Molar Memories: how an ancient mechanismcan ruin lives

www.hgi.org.uk This article was first published in theHuman Givens JournalVolume 13, No, 3 (2006) and appearsin this revised form in the book An Idea in Practice: Using the Human Givens approach (Shortlistedfor the MIND Book of the Year 2008).

When we react excessively to events, major or minor, we may be victims of a primitivesurvival mechanism gone awry, suggests research psychologist Joe Griffin. Despite oftencausing years of distress, it can be treated successfully — and usually remarkably quickly.

IN TIMES gone by, whenever people displayed wildly irrational behaviour or exhibited extremeemotional responses that did damage, they were said to be possessed by an evil spirit; a demon,fiend or even 'the devil' himself. Once inhabiting the poor unfortunates, these invisible malevolent beings could transform them into the very epitome of selfishness or self-destructiveness.With the 'beast' in command, distressing manifestations could occur. It might induce previously peaceful individuals to become violent, producing sudden rages in the poor person or driving themto the most destructively devious activities. Others, once 'possessed', might starve themselves to the point of death, physically attack themselves or become quite hysterically fearful or mad. In somecases these demons would make people perform bizarre, lustful acts. But always supernatural forceswere behind such goings on, or so it was thought for tens of thousands of years.Today, of course, we talk differently. We speak of anger disorders, obsessions, personality disorders,depression, anorexia, self-harming, psychosis and sexual deviancy, such as cross-dressing, and soon. And yet, by changing our language we are no nearer to understanding or curing most of theseconditions.But suppose there was a hitherto unknown psychological principle at work, one that, onceunderstood, made possible the removal of much of this suffering? One that, for example, could, in asingle session of psychotherapy, cure an anorexic, or stop an unwanted perverse sexual obsession,or dissolve unreasonable and irrationally cruel outbursts of anger. If such were possible wouldn'tmuch human misery be circumvented? In this chapter I am suggesting that such a psychological principle does exist and that using it may enable therapists to quickly cure at least some of theseconditions.Consider, for a moment, the following scenarios (I am sure that at least one will be familiar to you).You have a minor difference of opinion with your nearest and dearest about some entirelyinconsequential domestic matter … and yet you are left with a seething rage that persists for hours.Someone close to you pokes fun at you or teases you and you are consumed with a sense of righteous indignation and respond by getting insanely angry with them. Or you are amazed to beaccused by a partner or colleague of ‘winding them up' or 'pressing their buttons', after sayingsomething you thought was completely innocuous. In other words, you sometimes (or even often)find yourself reacting emotionally in ways that are totally out of proportion to the circumstances — and no doubt you have seen countless others do the same.Such seemingly irrational behaviour, both in myself and others, had often mystified and infuriatedme over the years until, after much consideration and experimentation, I realised that 'over-the-top',

'neurotic' or otherwise inappropriate emotional reactions like these are actually the expression of ahighly primitive survival mechanism: one that I have called the' pain–pleasure recall'principle (to distinguish it from the 'pain–pleasure' principle beloved of psychoanalysts).This principle, I suggest, is the key to understanding not only seemingly irrational outbursts butmore serious pathological behaviour as well — habitual actions which lead to self-destructive behaviour or damage to inter-personal relationships. Most importantly, however, once understoodwe can change behaviour, fast. As we will see, using the pain–pleasure recall principle has alreadyenabled me to help a woman recover her life by putting an end to 25 years of anorexia, a man in his30s to deal with and stop his longstanding compulsion to cross-dress, and another man to stop putting his marriage at risk — each after only one session of therapy. And other experienced humangivens therapists to whom I had explained this principle have since used it and reported back to meamazingly rapid progress with a range of cases previously considered difficult or intractable.This chapter sets out the evidence to support this new finding: that it's the special way the brain hasevolved to process the co-occurrence of pain and pleasure in a situation that shapes much humanand animal behaviour.I am, of course, not the first to consider the effects of pain and pleasure — countless thinkers fromancient and modern cultures around the world have speculated about the roles of pleasure and painin motivating our behaviour. Freud famously developed the 'pleasure principle' — the demanding of immediate gratification of instinctive needs. And a wealth of evidence has been accumulated bydistinguished learning theorists, such as Ivan Pavlov, B F Skinner and Edward Lee Thorndike, toshow that, if an action brings us pleasure, we will choose to do it again, and that, conversely, if anaction results in pain, we are reluctant to repeat it. Over the years, many laboratory experimentshave shown how animals have learned to alter their behaviour in response to different amounts andtypes of both positive and negative reinforcements. But what has never been taken fully intoaccount, is that, very often, an action may elicit both pleasure and pain.

Every animal must assess risk

All animals have needs that must be met if they are to live mentally and physically healthy lives(this is at the heart of the human givens approach). But to pursue needs without first making anassessment of the attendant risks — such as that of becoming another animal's lunch whilst in pursuit of your own — would lead, in all probability, to a greatly foreshortened lifespan. It would besurprising indeed, therefore, if evolution had left the assessment of risk to chance — the instinctiveassessment of risk is key to the pain–pleasure recall principle.We know that animals learn from painful experiences and are less likely to seek to repeat them. Wealso know that punishing animals, particularly human ones, for undesirable behaviour that they findrewarding is not as effective, generally, as rewarding the desirable behaviour that we would likethem to perform instead. (If it were otherwise, we would have no repeat offenders in our prisons.)But, in the real world, desirable experiences almost always come at a price. Procuring access to adesirable mate may mean having to fight the alpha male, for example; hunting a substantial prey for dinner carries the risk of the predator getting injured by the prey being sought, and so on. Animalsmust, therefore, have evolved an instinctive method of gauging risk, using previous experience as aguide.It was the failure of conditioning theory to predict how animals do this that has largely beenresponsible for the decline of pure behaviour therapy (which is based on conditioning or learningtheory) as it was increasingly recognised that learning isn't just a mechanical association betweenthings (such as the ringing of a bell when a steak appears, as in Pavlov's experiments when dogslearned to salivate on hearing the bell) but rather it comes about as a result of the perception of ameaningful relationship between different things.[1] For example, if a tone is sounded before

laboratory animals receive an electric shock, they will learn to fear the tone. If, next, a light is alsoturned on at the same time as the tone sounds, and then a shock is received, the animals don't learnto fear the light; they continue to fear just the tone.[2] My colleague Ivan Tyrrell and I have arguedelsewhere that it is just this perception of a meaningful relationship that generates consciousness.[3]So behaviour therapy was superseded by cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), which is based on anuneasy alliance between conditioning theory and cognitive appraisal theory — the idea that the waywe think and make our judgements affects our behaviour. This alliance arose because of thedemonstrable failures of conditioning theory to account for neurotic types of behaviour, especiallyin humans. For instance, how could conditioning theory explain why people can develop a phobiaabout snakes, to the point of shaking when they see a picture of a snake, when they have never actually come across a snake in their lives? However, it has become increasingly clear that thecognitive system only takes computational decisions, such as calculating which product offers the best value for money, so the alliance is becoming more and more compromised. In complex or ambiguous situations, it is the emotional brain that takes the initial decisions.[4] We see anunfamiliar manlike shape looming out of the lonely field in the dark and instantly feel fear as our bodies mobilise for fight or flight. Then our cognitive system kicks in and only at this point do werealise that we are looking at a scarecrow, and call off the red alert. Thus we can see that, for our survival's sake, it is the quicker emotional process that guides our responses in such circumstances,even if they are later informed by the cognitive system.Much of this confusion is due to a failure to understand the pain–pleasure recall principle.

The pain–pleasure recall principle

Pain involves negative or 'avoidance' emotions — we feel bad or we avoid a situation in which wemight experience pain. Pleasure involves positive 'approach' emotions – we feel good or seek out anexperience that will make us feel good. (This even includes the experience of anger because whenwe are angry we are both motivated to do something — go forward — and get satisfaction fromfeeling power.) The pain–pleasure recall principle holds that, when pain and pleasure are bothexperienced in connection with a given stimulus, irrespective of the order in which the pain and pleasure occur, the memory of that experience will be encoded so that the recall of the pain (thenegative feelings) precedes the recall of the pleasure (positive feelings) associated with it. I havefound it useful to call these memories ‘molar memories' because they have two emotional roots: theone that was painful and the other that was pleasurable. The pleasurable aspect of the experiencehas to stay outside of consciousness because, when a pattern match is triggered by a similar situation in the future, the negative feeling needs to be experienced first, so that risk assessment cantake place. This order of events is essential, survival always being the top priority. Only if thenegative feeling is defused by some response or not acted upon, mentally or physically — for instance, if we don't experience deep disgust or run away from the situation — will the positivefeeling be aroused and come through to consciousness.It is essential, I suggest, that pleasure and pain experienced in connection with the same event arecoded separately like this (with the memory of the pain being accessed first, so that an informed risk assessment can be made before indulging in the pleasure again). If the negatives were not evaluatedfirst, access to an expectation of reward might lead to a down-playing of the risks involved. Thiscould prove fatal if, when the reward seemed sufficient, it led animals to ignore the lessons of experience.If, however, after an automatic risk assessment, we perceive that the negative feeling which patternmatches to our current situation is not relevant, then the positive feelings will be activated by thememory. This triggers a dopamine rush, which we experience as desire. If we act upon this desireand experience satisfaction, the pattern is reinforced. If, however, pain is experienced as a further consequence of that action, this will become coded as part of our conscious, stored negative