Pavlov, Birthday Cake, and the Importance of Feeling Pain

Sometimes We Get Rejected

What others thnk about us, matters.

This week I had a party at my house, and invited my whole family to celebrate the birthday of my daughter.

In between handing out pizza and cake, and proffering red wine and coffee (along with soft drink, water and OJ), I overheard a family member say, in sotto voce, that I was too full on to handle. I thought I'd been mistaken, but - well, no. The guilty look and sudden silence when they noticed I'd heard them was a bit too obvious. It took some reflection, but I did come to see this as a good thing.

This is a blog about the first of the 'three waves' of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which at first was known simply as Behavioural Therapy. And it is a (probably poor) attempt to work through my own relationship with my family.

Ok, so we've all had those moments. I once saw a colleague accidentally find a file about herself which a third colleague was making in preparation for a formal complaint. Awkward. I've seen those 18th birthday party moments when the hostess cried cos she wanted to. I sat with a mate whose directorial debut in Carlton's Courthouse copped a savaging in its first review. Nobody likes that moment when our stomach drops away and we realise that the way we wanted to be seen is not the way we actually are seen.

It is a physical, nauseous reaction. It relates directly to the normal neurosis I have mentioned in a previous blog: that way we are wired to try very hard not be be cast out of the herd, where we'd be a singular target for tigers to eat.


Psychologists Learned To Mess With Our Behaviours

The way we respond to hearing ill of ourselves is an example of classical conditioning which, in my opinion, is a consequence of how we're raised (socialisation) and the way we're wired (genetic predisposition). In our culture we respond to some things because our environment has primed us to do so.

What I'm saying here is that when I felt sick 'cos someone said I was hard to handle, it was an automatic response because - like everyone else - I dearly want to fit in.  And like everyone else, I sometimes don't. And when I know I don't, like everyone else I experience a Pavlovian response.

Pavlov's name rings a bell, I expect. He did nasty things to dogs. It was a variation on the 'nasty things to cats' theme of an earlier blog.

Oddly, the usual pic you'll see of a salivating dog with a tube attached had nothing to do with Pavlov. It was a diferent researcher but early confusion of reporting has seen the error repeated until the present day. From memory, the picture was of a German dog, not one from Pavlov's Russian lab. I think the full story is told in C. James Goodwin's History of Modern Psychology, but it may have been in another book. I was checking the facts using Google, but for once it has failed to come up with the goods. Google thinks it is actually Pavlov's dog in the picture.  

Anyway you know the story: Pavlov rang a bell each day he fed the dog. Eventually he found all he had to do was ring dem bells, and the dog salivated. Specific predicatble conditions bring on predictable responses.  Wolpe based his systematic desensitisation upon this premise. If you can ring the bell and get salivating, then you can modify the conditions and get a preferred response. Sit the dog on a monkey bar until it isn't afraid of heights. Or something like that.

By implication, you'd think I'd be over trying to get my family to accept me by now.

I long ago accepted them. In general, they don't like book learnin', or travelling overseas, or non-commercial radio. They'd like to see our borders closed and they don't hold with jazz music. They're not quite sure who would watch the ABC. And that's ok. They've been good people who will help anyone out whenever they are asked. Generous, direct and loyal. I know where I stand with them. We talk about football and not politics, food and not culture, kids and not population.

From time to time, I've raised the 'no go' issues directly with them, and the discussions have been loud or solemn according to occasion. Generally, the consensus has been that I am different and, if only I'd change my views, I'd be welcome to fit in.

Before we discuss the use of Wolpe's systematic desensitisation in a family context, I'll just mention some of the heroes of Behavioural Therapy's First Wave.


Some Other Behavioural Psychologists' Work (And Why It Was Good)

John B. Watson established the cause of phobias by instilling a little boy named Albert with a fear of white, fluffy things. This led to the establishment of modern day ethics committees, who are charged with stopping bloody psychologists from ever again instilling little boys named Albert with a fear of white, fluffy things.


Watson also created what we'd now call marketing psychology. He figured out ways to stimulate people through advertising so their behaviour would change and they'd buy stuff. He did a lot of work for cigarette companies. His theories were seen as the basis of the behaviourist movement.

Other people whose work provided the basis for Behaviourism are our old friend Wolpe, Eysenck, Hull, and Skinner.  Wolpe and Eysenck are respected for their practical bent, Eysenck is often quoted as saying:  "if you get rid of the symptoms, you get rid of the neurosis". If you can't see it, it isn't there, if you like. Hull established a special kind of scientific method, and Skinner's 'radical behaviourism' banned the idea of thoughts being real: if you can't see it...

Ok, enough name dropping.

What was good about the first wave? Well, it laid the foundations. It actually demanded that we do something and measure its effect. It said that we should consider a difference is achieved if we can measure the behaviour before, and then after, the intervention, and then ascribe the change in behaviour, if any, to the intervention.

I know that sounds wanky and academic and obvious, but this was something you couldn't do with Freud. Freud would wriggle out of it and back-engineer some additional explanation for why what had happened, had happened. At the end of the day, Freud was chicken. You may quote me.

The behaviourists had the guts to back themselves and make a solid prediction. They put themselves out there, and they sometimes failed. Behaviourism was a great leap forward - because (following Popper) it gave psychologists a chance to fail.  This meant they could actually succeed, as well.


Why We Can't Have Our Birthday Cake and Eat It Too


So if Wolpe is my best friend, you'd think I'd have worked out how to have my family in my house and not want them to discuss twitter, or my trip to Boston, or the masters I am just starting, or my recent promotion... basically, I ought to have them around but not try to get them interested in what interests me. I ought to be skilled enough for that not to matter.

Well, largely it doesn't. Actually I forgot to tell them about the promotion, and Boston didn't come up. I've learned to steer them away from asylum seeker topic 'cos, blood relative or not, I carve people up when they use the phrase 'queue jumper' in my house (the masters is in International and Community Development).  I have sat on the monkey bars that are my family for so long that many things don't touch me.  But there's still a level where a lad wants to belong. And it is a relief, in a way, to know they can still hurt me.

One reason the comment hurt was that I actually thought I was on common ground, talking about jokes and comments on twitter. I'd restricted myself to a small aspect of my life and not discussed anything important and I was still too full on!

Many counsellors and psychologists are criticised for feeling things deeply. When we get upset, others sagely shake their heads and say: you, of all people, should understand that... blah blah blah. (I'm not sure what they actually say, 'cos frankly I stop listening at about the 'you, of all pe... ' stage).

There's a lot I have never told my family about things that matter to me. There's an entire life and death they know nothing of. Entire relationships have passed them by. They'd be hard pressed to say who I work for. And only my father really knows the truth of why my marriage ended.  But I refuse to kill those nerves entirely. There's a sense in which that would make me less than human.

Imagine if I lacked empathy when listening to someone talk about the grief of losing the love of their life! The capacity to feel our own pain is so important. Whoever we are, we need our own pain if we are to help friends and family cope with their own pain.


The Importance Of Feeling Wretched Some Times

The first wave of Behavioural Psychology helped us to curb the excesses of some people's problems. Wolpe helped us to reduce extreme fear to what is appropriate to a situation. But there is an endpoint to that process. It is very important that we still feel fear when the situation is dangerous. It is important that we want to belong, that we try to belong. We also need to feel the sting of others' judgement now and again.

So when my family find me too full on, it stings. When someone disagrees with me, I feel it. When my best mate shakes his head and tells me to forget Julieanne, it tugs again at wounds which just won't heal. And that is a very good thing. Such pain reminds us we're human, we're part of a group (or we want to be) and we aren't robotic non-people. Understanding ourselves is not, should not, cannot be about stopping the pain.

It is so very important to be able to feel such things.

Pain is a privilege.