Book Review: "Behave" by Robert M. Sapolsky

For anyone who wants to understand all of the huge number of factors that influence human behavior, as well as counter overly pat, simple, or downright mythological explanations for it, I cannot recommend a book more highly than this one. Every page – and there are almost 700 of them - is just packed with enlightening information on the role of almost everything you can think of. 

These factors include genes, gene regulation, epigenetics, neurotransmitters, hormones, brain structures, neural networks, unconscious cuing and sensory triggers, stress responses and protective factors, neural plasticity, peers and social acceptance, attachment figures, brain development in childhood and adolescence, socioeconomic and hierarchical status, collectivist vs. individualistic cultures, gender, reactions to “them” vs. “us,” heritibility  vs. inheritance of traits, gene/environmental interactions,  population density, evolution (individual, kin, and group selection), reciprocal and pathological altruism, obedience vs. resistance, cooperation vs. competition, and empathy. And a whole lot more.

Can one book really be that encyclopedic?? Yes! I have no idea how he accomplished writing this. 

If you do not understand some of the scientific concepts that are under discussion, he conveniently includes three appendices in the book to help explain them. Not that the main body of the book is dry and overly technical. It is laced throughout with witty jokes, stories, and ironic observations that kept me thoroughly entertained.

Does he leave anything out? Well, yes, he does not seem to know about the effects of rapid cultural change on families which may create shared intrapsychic conflicts leading to parents giving mixed messages to their children which then trigger and reinforce their repetitive self destructive behavior. But I haven’t yet seen anyone else write about that besides me – at least not in the way I have conceptualized the process - so I wouldn’t expect that. He also doesn’t discuss the effects of chaos theory on the amazingly multi-factorial “causes” of behavior he goes into - a minor quibble.

Sapolsky shoots down behavioral and neuroscientific myths believed by health care professionals, some scientists, and the lay public alike (what mirror neurons actually do, for example) with the abandon of someone armed with an Uzi facing off against people armed with swords. Amazing.

Some of his important points: 

1.       Brains and cultures co-evolve.

2.       We haven’t evolved to be selfish or altruistic, but to behave in particular ways in particular settings. Context is everything.

3.       Genes are not about inevitabilities, but about potentials and vulnerabilities, and they do not determine any behavior on their own.

4.       Evolution has been most consequential when altering regulation of genes, not the genes themselves.

5.       Saying a biological system works well is not a value judgment – it can function equally well for those who do something wonderful or in those who do something horrific.

6.       Nothing seems to cause anything - everything just modulates something else within a specific environmental context. And changing one thing often changes ten other things as a byproduct.

7.       Any causative factor within any specified population of individuals within any specific environmental context has an average effect on behavior that may or may not apply to any given individual. There are always exceptions.

What an accomplishment.

Borderline Personality Family Dynamics: The Parents, Part II

In my post of 2/6/11, Dysfunctional Family Roles, Part I: The Spoiler, I opined that the basic problem in the "borderline" family (one that produces offspring with borderline personality disorder [BPD]) is that the parents in such families see the role of being parents as the end all and be all of human existence, but all the while, deep down, they either frequently hate being a parent or see their parental role as being an impediment to their personal fulfillment.

In Part I of this post, I described the one most common major issue - gender role conficts - and the resultant behavior patterns, that I have discovered leads individuals within a family to develop a severe conflict over the parenting role. In Part II, I will describe the other ones.

To repeat a caveat from the previous post: All of these issues may seem very common everywhere, and indeed they are. Most families that face them do not produce emotional conflicts significant enough to create BPD pathology. Rather, the issues in families that do have been magnified significantly by an interacting tableau of historical events impacting the family and the individual proclivities of each and every family member and descendent.

Common issue #2 causing parental ambivalence over being parents: Untimely deaths. The loss of children, in particular, may make someone fearful over losing the others while, at the same time, may lead to parental resentment over the fears and insecurities created by the presence of the remaining ones.

For example, one grandparent of a patient in our clinic had lost 10 out of 11 children to disease; the 11th was the parent of the therapist's BPD patient. The grandmother was overprotective of the mother but at the same time avoided closeness for fear of the pain of losing yet another child. When the mother grew up and left home, the grandmother became depressed. The patient was then given up as a child to the care of the grandmother to help feel the void, and became the new focus of the grandmother's hyperconcern and insecurity. This is also an example of a parent giving up a child as a gift to a grandparent - the subject of my 10/15/2010 post.

Issues #3 and #4: Financial reverses and chronic illnesses - including severe mental illnesses. Because of the financial strains and general chaos caused by these considerations, the joy of raising children may be suddenly turned into a frightful burden, both emotionally and financially, and thereby generate parental ambivalence.

Interestingly, the presence of bipolar disorder - with which BPD is often confused these day by both incompetent psychiatrists and the public despite the fact that they do not look anything alike - in a parent may lead to the very chaos in families that generates BPD behavior in children. Children in such a family are at risk both biologically and genetically for bipolar disorder and environmentally for BPD.

Issue #5: Ambivalence over religious or cultural values concerning childbearing, child rearing and filial responsibilities may lead to parental ambivalence. Examples include:

• 1.  The Roman Catholic emphasis on large families in a day and age when children cost a small fortune to raise. This may lead parents to follow the church rules but be extremely unhappy about the results.
• 2. Children, often the eldest female in a traditional family, may be called upon to take care of younger siblings in large families. In doing so they are often forced to give up exciting adolescent activities in which their peers at school freely indulge. The result may be that they become identified with the caretaker role yet resentful of it. When they leave home and have families of their own, this history may lead them to resent their own children. 

I     I used to practice in Los Angeles where I saw many Chicano (Mexican American) patients.  I saw several females who had functioned as "mother's assistants" when they were growing up. They were the eldest sister in large families. They had to stay home and take care of their younger siblings, and frequently had to miss important social events in school such as their senior Proms. Their younger sisters, however, got to go to and do everything the olders sisters had missed. When these older sisters grew up and had their own children, this recreated the family of origin issues for them and induced ambivalence in them about their brood.



•  The eldest male in a traditional family, such as seen in some Asian cultures, may be called upon to take over the family business in a career that he may just happen to hate. The costs incurred in raising children may lead to continuing family pressure to keep the business going when he wants out. The anger of Son #1 in such a situation may be displaced onto his children.

Issue #6: Parent-child role reversals. If adults in the family become incapacitated for whatever reason, and the children are therefore called upon to take over heavy adult responsibilities prematurely, the children may become resentful in a manner analogous to the situation of the eldest female in a traditional family described above.

Such individuals often describe this state of affairs with statements such as “I never got to be a kid.” [This is not the reason, however, that Michael Jackson said that]. A similar situation occurs when parents who were infantalized by their own families of origin appear to be unable to take care of themselves. Their children then try to fill the power vacuum and take care of them before they are really equipped to do so.

Issue #7: A couple has a child to “save the marriage.” The child then becomes the reason that the parents must continue in their miserable relationship. The resentment within the marital dyad becomes symbolized by the child whose presence was supposed to make the relationship better, but instead has led to the continuation of the same old marital misery.

The child then begins to believe that the family problems are all his or her fault, and the parents do not seem to try very hard to counter this belief. Children in such a bind usually come to the conclusion that their very existence is the reason their parents seem to hate each other. They may also feel that it is their reponsibility to provide a distraction to the parents' anger at one another by drawing anger on to themselves. This is one of the functions of the spoiler role.

Two or even several of these issues can present themselves simultaneously to a family, thus increasing parental ambivalence over the presence of children almost exponentially. The whole family becomes embroiled in quite a stew, and the abuse and neglect of children that sometimes results from these conflicts becomes more understandable, although still not excusable.

Expressing empathic understanding of the family's behavior, without condoning it, is far more productive in helping a family to stop troublesome behavior patterns than raking them over the coals for their misbehavior.