incorporate and integrate external sense perception (such as sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell) so as to be able to survey the environment for obstacles and threat, as well as to acquire the basic necessities of life. At the same time, the instinctual programs required interoceptive (internal) feedback from muscles and joints to signal tension and position, more precisely allowing animals to know where they were in space at any given moment.
The predator/prey struggle demanded the capacity to plan ahead, both for attack and for evasion. The inhabitants of this period had to be able to solve the complex Newtonian physics problem of two moving bodies—that of its prey (or stalking predator) and that of itself. They had, in other words, to anticipate the future in a terrain that was uncertain and difficult to predict. The only way to accomplish this was to have awareness of five dimensions, three in space, one in gravity and one in time. Accurate timing required the integration of events in the recent past with those in the present moment. Extrapolation into the future then became the sought-after “fittest” pièce de résistance for survival.
In the absence of clairvoyance or telepathy, the future can only be anticipated through the permutation and recombination of “recollected” (implicit) past experiences. Nature seems to have arrived at a grand solution to the complex calculus of prediction. Her name is consciousness. Such a “device” (i.e., mechanism) facilitates this game of “take-and-put.” In other words, if I take this present situation and, based upon past experience, place it (in the body/mind’s eye) there; then such and such is likely to occur in the future. The capacity to anticipate and predict movement is the basis of what consciousness is all about. Consciousness at its very most basic level is a strategy, simply an evolutionary invention that allows an animal to better predict its trajectory (in space, gravity and time). It does this in relation to potential sources of food, shelter and threat. This is the role that consciousness “plays”—or that plays itself in consciousness. The “game” of driving a car, sailing a boat, skiing, playing tennis or dancing could not occur without consciousness. And then, abstractly, consciousness is played out in the symbolic logic of checkers, chess, letters, words and mathematical relationships. In this sense, the modern-day chimpanzee rates as a novice in consciousness, while the dog, cat, pig and rat, in diminishing order, demonstrate a nascent capacity for consciousness. However, any animal that is able to modify its behaviors (in response to changes in its situation) is imbued with some form of consciousness.
In this way “mindedness” derives directly from improved organization and execution of bodily movement in space and time.119 Without predictive consciousness, we could not grasp and remove a carton of milk from the refrigerator or make a sandwich and eat it. We could not solve a quadratic equation or write a book. All of these wonderful talents have evolved, however, because an archaic consciousness helped us to avoid being eaten by a stalking predator and to be cunning in pursuit of our prey. With crisp parsimony, the father of modern neurophysiology, Sir Charles Sherrington, a gentleman of few words, put it this way: “The motor act is the cradle of the mind.”
Our basic survival instincts are the evolutionary engine upon which the castle of consciousness was built. While consciousness is not a uniquely human attribute, conscious awareness varies in quality and quantity in relationship to the complexity of each organism’s nervous system, but not in the essential phenomenon itself. I am reminded of a “trick” performed by my dog, Pouncer (an exceptionally bright dingo–Australian shepherd mix), suggesting a fairly sophisticated form of conscious awareness. I shall use him as an example:
Pouncer loved to go cross-country skiing with me and resembled a snow-dolphin as he joyfully leaped through the flaky white mounds by my side. However, when I chose downhill skiing, he would have to spend most of the time in my truck with only an occasional run around the parking lot. One morning, ready for a downhill day on new powder, I brought my downhill boots and skis up from the basement. Resigned, Pouncer flopped to the floor in apparent disappointment. However, after a bit, he got up, marched out of the room and returned a few moments later from the basement with one of my cross-country shoes gripped firmly in his mouth. He shook it in front of my face as though to tell me he had a different plan for the day. His point was so well made, and I was so touched, that I couldn’t help but change my course of action accordingly. Had Pouncer possessed full linguistic capability, words couldn’t have made his point any more clear than did his disarming unspoken response. As evidenced by Pouncer’s response, the give-and-take game of predictive consciousness does not involve symbols or abstractions but, rather, has its elementary roots with “plus-and-minus” values and purposive action; or, how do I get from here to there in a way that imparts an overall positive outcome?
Both successful attack and escape are promoted by a basic strategy that incorporates past experience in the service of imagining (“imageing”) future outcomes. The spanning of time allows choice of the imagined options. This strategy, however, is only effective when the organism is fully present in the now. If, on the other hand, we view the future solely in terms of the past—without a robust anchoring in the present—then, in the words of the country-and-western singer Michael Martin Murphy, “There ain’t no future in the past.” In other words, a future that is overly determined by the past ain’t no future at all. This fixation, set in the past, with no sense of a future that is different, is precisely what happens in trauma. If Pouncer couldn’t have imagined in the present, he most likely would have stayed resigned, and therefore a bit depressed. Unfortunately, unlike our animal friends, humans have a tendency, when under stress, to be pinned to the past. Only man routinely becomes lost in regret for the past and fearful of what will happen in the future, causing us to be disconnected and adrift from the now. One might even call this lack of living in the present moment a modern-day malady. It appears to be a by-product of a loss of connection with our instinctual animal nature.
The “job” for each species is to adapt and maintain a place for itself in a very complex ecosystem. Evolution’s winnowing-out process has produced, for all species, a means of coping, through complex sets of actions, even in the most extreme situations. Whether we are frozen in terror, overwhelmed and collapsed or remain mobilized and engaged is determined largely by our ability to navigate the complex instinctual action patterns described by Darwin and elaborated by his followers. These complex organismic responses depend, in a context of social collaboration, on harmonious teamwork between chemicals, hormones, neurons and muscles. It is this complex coordination that allows animals to orient and to take the right actions to ensure the reestablishment of control and safety. When all of these intricate systems are working together coherently, we humans have the felt-sense recognition that we “belong” in the world, that our consciousness is expanded and that we are capable of coping with whatever challenges life brings our way. When these systems are not operating smoothly, we feel insecure and out of sorts. So while our literal survival in a postmodern (actual predator–sparse) environment does not so much depend upon expanded consciousness, the very survival of our sanity and selfhood does.
Let’s take a step back to the beginnings of life to glean a deeper understanding of the concepts we have been exploring. A single-cell organism, like the amoeba, retracts when poked by a sharp object or withdraws from toxic substances. On the other hand, it propels itself toward a source of food by following along chemical nutrient gradients in the water. The totality of its behaviors involves approach and avoidance. It moves toward sources of nourishment and away from noxious stimuli. Later, as cells formed into colonies and neural nets developed to electrically communicate, movements became more organized and “purposeful.” The highly coordinated pulsing rhythm of the jellyfish, navigating in the surging sea, is an example of this coherent functioning. As organisms became increasingly differentiated and complex, first as fish and later as reptiles and mammals, the motor systems were fundamentally refined, and the organization gradually became more social in mammalian development.
Our early hominid ancestors were social creatures who needed to be able to rapidly alert each other about novelty, danger and other emergencies. In addition, they needed to be able to predict each other’s behaviors, to establish hierarchies and to facilitate deception. The best way to hone those skills was by observing, and trusting, their own inner processes. In “Cells That Read Minds,” Sandra Blakeslee quotes the neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti:120
“We are exquisitely social creatures. Our survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others. Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling—not by thinking.”
To facilitate survival in an increasingly complex and socially mediated world, a new mammalian adaptation evolved: feeling states. Feelings are never neutral; they exist along what is called a “hedonic continuum” designating affective spectrum from unpleasant to pleasant. We never feel a neutral emotion. Whereas the amoeba either reflexively retracts when poked (avoidance) or moves toward something nourishing (approach), higher animals “feel into” such movements as being either pleasurable or painful. External sense organs transmute physical stimuli and convert them into nerve impulses registering sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Ubiquitous internal sensors monitor a multitude of physiological and visceral processes and sort them into comfortable and uncomfortable. Such was the wisdom imparted by William James—that it is the scanning of our internal sensations that becomes the crucible of feeling.
A mammal baby does not have to learn that the taste of sugar is “good” and a hard pinch or a tummy ache is “bad.” The ingestion of sugar is necessary for energy production, hence the pleasure attraction; while the pinch can cause tissue damage, feels painful and is, therefore, to be avoided. Similarly, a very light touch can give us an uncomfortable creepy feeling simply because crawly things, in the evolutionary past, were likely to be poisonous. Our most compelling feelings of badness (avoidance) and goodness (approach) derive from visceral sensations such as nausea or belly warmth.
Hedonic feelings are also important for group cohesion and, therefore, for survival. As an example, when we exhibit behaviors that are beneficial to the group, such as nurturance and cooperation, we are rewarded by feeling good. We may even rescue someone (or give them one of our kidneys) even though it may put our own life at risk. On the other hand, when we do something that may endanger the group, such as coveting another’s mate or possessions, or endangering one’s children, we are shamed and shunned. These feelings can be so distressing as to cause illness or even death.121 In fact as studies have shown, those individuals who experience the greatest health and positive self-regard, throughout the world and in all socioeconomic levels, are those with strong group affiliations.
Feelings and emotions have evolved, at least in part, to amplify the hedonic sensations of approach and avoidance. When, for example, we taste something that is mildly bitter, sensations of “distaste” are registered upon our consciousness. However, when something tastes extremely bitter (and therefore, likely to be toxic), we are more apt to have the compelling emotion of disgust, with the associated sensation of nausea. With this emotional red flag (disgust), we are very likely to avoid such substances (or those that taste, smell or look like them) in the future. In addition, other members of the group who see our reaction will be less likely to ingest the same substance. Because we may not get the chance to avoid a poison (such as a rancid carcass) more than once, these emotional signaling reactions are meant to be compelling to us and others, making a long-lasting survival imprint. This is why if you get violently ill after eating steak béarnaise at your favorite restaurant, you are likely to avoid this particular dish and even that restaurant for years—if not going to the extreme of becoming a vegetarian.
By being able to feel things out, we are afforded the precision and overall adaptability that have put us at the top of the heap. There is a significant downside to this solution of imparting to feelings such a kingly executive function. If the emotional feeling systems were to fail and become disordered, as they do in stress and trauma, this disarray would reflect throughout the myriad of the physiological, behavioral and perceptual subsystems. This leaves us susceptible to fundamental misperceptions. A disturbing example of this flaw is when we detect danger where it does not exist—and, on the flip side, when we fail to detect it when it’s actually in our face. Another poignant example of our “feeling system” gone awry is the presence of every sort of stress, autoimmune illness and “psychosomatic” disease, which have been the bane of modern medicine. It has been estimated, for example, that between 75 to 90% or more of all visits to the doctor’s office are stress related. Fortunately, the evolution of conscious emotional feeling states provides, in itself, a remarkable solution if we can learn to register and respond to the inner promptings of our bodies.
Our instinctual feeling-programs are the foundation for what allows us to plan and move ahead with purpose and direction. It is the fabric of what connects us to one another. When this critical map becomes disordered and maladaptive with trauma or protracted stress, as a consequence, we simply become lost.
Ivan Pavlov was born in a small village in central Russia. His family, wanting him to become a priest, enrolled him in a theological seminary. After reading the revolutionary Charles Darwin, however, he dropped out, leaving the seminary for the University of St. Petersburg, where he pursued a scientific career studying chemistry and physiology. He received his doctorate in 1879. In 1904 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his prodigious research on the conditioned reflex. Pavlov is most well known for his methodically controlled conditioning studies. Yet his pivotal contribution to the understanding of trauma was spontaneously provoked by an unexpected and uncontrolled experiment, a natural disaster that disrupted his rigidly structured laboratory protocols. He had been resting on his Nobel laurels for almost two decades when a chance occurrence opened a new vista—a discovery that is little appreciated as the first, and arguably the single most critical, experimental antecedent for understanding the physiology and behaviors of trauma.
The great Leningrad flood of 1924 caused the water to rise in Pavlov’s basement laboratory precipitously close to the level of his caged experimental dogs. Fortunately, his assistant rescued the dogs from their cages and carried them to safety. While the animals had suffered no physical harm, and looked from all outward appearances to be completely normal, very strange changes had come over them. First of all, these terrorized animals had “forgotten” or had reversed the conditioning that they had learned prior to the event. Secondly, some of the dogs that were previously docile in nature attacked anyone who approached them, while those with previous aggressive tendencies often shook and cowered in their cages. In addition, Pavlov observed physiological changes such as elevated and depressed heart rates under mild stress and full startle reactions to mild stimuli, such as tones or the sounds and movements of an approaching experimenter. Embarking (no pun intended) on his new career, Pavlov began to systematically study these phenomena with his dogs. He must have been aware of the traumatic breakdown of soldiers and the salient need for treatment considering that Russian military losses in October 1916 were between 1.6 and 1.8 million killed and another two million held as prisoners of war.
Pavlov remained focused on his experimental study of animals breaking down under stress during this epoch. He formulated the following sequence by which his dogs (and presumably humans) break down under extreme or protracted stress, thereby losing our sense of direction and purpose.
In the first stage, the equivalent phase, the animal gives the same response to both weak and strong stimuli. This can be observed in humans who are deprived of sleep for even a couple of days. Under this type of stress, people may react to an innocuous question with the same degree of irritability and confusion as when they are exposed to a significant provocation. One wonders how many domestic arguments, often around trite frictions, arise out of simple sleep deprivation.
In the paradoxical phase, or Pavlov’s second reaction to protracted stress, the animals exhibited a reversal of their conditioned responses. Something had happened in their brains that made the dogs respond more actively to weak stimuli than to strong ones. This is something that does not normally happen to individuals unless they have been traumatized. The Vietnam veteran who ducks for cover when a distant car backfires, but spends his afternoon at the firing range, demonstrates this phase of breakdown. Another example might be the rape victim who startles to every passing shadow yet hangs out in seedy bars.
Pavlov named the third and final chapter in the breakdown saga following unmitigated stress ultra-paradoxical but also referred to it as the transmarginal phase. In this final phase of “supramaximal” stimulation, a critical point was reached. Going beyond this apex would cause many of his dogs to just shut down; they became unresponsive for an extended period of time. Pavlov believed that this shutdown was a biological defense against neural overload. (In this way Pavlov set the stage for the study of conservation-withdrawal as investigated by Engle and later by Porges with the formation of his polyvagal theory.) In addition, as his animals “recovered” from being stunned, they exhibited extremely odd and inexplicable behaviors. The aggressive dogs became docile while the timid ones turned hyper-aggressive, as mentioned earlier. Similarly, trainers for whom the dogs had shown affection prior to the flood were now confronted with aggressive snarls and lunges. Other dogs, who had previously disliked their handlers, greeted them with showers of tail wagging and affection.
These about-face counterintuitive behaviors are analogous to those of highly traumatized humans. The loving husband who attacks his wife upon returning from the Iraq War is one such possible example. Another involves hostages who exhibit the Stockholm syndrome. They are not only compliant but may behave as though they have fallen in love with their captors, even refusing to leave when their rescuers arrive. There are a multitude of examples where victims of kidnapping have regularly visited their previous attackers in prison for years and have even married them. Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter, described her Iraq abduction in almost cheerful terms but then, a day or two later, talked about being in seclusion because of her trauma. And then, hopefully back to equilibrium, she made the statement, “I finally feel like I am alive again.”
In addition, traumatized individuals generally find themselves, as with Pavlov’s transmarginal phase, swinging wildly and unpredictably between being numb and shut down on the one hand and being flooded by emotions, including terror and rage, on the other. These bipolar swings are often erratic and capricious. With human posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic sufferers tend to gravitate, over time, toward shutdown. This shows up as symptoms of alexithymia (the inability to describe or elaborate feelings due to a deficiency in emotional awareness), depression and somatization.
Pavlov, observing his dogs suffering with their debilitating and intractable symptoms, concluded that they had lost their capacity to make adaptive approach/avoidance responses; they had essentially “lost their purpose.” In summarizing the plight of these poor creatures, he remarked that they had lost the “reflex” or instinct of purpose; they had lost their way. A similar example of breakdown comes from nature. A Galapagos Island guide told the following story to one of my students: “When a volcano erupts, the animals frequently lose their survival instincts, get confused, and some walk straight into the oncoming lava. This includes sea lions and marine iguanas capable of swimming to another island.” It appears that under this form of extreme duress, even animals in the wild may lose their bearings in the chaos. With a rare prescience Pavlov also inferred the natural, instinctive mechanisms by which traumatized organisms could regain their purpose and will to live. In particular he realized that approach and avoidance were aligned with what he called the defensive and orienting response. In his further study of the orientation responses (approach) and defensive responses (avoidance), Pavlov provided us with the key to establishing a healthy encounter between an organism and its environment: an optimal balance between curiosity and the need to defend and protect oneself.
Pavlov discovered that when animals are exposed to something novel in their environment, they first arrest their movement. Next they direct their eyes, head and neck in the direction of a momentary sound, fleeting shadow or novel scent (or follow the lead of other members of the group as they go into an arrest and alert response.). During arrest there is a brief deceleration of the heart rate, which apparently “tunes” and opens sensory perception.122
Pavlov discovered that these orienting responses served the function of both locating a source of novelty as well as accessing its meaning (i.e., is it a source of threat, mating, food or shelter?). It was likely that Pavlov was aware of this dual function. He called the innate characteristic of the orienting response the chto eta takoe reflex (instead of the simpler chto eta). Attempts at a literal translation have resulted in its being called the “What is it?” reflex. A more exact translation, however, suggests something closer to “What is that?” or “What is going on here?” or “Hey man, what’s happening?!?”b This labelling emphasizes the amazement and curiosity inherent in the response. This dual response (reacting plus inquiring) is the dominant feature of orienting behaviors. For humans, as well as other animals, this includes expectancy, surprise, alertness and curiosity.
Let’s end this chapter by tracking what Pavlov taught us back to its therapeutic application with clients: In virtually every session, as (formally) traumatized individuals emerge from immobility and shutdown, they are biologically wired to have the nascent impulse to orient to the room, to the therapist and others (as in group sessions) and to the here and now. So as Pavlov showed us how we lose our way, he also illuminated the way back. Recall for a moment an example of this during the session with Adam (the Holocaust survivor in Chapter 8). By embodying the image of the slum children joyfully flying their kites, Adam was able to emerge from his profound shutdown and began to orient to the various objects in the room and, then, to engage with me in a fresh and vital way. In that moment he came back into life long enough to embody new possibilities.
So you see, we are, in the final analysis, just a bunch of animals—instinctive, feeling and reasoning. In closing, I would like to repeat the quote from Massimo Pigliucci that opened this chapter because it seems to sum it all up succinctly: “We may be special animals, we may be particular animals with very special characteristics, but we’re animals nonetheless.”
* Oxytocin and the endorphins have been implicated in this feel-good and trust-promoting chemical cascade.
† These include Ivan Pavlov, Sir Charles Sherrington, Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch and Roger W. Sperry.
‡ Jim Anderson, a psychologist and primate researcher at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, described a recent videoing of the death of Chimp and the reaction of others in the same pen (BBC News, April 26, 2010): “As the breathing of the old female chimp slowed, and finally stopped, the others bent down to look intently into her face … We had never seen that before.” They poked and gently shook her body for 30 or 40 seconds. They looked puzzled, Anderson reported, and slept more fitfully that night than usual. The dead chimp’s adult daughter slept on the platform where her mother’s body lay—close but not touching or inspecting it. Reporting in the April 27, 2010, issue of the scientific journal Current Biology, Anderson said that these observations add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that chimps have a rich emotional life. “It might well be that they do have some awareness of death. We know from other work that chimpanzees, more than monkeys, are capable of showing empathy toward others who have a problem, or have been attacked. We see consolation behavior.” Chimps clearly have a sense of self, Anderson said, and some sense of future and past.
§ In the tradition of St. Francis of Assisi, both David Rothenberg, in Why Birds Sing, and Maya Angelou, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, write about this creative core in birdsong. Rothenberg asks the question of why birdsong sounds so musical, and after earlier “duets” with birds and cello and flute, he has recorded a series of live duets between bird and clarinet.
‖ Note that one of the moth’s camouflages is an eye on its wings.
a There may, of course, have been multitudes of soft-bodied creatures that are not preserved in the fossil records. See Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).
b I recently spoke to the Russian translator for my first book, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, and she confirmed this analysis.