Bizarre Behavior and Culture-Bound Syndromes

Worries of a child conceived by a sperm donor

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Rocklin, Ph.D.) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:31:00 +0000

Children conceived by a sperm donor are worried that they will have an intimate relationship with an unknown, blood relative.

(http://www.familyscholars.org/assets/Donor_15findings.pdf) According to Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval D. Glenn and Karen Clark, half-46%-of donor offspring... agree. "When I'm romantically attracted to someone I have worried that we cold be unknowingly related."

Realistic fear? Consider that there is some evidence that biologically similar adults are more sexually attracted to one another, especially when reared apart and this phenomena is termed

Genetic Sexual Attraction. Just ask Phil Bailey and his grandmother, Pearl Carter or Patrick and Susan Stubing, a married couple with two children. By all outward appearances they are a normal family living in Germany with one important exception: Patrick and Susan are siblings. (http://www.bizarrebehaviors.com/2009/09/genetic-sexual-attraction-an.html) So it seems that their increased worry is justified.

Zombies - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:17:00 +0000

Recently I ran across some articles that got me thinking of 'zombification' in the animal Kingdom. A really great summary by Mo Constandi on his blog Neurophilosophy (Costandi, 2006) as well as an article by Evans, Elliot, & Hughes (2011) describe brain altering fungi – usually from the genus Cordyceps. This entomopathogen (something that causes disease in insects) infects ants when its spores attach to the outside of the insect. The spores then germinate growing into the interior of the ant’s body through the spiracles (i.e. respiratory holes in the exoskeleton) or its trachea (or throat). The fungus then sends mycelia, which are filament-like roots, into the body of the ant where it feeds on any soft tissue while avoiding any organs necessary for the ant’s survival. Eventually, the mycelia grow into the ant’s nervous system where they release chemicals that affect its brain. This causes the ant to change its behavior. Typically, the ant will then climb up a plant to an exposed location where it will then clamp on to a leaf. At this point the fungus will then consume the ant from the inside out and produce spores. These fruiting bodies (i.e. the ‘mushroom’ part of the fungus) will then sprout from the ant’s head and body. The fungus will then release spores from the fruiting body and exposed location of the ant will allow these spores to spread via the air and hence to other ants.

Ant with Cordyceps Fruiting Body Growing from its Brain

Such a relationship between parasites and insects is not unusual and there are many other examples in the animal kingdom. For instance a similar example involves crickets that are infected by nemotodes (roundworms) that cause them to jump into water facilitating the nematode lifecycle (Thomas et al., 2003). Lewis (1974) describes the life cycle of Leucochloridium helminthes (worms), which infect terrestrial mollusks (snails). The worms infect the snails and form broodsacs in the snail’s tentacles. The tentacles become striated, swell, and pulsate mimicking something like a maggot – a favorite food for birds. The worm also changes the snail’s behavior so that it moves to an exposed place. Birds are attracted to the maggot-like tentacles and bite them off the snails. The worm larvae are then excreted by the bird ready to infect another snail. The snails do not necessarily die, the tentacles can regenerate, and more broodsacs can be formed.* Other snails infected with helminthes may instead be castrated by the broodsac that form inside the snail.

Snail with Leucochloridium Infection

The phenomena of parasites changing the behavior of a host are not limited to insects and mollusks. There is evidence that infection by the intracellular protozoa Toxoplasma gondii changes the behavior of rats. Rather than showing aversion to cats the rats no longer act as if the cats are no longer predators and in some instances are attracted to them. This of course results in the infected rats being eaten and the cats facilitating the life cycle of the parasite through harboring the protozoa and then excreting it in their feces.

T. gondii is infectious to all mammals and will infect the human nervous system in particular. Pregnant women infected with T. gondii can pass it on to their unborn children causing serious problems such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and even death. This is why pregnant women should not change the kitty litter!

Generally infection with T. gondii is asymptomatic in the initial stages though it has been linked to psychotic symptoms in humans, especially those who have compromised immune systems. Late stage T. gondii infection has been linked to personality changes, a decrease in intelligence, psychomotor performance degradation, certain types of brain tumors, and schizophrenia. A paper by Webster et. al. (2006) clearly outlines the evidence for the association of T. gondii infection and schizophrenia. The authors hypothesize that anti psychotic medications such as haloperidol may work in part because they have anti – T. gondii properties. In fact, the authors found that haloperidol and valproic acid were as effective in controlling T. gondii infection in rats as standard anti – T. gondii medications. The authors conclude that their findings could “lead to improved prognosis and potentially new medication combinations and therapeutic modalities for the treatment of both toxoplasmosis and severe psychiatric disorders” (p. 1029). Seen from this light it is possible that schizophrenia associated with T. gondii infection could be seen as a form of ‘zombie-ism’ – one that could be treated by eradicating the protozoa, which is also be a potentially new way of dealing with psychosis!
Of course humans suffer from other types of nervous system infections that could potentially affect behavior. For example one of the most common and oldest known infection of the brain is caused by Taenia solium otherwise known as the tapeworm. T. solium usually enters the body when a person eats undercooked pork that carries the eggs of the tapeworm. These hatch in the intestines and live in this ‘food rich’ environment. But sometimes T. solium makes its way into the bloodstream where it can travel to the muscles, eyes, or brain.

Live Tapeworm being Removed from a Human Brain

In 2008 Fox news reported on a woman in Arizona who had a live tapeworm in her brain (“It’s Not a Tumor - Doctors Find Worm In Woman’s Brain Instead,” 2008). She had reported numbness in her arm and blurred vision and doctors suspected a tumor. Indeed something showed up on a MRI scan and the woman was scheduled for surgery. During the operation for an expected tumor the woman’s surgeon found the live worm and removed it.** Interestingly, this woman was lucky because once the worm was removed her neurological symptoms resolved. Worse problems may arise if the worm dies while in the brain. When this happens an inflammatory immune action is provoked and a cyst is formed around the worm. This can cause headaches, encephalitis, seizures, and in some cases zombie-like mental confusion as well loss of coordination and balance. While single cyst-caused lesions are less problematic, people who have multiple or calcified lesions may have permanent neurological issues (Singhi, 2011). T. solium infection highlights the importance of fully cooking food like pork as well as the necessity for good hygiene among those who handle food.

Neurocysticercosis - Tapeworm Cysts in the Brain

The infections cited above, whether deliberately part of an organism’s life cycle (as with Cordyceps or Leucochloridium) or accidental (as with T. gondii or T. solium), cause damage to the brain. There are of course other pathogens such as viruses that can also infect the brain. These infections result in encephalitis, which is an inflammatory response causing swelling and irritation that are potentially life threatening. Encephalitis is most often caused by a virus and usually results in mild flu-like symptoms. However, encephalitis is unpredictable. Severe cases can be deadly or cause permanent brain damage, having at least the potential to create a zombie-like state. Some pathogens, like viruses in the Herpes simplex (HSV) group can cause severe encephalitis.

Three of the HSV types (HSV-1, HSV-2, and Varicella zoster) can infect the human nervous system. HSV-1 (commonly known as oral herpes) is the most common cause of viral encephalitis that can be life threatening. HSV-1 has a preference for infecting the frontal cortices, which can produce a number of neurological problems, including language and memory impairment as well as epilepsy. Psychological issues such as personality and behavioral abnormalities, including disinhibition and increased aggression can also occur (Arciniegas & Anderson, 2004). HSV-2 (the type responsible for genital herpes) infection can also produce encephalitis that causes neuropsychological symptoms. While HSV-2 seems to have a preference for infecting the meninges (tissues around the brain), it can also affect the brain, brainstem, cranial nerves, nerve roots, and spinal cord, as well. This can result in cranial nerve damage (neuropathy), weakening (hemiparesis) or loss of sensation (hemisensory loss) on one side of the body, and altered levels of consciousness. Typical herpes skin lesions may accompany neurological infection (Berger, Houff, & Fathallah-Shaykh, 2008). It seems plausible that people suffering from untreated neurological HSV 1 & 2 encephalitis could look and behave like zombies.

Heinrich Kluver

Paul Bucy

Another serious possible consequence of HSV encephalitis is Kluver-Bucy Syndrome (KBS) (Begum, Nayek, & Khuntdar, 2006; Cohen, Park, Kim, & Pillai, 2010; D Ku & Sang Yoon, 2011; Duggal, Jain, Sinha, & Nizamie, 2000; Gabison-Hermann, Pelletier, Taleb, & Bouleau, 2009; Yilmaz et al., 2008). Heinrich Kluver was a German émigré experimental neuropsychologist at the University of Chicago. He served as a German soldier from World War I and was wounded. A trip to the base hospital spared him from defending against the final Allied assault and perhaps saved his life. Those who didn’t know him well found him diffident and somewhat perfectionistic – almost a cliché of German scientists from this era. His friends however know him as a warm and thoughtful scientist. Kluver studied eidetic imagery, which led him to study hallucinations induced through mescaline. Reportedly Kluver used himself as a guinea pig with regard to the effects of mescaline and an overdose supposedly left him seriously ill for a time. After studying the effects of mescaline on monkeys he began experiments with neurosurgeon Paul Bucy on the effect of removing the temporal lobes of the brain in their primate subjects. The loss of the temporal lobes produced a syndrome that was named after the two researchers. (Hunt, 1980).

Kluver-Bucy Syndrome (KSB) results in marked behavioral changes which include hyperorality (putting things in the mouth), hypoermetamorphosis (a fixation of attention to something in the environment – usually related to orality), hypersexuality, and a supposed passive ‘tameness’ (Klüver & Bucy, 1937, 1938, 1939). The last quality has been construed as a lack of aggression in that caged monkeys with KBS were more placid and easily approached. However, in a later experiment by Kling where the monkeys were allowed to roam freely after the operation, it was noted that the animals did not act tame and were not easily approached, but instead became socially isolated (Glick & Roose, 1993).

In humans KBS results in behavioral changes similar to those in monkeys. These changes, however, are more elaborate and include amnesia, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, confusion, aggression and frustrated rage, pica (eating non-edible things including corprophagia), dysphasia (impairment in speech and comprehension of speech), emotional blunting and lability, hypermetamorphosis, hyperorality (which in one case involved continual spitting), hypersexuality, impulsivity, passivity, visual agnosia (inability to make sense of what is seen), etc. (Begum et al., 2006; Berger et al., 2008; Cohen et al., 2010; D Ku & Sang Yoon, 2011; Duggal et al., 2000; Gabison-Hermann et al., 2009; Greenwood, Bhalla, Gordon, & Roberts, 1983; Lilly, Cummings, Benson, & Frankel, 1983; Yilmaz et al., 2008). There can be a number of causes of KSB in humans (besides encephalitis) and damage to the temporal lobes may vary to a great degree (Lilly et al., 1983). Interestingly the studies of KSB in humans often report some form of aggression. Clearly many of the aspects of KSB listed above could be seen as indicative of a form of ‘zombie-ism’.

I am familiar with KSB from my psychological practice at a large state mental hospital. When I worked in a skilled nursing ward I had a patient (who I will call) John who demonstrated many aspects of KSB in humans.

John's life was a tragedy. At age five he was playing in his driveway behind his parent's car. His father, rushing off to work, failed to notice the little boy and backed the car up, driving over the boy’s head. John survived but suffered severe brain injury on one side to his temporal and frontal lobes. He became developmentally delayed (what used to be called 'retarded') and his behavior became unruly and violent. John's behavior became so bad his parents couldn't handle him at home and he was committed to a state mental institution. When I began to work with John he was 30 years old and had grown up in the mental hospital. This was not a good place to grow up. In John's case being an unruly violent child in the company of other unruly violent children meant constant fights and injuries. When John became a teenager he got in an especially bad fight that resulted in his head being repeatedly smashed against a concrete floor by an older, much stronger patient. This patient had no idea of what he was doing and kept hitting John's head against the floor until John almost died.

John suffered further traumatic brain injury from this incident, this time to the temporal and frontal lobes on the other side. Whereas after the first injury John could talk and reason to some degree, after second he could not. His demeanor was that of being in a awakened vegetative state. John also suffered damage to his motor cortex and was paralyzed from the waist down. More interestingly though (and the point of this story) is that the damage to John's frontal lobes resulted in KBS. In essence, John became an eating machine. Without consciousness John would spend every waking second trying to eat something, whatever came within his grasp. He would constantly pick at his clothes until he could rip off chunks and eat them. John's physician showed me an old X-ray of John's stomach which was filled with cloth, a couple of forks, toys, anything he could fit in his mouth.

X-Ray of the Stomach of a Person With Pica Behavior

John would also try and eat people. When you came close to John he would reach out, grab you, and try to get a bite. Because of this insatiable appetite for anything he could get his hands on, John spent his days dressed in rip-stop clothing, with his arms tied down in restraints. This drive to eat had no conscious motivation to it, and John exhibited no consciousness at all - eating was the whole of John's being. John exhibited hypermetamorphosis in that once he locked on to something in the environment he would focus obsessively on trying to eat it. John was not usually aggressive, except if he were kept from something he wanted to eat. Then he would become frustrated and somewhat enraged. Had John able to walk, he would certainly have attacked people and tried to eat them. He had in essence become a zombie.

For me, the case of John and others like him brings up the real possibility of zombie-ism. The one saving grace in this nightmare scenario is that fully mobile and unrestrained, John-like zombies would soon eat themselves to death. They could not keep ingesting inedible objects without serious consequences. Unless John-like zombies somehow developed a taste for living creatures, the rest of us wouldn't have much to worry about and after a few days of unrestrained eating they would either be debilitated or dead. All enterprising survivors would have to do would be to hole up somewhere and wait out the ‘zombacolypse’.

Yet the case of John and others like him give hard evidence that an infectious agent or trauma can cause injury to the brain leading to zombie-like behavior changes. This scenario is far-fetched perhaps, but not impossible. Harvard psychiatrist Steven Schlozman elaborates on this idea in his book The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse (Schlozman, 2011). In this fictional account an infectious agent has caused a pandemic. The infection itself is man-made comprising a virus that delivers prion disease to the brain, selectively destroying its higher centers. The virus/prion combination (and a third infectious agent the protagonists try to identify) also infect the body, leaving just enough function to allow the zombie to move and eat. I would suggest that in real life such an elaborate mechanism is not necessary. There are plenty of prospects in the world at large that have the potential to be 'zombifying' agents. A small mutation in one of the herpes viruses or T. gondii, a tapeworm variant, a fungus that jumps from insects to humans, or some combination thereof could do the trick. Given these infectious agents our obsession with zombies starts to makes sense. Perhaps in the back of our minds we realize there is the possibility of a real zombie outbreak, that there is something to be afraid of?

Notes

* There is a wonderful video of these snails online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWB_COSUXMw
** Video of the worm being removed can be found here: http://media2.foxnews.com/112008/worm_tumor_700.wmv

References

Arciniegas, D. B., & Anderson, C. A. (2004). Viral encephalitis: Neuropsychiatric and neurobehavioral aspects. Current Psychiatry Reports, 6, 372-379. doi:10.1007/s11920-004-0024-x

Begum, H., Nayek, K., & Khuntdar, B. K. (2006). Kluver-Bucy syndrome--a rare complication of herpes simplex encephalitis. Journal of the Indian Medical Association, 104(11), 637-638.

Berger, J. R., Houff, S., & Fathallah-Shaykh, H. M. (Ed. . (2008). Neurological complications of herpes simplex virus type 2 infection. Archives of Neurology, 65(5), 596-600. doi:10.1001/archneur.65.5.596

Cohen, M. J., Park, Y. D., Kim, H., & Pillai, J. J. (2010). Long-term neuropsychological follow-up of a child with Klüver–Bucy syndrome. Epilepsy & Behavior, 19(4), 643-646. doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2010.09.003

Costandi, M. (2006, November). Brainwashed by a parasite «?Neurophilosophy. Retrieved September 14, 2011, from http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/11/20/brainwashed-by-a-parasite/

D Ku, B., & Sang Yoon, S. (2011). Relapsing herpes simplex encephalitis resulting in Kluver-Bucy syndrome. Internal Medicine (Tokyo, Japan), 50(7), 763-766.

Duggal, H. S., Jain, R., Sinha, V. K., & Nizamie, S. H. (2000). Post-encephalitic Kluver-Bucy syndrome. Indian Journal of Pediatrics, 67(1), 74-76.

Evans, H. C., Elliot, S. L., & Hughes, D. P. (2011). Hidden diversity behind the zombie-ant fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis: four new species described from carpenter ants in Minas Gerais, Brazil. PloS One, 6(3), e17024. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017024

Gabison-Hermann, D., Pelletier, A., Taleb, M., & Bouleau, J.-H. (2009). [The case of temporal lobes dysfunction in atypical psychiatric episodes]. L’Encéphale, 35(5), 491-495. doi:10.1016/j.encep.2008.06.013

Glick, R. A., & Roose, S. P. (1993). Rage, power, and aggression. Yale University Press.

Greenwood, R., Bhalla, A., Gordon, A., & Roberts, J. (1983). Behaviour disturbances during recovery from herpes simplex encephalitis. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 46(9), 809-817.

Hunt, W. A. (1980). Heinrich Klüver: 1897-1979. The American Journal of Psychology, 93(1), 159-161.

It’s Not a Tumor - Doctors Find Worm In Woman’s Brain Instead. (2008, November 20). Text.Article, . Retrieved September 27, 2011, from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,455067,00.html

Klüver, H., & Bucy, P. C. (1937). “Psychic blindness” and other symptoms following bilateral temporal lobectomy in Rhesus monkeys. American Journal of Physiology, 119, 352-353.

Klüver, H., & Bucy, P. C. (1938). An analysis of certain effects of bilateral temporal lobectomy in the rhesus monkey, with special reference to “psychic blindness.” Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 5, 33-54.

Klüver, H., & Bucy, P. C. (1939). Preliminary analysis of functions of the temporal lobes in monkeys. Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry (Chicago), 42, 979-1000.

Lewis, P. D. (1974). Helminths of Terrestrial Molluscs in Nebraska. II. Life Cycle of Leucochloridium variae McIntosh, 1932 (Digenea: Leucochloridiidae). The Journal of Parasitology, 60(2), 251-255. doi:10.2307/3278459

Lilly, R., Cummings, J. L., Benson, D. F., & Frankel, M. (1983). The human Klüver-Bucy syndrome. Neurology, 33(9), 1141-1145.

Schlozman, S. C. (2011). The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse. Grand Central Publishing.

Singhi, P. (2011). Neurocysticercosis. Therapeutic Advances in Neurological Disorders, 4(2), 67-81. doi:10.1177/1756285610395654

Thomas, F., Ulitsky, P., Augier, R., Dusticier, N., Samuel, D., Strambi, C., Biron, D. ., et al. (2003). Biochemical and histological changes in the brain of the cricket Nemobius sylvestris infected by the manipulative parasite Paragordius tricuspidatus (Nematomorpha). International Journal for Parasitology, 33, 435-443.

Webster, J. P., Lamberton, P. H. L., Donnelly, C. A., & Torrey, E. F. (2006). Parasites as Causative Agents of Human Affective Disorders? The Impact of Anti-Psychotic, Mood-Stabilizer and Anti-Parasite Medication on Toxoplasma gondii’s Ability to Alter Host Behaviour. Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 273(1589), 1023-1030.

Yilmaz, C., Cemek, F., Güven, A. S., Caksen, H., Ata?, B., & Tuncer, O. (2008). A child with incomplete Kluver-Bucy syndrome developed during acute encephalitis. The Journal of Emergency Medicine, 35(2), 210-211. doi:10.1016/j.jemermed.2007.05.051

Zombies - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:24:00 +0000

In order to understand zombies it is important to know their origins. Here I would like to trace our conception of zombies back to Haiti and Africa, explain the 'original' zombie types, look at how these zombies come into being, and how they are used. I will conclude with a discussion on the psychology of zombies.

The word zombie is African in origin, though it does not have a simple etymological lineage. There are a number of Africa terms that may be related to of the modern word zombie. These include fumbi, which is the Yoruba word for spirit; mvumbi, which in the Congo can refer to either a cataleptic person or the invisible spirit of a person; ndzumbi, the Gabon word for corpse; nsumbi the Congo word for devil; nvumbi the Angolan term for a body without a soul; nzambi the Congo word for the spirit of a dead person and the Bantu word for the creator and/or serpent God; zan bii a term used in the Ghana-Togo-Benin areas of Africa to refer to a nighttime bogeyman used to scare children; and zumbi, a word used in the Congo and in Angola to refer to someone raised from the dead (Ackermann & Gauthier, 1991, p. 468)

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Voodoo states that a zombie is an individual whose soul has been captured by a sorcerer (Turlington, 2002). However, zombies may be of two types - a soul without a body or a body without a soul. The former is relatively easy to obtain, while the latter requires extraordinary skill on the part of the sorcerer. This delineation of zombies into two types is related to the African belief that humans have two types of souls or spirits. In Haiti these are known as the Gros Bon Ange (good big angel) and the Ti Bon Ange (little good angel). Depending on whom you talk to, one or both of these souls can be captured through sorcery. The soul itself may then become a zombie. Called a zombi astral or zombie of the spirit (I will refer to it as a spirit zombie), it is held by a sorcerer who can then transform the soul into various forms to carry out his or her bidding, for both good and evil. Conversely, one or both of these souls can be removed from a person, turning them into a soulless body that is under the power of its sorcerer master. In either case, a zombie can be considered to be someone who has problems with their soul(s). Typically, western writers have reported mostly on soulless body type zombies, which are called zombi cadavre or zombi corps cadavre which can be translated into a zombie of the flesh (I will call it a flesh zombie from here on out), Nevertheless, interviews with Haitian sorcerers indicate that spirit zombies are quite common. (Ackermann & Gauthier, 1991).

There are various ways to create zombies. Spirit zombies can be obtained simply by capturing the soul(s) of a person via magic. This is relatively easy and does not require great skill. Flesh zombies require much greater skill to obtain and may require the use of animal and plant based drugs and poisons in addition to magic. It also may require murder, though some zombies are the result of a soul stolen from a living person. In most cases however, zombie creation requires access to a dead body, regardless of whether the body is freshly murdered or not.

The use of drugs to induce a flesh zombie is controversial (Davis, 1988b; Hines, 2008). Davis (1985) was one of the first people to argue that a zombie state could be induced using a mixture of certain animal and plant based substances. However, he was not able to obtain so-called zombie powders that would have produced the 'zombification' depicted in the movie The Serpent and the Rainbow, which was based on Davis' book. However, if we are willing to stretch the point it is possible to come up with a list of useful ingredients for flesh zombie creation:

Tetrodotoxin (derived from a number of different types of Puffer Fish) - which causes paralysis, reduces oxygen consumption, and leaves a person fully conscious, Because this toxin does not cross the blood-brain barrier it can induce a profound paralysis while leaving a person fully conscious (Davis, 1985, 1988a). Psychologically this creates a profound sense of helplessness and loss of control.

Datura Stramonium (Jimson Weed also known as 'Zombi Cucumber')- Hallucinations, schizophregenic (i.e. induces symptoms of psychosis and dissociation), and possibly brain damage. Also thought to reduce or eliminate a person's willpower (Davis, 1985).

Zombia Antillarum (Zombi Palm) - The oil produced from the seeds is thought to be able to activate the senses and wake up the zombified person. The leaves of this plant are also thought to prevent being spied on by zombies (Taylor & Timyan, 2004).

Care must be taken to use right dosage of these toxins as too much will kill the victim. In popular renditions of the creation of zombies the toxins are either ingested by breathing in a powder or by having it come into contact with a cut. After the toxin takes effect the victim is typically interred in a coffin and buried alive. The person being turned into a flesh zombie is fully conscious during the burial and feels profound fear, anxiety, and loss of control. The potential flesh zombie then remains buried and the poison eventually wears off freeing them victim to struggle in their grave. At some point the zombie's master digs up the victim who is now supposedly compliant and without the will to resist.

The last part of the flesh zombie creation is the most controversial since once the poison wears off there is no reason the person should be compliant. None of the substances listed above, or listed by Davis in his publications, would induce a permanent lethargic-compliant state. Perhaps the zombie has to constantly be drugged, or is brainwashed? Some writers, notably Hines (2008) find this idea far-fetched. A more realistic explanation might be that a lack of oxygen in the coffin during burial could cause some degree of brain damage, perhaps to the frontal lobes. This would explain the blunted affect and lack of volition typical of zombies. It may be that the creation of a flesh zombie produces something akin to a person with a lobotomy.

It also may be true that what I am calling flesh zombies are nothing more than mentally ill people. Certainly some types of psychoses include the lack of volition, lethargy, compliance, and shuffling gait seen in flesh zombies. As Ackermann & Gauthier (1991) state, zombies might be based on the:

Observation of imbeciles, or certain mentally ill people, especially catatonic schizophrenes, demented or amnesic, who wandered off and were sighted later. In countries where illness and premature death are commonly attributed to magic, it would be logical to explain the vagrant mentally ill as resurrected dead without a soul. This would be a purely popular belief; sorcerers could have contributed nothing but rumor. (p. 490)

These authors go on to say that this idea is reinforced by the high incidence of psychosis among the homeless.

Regardless of the type of zombie created, they are useful to the person controlling them. Spirit zombies can be used for varied purposes ranging from helping with homework to inflicting disease. Flesh zombies can be used as domestic servants, manual laborers, limited skill workers, as well as bodyguards and assassins (Ackermann & Gauthier, 1991; Davis, 1988).

In essence, zombies make perfect slaves. In fact, aspects of the zombification process echo the forced diaspora of slaves from Africa. It is not too much of a reach to see the similarities between being conscious in a coffin and being in the hold of a slave ship. Both experiences include a complete loss of control as well extreme fright and claustrophobia. Both experiences are also easily fatal, or in the best case scenario result in lifelong degrading servitude.

There is more than just irony in the fact that slaves, and later former slaves, would want to create slaves for themselves. Psychoanalysts would call this a classic case of repetition compulsion. In other words, by repeating the process of slavery, the slaves seek mastery over their situation. This also represents the related phenomena of identification with the aggressor, where someone who is abused by another will take on the aggressive character of the abuser as a defense against their lack of self-worth. That people who were forcibly taken from their homes, subject to torture, horrible living conditions, and forced into long-term servitude would develop these psychological coping mechanisms makes sense. When you are under the total control of another, you can regain a sense of control over yourself by controlling someone else weaker and more vulnerable. Given that in many parts of the world people are still extremely vulnerable and struggling to gain control over their lives, it shouldn't be a surprise that zombies are in our thoughts**.

*In any case the film "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is well worth watching for it's depiction of the creation of a zombie with plenty of cinematic flair. Interestingly enough, Davis, absolutely hated the film even though he made quite a bit of money on it. In contrast the Voudun priest Max Beauvoir, who acted in the film loved the movie and it's portrayal of Voudun, so go figure (Craven, 1988; Marsh, 2010).

**Please consider making a donation for Haitian relief at jphro.org

Ackermann, HW., & Gauthier, J. (1991). The Ways and Nature of the Zombi. The Journal of American Folklore, 104(414), pp-466-494.

Craven, W. (1988). The Serpent and the Rainbow. Universal Pictures.

Davis, W. (1985). The serpent and the rainbow. New York, NY Simon & Schuster.

Davis, W. (1988a). Passage of darkness: The ethnobiology of the Hatian zombie. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Davis, W. (1988b). Zombification. Science, 240(4860), pp. 1715-1716.

Hines, T. (2008). Zombies and Tetrodotoxin. Skeptical Inquirer; (32)3, pp. 60-62.

Marsh, S. (2010). Interview with Hamilton Morris, filmmaker behind NZAMBI: documentary on Haitian zombie phenomenon. Downloaded from boingboing.net/2010/11/08/interview-with-hamil.html, 6-15-11

Taylor, FB., & Timyan, JC. (2004). Notes on Zombia Antillarum. Economic Botany, 58(2), pp-179-183.

Turlington, SR. (2002). The complete idiot's guide to Voodoo. Indianapolis, IN: Alpha Books.

Are Anthony Weiner's Penis Pictures Bizarre

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 06:12:00 +0000

With all of the hullabaloo about the twittering of Anthony Weiner (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/12/anthony-weiner-photos-resign_n_875534.html), We asked ourselves, “Why weren’t we writing a blog about his escapades?” Sure, he for the past three years, sent twitters of himself in various states of dress and undress to women who because of their interest in his political prowess, thought they would like to see his package. Not a particularly glaring oversight considering the acts of other politicians, (Schwarzenegger, Vitter, Ensign) and sports figures (Favre, Woods). Why didn’t he cease and desist after marrying Huma Abedin or when he discovered that he would have a child and become a father? Now his wife has to decide if he has been unfaithful with his sexting (http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/article1114177.ece/Is-sexting-the-new-age-version-of-infidelity). He even continued his sexting after Andrew Breitbart and others told him they were on his tail and let him know what they found. This must be a pervasive, well-established behavior, but very understandable to us experts in human behavior but strange to most others. How might we make sense of this?

The father of psychoanalysis and the greatest influence in personality theory (Schultz & Schultz, 2005), Sigmund Freud, asserted that boys love their mothers from about age 4, the phallic stage of child development. The boy overtly expresses his love for his mother and fantasizes about realizing his love for her. He competes with his father for his mother’s love. The son knows the father has a special relationship with his mother, which causes him to feel jealous of and then angry with his father. Freud wrote, “I have found love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case, too.” (Freud, 1954,p.223) The son expects that the father will attack him by cutting off his penis, the source of the boy’s sexual maternal interests and this becomes, what Freud called, castration anxiety. This anxiety is worsened when the son is punished by the father for masturbating or even for the desire to masturbate. How can the son get rid of such an unpleasant emotional state? He identifies with the father and seeks to behave like him and can redirect his sexual longing for his mother with acceptable forms of expression of affection, such as bringing his mother flowers or helping her with household chores. By discovering acceptable expressions of love for his mother, the son resolves his Oedipal Complex, seeks work that symbolizes his male virility, and remains proud of his penis.

For Freud, girls had a greater developmental challenge when they realized that they did not have a penis. They would feel inferior and blame their mother, which could become hate. Freud wrote that “girls feel deeply their lack of a sexual organ that is equal in value to the male one: they regard themselves on that account as inferior and this envy for the penis is the origin of a whole number of characteristic feminine reactions” (Freud, 1925, p212). Freud identified these feelings of little girls as penis envy.

So little boys, four and five years old, will masturbate in front of others, because of the pride they have for their penis and their wanting to let the world know they are just like their Dads. They are usually punished for such acts and with maturation, they discover socially acceptable ways to satisfy their passionate needs. When a mature adult behaves like a five year old, a follower of Freud would conclude that he has not sufficiently resolved his Oedipal Complex and therapy is pursued to accomplish what nature has failed to achieve.

There are other theories that are useful to understand why men would want to send women pictures of their penis or shots of them undressed sporting the results of their workout. Gorillas will flex their muscular bodies, beat their chests, and show off in front of the female. However, female Gorillas usually start the ritual by touching their lips or sitting on the male’s lap. With power and social status comes an increased risk of men seeking mates outside of their monogamous relationship (Knox, Vail-Smith, and Zusman, 2008) and women are soliciting men by sexting, and if Mr. Weiner had googled, he could have read rules for sexting men (http://www.askmen.com/dating/dating_advice_400/477_sexting-etiquette.html).

So what are women to do? Karen Horney was so incensed by Freud’s postulating woman’s penis envy that she defected from his psychoanalytic doctrine and found her own school of psychoanalysis. Horney considered Freud’s view that women envied the penis as demeaning and asserted that men feel inferior because they cannot bear children and consequently, suffer from womb envy. “Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?" Horney explained.(http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_karenhorney.htm)

Kristen Schaal, the Women’s Issue Correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (http://www.thedailyshow.com/), perhaps most accurately summarized Anthony Weiner’s goal for his therapy. There is an “age old misconception; that women want more information about your penis and that seeing it will make you more attractive. Men need to realize their penis has far more power over them than it has over us.”

Best wishes to Anthony Weiner as he pursues his treatment.

References

Freud, S. (1925) An autobiographical study. In Standard Edition (Vol. 20). London: Hogarth Press.

Freud, S. (1954). The origins of psychoanalysis:Letters to Wilhelm Fleiss, drafts and notes: 1887-1902. M. Bonaparte, A. Freud, & E. Kris (Eds.). New York: Basic Books.

Horney, K. (1939). New ways in psychoanalysis. New York, Norton.

Knox, D., Vail-Smith,K,., and Zusman, M. (2008). Men are dogs’: Is the sterotype justified? Data on the cheating college male. College Student Journal, Vol 42(4), Dec, 2008. Pp. 1015-1022.

Schultz, Duane P., & Schultz, Sydney Ellen, Theories of Personality, 8^th.ed.,Thomson Wadsworth, 2005.

Vampires Exist?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Fri, 20 May 2011 19:14:00 +0000

Franck and Emilie Dayan wrote about porphyrins (Porphyrins:One Ring in the Colors of Life) in the American Scientist (May-June,Vol. 29) in which they brought together science and myth to explain the existence of Vampires. They even referenced a “vampire plant” so named by Crispin Taylor of the American Society of Plant Biologists because it has a phenotype similar to photosensitive patients afflicted with porphyria. They shed light on the legend of Dracula when they described Vlad III, born in 1431, the Prince of Wallachia, who was Knight of the Order of the Dragon (a Hungarian religious order organized to protect the interests of Catholicism and the Holy Roman Empire) as a very authoritarian ruler known for his cruelty to his foes. He chose Easter Sunday, 1459, to arrest and impale many of his nobles who had rebelled and killed his father and his brother. The Dayan’s note that his preferred method of punishment earned him the nickname, Tepes, which means the impaler. His methods of torture included skinning, decapitation, hacking, strangulation, hanging, boiling, and burning. Noses, ears and sexual organs were cut off. 20,000 to 40,000 European civilians were killed, most of whom were impaled. Tepes created a “Forest of the Impaled” described by Sultan Mehmed who, in 1462, encountered 20,000 rotting cadavers of Turkish captives when he entered the capital of Wallachia. While not known for drinking the blood of his enemies, his thirst for vengeance served as a model for the villain, Dracula. The Dayan’s pointed out that while most cultures describe mythical creatures that feed on the blood of the living, it wasn’t until Bram Stoker, an Irish writer, was introduced to Vlad Tepes in 1890 by professor Armin Vambery, that the term vampire became popular. Remember that Tepes was a Knight of the Order of the Dragon and “Dragon” is pronounced “Dracul” in Romanian and Dracula means son of Dracul.

What does this have to do with porphyria? Porphyrin is a molecule that binds to metal ions which have many different biological functions that are necessary to sustain essential activities in all organisms. Genetically based increases in porphyrin in places of the body in which they shouldn’t be, can cause light-dependent swelling and itching of the skin, mental disorders that can include muscle numbness, pain, and vomiting. While the Dayans make it clear that there is no evidence that Tepes suffered from porphyria, they do assert that David Dolphin, a prolific Canadian chemist who wrote seven volumes on porphyrins, identified that porphyria victims suffer from sensitivity to light as well as withered fingers and lips and “gums may tighten to reveal fanglike teeth with reddish hues due to elevated porphyrin levels.” (Dolphin, 12978-1979). The Dayans properly asserted that, “it is important to remember that patients afflicted with porphyria are by no means vampires…No one suffering from porphyria deserves a rendezvous with Buffy the vampire slayer.” We agree.

References

Boulton, J. (2000). The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchiacal Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325-1520. Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press

Dayan, Franck E.. and Dayan, Emilie A., Porphyrins: One Ring in the Colors of Life, American Scientist, May-June 2011, Vol.99, (3),p.236

Dolphin, D. (1978-1979), The Prophyrins. Volumes 1-7. New York, Academic Press

Dolphin, D. (1985) Werewolves and vampires, Annual Meeting of American Assoication for the Advancement of Sciences

Poblete-Gutierrez, P., Wiederholt, H.F., Merk and J. Frank, (2006). The prophyrins:clinical presentation, diagnosis and treatment. European Journal of Dermatology, 16(230).

Taylor, C.B., (1998), Vampire Plants? Plant Cell, 10(1071.

Genetic Sexual Attraction Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Tue, 17 May 2011 16:28:00 +0000

Genetic Sexual Attraction Revisited

We have written about men who get turned on watching high heeled women step on worms (crush videos), about men who prefer a “relationship” with a realistic looking female doll to the live, breathing person, but the topic that has elicited the greatest reader reaction has been genetic sexual attraction, otherwise known as the Westermarck Effect. (http://www.geneticsexualattraction.com/, http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/stories/peteroverton/441583/forbidden-love) Remember Patrick and Susan Stubing who live in Germany with their two children and have a normal family except that they are brother and sister. Patrick was adopted as a baby and did not meet Susan, towards whom he had an immediate attraction until he was 23 years old. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6424937.stm) What brought this to mind was a documentary entitled “Donor Unknown” from Metfilm and Redbird directed by Jerry Rothwell that recently screened at the Tribeca Film Festival (http://www.donorunknown.com/). It is the story of a child from donor 150 who searches for and meets her father and discovers that she has more than a dozen half-siblings. Providing four donations per week is "an acceptable practice from a medical standpoint," said Dr. Peter Schlegel, chairman of urology and professor of reproductive medicine at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York, but …the American Society for Reproductive Medicine now recommends that the number of children from an individual donor in a geographical area not exceed 10…This limits the risk of a brother and sister meeting and marrying without realizing they are related…There have been surprise meetings of siblings that sparked fears of accidental incest. In South Australia, one man's sperm was reportedly used to produce 29 children, most of whom came to live in the city of Adelaide (population 1.2 million). With more than 1 million children of donors alive today, a documented case of accidental incest would seem to be inevitable,” Schlegel says.(http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-unreal-donor-unknown-20110516,0,5927086.column)

Given what we know about Genetic Sexual Attraction accidental incest is not as much an accident as once thought and more predictable as a consequence of the Westermarck Effect.

References:

Gonyos, Barbara. I'm his mother, he's not my son. http://www.amazon.com/His-Mother-But...1444477&sr=8-3

Phillips, M. (2009). High On Arrival New York, NY: Simon Spotlight Entertainment.

Schneider, M.A. & Hendrix, L. (2000). Olfactory sexual inhibition and the westermarck effect. Human Nature, 11(1), 65-91.

Shepher, J. (1971). Mate selection among second generation kibbutz adolescents and adults: Incest avoidance and negative imprinting. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1(4) 1573-2800.

Spain, D. H. (1988). Incest theory: Are there three aversions? The Journal of Psychohistory, 15(3), 235-253.

Walter, A. (1990). Putting Freud and Westermarck in Their Places: A Critique of Spain. Ethos, 18(4), 439-446.

Walter, A., & Buyske, S. (2003). The Westermarck Effect and early childhood co-socialization. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 21, 353-365.

Weisfeld, G.E., Czilli, T., Phillips, K.A., Gall, J.A., & Lichtman, C.A. (2003). Possible olfaction-based mechanisms in human kin recognition and inbreeding avoidance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 85(3), 279-295.

Wolf, A.P. & Huang C. (1982). Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945. The China Quarterly, 90, 310-313.

Zombies - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Fri, 13 May 2011 20:48:00 +0000

Last year I appeared on the Animal Planet television show Lost Tapes in an episode on zombies. Some people who watched the episode thought that I might have been advocating for the existence of actual zombies and that there was a scientific rationale for this. I will go on record now as saying I do not believe zombies as typically seen in movies and television are real. Nor do I believe it is likely that humans could ever be transformed into a zombie-like state (I will talk about some exceptions to this in Part 2). Nevertheless, I do believe zombies are important and have a psychological existence within our psyches.

It seems we have zombies on our minds. My theory (shared by almost every other psychological writer on zombies) is that zombies represent the lower, more bestial aspects of ourselves that we typically keep repressed. These aspects of ourselves cause a great deal of anxiety which we defend against through repression. What about these aspects? They are primitive, oral, and aggressive. Hence the zombies predilection for eating people alive. Zombies may grab you with their hands, but it's their mouths and teeth that kill you. The preferred food for zombies is brains. This makes sense when we understand zombies to be fundamentally irrational. Both actually, and metaphorically, zombies seek to destroy our higher thoughts and aspirations.

Zombies may also represent fear of the mob. We like to think ourselves safe within the bubble of our lives. But the outside world is frightening. When we read about crime in the paper or watch the news, it sometimes seems as if everything outside is dangerous. It is as if other people are mindless automatons bent on mayhem and destruction. Or as Freud puts it in The Future of an Illusion (1927):

"They will have to admit to themselves the full extent of their helplessness and their insignificance in the machinery of the universe; they can no longer be the centre of creation, no longer the object of tender care on the part of a beneficent Providence. They will be in the same position as a child who has left the parental house where he was so warm and comfortable. But surely infantilism is destined to be surmounted. Men cannot remain children for ever; they must in the end go out into ‘hostile life’. We may call this ‘education to reality." (p. 48).

We may be shocked at the realization of the senselessness of a zombie infested world, so mindless and irrational. A school principal is shot for no apparent motive. His attacker is zombie-like in his mindless, unthinking aggression. The same for school shooters, bank robbers, gang members, disgruntled post office employees, etc. Or perhaps there is a motive - a mugging where someone loses their life over the most trivial possession - but this is also revealed to be another case of zombie-like selfish aggression. Because who in their right, logical, thinking, mind would perpetuate such acts of violence against their fellow human beings? From the aspect of our rational mind most violence starts to resemble the action of zombies. Better to stay away from places where people are gathering. Their cannibalistic, orally aggressive urges linger just below the surface ready to spring forth at any moment. It is better to stay locked up inside, safe in a well-defended home, stocked with food... and plenty of ammo.

Yet, there is always the insidious threat that someone inside has already been infected and could turn zombie at any time. Best to keep a close eye even on those we know best. This type of paranoia is also an aspect of zombies. In an excellent scene in the television show The Walking Dead, two of the protagonists smear themselves in zombie blood and guts so they can go amongst the undead horde undetected. Apparently the zombies detect normal humans by smell and the fetid offal masks this. The heroes shuffle along pretending to be zombies, while the 'real' zombies eye them curiously, sniffing at them. The ruse works until it starts to rain, their disguise is stripped away, and they are revealed as human.

This scene reminded me of the Kafka story - The Metamorphosis, where the protagonist is no longer able to go through the motions of fitting into human society (in this case because he has turned into a giant cockroach). His facade of humanity removed, he is revealed as a monster. The Walking Dead episode delivers a message that is just the opposite! We must act like monsters to be part of a deranged society, and if our zombie-like attributes are stripped away we will be persecuted for our humanity. How many of us can relate? How many of us at one time or another have had to metaphorically cover ourselves in something disgusting in order prevent negative attention to our true selves? Perhaps this is the adaptation we must make to venture out amongst the 'hostile life', the 'education to reality' that allows us coexist with our fellow zombies?

References:

Freud, S. (1927). The Future of an Illusion . SE, 21: 1-56.

Kafka, Franz (1915/2005). The Metamorphosis. Project Gutenberg: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200.

Kirkman, R. (2010). The Walking Dead [Television series]. Hollywood, CA: AMC.

"Zombies." Television Appearance. Lost Tapes, Animal Planet. Sep 28, 2010. (http://animal.discovery.com/videos/lost-tapes-zombies.html)

Prohibiting Crush Videos-Update

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 22:05:00 +0000

The Senate gave final approval on Friday to the bill, which bans the sale of “crush” videos that show the mutilation and torture of small animals. The measure now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.
The Senate unanimously passed the law. We are pleased that Dr. Volkan's testimony significantly contributed to the Senate's unanimous support of the law.
Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/nov/19/senate-passes-gallegly-crush-video/#ixzz15rWYCMxj

Lost Tapes

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:41:00 +0000

Kevin will be making his on-camera TV debut as a bizarre creature 'expert' in the next few weeks. The show is Lost Tapes on the Animal Planet network. Times and subjects of the episodes are:

09/28/10 10:00 PM Zombies

10/05/10 10:00 PM Strigoi

10/05/10 10:30 PM Poltergeist

10/19/10 10:00 PM Wendigo

Prohibiting Obscene Animal Crush Videos in the Wake of United States v. Stevens - Written Testimony of Kevin Volkan, Chair & Professor of Psychology, California State University Channel Islands

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:12:00 +0000

Hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee: “Prohibiting Obscene Animal Crush Videos in the Wake of United States v. Stevens” September 15, 2010

Written Testimony of Kevin Volkan, Chair & Professor of Psychology, California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, for inviting me here today to testify. My name is Dr. Kevin Volkan. I am Chair and Professor of the Psychology Program at California State University Channel Islands, where I teach courses on atypical psychopathology and culture-bound syndromes. I was formerly a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and I have training in both clinical psychology and public health. I also author a blog titled “Bizarre Behaviors and Culture-bound Syndromes” with my colleague Dr. Neil Rocklin, who lectures in my department and who has been in private practice for the last 35 years. Dr. Rocklin co-authored this written testimony.

My testimony today will focus on explaining the sexual nature of “crush” paraphilias, and describing how crush videos are sexual in nature and that those who watch crush videos do so to obtain sexual gratification. I will also explain the nature of this paraphilia from a variety of theoretical viewpoints.

Paraphilias are sexual disorders that involve recurrent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, urges or behaviors related to non-human objects, non-consenting persons or children, and the suffering and/or humiliation of oneself or a partner. Generally, to be considered pathology, a paraphilia should result in clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning (Association & DSM-IV, 2000). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Association & DSM-IV, 2000) lists the following specific paraphilias that we believe are related to crush videos: fetishes, sexual sadism, and sexual masochism. In my professional opinion, the crush paraphilia and crush videos contain elements of these specific forms of paraphilia in varying degrees and I believe that the crush paraphilia and crush videos are clearly sexual in nature.

Fetishes
A “fetish” is a strong recurrent sexual attraction to a non-living object. The most common fetish objects are clothing such as underwear, shoes and boots. With regard to the crush paraphilia, the fetish aspect is likely most related to the object that is doing the crushing–most often a foot or shoe. Crushing objects can vary and may include objects such as the buttocks or even a car. In fact one of the most notable crush fetishists who enjoyed the crushing of live animals, Bryan Loudermilk, was himself crushed to death by a vehicle in a scenario where he voluntary had a car driven on to his abdomen. (Reischel, 2006). Simply put, the crush paraphilia can be thought of as an extreme version of a “foot fetish” where the individuals with the paraphilia derive sexual pleasure from watching the object of their desire crush a living creature to death.

Sexual Sadism
The desire to see animals crushed to death by the fetish object (foot or shoe) may be explained in terms of sexual sadism and masochism. Sexual sadism is where sexual gratification is achieved through the fantasy of harming a partner or as a consequence of directly subjecting the partner to pain and humiliation. Typically, sexual sadism involves a human partner. In the case of crush paraphilias the partner is an animal. The animals used for sadistic purposes range from insects to larger mammals such as dogs. Many crush videos use small mammals such as mice, rats, puppies and kittens but regardless of the “victim,” the cause and purpose of the action appear to be the same. (1)

Sexual Masochism
This is the feeling of sexual arousal or excitement resulting from receiving pain, suffering, or humiliation. The pain, suffering, or humiliation is real and not imagined and can be physical or psychological in nature. Many who are involved in crush paraphilias take sexual pleasure in being crushed, squashed, or being put under pressure. Masochists often suffer from personality disorders in which they are only able to experience feelings in the context of situations where they are hurt or in pain. These people need to surrender their needs and identity and experience extremely disturbing things to feel that they exist and to feel pleasure (Saretsky, 1976). Masochism in which a person receives sexual gratification from being crushed has been reported in academic literature, but such reports are uncommon (Shiwach & Prosser, 1998), perhaps due to a paucity of reporting of such cases. There are also reports of autoerotic asphyxiation due to chest compression, which may involve a masochistic component (O'Halloran, R., & Dietz, P., 1993). In terms of the crush paraphilia, it is possible that masochists identify with the animals being tortured and killed, actually seeing themselves as the animal being crushed, and these individuals obtain sexual gratification through this identification.

Discussion of Crush Paraphilias
Paraphilias and fetishes (which are often not well-differentiated in the psychological literature) have been described as far back as the turn of the last century as the association of something pleasurable (usually sexual) with some object other than a whole human. These early writers also noted the association of sexual gratification with pain (Binet, 2001; Krafft-Ebing, 1922). Freud associated fetishes with the fear produced by the castration anxiety of the Oedipal complex. In this conception using the fetish object for sexual gratification was safe (Freud, 1961/2001).

Sexual sadism is thought by Freudians to be a defense against the anxiety produced by an aggressor. The sexual sadist identifies with this aggressor which reduces the sadist’s anxiety. Masochism on the other hand represents pain that has become associated with pleasure. This also has a defensive characteristic in that by accepting the pain that is given the individual may avoid worse pain. Freud also talked about masochism being sadism turned in upon itself; from being active to passive.
Most of the psychoanalytic explanations refer back to the original idea that paraphilias serve to ward off castration anxiety and this explanation would explain why most individuals who derive sexual gratification from paraphilias are men. While psychoanalysis does not have anything specific to say about crush paraphilias it would recognize the relationship of crush paraphilias to humiliation. As Susan Creede, a police investigator with the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary in 1999, (Creede, 1999), crush videos primarily appeal to men and are of most interest when the person doing the crushing is a woman. Men with this type of masochistic fantasy have, through personal life experience, linked their sexual gratification with personal humiliation. Exhibitionism is an example of this process. Personal humiliation causes an unacceptable amount of pain and risk, so these individuals resort to watching the torture of animals, imagining what it would be like if they were the animal being tortured and/or squashed by a controlling, domineering, over-bearing female partner. The ultimate sexual release occurs with death, but the benefit of killing an animal is that the crush practitioners can return the next day for another opportunity to fulfill their sexual needs.

Other explanations of the causes of paraphilias typically involve the association of pleasure with varying stimuli during childhood. These associations are reinforced and the person learns to experience sexual pleasure from the stimuli when they are older. This conditioning model has been verified in a series of studies done in the 1960s and 1970s (Marquis, 1970; Quinn, Harbison, & McAllister, 1970; Rachman, S., 1966, 1968). These researchers were interested in whether or not normal males could be conditioned to acquire a fetish. In one experiment, males were shown pictures of nude women while simultaneously viewing pictures of fur-lined boots. Penile plethysmography was used to measure the presence of arousal. After repeatedly seeing nude women with pictures of a variety of footwear, the men began to be aroused at the sight of the footwear alone. With regard to crush videos this type of association may be seen in the foot that is doing the stomping. The act of stomping found in many crush videos typically features women’s feet or shoes doing the stomping. The association of the foot with sexual pleasure may have pre-existed the sadomasochistic response to crushing animals, or the foot may have became eroticized by association with the abnormal sexual response to scenes of animal torture and killing. Both explanations are possible.(2)

The greater capacity for paraphilias in human males may be a byproduct of the successful evolutionary strategy whereby human females remain fertile throughout the year instead of seasonally like most primates. For fertility in females to be useful, males also need a correspondingly greater interest in sex, i.e. a stronger sex drive. This obviously had survival value for our primate ancestors. However, access to primate females exists in the context of a male dominance hierarchy that may not allow all males easy sexual access to females. Therefore human males, like other primates, may have evolved the behavioral capacity to find substitute sexual outlets (Wilson, 1987).

Treatment
Typically, people who have a paraphilia do not seek treatment unless the paraphilia has resulted in legal consequences. Treatment modalities include psychodynamic psychotherapy, behavior therapies, cognitive behavioral treatment, pharmacological treatment, and relapse prevention. Paraphilias, especially the more egregious types such as pedophilia, are notoriously difficult, but not impossible, to treat with high rates of relapse (Marvasti, 2004; McKay, Abramowitz, & Taylor, 2009; Nathan & Gorman, 2002; Rowland & Incrocci, 2008). One of the problems with successfully treating individuals with paraphilias is that they have a high rate of co-morbid mental disorders (Leue, 2004). Treatment combining different modalities is thought to be more effective than single modality treatment (Guay, 2009). Given the rather more primitive nature of the crush paraphilia and its high level of social unacceptability, it is likely that most individuals involved with crush paraphilias will not seek treatment or even be willing to acknowledge that they engage in this activity. These characteristics would indicate that there would be a strong commercial market for crush videos that can be watched in secret.

Conclusion
An important implication supported by all of these theories of the origins of paraphilias is that humans have the capacity to develop paraphilias in a wide variety of ways. A basic drive, such as sexual gratification, can be conditioned to occur while feeling humiliated or hurt. Adults, especially adult males, who have been so taught may also realize that subjecting others to pain is dangerous and socially reprehensible, so animals become the “safe” objects who, when tortured, give these men sexual gratification. Men who are unwilling to torture and kill the animals, or who want to hide their crush activities from society and others close to them, can obtain similar gratification by watching crush videos.

Certain human males have the capacity to learn to become sexually aroused by watching crush videos. In these videos the torture and killing of animals becomes associated with something males normally find sexually arousing, such as a beautiful woman. The treatment prognosis for those involved in crush videos is very poor. Treatment is not likely to prevent the acquisition of a crush paraphilia, curb the current practice of this paraphilia, or prevent a relapse. Given the above characteristics associated with crush paraphilias, I believe that a prohibition on the sale of crush videos is one of the few ways in which the practice and enjoyment of crush paraphilias can be reduced.

Footnotes:
1. It should be noted that there is a well-established relationship between animal sadism and violent crime (Stone, 2007) and some studies suggest there is a mental association between animal sadism and severe abuse in childhood. Taken together, this points to animal sadism as an important warning sign of violent crime.

2. Paraphilias can also be seen in primates, though not to the elaborate extent as in humans (Wilson, 1987). Epstein describes a chimpanzee that developed a foot fetish with a rubber boot. It is unknown how the fetish developed but the author speculates that the boot either became associated with the pleasure and food given by the caretaker or that the shiny color of the boot reminded the chimp of the genital display of a female chimp in heat (Epstein, 1987). As a recent youtube.com video graphically demonstrates, chimpanzees are quite capable of using different species of animals as a paraphilia (Chimp Rapes a Frog, 2010).

References:
Association, A. P., & DSM-IV, A. P. A. T. F. O. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of
mental disorders: DSM-IV-TR. American Psychiatric Pub.

Beetz, A. (2004). Bestiality/Zoophilia: A Scarcely Investigated Phenomenon Between Crime,
Paraphilia, and Love. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, 4(2), 1-36. doi:10.1300/J158v04n02_01

Binet, A. (2001). Le Fétichisme dans l'amour. Payot.

Blumstein, Philip W, & Schwartz, Pepper. (1993). Bisexuality: Some social psychological issues.
In Psychological perspectives on lesbian and gay male experiences. Garnets, Linda D.
(Ed.); Kimmel, Douglas C. (Ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Butcher, N. (2004). The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse: A Chronicle of Medical Mysteries,
Curious Remedies,and Bizarre but True Healing Folklore (1st ed.). Avery Trade.

Chimp Rapes a Frog. (2010). Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVE60zwXx1k&feature=youtube_gdata

Creede, S. (1999). Testimony on 'Crush Videos'. Washington, DC.

Epstein, A. (1987). The phylogenetics of fetishism. In Variant sexuality: Research and theory.
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Freud, S. (2001). The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: "The Future of an
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Aliens Visit France?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:46:00 +0000

Well, not now but hopefully. At Ares, near Bourdeau, there is a rest stop for aliens. http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/french-ufo-landing-pads-first-visitor-not-et/1962698
A plaque proclaims, "Reserved for voyagers of the universe." In Newfoundland, earlier this year, there were UFO reports and in 2005, an elementary school teacher in Puerto Rico, who claimed to be in communication with extraterrestrials, announced his intention to build a UFO runway http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2005-09-28-alien-runway_x.htm.
So maybe http://www.bizarrebehaviors.com/ will have to no longer include articles about aliens (Sept. 2009 and Sept. 2010) because alien believers like physicist Stephen Hawking, past presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, Apollo 11 astronaut Edgar Mitchell and 14% of Americans http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21528787/page/22/
make belief in aliens mainstream?

Hawking says watch out for aliens

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 01:00:00 +0000

Stephen Hawking warns that if we go looking for aliens, we could end up like the Native Americans after they were discovered by Christopher Columbus.
Professor Hawking said: 'We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

'I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet.
'Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.'
It would be 'too risky' to attempt to make contact with alien races, he concluded.
'If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.'

Go to our post in November of 2009 and read more and read more at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1308278/Stephen-Hawking-God-did-create-Universe.html#ixzz0yW9Sm9F2

Whale Wars: A Somewhat Psychoanalytic Review

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:57:00 +0000

It is the Antarctic Ocean, one of the most desolate places on earth, yet there are penises everywhere. Phallic shaped whales swim in the vast sea; spurting water cannons festoon the Japanese whaling fleet; And the Ady Gil (a black futuristic speedboat looking like a hi-tech phallus with two testicles) powers menacingly through the water. This is the setting for Animal Planet's television show Whale Wars, which follows the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as they try to thwart the Japanese whaling fleet and prevent the killing of whales. This is a show about men and the drama is mostly male-oriented. There are some women around to be sure, but they mostly play supporting roles as cook, nurse, doctor, and sometimes love interests for the menfolk.*

Why are these men and phalli in the Antarctic? Because of whales. Either because they are the Japanese hunting them for 'research' - a flimsy cover story at best - or trying to protect them from the Japanese. This is the job of the Sea Shepherds who are not content to lobby governments and argue policies while whales are being slaughtered. Instead they choose action on the high seas, seeking to directly impede the Japanese whaling fleet.

In Whale Wars we learn very little about the Japanese whalers and it would be interesting to hear the reasons they hunt whales. In the show they remain a mysterious 'other', a dark and often out of focus foil for our unconscious projections. The Japanese are portrayed as an evil enemy; the murderers of intelligent, majestic, peaceful, and utterly helpless whales. Not since Allied propaganda films of WWII have we seen such a negative and a one-sided depiction of the Japanese. Unfortunately for them this makes for good television.

Still, the Japanese seem to have it in for sea mammals such as whales and dolphins. This has made for some great parody such as the episode of the animated series Southpark where whales and dolphins are shown to have been responsible for the atomic bombing of Japan**. Even though these cetaceans are traditional menu items at some Japanese restaurants, most modern Japanese do not eat them. Whaling is a small industry, hardly worth the ruin of the international reputation of a progressive modern country. As one article indicates, much of the whale meat intended to be sold as a delicacy for humans ends up as cheap school lunches and dog food.

Japanese traditions are vanishing and perhaps this compels them to passionately retain to those few traditions they have left. To be sure, there is money to be made by whaling, but not much. Due in large part, to the activities of the Sea Shepherds, the Japanese only took about half their quota of whales (around 500) this season. Supposedly they need to kill 700 whales to break even. The expense of hunting whales has also increased (again in part because of the interference of the Sea Shepherds). It supposedly costs $2.5 million just to fuel the whaling ships for the hunting season. (For a more detailed examination of why the Japanese support whaling see Hirata, 2005).

The primary antagonist of the Japanese whalers is the extraordinary founder of the Sea Shepherds, Captain Paul Watson. He was one of the founders of Greenpeace who left that organization when he felt they had compromised their core beliefs. His story is inspirational and impressive, yet on the show he comes across as laconic and calculating. He has been an activist for a long time and is well aware of the political consequences of his actions as well as the public's perception of his efforts. Equal parts, senex (wise old man) and puer aeternus (peter pan), he serves both as controlling father (and hence THE target for the oedipal projections of the other Sea Shepherd men) and originator of rather sketchy, possibly dangerous command decisions that demonstrate a certain degree of impulsiveness. It quickly becomes clear when watching Whale Wars that Watson takes chances - calculated chances, but chances just the same. Surprisingly, Watson is not shown having much in depth to say about the whales he is protecting. The impression is that Watson and his crew are primarily motivated by their unconscious feelings about whales, suggesting that the whales carry a deeper symbolic meaning for the Sea Shepherds.

Whales, by and large, are gentle, majestic creatures, highly intelligent, with impressive linguistic capabilities. They form tight knit families and social groups, and perhaps even 'cultures' (Morisaka, 2007; Simmonds, 2006; "Zeroing in on Whale Culture: Language is the Key," n.d.). To harm them seems absurd. Yet many other animals are in the same boat - pigs come to mind as intelligent, social creatures (Angier, 2009). Many other food animals fare poorly, raised in terrifying and painful conditions in order to be killed and consumed by humans. So why so much emotion about whales? What do whales represent in our unconscious that inspires so many people to care about them while the plight of other deserving animals is ignored?

Not much has been written specifically about whales from a psychodynamic point of view. However, it is possible to extrapolate from the symbolic meaning of other sea creatures. In psychoanalytic theory the ocean can represent the unconscious mind; a vast repository of images and feelings that are unacceptable to the conscious. Within the unconscious, animals can be symbolic images of our deepest fears and anxieties (Akhtar & Volkan, 2004).

Sea creatures often appear in dreams and myths as dreaded monsters or as peaceful mermaids. In these guises these sea creatures represent mother or father, both as gentle and loving like the manatee, or as angry and devouring like the shark. Yet both types of parental images threaten to envelope and swallow us whole, submerging our identity into theirs, our conscious drowned into the ocean of the infinite unconscious. We are either devoured by the monsters from the deep or taken back into the uroboric womb. In either case we cease being individuated humans, returning instead to a helpless, undifferentiated state.

An example of the devouring mother would be the Kraken. This creature is a giant squid that rises from the depths, enveloping ships in its tentacles, and dragging them down into the sea. The Kraken is decidedly female in shape. It reminds us of female genitalia - the vagina dentata, only with a sharp castrating beak. Sailors feared the Kraken and wove stories of it, perhaps based on sightings of real giant squid that would sometimes be seen dead on the surface of the ocean (in life these creatures dwell exclusively in the depths). Psychoanalytically speaking, the Kraken is the image of the internalized bad parent (or object), the frustrating, angry, devouring, all-powerful mother of our infancy.

The whale is the opposite, a good mother to the Kraken's bad. Like the Kraken, the whale is devouring, but this results is a blissful return to the womb, to the loving mother of our babyhood that had been lost forever. For those who have perhaps lost their mother in real life, or never experienced motherly love as infants, the whale can be an alluring creature.

This gentle devouring also relates to the journey of the hero. In the biblical story of Jonah, the whale is a creature of God, who consumes Jonah to protect him. Being consumed in this way is akin to dying in order to be reborn. As the Bible says "... just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights." (Matthew 12:40, King James Version). By being devoured and then spit out again into the world we become fully individuated and changed for the better. The belly of the whale is the crucible for our enlightenment.

The popular conception, therefore, of whales is as a kind, life-giving, mother whose love transforms us and the television show does nothing to dissuade the viewer of this idea. Whale Wars typically shows whales and other cetaceans as peaceful creatures, living in pods and playing together in families. When the Sea Shepherds come across them they experience a few moments of blissful satori. (The hostile, aggressive side of whales was not shown until near the end of the 2010 season when the Sea Shepherds witness a pod of Orcas ambushing a Sea Lion. Cetaceans, like many intelligent, social, creatures have a dark side to their nature. Orcas, or Killer Whales, have been known to devour seals and porpoises for fun, while male Bottlenose Dolphins have been observed gang raping females of their species - c.f. Ford, Ellis, & Balcomb, 2000; Conner, Wells, Mann, & Read, 2000; Mann, 2006).

Nevertheless, the whale is an androgynous symbol, also having a phallic meaning. This is a state of male innocence and freedom that precedes the Oedipal conflict. While we might long to return to the womb, we also desire the state of relative freedom when our genitals were a source of pleasure without guilt. The whales represent this, and the irony of so many Sea Shepard men in the thralls of Oedipal strife on the Antarctic seas does not go unnoticed. One gets the sense that while these guys are in the midst of their Oedipal struggles they would sometimes like to give up and return to a more blissful pre-conflictual psychic existence. Of course they can't do this and so instead idolize the whale as representative of this state while continuing to act out their Oedipal dramas.

On the 2010 season of Whale Wars one of the most interesting of these dramas involved the Ady Gil, a futuristic hi-tech black trimaran (imagine Batman's penis). The crew of the Ady Gil, led by Captain Pete Bethune, shave their heads before embarking on the ship, looking like human-sized homunculi. They challenge the Japanese whaling fleet with a phallic arsenal of air-powered spud guns and bottles of butyric acid (the same chemical that gives rancid butter its intense smell) and bows and arrows. Like an enraged father, the Japanese ship the Shonan Maru 2 responds, as might be expected, by ramming the Ady Gil, cutting the ship in two and essentially castrating it. The desire for the whale-mother has led to the greatest fear of these 'little boys', the loss of the penis. The traumatized crew of the Ady Gil deal with this in their own ways. One crew member challenges the less imposing father figure of Chuck Swift, Captain of the Bob Barker (the other new Sea Shepherd ship), while Pete Bethune devises a number of methods of gaining revenge which include a flaming high powered cutting torch that almost starts the Bob Barker on fire. After considering many (somewhat hair-brained) schemes Bethune eventually takes a jetski over to the Shonan Maru in the dark, jumps aboard, penetrates the ship's defenses (literally using a knife), and confronts the crew. He is arrested and taken back to Japan to stand trial***.

Given the repetitive nature of the Oedipal drama on Whale Wars, it is not surprising that we do not see other approaches to reducing the slaughter of whales. For instance, no one on the Sea Shepherds seems to have any expertise in whale behavior. A rather obvious thought I had while watching recently was that the Sea Shepherds should teach the whales to be afraid of humans. The ship often comes across whales and dolphins that frolic nearby while the Sea Shepherds watch them in a state of near bliss. I might suggest to Captain Watson that he include some whale behavioral experts (biologist/ethologist/psychologist) on-board (they could even be women!) and the Sea Shepherds stage a campaign to teach whales to be frightened of humans and their ships.

While watching the episode where the Ady Gil is rammed I got caught up in the drama of the crew (helpless little boys) frustrated to impotent anger by the Shonan Maru 2 (all powerful father). My thought (maybe it was counter-transference?) was why did they spend three million dollars on the Ady Gil? For much less money, the Sea Shepherds could have bought a World War II era submarine. These submarines are very fast on the surface of the water and would easily be able to keep up with the Japanese whaling fleet. Add in the stealth capabilities of being able to travel under water, the prop fouling possibilities (one of the Sea Shepherds favorite methods of stopping the Japanese ships), the safety of being able to submerge when a ship tries to run you down, and of course, the pure visual (phallic) potency of being confronted by a submarine and this really starts to seem like a good idea - at least in my fantasy! It would certainly be interesting to watch on television.

It is hard not to root for the Sea Shepherds. And even though I don't think the Japanese are evil, I find myself wishing they wouldn't kill whales. For all their psychological conflicts, the Sea Shepherds are actively standing up for something they deeply believe in. They are willing to walk the walk and put themselves in harm's way to save whales. For this they have my support and respect. The television show documents the efforts of the Sea Shepherds in a brilliant and compelling way. It is well worth watching, both to see the ships in action and for the human drama.

*Someone at Animal Planet must have noticed this because the Sea Shepherd women are more prominently featured in the 3rd season of the show. Still, the women generally are supporting characters while the men are prominently featured.

**This episode also mercilessly makes fun of the Sea Shepherds as well.

***After five months in Japanese prison Bethune was convicted of crime of trespassing, vandalism, carrying a knife, obstructing commercial activities, and assault. He received a two year suspended sentence, was banned from Japan for five years, and promptly deported back to New Zealand where he is a citizen.

References:

Akhtar, S., & Volkan, V. D. (2004). Mental Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and Its Pathology. International Universities Press.

Angier, N. (2009, November 10). Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10angier.html

Connor, R.; Wells, R.; Mann, J.; Read, A. (2000). "The Bottlenose Dolphin". in Mann, J.; Connor, R.; Tyack, P.; Whitehead, H.. Cetacean Societies. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. pp. 102.
Ford, John K.B.; Ellis, Graeme M.; Balcomb, Kenneth C. (2000). Killer Whales, Second Edition. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Hirata, K. (2005). Why Japan supports whaling. Journal of international Wildlife Law & Policy, 8, p. 129-149.

Japan's Whaling Fleet Returns Home in Shame - Activists 'paralyzed' their activities for 31 days - Softpedia. (n.d.). Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://news.softpedia.com/news/Japan-s-Whaling-Fleet-Returns-Home-in-Shame-139724.shtml

Mann, J. (2006). Establishing Trust: Sociosexual behaviour and the development of male-male bonds among Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphin calves. In P. Vasey and V. Sommer (Eds.) Homosexual Behaviour in Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective. Cambridge University Press
Morisaka, T. (2007). Current cognitive studies on cetaceans. Japanese Journal of Animal Psychology, 57(1), 41-51.

Oosedo, H. (n.d.). Whale meat used for dog food | The Australian. Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/whale-meat-used-for-dog-food/story-e6frg6t6-1111115171833

Sea Shepherd. (n.d.). . Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.seashepherd.org/

'South Park' Takes On Japanese Dolphin Slaughter (VIDEO). (n.d.). . Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/south-park-takes-on-japan_n_335175.html?view=print

Simmonds, M. P. (2006). Into the brains of whales. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 100(1-2), 103-116.

The Institute of Cetacean Research. (n.d.). . Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.icrwhale.org/eng-index.htm

Whale Wars : Animal Planet. (n.d.). . Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://animal.discovery.com/tv/whale-wars/

Zeroing in on Whale Culture: Language is the Key. (n.d.). Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/06/whale-voices-the-key-to-their-culture-scientists-are-starting-to-consider-the-notion-that-whales-might-have-a-pretty-cool-cul.html

Genetic Sexual Attration Part 2: Intergenerational Love

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:31:00 +0000

Given the recent news of Phil Bailey and Pearl Carter we thought we would do a follow up to our September post on Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA).

As recently reported the 26 year old Phil Baily is romantically and sexually involved with his 72 year old grandmother Pearl Carter. This relationship follows almost exactly the characteristics we previously reports for GSA. Pearl had a daughter at a young age who was put up for adoption and who never had a relationship with her mother. This daughter had a son, Phil who was told by his mother on her deathbed that she had been adopted and that he had biological grandparents. After his mother died Phil began to search for his grandparents and eventually found Pearl. As in many cases of GSA both Phil and Pearl immediately experienced strong feelings for each other that quickly evolved into a sexually active relationship. Apparently their relationship is stable as they have now been together as a couple for four years. They recently decided to have a child using a surrogate - the child will be Phil and Pearl's son or daughter, but will be also be Pearl's great grandchild.

Besides the general features of GSA Phil and Pearl's relationship also has two unique features. The first is that the couple was fully aware of the GSA phenomena. However, unlike Barbara Gonyo, who used her awareness of GSA to understand her feelings for her son so she could have a normal relationship with him, Pearl and Phil cite GSA as something that makes their relationship legitimate! As Pearl said, "I could now understand my feelings and realize they weren't wrong...".

A number of research studies have made it increasingly clear that the Westermark Effect exists and the strength of incest avoidance and moral sentiments around incest are related to the amount of time close relatives (most of the studies looked at siblings and even unrelated children), live with each other, regardless of genetic relationship (Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2003).

For instance, a recent study (Lieberman, 2009) of the Westermark effect in Taiwan indicates that cues for incest avoidance may be different for younger and older siblings. This study found that younger siblings are cued for incest avoidance by the amount of time they live with their older siblings, while the cue for older siblings is the experience of their mother caring for a newborn infant.

Given these studies of the Westermark Effect, it is not much of a stretch to see how the lack of time Phil spent living with, or even knowing his grandmother as a child, might contribute to his attraction. However, the Westermark Effect doesn't explain the unique intergenerational nature of this relationship - the couple are 46 years apart in age. Phil claims he has always been into 'older women', and it may be he has some sort fetish for older partners. However, the vast age difference seems to go beyond the typical 'May-December' romance and it might be a stretch of the imagination to label Pearl as a 'Cougar' - her attraction to Phil seems baffling.

Intergenerational romantic relationships are not well-studied. One study from Africa has shown that some men prefer older female partners because they are less likely to be infected with HIV than younger women (Leclerc-Madlala, S., 2008). It is also known that sexually abusive grandparents are mostly male (Margolin, 1992). And Goldstein (1992) describes a case where a grandmother was found to be sexually abusing her six year old granddaughter. None of these studies begin to explain the dynamics of the relationship between Phil and Pearl.

Predictably enough, when I describe this case to my students their collective reaction is "that's digusting!". Until more research is done on intergenerational incestuous romance our understanding will be limited to this understandable sentiment.

References:

Goldstein, E. (1992). Sexual abuse in families: The mother-daughter relationship. Issues in Ego Psychology, 15(1), 63-64.

Leclerc-Madlala, S. (2008). Age-disparate and intergenerational sex in southern Africa: The dynamics of hypervulnerability. AIDS, 22(Suppl4), S17-S25.

Lieberman, D., Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L. (2003). Does morality have a biological basis? An empirical test of the factors governing moral sentiments relating to incest. Proceedings of the Royal Society London, 270, 819–826.

Lieberman, D. (2009). Rethinking the Taiwanese minor marriage data: evidence the mind uses multiple kinship cues to regulate inbreeding avoidance. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(3), p. 153-160.

Margolin, L. (1992). Sexual abuse by grandparents. Child Abuse & Neglect, 16(5), 735-741.

21st Century Idol Worship

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:16:00 +0000

Many of you are familiar with the Old Testament description of the ancient Hebrews who, even after being delivered from Egyptian bondage, who observed the ten plagues visiting the house of the Egyptians, who with G-d's help crossed the Red Sea, still built and worshiped the Golden Calf while Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments from Yahweh. Most of us recall the scene from the Cecil B. DeMille's movie, The Ten Commandments, during which Charlton Heston as Moses becomes so angered that he drops the tablets on the idol worshiping, dancing Hebrews. Those tablets and the Old Testament in both Exodus and Deuteronomy prohibit the worship of idols, but just like the Hebrews, we persist in elevating mere mortals to the status of idols and expecting more from them than just being human.

There are many examples of our idol worship - sports figures, politicians, musicians, and actors, etc. Many in these fields achieve a saint-like status, perhaps receiving more adoration than more established religious deities. However, in actuality, these people remain mortal human beings. While many of these celebrities have accomplished great things,why do we consider their accomplishments as super-human? What is it about our psyche that causes us to worship and and then sometimes hate celebrities?

Carl Jung wrote that the deepest and least accessible level of the psyche is the Collective Unconscious. It is the repository for the experiences of the human and pre-human species and passed from one generation to the other, or as Jung puts it. "...the residues of ancestral life" (Jung, 1953, p. 77) Among the recurring themes of the Collective Unconscious, common to all human cultures, is the archetype of the Hero. As Joseph Campbell writes in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, our concept of the hero derives from two ancient myths, sacrifice from hunter-gatherer societies, and the eternal return which arose with the development of agriculture. The hero then, makes a great sacrifice, descending into the underworld to battle dark unconscious forces, fulfilling his quest, but then returning the to the world, transformed in some way. We are all attuned to the hero's journey, projecting ourselves into the this role. In our celebrities, sports figures, rock stars, film actors, we see our own hero myth played out. Our worship of those deified in our society is in actuality more akin to projective identification.

There is an important danger that comes with the worship of our heroes. They may become inflated, too elevated with success, the heroic transformation going awry. This can lead to enantiodromia where the hero is rendered into his or her opposite, from god into demon. This is all too common for the heroes of our time, from the suicide of Kurt Cobain to the destructive lifestyle of Lindsay Lohan, the psychological pressure of the hero worship of adoring fans can force our idols over to the dark side (BTW, the Star Wars saga is a good example of what we are talking about here). The most recent example of this phenomena is the discovery of Tiger Woods' sexual hedonism and his subsequent demonization. When those we worship fall from grace, they fall hard. Suffering from the sin of hubris, our heroes fall like Icarus from Greek mythology when they fly too close to the sun. The inevitable result is destruction in the cold and lonely sea.

Being trapped in the hero myth is not only dangerous to celebrities, but to each of us. As psychologist James Hillman says in the book Inter Views we can become trapped into the heroic view point, leading to a sort of psychological fundementalism;

"Fundamentalism serves the hero myth. It gives you fundamental principles - words, truths, directions. It builds a strong ego. It is American psychology. No Hermes, no Dionysus, no Aphrodite in it at all. Utterly monotheistic because there is only one meaning, one reading of the text...whatever else...you have lost the fact that you are a bundle of many levels, people, noises, impulses, trends, personalities, possibilities..." p. 82

We can become trapped in our own hubris, regardless of what we project on to our celebrity heroes. Our own heroism can cause us to become mono-dimensional, losing the creativity associated with the natural dimensionality of our personalities. Rather than projecting our disappointment and rage outward to celebrities, we sometimes need to kill our own heroic tendencies. This is perhaps the meaning in the image of Moses smashing the tablets over the Golden Calf - we must destroy our own heroism before we can properly worship. This is also the message of Sheldon Kopps book, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!. We need to beware of the hero. There is no need to split into Luke Sky Walker and Darth Vader - we can accept both the light and dark side of the force within ourselves and in doing so perhaps have more realistic expectations of those we admire.

References:

Apollodorus, (Hard R., Translator). (2008). The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA.

Campbell, J. (2008). The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series). Novato, CA: New World Library.

DeMille, C.B. (Director). (1956). The Ten Commandments (50th Anniversary Collection). Los Angeles, CA: Paramount Studios.

Hillman, J. (1991). Inter Views: Conversations With Laura Pozzo on Psychotherapy, Biography, Love, Soul, Dreams, Work, Imagination, and the State of the Culture. New York, NY: Spring Publications.

Jewish Publication Society of America. (2000). Hebrew-English Tanakh Student Edition. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America.

Jung, C.G., (1953). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.7). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kopp, S.B. (1976). If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;IS2=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;fc1=000000&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;t=bizabehaandcu-20&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;o=1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;p=8&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;l=as1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;m=amazon&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;f=ifr&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;asins=0691017824" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/iframe&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

Education in Nazi Germany

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:23:00 +0000

Kevin recently went returned from Davos, Switzerland where he presented at the World University Forum on education in Nazi Germany. His conference presentation is here. Click for provocative and scholarly insights you have yet to consider.

Certainly there are many good examples of bizarre behavior in this subject!

Psy 473: Bizarre Behavior and Culture Bound Syndrome

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:45:00 +0000

We want to share a link to Kevin's class, Psy 473: Bizarre Behavior and Culture Bound Syndromes. You can watch and listen to Kevin's lectures as he teaches this class through the semester and then think, bizarre or not. Just click on the class title above and be taken to a list of his lectures. Click on a lecture and watch the magic. More blogs to follow.

Polyamory

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:00:00 +0000

We have received a lot of comments about the Tiger Woods polygamy post, so I thought it might be interesting to explore the idea of non-traditional sexual partnerships a little more. There is a long history of groups of people, who are usually bound together by common religious beliefs, creating communities that have sexual/romantic relationship practices that differ from the monogamy that is seen in the majority of human societies. Some, like the homosexuality of the ancient Greeks, just expand the standard practice of monogamy. Others, like the early Mormons, and the Maasai people in Africa, had group marriage practices such as polygyny and polyandry. Another type of non-standard sexual/romantic relationship that has been seen in recent American history is polyamory. In polyamory groups of people form sexual/romantic relationships. Polyamory may refer to a couple who allow one of both partners to engage in intimate relationships with other people, or it may refer to a group of people who have exclusive intimate relationships among themselves (polyfidelity).

One of the best known groups to have practiced polyamory was the Oneida Community in New Harmony Indiana which lasted from 1848 to 1881, and at its zenith had around 300 members. Members of the Oneida community (not be mistaken with the native American Oneida tribe) practied a form of group marriage whereby every male was married to every female in the community. The Oneidians believed that Christ had already returned to earth and that they were perfect and free from sin. Theoretically men and women were equal, though in practice labor was divided into stereotypical gender roles, with the women doing most of the domestic work. Exclusive intimate relationships were not allowed and group members were supposed to circulate through different partners. Married couples joining the community were supposed to expand their sexual relationships to include the other group members. Female group members reported that the had an average of three sexual encounters per week. Sexual relationships were encouraged between the more spiritual members and the less devout with the idea that the less devout would become more spiritually-minded through association. Teen-aged males were paired with older post-menopausal women who not only were able to initiate the males into sex, but also provide spiritual instruction. Males were encouraged to learn to control their ejaculation both for health reasons (it was thought that too much ejaculation could damage a man's health) and for birth control. As a result birth rates in the community were low, but sexual encounters could last an hour or more which supposedly made the women happy. Positive eugenics was practiced and members had to apply to become parents. Prospective parents were matched by the group leaders in order to produce the healthiest children. After weaning, children were raised communally. Like many such utopian sexual experiments, the community disintegrated after the death of its charismatic leader John Humphrey Noyes.

Another more recent experiment in polyamory was the Kerista Village in San Francisco which existed from 1971 until 1991. The Keristas practiced what they called 'polyfidelity'. Each person belonged to a B-FIC (best friend identity cluster) where every person slept with everyone else of the opposite sex on a strict schedule. Children were raised with all adults in a B-FIC taking on equal parenting roles. The community supported itself by doing computer support for Macs (what else?!)

When I was in college at UC Santa Cruz in the late 1970s and early 1980s the Keristas came by trying to recruit people (mostly young women including my girlfriend at the time) into the community. As one of my friends from that time says:

"Yeah... I hung around with the Keristas for a while. They were really hot to have us... and I guess we kind of strung them along by pretending to be seriously interested. Exploring their world was like doing anthropology field work or something - we should have asked the UCSC Anthro Dept. if we could write a paper for credit.

The best part was that, once they'd gotten comfortable with us, they let down their guard and started gossiping about one another and openly discussing the tensions in the community in front of us - particularly speculation as to who might or might not be a "romantic couple" (a thing looked upon with scorn in the Kerista world).

We did indeed find the Kerista efforts to regiment human sexuality by enforcing strict "sleeping schedules" and proscribing some of the world's most popular sex acts hilariously ridiculous - but looking back on it with 30 years additional life experience under my belt, I now wonder whether our own culture's similar but more familiar efforts to regiment human sexuality aren't equally ridiculous."

The Keristas ran into trouble however when people in the B-FICs started falling in love with another person exclusively. They would still sleep with everyone but would only have sex with the person they were in love with. They also had some problems because the leaders supposedly banned oral sex from being performed on the women - that got them into a lot of trouble! The Keristas were also reported to be very messy since no one would enforce rules about cleaning up.

To my mind the life cycle of these experiments in polyamory says a lot about the evolution of the monogamous family structure. There was (and perhaps is) great survival value in monogamy for humans. It is a system that kept both parents around for child-rearing, and for obtaining resources like food and shelter necessary to live. It also helped keep males for competing with each other for harems, allowing them to cooperate in hunting and protecting the social group.

In both the Oneida Community and Kerista Village many if not most of the community members ended up in monogamous relationships when the groups dissolved. Monogamy and the nuclear family structure are likely to some degree hardwired within us. We may go to an orgy, exchange one partner for another for another, or live in a a group marriage, or have a harem of mistresses, but at the end of the day most of us revert back to monogamy. Even though Tiger Wood's wife is leaving him, I would be willing to bet that he will be in another monogamous relationship in the near future. Hopefully his new wife will be comforted by the fact that although he may cheat (which I also think is likely and which I hope she understands up front), he will likely return to her.

References:

Foster, L. (1998). Sex and prophetic power: A comparison of John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community, with Joseph Smith, Jr., The Mormon Prophet. Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought, 31(4) pg:65-83.

Kerista Village Website

Margulis, L., Sagan, D. (1991). Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York, NY: Summit Books.

Wikipedia Entry for the Oneida Community

Wikipedia Entry for Polygyny
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The Solution to Tiger Wood's Problems: Polygamy!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:52:00 +0000

Like most of you we have been inundated with news of Tiger Woods' multiple infidelities over the past week or so. Most commentators have been expressing various forms and levels of shock and outrage over his sexual escapades as if his situation was somehow unique, strange, and bizarre. It is of course none of these things and, in fact, for a person of Tiger Woods' vast resources, quite common.

Plato wrote in the Republic of the Ring of Gyges, which renders its wearer invisible and hence capable of any kind of behavior without consequence. Anyone with the Ring will be succumb to temptation to use it and act immorally. In Plato's view, morality is a social construction in that we adhere to its conventions only because we fear our immorality could be discovered. If we cannot be caught, this fear is removed and we will behave immorally. By the way, it is interesting to note that Plato's Ring of Gyges likely provided J.R.R. Tolkien with inspiration for Lord of The Rings.

For men like Tiger Woods, their vast wealth and fame must excerpt a temptation similar to the Ring. When your net worth is around 1 billion dollars it is inevitable that you might feel you can get away with anything. How many of us men (and women too) if given a billion dollars, would be able to withstand the temptation?

Of course, wealth and fame are only an approximation of the power of the Ring, and as we know Tiger has been caught cheating. So what, in biological terms did Tiger do? He committed the act of reproduction (i.e. sex) with multiple females (at least one of whom wanted to have his actual baby) as alpha males have done throughout human history and throughout time in the animal kingdom. Tiger is no different than past Turkish Sultans, Chinese Emperors, or European medieval lords with their droit de seigneur. He also behaved no differently than alpha male gorillas and chimpanzees, or even the elephant seals which are currently congregating at Ano Nuevo Island on the California coast, north of Santa Cruz.

A recent study by Knox, Vail-Smith, and Zusman (2008) found that about 1 in 5 college-aged men of typical social status report cheating on their partners. Furthermore, these men did not always disclose their cheating. Sexual infidelity is not that uncommon, so why such a big negative reaction to Tiger? It may be that the alpha male is always a target for subordinate males who would like (at least unconsciously) to usurp his position. The Tiger Woods of the world bring out the Oedipal Complex in us men - if we can't get rid of him, we want to be him. The overblown response to Tiger's cheating (as with Bill Clinton or Elliot Spitzer) may be an example of our inability to identify with Tiger anymore and a reversion back to our unresolved Oedipal crises. If we can't be Tiger at least we can bring him down a notch. (We don't have space to go into Tiger's own Oedipal issues including his identification with an adulterous father. Supposedly he was in bed at his home with one of his mistresses when he received news of his father's death.)

It is likely that the number of cheaters among the rarefied social ranks is higher and perhaps like our primate ancestors we worry in some deep, hidden parts of our brain that these alpha cheaters are capable of ravishing our women as well. If Tiger has put on the Ring of Gyges what is to prevent him from seducing our wives or girlfriends?

The solution to this seems in some way obvious to me, and is something practiced in many cultures: Polygamy. In other words why not adopt a practice which allows alpha males to have sex with multiple partners within a moral, not to mention legal, framework?

I am not talking here of forcing young girls to marry partners chosen for them as has been found in some fundamentalist Mormon sects and in some Muslim countries. This is tantamount to child rape. I am speaking of polygamy with the fully informed consent of all adults involved. While controversial, this could be at least an option for SOME individuals.

One model for the institution of polygamy might come from Indonesia, a progressive Muslim nation where the practice is legal under tight constraints. Most importantly, the first wife must give consent (The need for the first wife's consent can be withdrawn if it is proved that she is infertile, terminally ill, or "not performing her wifely duties"). Another condition is that it is necessary to get the permission of a religious adviser. Polygamy in Indonesia is controversial with some women's groups trying to have the practice forbidden. However, some women, such as Dr. Gina Puspita are supportive of the practice, starting 'Polygamy Clubs' to educate men and women who may be considering adopting the practice.

And of course all of the arguments in favor of polygamy could also apply to the practice of having multiple husbands or polyandry. This was traditionally practiced in some parts of Tibet where a woman might marry two or more brothers, one of whom would be off on long trading treks for months or years. One could easily imagine powerful women like Hillary Clinton or Carly Fiona having multiple husbands. And there would likely be many men wishing to be added to Sarah Palin's harem.

What if Tiger Woods' had married a women who understood that he would likely take on more wives in the future instead of a wife who unfortunately assumed he would be monogamous? How many of Tiger's mistresses would even today opt into a polygamous marriage? We most likely will never know. What is certain is that the vein of suffering in Tiger's current situation has not dried up. The Ring has been ripped from his finger, and like Gollum, he is falling into a fiery abyss.

References:

Badenhausen, K. (2009). Sports' First Billion-Dollar Man. Forbes.com, Sept. 29.

Bennett, C., and Burke, C. (2009). Tiger's mistress romp as father died. New York Post, Dec. 17.

Childs, G. Polyandry And Population Growth in a Historical Tibetan Society, The History of the Family Vol. 8: 423-444, 2003.

Entry for Droit de Seigneur. Encyclopædia Britannica.

Knox, D., Vail-Smith, K., and Zusman, M. (2008). Men are dogs': Is the stereotype justified? Data on the cheating college male. College Student Journal, Vol 42(4), Dec, 2008. pp. 1015-1022.

Plato (360 BCE). The Republic. (Trans. Benjamin Jowett). The Internet Classic Archives. MIT

Van Wagner, K. What Is an Oedipal Complex? About.com, downloaded Dec 17, 2009.

Vaswani, K. (2009). Club promotes polygamy in Indonesia. BBC Jakarta, Dec. 17.

Wikipedia Entry on Plato's Ring of Gyges

Preventing the Murders at Fort Hood

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:55:00 +0000

Nidal Malik Hasan entered a processing center at Fort Hood and in a tragic act used a 5.7 millimeter pistol to kill fourteen people, 13 of whom were soldiers. These horrific murders of innocent people were committed by a medical doctor, a major, and a psychiatrist. In our opinion these murders were predictable and consequently preventable. Understanding the psychology of this event and overcoming the reasons people failed to act could save lives and insure that tragedies like this never happen again.

According to an Associated Press report "Doctors and staff overseeing Hasan's training viewed him at times as belligerent, defensive and argumentative in his frequent discussions of his Muslim faith". He was sent to Fort Hood because "this was the best assignment for Hasan because doctors could handle the workload if he continued to perform poorly." At times, Hasan complained about harassment, once describing how someone had put a diaper in his car, saying, "That's your headdress." In another case reported in the New York Times, someone had drawn a camel on his car and written under it, "Camel jockey, get out!".

While neighbors described Major Hasan as gentle and kind, they reported that he virulently complained about the oppression of Muslims in the Army. His behavior was described as intense and combative. "Around 2004, Major Hasan started feeling disgruntled about the Army, relatives said. He sought legal advice, possibly from an Army lawyer, about getting a discharge...He wanted to leave the Army...But because the Army had paid for his education, and probably because the Army was in great need of mental health professionals and was in need of Arab-Americans he was advised that his chances of getting out were minuscule..." Not only would Hasan be unable to leave the military, his transfer to Fort Hood extended his military service by a year. He had few friends, was never fully accepted by the men at his Mosque, and lived frugally in a run-down apartment despite making a good salary. Immediately prior to his violent rampage, Major Hasan said goodbye to his friends and asked forgiveness from one man for any past offenses. "I'm going traveling," he told a fellow worshiper, giving him a hug. "I won't be here tomorrow."

As clinical psychologists we believe that Hasan's delusional perceptions and aggressive actions sent clear warning signals that he was capable of violence. His voicing "I won't be here tomorrow" is a statement that would have alerted mental health professionals that Major Hasan was a potential danger to himself or others. (However, in the context of a military staging area it is possible that those around Hasan may have took this statement to mean he was about to be deployed.)

Many traumatized soldiers internalize their aggressive feelings and self-inflict wounds, sometimes resulting in their death. This usually occurs after the experience of being in a war. In this case, Major Hasan's trauma was second-hand, something internal, and not the result of being in a combat zone himself. His psychology is not the post traumatic stress of the soldier, but the narcissistic self-righteous delusion of the school shooter. Like a school shooter it was Hasan's feelings of isolation, hopelessness, despair, and delusional feelings of moral injustice that precipitated his aggression. Army health professionals at Ft. Hood, overworked, understaffed, and with their focus of post traumatic stress should be forgiven for not seeing the warning signs. After all, on the surface, who would expect a psychiatrist to follow in the footsteps of Klybold, Harris, or Cho?

In general, humans in groups tend to minimize the warning signs of violence. We recently have seen examples of this in the Jaycee Lee Dugan kidnapping, where parole officers failed to see the signs of her rape and imprisonment. Likewise in the case of the Cleveland rapist-serial killer Anthony Sowell, police did not pick up the warning signs of his crimes despite being alerted to his violent behavior numerous times by people in the area. In a classic study Darley and Latane (1969) found that subjects remained in a dangerous situation when others in the room seemed unconcerned. Likewise subjects failed to come to the aid of a hurt "victim" when others failed to act. These results show the tendency of people to ignore an impending crisis because; there is no reward, they are unprepared, they don't know how to respond, and they are inhibited in highly stressful situation. In a stressful environment it is all too easy for us to see the inaction of others and do nothing ourselves.

It is also known that people under pressure in organizations will 'normalize deviance'. In his book The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to Construct Meaning, Create Knowledge, and Make Decisions, Chun Wei Choo (1998) discusses what he calls the "production of culture". This is where a group repeatedly uses a decision-making sequence to develop norms, values and procedures that support their central beliefs even in the face of deviant information. This involves five steps: 1. Perceiving a potential danger; 2. acknowledging escalated risk; 3. reviewing evidence; 4. normalization of deviance and accepting the risk; and finally 5. a decision to act or not act that reinforces the core beliefs of the group. While there is no way to know for sure whether the production of culture allowed military and medical professional to overlook Hasan's aggressive, deviant, and delusional behavior over the years, we think this is likely given the relatively closed nature of both medical and military organizations. The production of culture is less likely to occur when there is regular unconstrained input from others outside the group.

Military health professionals are educated to identify the behaviors that represent psychological conflicts that would promote violent acts to self and others. In Hasan's case investigators are asking how did this man get through medical school and the military without any intervention by medical or mental health professionals. Another recent article stated that Hasan was offered psychotherapy as part of his psychiatric training but he turned it down. We have to ask why this was allowed when personal psychotherapy is a strict requirement in most mental health professions? Given his argumentativeness, stressful work with soldiers returning from battle, and his inability to connect with others, it is not surprising that he could become "self-radicalized' under the influence of an Islamic extremist. What is surprising is that Hasan could be allowed to train and work as a psychiatrist for a number of years without anyone realizing his serious emotional serious issues put him at risk for becoming unhinged. A professional evaluation of the well understood and identifiable precursors to violent behavior would have likely prevented Major Hasan from murdering thirteen sodiers at the Fort Hood processing center.

References:

Blackledge, B.J., & Lardner, R. (2009). Fort Hood suspect's superiors questioned behavior. Associated Press. November, 12th.

Choo, CW. (1998). The Knowing Organization: How Organizations Use Information to Construct Meaning, Create Knowledge, and Make Decisions. New York: Oxford University Press.

Latane, B., & Darley, J. Bystander "Apathy", American Scientist, 1969, 57, 244-268.

Rotella, S., & Meyer J. (2009). Fort Hood suspect's contact with cleric spelled trouble, experts say. Los Angeles Times. November 12, 2009

Shane, S. & Dao, J. (2009). Investigators Study Tangle of Clues on Fort Hood Suspect. New York Times, November 14th.

Shane, S. & Johnston, D. (2009). Questions, Not Alarms, Met Exchanges With Cleric. New York Times, November 11th.

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Stomp and Crush - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:44:00 +0000

In our previous post on stomping and crushing fetishes we mentioned federal law H.R. 1887, championed by Congressman Elton Gallegly, which makes the creation and selling of 'crush' videos involving cruelty to animals illegal. After the Ventura County California District Attorney's Office was frustrated in their attempts to prosecute a known producer of 'crush' videos from Thousand Oaks, CA, they joined together with the Doris Day Animal League to convince Gallegly to put forward a bill making the creation and sale of these videos illegal. As part of the bill's passage through Congress the House Subcommittee on Crime solicited testimony on 'crush' videos. I was able to dig up the extremely cogent and interesting testimony given by Susan Creede, a Ventura County police investigator, to the subcommittee on September 30, 1999. It makes for interesting reading, gives a great deal of insight into the 'crush' phenomenon, and shows how important a psychological perspective can be for investigative police work:

"My name is Susan Creede. I am an investigator with the Ventura County District Attorney's Office. I have been a police officer for nearly twenty years, but I only became familiar with animal crush videos in September 1998, when this case was first assigned to me. The investigation began after we received a video from the United States Humane Society in Washington D.C. They purchased the video on the Internet from an individual using the name "Steponit," a resident of Thousand Oaks, a city in Ventura County.

During my investigation, I ran searches for animal crushing on the INTERNET. I found different websites and chat rooms announcing crushing activities. I also located bulletin boards involving animal crushing activities. While in the different chat rooms involving foot fetishes, I communicated on line with people and told them that I was interested in animal crushing. I was eventually directed to a chat room called "Crushcentral," where people with foot fetishes and different sexual deviances meet to talk with people of similar interests. I spent the majority of my time in "Crushcentral," but I was able to locate two other chatrooms that were similar in nature, "Crush 101" and "Feet."
People from all over the world meet in these chatrooms. They use stage names such as "Under Her Feet", "Squished," etc. I met these people on a daily basis, using the name Minnie. I talked to and "made friends with" people from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. Each day I chatted with these individuals during the day and evening, depending on where in the world they lived. We shared crush experiences as well as everyday life experiences. The fact that people do not use their real names makes investigating these crimes difficult. One never knows with who they are actually corresponding, which makes it very difficult to prove who is actually producing the videos.

Through my conversations, I learned that the common denominator was the "foot fetish." They spoke about their fetishes and how they developed. For many of them the fetish developed as a result of something they saw at a very early age, and it usually occurred before the age of five. Most of these men saw a woman step on something. She was usually someone who was significantly in their lives. They were excited by the experience and somehow attached their sexuality to it.
As these men grew older, the woman's foot became a part of their sexuality. The power and dominance of the woman using her foot was significant to them. They began to fantasize about the thought of being the subject under the woman's foot. They fantasized about the power of the woman, and how she would be able to crush the life out of them if she chose to do so. Many of these men love to be trampled by women. Some like to be trampled by a woman wearing shoes or high heels. Others like to be trampled by women who are barefoot. They prefer to be hurt and the more indifferent the woman is to their pain, the more exciting it is for them.

I have learned that the extreme fantasy for these men is to be trampled or crushed to death under the foot of a powerful woman. Because they would only be able to experience this one time, these men have found a way to transfer their fantasy and excitement. They have learned that if they watch a woman crush an animal or live creature to his death, they can fantasize that they are that animal experiencing death at the foot of this woman.

Many videos are produced wherein defenseless animals are tortured and crushed to death, for the sole purpose of sexually exciting men. The animals are tortured in a slow, cruel and deliberate way. The women torturing the animals talk to them as if they are human. The women play the part of the dominitrix.

These videos are usually sold for fifty to two hundred dollars a piece. Special orders are made at the request of the buyer. He merely E-mails his request in detail to the producer. The fantasy is then acted out by the actress while being filmed by the producer.

During my chats, I have learned that many of these videos are being produced in the United States. Several of the producers live in California. However, I have learned that there are producers living in Texas and Ohio as well.

The animals being crushed include, but are not limited to, mice, pinkies (baby mice), guinea pigs, rats, squirrels, rabbits, birds, chickens, cats, dogs and monkeys. I have been personally asked to make a video of a dog being crushed. I was also approached on the INTERNET by an individual that asked how big an animal I was willing to crush. I was once instructed on how to torture a dog on video, step by step. I was told to purchase the dog at a place that would not check on the animal at a later date. I was told to make the video immediately after purchasing the animal to avoid the risk of becoming attached. I was told to make the crushing incident last ninety minutes before the animal actually died.
In May 1999, I was contacted through the INTERNET by Gary Thomason, known to the crush community as "Getsmart." Thomason sent me a clip of a mouse and rat crush video he filmed with "Diane." Thomason told me he would much rather produce a video with me, and he asked me to consider making a video with him. I agreed and we made arrangements to meet at his apartment on June 19, 1999.

With the assistance of Long Beach Police and investigators from the Ventura County District Attorney's Office, I went under cover with a second police officer from Long Beach. After we arrived at Thomason's residence, he went to the local pet store and purchased five large rats. Thomason arranged for a second camerman to video tape the crushing event from a different angle. After Thomason taped one of the rats to a table and both camera men had the cameras running and ready to film, the arrests were made. At that point the Long Beach Police Department took over the investigation. Mr. Thomason awaits trial on Felony Animal Cruelty charges.

During my conversations in the different chat rooms, individuals have sent me samples or clips of these videos to add to my collection. Many photos of animal crush and trampling have also been sent to me over the INTERNET through the chat rooms similar to the ones you have seen today. Tom and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have."

References:

Testimony to the United States House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Crime, September 30, 1999

History of animal-cruelty law at issue in Stevens poses incongruity
By Adam Ezra Schulman, First Amendment Center legal intern

Suicide is Contagious

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:02:00 +0000

A bright teenager attending a prestigious high school commits suicide. A number of the student’s classmates end their lives in the same way. Gunn High School, May, 2009? No! Plano, Texas, February, 1983. This began a twelve month period during which seven teenagers, from one of the best school districts in one of the most affluent cities in the country, ended their lives. In New York's Westchester and Putnam counties five boys died by their own hand in February 1984. In Omaha Nebraska at the beginning of 1986, three students from the same high school who vaguely knew one another ended their lives (Leo, Taylor, et. al, 1986). So the most recent deaths by four Gunn High School teens by willingly stepping in front of commuter trains are not at all bizarre but the most recent examples of the tragic but understood phenomena of cluster teen suicides (Fernandez & Samuels, 2009).

What makes teens so vulnerable? During puberty boys’ testosterone rises to almost twenty times its pre-puberty level and doubles in girls. The hypothalamus that monitors many bodily functions, including sex, becomes less sensitive to sex hormones and waits until those urges are very strong before it signals self control. The brain is beginning to become more efficient at fourteen by eliminating unused nerve pathways, but it takes about four years to complete the process. The pleasure centers develop more quickly than the impulse control system of the prefrontal cortex. Consequently early adolescents are more emotional than those older, young adults and extreme emotional states, both positive and negative, are more frequent. The body is rapidly changing with pressures for girls to be slimmer than is humanly possible but frequently represented by the media and emphasized by parents and peers. Puberty and life style also disrupt adolescent sleep cycles so that while teenagers need nine hours of sleep, they get seven hours or less. With sleep deprivation comes irritability and impaired decision making.

So what are the risk factors that when added to the dramatic biological and sociological influences of adolescence leads to an increased likelihood of suicide? According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), girls are twice as likely to seriously think about suicide with Hispanic females most often attempting suicide (CDC, 2007). However, boys are four times more likely to die from suicide as girls. Hispanic and white boys most often have a plan, and Hispanic boys most frequently require medical treatment after a suicide attempt. Suicide becomes a solution to problems connected to depression. A suicide plan is thought of as a solution to intolerable emotional pain. Family conflicts, economic stress, relocation, isolation from friends, a victim of bullying, gender identity confusion, history of a suicide attempt by a family member, friend or neighbor are all risk factors.When according to the CDC (2007) one in six high school students in the past twelve months think about suicide, and when 13% of those surveyed said they had a plan, and one in twelve students had attempted to kill themselves at least once, risk factors cannot be minimized or overlooked and action is required. First, this information needs to be shared with high risk groups, like students who are members of a community in which a student suicided. Students need to be told that depression is a mental illness that can be successfully treated with psychotherapy and/or antidepressants (use of anti-depressants needs to monitored carefully as this class of drugs may increase the risk of suicide among adolescents - c.f. Simon, 2006). Students should also be told that the way to get help is to talk to their doctors, parents, or teachers.

When made aware of friends who talk about being unhappy or alone, or who have sudden changes in behavior that may include either sleeping excessively or very little, eating very little or way too much, or have wide variations in mood and irritability, a professional consultation must be sought. Take all threats to hurt one self or others seriously and seek professional advice. Opportunities for students to talk in small groups and share concerns for classmates mitigate isolation and promotes accessing professional help. Professionals can offer consultation and advice when students gather to grieve the loss of a classmate. Adults who are vigilant and supervise their children can prevent a tragedy such as when the mother of a Gunn teenager followed her son to the train tracks. The National Suicide Hotline is 1-800-suicide (784-2433). In Santa Barbara call 211 or 1-800-400-1572. In Ventura County call 805-652-6727. Remember that most health insurance plans have some mental health benefits. Become knowledgeable, informed and act to prevent suicide.

References:

Centers for Disease Control (2007). School health policies and programs study: Suicide prevention. Journal of School Health, 77(8).

Fernandez, L., & Samuels, D. (2009). A fourth Palo Alto high school student, 16, kills self on Caltrain tracks. San Jose Mercury News, Oct, 21.

Leo, J., Taylor, E., et. al. (1986). Behavior: Could suicide be contagious? Time Magazine. Feb., 24th.

Simon, G.E. (2006). The antidepressant quandary: Considering suicide risk when treating adolescent depression. The New England Journal of Medicine. 355(26), pp. 2722-2723.

Where the Wilds Things Are - Lycanthropy

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:23:00 +0000

A very pestilent disease, my lord,
They call lycanthropia...
I'll tell you.
In those that are possess'd with't there o'erflows
Such melancholy humour, they imagine
Themselves to be transformed into wolves;
Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night,
And dig dead bodies up: as two nights since
One met the Duke 'bout midnight in a lane
Behind St. Mark's Church, with the leg of a man
Upon his shoulder, and he howl'd fearfully;
Said he was a wolf, only the difference
Was, a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside,
His on the inside; bade them take their swords,
Rip up his flesh, and try: straight, I was sent for,
And having minister'd unto him, found his grace
Very well recover'd. - The Duchess of Malfi, Act V, Scene ii. (Webster, 1623/1997)

In honor of Halloween, we thought we would do a piece on werewolves. Wolves, intelligent, dangerous, creatures of the night, have only recently in history been eliminated as a threat to humans. The wolf is still a powerful image of intelligence turned inwards to serve the attainment of beastly desires. There are many legends of people who turn into wolf-like form for one reason or another. The ancient Greeks speak of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, who tried to fool Zeus into eating human flesh. But Zeus caught on to the trick and punished Lycaon by transforming him into a wolf (hence the root of our modern technical term for werewolf-ism - lycanthropy). The Roman Empire was founded by Romulus and Remus who were suckled and protected by a she-wolf. From Europe, to Africa, to Asia stories abound of those who turn into wolves at night, running amok trying to satisfy their lust for fresh meat. Lycanthropy as a medical condition similarly has a long history. Paulus Aegineta, a seveth century Greek described the syndrome. Likewise, Nebuchadnezzar was said to have suffered from something like lycanthropy in the aftermath of a long and severe depression. Supposedly St. Patrick turned Veneticus, King of Gallia into a wolf (Coll, O'Sullivan, & Brown, 1985).

The Chinese and Japanese have legends of fox demons. In China these demons take the form of beautiful women in order to seduce unwary men, draining their life force through love-making. In Japan, the fox demons possess women by entering their bodies under their fingernails or through their breasts. Women possessed by a fox demon (kitsunetsuki) have changed features, looking more fox like. They are said to be ravenously hungry, especially for tofu, rice and sweet red beans. If cured the victims will never again be able to eat these foods. The phenomena of kitsunetsuki is considered by some psychiatrists and psychologists to be a culture-bound form of psychosis.

For some unknown reason, Wisconsin seems to be a focal point for werewolf sightings in the U.S. In 1936 a religious man named Mark Schackelman encountered a tall putrid smelling creature that had the features of both a wolf and ape while driving down a lonely highway. In 1964 Dennis Fewless had a similar encounter approximately two miles from where Shackelman saw his wolfman. And in 1972, a woman reported that a wolfman like creature had attempted to break into her home. In 1989 Lorianne Endrizzi saw a werewolf-like figure on the side of the road. Farmer Scott Bray also saw a similar looking creature around the same time period. As recently as 1999 in the same area, Doristine Gipson thought she had run over something in her car on a wet night. When she stopped her car to make sure she hadn't hit anyone a werewolf-like creature jumped on to the back of her car. She sped off and the werewolf slipped off. After she told her story many local people came forward with their own tales of encountering the creature.

We may never know what was going on in Wisconsin, but we have a better idea about werewolves whose 'hairiness' is on the inside. There are a number of reports of lycanthropy in the psychiatric literature (Benezech, et. al., 1989; Dening & West, 1989; Fodor, 1945; Garlipp, et. al. 2004; Kulick, Pope, & Keck, 1990; Nejad & Toofani, 2005; Rosenstock & Vincent, 1977). In many of these cases the patients are suffering from psychotic delusions of being a wolf; behaving as they think a wolf would behave, thinking they have hair and claws, and acting out compulsive urges of bestiality, sexual licentiousness, and a desire to eat flesh. In some cases patients report being under the influence of the devil, their lycanthropy being intermixed with demonic possession. Some cases of supposed lycanthropy can be explained by purely medical causes such as hypertrichosis (where hairs grows all over the body), ingestion of ergot fungus (which contains the hallucinogenic lysergic acid), lepromatous leprosy, late stage syphilis, and severe congenital erythropoietic porphyria (Benezech & Chapenoire, 2005). However, when mental illness is prominent Rosenstock & Vincent (1977) report five typical characteristics in lycanthropic patients;

1. Delusions of being a wolf or other predatory animal. These delusions are often triggered when the patient is under extreme stress. These delusions may be psychotic and accompanied by hallucinations.

2. Preoccupation with religious issues including the devil and demonic possession. These pre-occupations vary according to the culture of the patient.

3. An almost obsessive need to be out at night, to frequent graveyards, and wild places.

4. Bestial-like aggressive and sexual urges.

5. Physiological signs of anxiety

The authors conclude that lycanthropy falls into six diagnostic possibilities; schizophrenia, psychosis with organic origins, psychotic depressive reaction, hysterical neurosis with dissociation, manic-depressive psychosis, and psychomotor epilepsy.

These psychiatric definitions are fine when the mental pathology is overt. However, there are a number of people who do not present any clearly defined pathology and yet consider themselves to be werewolves, other animals (therianthropes), or other creatures. The Otherkin are a subculture made up of people who consider themselves to be non-human. Their real or 'true' form may be an animal such as a wolf, or a mythological creature such as an elf, dragon, or vampire. Some Otherkin even believe themselves to be space aliens! Otherkin have a number of explanations for their 'transpecied' condition. Some believe in reincarnation, arguing that they retain vestiges of their animal habits from a previous incarnation, or that they are an animal mistakenly born as a human. Some Otherkin claim a totemic relationship to an animal. Much like some native peoples who believe that they are related by blood to creatures who share their world, these Otherkin form a strong spiritual bond to certain animals. Those who believe they are Otherkin may feel their bodies and instincts to be distinctly non-human. This could be a form of a hallucination or delusion, but these phenomena are specific to the feeling of being non-human and do not spill over into other aspects of the Otherkin's life. Other explanations of the Otherkin include being transpecied (in the way that some people are transgendered), having non-human genes, being possessed by a non-human spirit, or having multiple personalities where one or more of the alters is non-human. The interesting thing about the Otherkin is they did not exist as a group until the internet facilitated communication among people with Otherkin beliefs!

Are the Otherkin and werewolves really so different than the rest of us? As Sigmund Freud wrote in his book Civilization and Its Discontents,

"Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment. The result is that their neighbour is to them not only a possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus; who has the courage to dispute it in the face of all the evidence in his own life and in history? This aggressive cruelty usually lies in wait for some provocation, or else it steps into the service of some other purpose, the aim of which might as well have been achieved by milder measures. In circumstances that favour it, when those forces in the mind which ordinarily inhibit it cease to operate, it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals men as savage beasts to whom the thought of sparing their own kind is alien. Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities of the early migrations, of the invasion by the Huns or by the so-called Mongols under Jenghiz Khan and Tamurlane, of the sack of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders, even indeed the horrors of the last world-war, will have to bow his head humbly before the truth of this view of man." (p. 103-104)

Things haven't changed much since Freud's time. A quick glance through recent human history shows that a beast still lurks in all of us. And this is something that is perhaps truly frightening.

References:

Benezech, M., de Witte, J., Etcheparre, J.J. & Bourgeois, M. (1989). A lycantropic murderer. American Journal of Psychiatry, 146(7), pp. 942.

Benezech, M.; Chapenoire, S. (2005). Lycanthropy: Wolf-men and Werewolves. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 111(1), pp. 79.

Coll, PG., O'Sullivan, G., & Browne, P.J. (1985). Lycanthropy lives on. British Journal of Psychiatry, 147, pp. 201-202.

Dening, TR., & West, A. (1989). Multiple serial lycanthropy: A case report. Psychopathology, 22, pp. 344-347.

Fodor, N. (1945). Lycanthropy as a psychic mechanism. The Journal of American Folklore, 58(230), pp. 310-316.

Freud, S. (1930/2005). Civilization and Its Discontents. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Garlipp, P., Godecke-Koch, T., Dietrich, DE., & Haltenhof, H. (2004). Lycanthropy – psychopathological and psychodynamical aspects. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 109, pp. 19–22.

Kulick, AR., Pope, HG., & Keck, P. (1990). Lycanthropy and self-identification. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 178(2), pp. 134-137.

Nejad, A. G., & Toofani, K. (2005). Co-existence of lycanthropy and Cotard’s syndrome in a single case. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 111, pp. 250–252.

Rosenstock, H., & Vincent, K.R. (1977). A case of lycanthropy. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 134(10), p. 1147-1149.

Webster, J. (1623/1997). The Duchess of Malfi (Drama Classics Series), London, UK: Nick Hern Books.
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Genetic Sexual Attraction and the Westermarck Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:45:00 +0000

The revelation by former child actress Mackenzie Phillips this week in her book High On Arrival of her 10 year long sexual affair with her father is making its rounds through the media this week. Phillips blamed the affair on serious drug use by herself and her father. By all accounts, Phillips' father was not much involved with her when she was growing up and the affair did not occur until she was 19. While shocking, Phillip's incestuous relationship may not be as uncommon as commonly thought.

Let's meet Patrick and Susan Stübing a married couple with two children. By all outward appearances they are a normal family living in Germany with one important exception: Patrick and Susan are siblings. As is common among consensual adults engaged in incestuous relationships Patrick and Susan did not grow up together. As reported by the BBC, Patrick was adopted out of his birth family at a young age and did not meet his biological mother and Susan until he was 23 years old. Both Patrick and Susan report that they had an immediate attraction for one another. After their mother died they began their relationship and have been living together for the past 8 years, excluding the time Patrick has served in prison for the crime of incest. Patrick and Susan claim they are not bothering anyone and have been persecuted for their forbidden love. They have been trying to overturn Germany's Paragraph 173 of the civil code which makes incest a crime. Medical and genetic experts claim there is a good public health reason for the law. Children produced by incestuous relationships are much more likely to have medical issues. Indeed Patrick and Susan's son has epilepsy and learning difficulties, while their daughter is a special needs child. Nevertheless they maintain that these problems are not the result of the incestuous pairing of their genes.

The attraction that Patrick and Susan feel for each is called Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) and has also been reported in cases of mother-son and father-daughter incest. In all cases of GSA the relatives affected were not present during the childhood of one or both parties. The term GSA was first coined by Barbara Gonyo who founded the group Truth Seekers in Adoption - a Chicago based organization which provides support for long lost relatives who have reunited - and the website www.geneticsexualattraction.com. In her book I'm His Mother, He's Not My Son, Barbara speaks frankly of the intense emotional feeling she experienced when she was reunited 26 years later with the son she gave up at age 16. Barbara describes her initial contact as a 'honeymoon period'. She became obsessed with wanting to touch and smell her son. She is convinced that these feelings were the result of 'missed bonding'. She recognized her son as related to her - perhaps accentuating the loss of bonding a mother experiences with her infant. These feelings may result in an intense desire for closeness which can manifest as sexual behavior in adults. In a 60 Minutes interview with some GSA couples New York psychotherapist Joe Soll characterized GSA;

"It is an attraction that develops between people who, generally speaking, have not been raised together and don't have a taboo. They just want a hug, they want to get close and if they don't have the taboo and they're not careful it can turn into sex".

The taboo Soll is speaking about is the so-called "Westermarck Effect". Postulated by anthropologist and sociologist Dr. Edvard Westermarck, it simply states that people raised together rarely see each other as sexual partners. It may be that the Westermarck Effect is a form of reverse imprinting where early exposure to others in the environment causes them not to be seen as future sex partners. Westermarck's discovery is readily observable throughout human cultures and has been seen in children raised in the Israeli kibbutz system (Shepher, 1971) and marriage customs in China (Wolf & Huang, 1982). More recent research by Walter and Buyske (2003) at Rutgers University has verified the effect for females in Morocco but not males. Other research by Weisfeld et. al. (2003) and by Schneider and Hendrix (2003) supports the notion that sexual inhibition among family members has been selected for through the mechanism of natural selection and that it may be mediated by smell.

Freud was the most famous psychiatrist to write about sexual prohibition among close relatives. He claimed that unconscious lust for the opposite sex parent leads to an incest taboo (via fear of castration for males) and identification with the same sex parent. Westermarck's theory, on the other hand, has no need for unconscious lust; the incest taboo would evolve through natural selection.

In another article Walter (1990) has speculated that since females have a greater investment in their offspring (i.e. a long pregnancy) they are more choosy than males for genetic fitness, and hence would be more likely to experience the Westermarck Effect. Certainly Walter's later research in Morocco supports this notion. He also speculates that without the Westermarck effect older dominant males would likely exert control over younger males through control of their sexual impulses. Again this is readily observable in traditional societies around the world where adolescent rites of passage for young men involve separation from the group's females for a period of time, not to mention proving their genetic fitness through arduous tasks. As Spain (1988) suggests, if we consider this phenomenon without the biological underpinnings it is actually similar to what Freud describes.

Unlike Mackenzie Phillips' father, Barbara Gonyo was able to avoid a sexual encounter...but mostly because her son wasn't interested. Eventually she was able to work through her emotions and develop a healthy relationship with her son. GSA is thought to occur in up to 50% of reunions of close relatives. The advent of in-vitro fertilization where the one or both parents do not contribute DNA to their children, could lead to a future epidemic of GSA. At the very least this is something to be aware of in the future.

- Kevin

References:

Gonyo, B. (downloaded 2009). I'm his mother, he's not my son. (Self-Published).

Phillips, M. (2009). High On Arrival New York, NY: Simon Spotlight Entertainment.

Schneider, M.A. & Hendrix, L. (2000). Olfactory sexual inhibition and the westermarck effect. Human Nature, 11(1), 65-91.

Shepher, J. (1971). Mate selection among second generation kibbutz adolescents and adults: Incest avoidance and negative imprinting. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1(4) 1573-2800.

Spain, D. H. (1988). Incest theory: Are there three aversions? The Journal of Psychohistory, 15(3), 235-253.

Walter, A. (1990). Putting Freud and Westermarck in Their Places: A Critique of Spain. Ethos, 18(4), 439-446.

Walter, A., & Buyske, S. (2003). The Westermarck Effect and early childhood co-socialization. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 21, 353-365.

Weisfeld, G.E., Czilli, T., Phillips, K.A., Gall, J.A., & Lichtman, C.A. (2003). Possible olfaction-based mechanisms in human kin recognition and inbreeding avoidance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 85(3), 279-295.

Wolf, A.P. & Huang C. (1982). Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945. The China Quarterly, 90, 310-313.
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Familicide - Evolutionary Origins

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin Volkan and Neil Rocklin) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:59:00 +0000

In our last post we reported about the case of infanticide (or fililcide) where a man involved in a bitter custody dispute killed his children and then took his own life. With the reporting of a similar case in Florida, this time representing familicide where the entire family was killed by a parent, I thought perhaps it might be worthwhile to try and understand the roots of this behavior.

Mesac Damas recently killed his wife and five young children and then fled to Haiti where he was caught. Supposedly while awaiting extradition back to the U.S., he confessed to the murders. When asked why he did it he responded "Only God knows". The murders were especially brutal with Sheriff in charge of the case calling them "the worst of the worst". Damas had a history of domestic violence and apparently thought his wife was cheating on him with another man.

In a fascinating 1995 paper by Wilson, Daly, and Daniele, the authors delineate some of the characteristics of familicide- i.e cases in which a spouse kills an entire family and sometimes themselves. In an examination of 109 incidents of familicide in Canada and Britain the authors found that familicide is most often perpetuated by men. Half of these male perpetrators killed themselves which is a much higher percentage than men who kill only their wives, or just their children. In cases of familicide the parents are more likely to be living together as opposed to being married. Step children are more likely to be victims of familicide than genetic offspring. However, men who kill step children almost never kill themselves. The authors conclude with a tentative categorization of familicidal incidents into two types - accusatory or despondent. As the authors explain:

"The hostile, accusatory familicidal killer is often enraged at the alienation of his wife, and may declare that "If I can't have her, no one can."The despondent familicide perpetrator instead appears to believe that his victims could not persist or cope in his absence, and that their deaths are therefore necessary, perhaps even merciful, corollaries to his suicide. In either case, the killer apparently feels entitled to decide his victims' fates." p. 15

The Florida case presents many of the characteristics outlined in this paper. The killer was male, he and his wife had been living together for a long time and had only recently been married. He fit the pattern of an accusatory killer who was outraged that his wife may have been cheating on him. What we do not know is whether he suspected that any of his wife's children were by another man, but it wouldn't be surprising.

Why would this be important? It is well known that violence against children in a family is more likely to be perpetrated by a step parent. In another paper Daly and Wilson (1994) found that step fathers were more likely to beat step children to death, while genetic parents were more likely to shoot or asphyxiate their offspring. The genetic fathers were also more likely to commit suicide.

As David Buss writes in Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, genetic relatedness is a strong predictor of not only how many resources a child receives but also of how likely they are to be abused. The closer the genetic relationship, the more likely the child is to receive resources and not be abused, while the more distant the relationship the more likely the child is to be abused and not receive resources. This pattern comes from our evolutionary history. Male primates such as chimpanzees are known to kill other males' offspring which precipitates the females going into heat. The killer males will then mate with the females to produce their own offspring. This pattern of behavior presumably originated in the common ancestor to humans and apes. It had survival value and so continues to be found in humans and primates today.

In her book The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, noted biologist Jane Goodall describes numerous incidents of infanticide by both males and females among chimpanzees. In general she believes that many of the attacks are focused on the mothers of the infants and are related to a distrust and aversion to strangers. Yet males appeared to also attack and sometimes eat infants of females so as to bring the females into heat sooner. Interestedly, young unattached females from other groups were only attacked mildly, while older females who were not in heat and who had infants were attacked quite severely and even killed.

Unfortunately for us, we find these evolutionary patterns of killing writ large in humans. A quick examination of mass killings around the world reveals this pattern in ethnic cleansing and warfare. In World War II, the Soviets raped and killed on a massive scale (the Germans while brutal killers did not commit as much rape). The degree of infanticide and rape during the recent ethnic violence in Rwanda has also now been documented. And of course it is quite easy to find more examples.

This is not to say that step parents are murderers, child abusers, bad parents (most are not) or that in our society familicide is common (it is not). But is does remind us to be aware of the possible pre-cursors to this type of violence and to be cognizant of things that may trigger this behavior.

- Kevin

References:

Davies, N. (2007). No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945. New York, NY: Viking.

de Brouwer A., & Ka Hon Chu, S. (Editors). (In Press). The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence. Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre.

Buss, D. (2008). Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Daly M, Wilson MI (1994) Some differential attributes of lethal assaults on small children by stepfathers versus genetic fathers . Ethology & Sociobiology 15: 207-217.

Goodall, J. (1986). The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wilson M, Daly M, Daniele A (1995) Familicide: the killing of spouse and children. Aggressive Behavior 21: 275-291.

Further Readings:

Publications by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson
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