Russell Gardner, Jr, MD 28.8.92
Fax:
0101 409 772 4288
Dear Russ,
Herewith a farewell to Michael Chance, diluted with some ramblings of my own (3 PAGES IN
ALL). Antonia and I dallied for two
weeks after the conference in
Thanks to Michael Chance (ASCAP Sep 92, Vol 5, No 9, p 2-4)
Michael Chance has now completed his year of
service as president of IASCAP, and as the new president it falls to my happy
lot to propose a vote of thanks to him and wish him well. It was very appropriate that he should have
been the first president of a society devoted to across species comparisons and
psychopathology. At a time when the
other great names in animal behaviour such as R.A.Hinde
and S.A.Barnett were expressing pessimism about the
value of across species comparisons, Michael was demonstrating several areas in
which they were invaluable, not least in the relation between the agonic mode
and psychopathology. It may be difficult
for ASCAP readers to remember that twenty years ago it was thought that
depressive and anxiety states were related exclusively to attachment behaviour,
or rather, the failure of attachment behaviour.
It was a matter for speculation how much of psychopathology could be
accounted for by the failure of parent-child bonding, how much due to
inappropriate pair-bonding or the breakup of
pair-bonds by death, how much by failure of affiliative behaviour and how much
by mismanagement of reciprocal exchange.
All forms of competitive behaviour including agonistic behaviour were
simply ignored. Bowlby and Hinde had spoken, and only Michael Chance had the intuition
and courage to speak out and demonstrate that the various dysphoric states that
constitute the bulk of human psychopathology make much more sense in the
context of agonistic behaviour. His
concepts of the agonic and hedonic modes, linked to his concepts of attention
structure and reverted escape, have illuminated both animal and human behaviour.
This
is not to say that the failure of attachment behaviour is not important in
psychopathology. We know clinically that
many depressive states follow loss of some sort. But this is proximate causation. Underlying attachment behaviour, at a
phylogenetically earlier level of the brain, the mechanisms for agonistic
behaviour are "pulling the strings" and give an ultimate explanation
for the paradoxical apparent maladaptiveness of
depression such as the incapacity, the cognitive distortions and the inhibition
of affiliative behaviour. These cannot
be given an ultimate explanation in terms of malfunctioning attachment
behaviour, because they actually exacerbate any affiliative malfunction that
already exists; only
in the case of the rejected suitor can some function be seen, in that
depression may inhibit what would otherwise be inappropriate courtship
behaviour of the type we often read about in the papers, in the form of a
rejected suitor getting sent to prison for pestering or harming the person who
has rejected him. On the whole, however,
depression is maladaptive in cases of attachment malfunction, when usually
increased affiliative and other activity is required. Only in the role of the yielding reaction and
the inhibition of agonistic behaviour can the strange phenomena of depression
be understood in an evolutionary context.
Most ASCAP readers will be familiar with Michael Chance's book Fabrics
of the Mind, and his previous books are still well worth reading. His latest initiative has been to edit a
symposium on the two modes for World Futures: the Journal of General Evolution which is
due to appear in the September, 1992, issue; contributors are: Chance, Gilbert, Kemper, Power, Stevens,
Wedgwood-Oppenheim, Hold-Cavell
and myself. I look forward to reading
this symposium and I wish it had been possible to circulate copies to ASCAP
readers. Anyone who has difficulty
getting access to World Futures can get a copy of the symposium by writing to
Gordon and Beach Publishers Inc, Frankford Arsenal Building 110,
In my
contribution to the symposium I point out how the mode concept is applicable to
marital relationships. The way a
marriage can switch from the agonic mode to the hedonic and back again is
something that is clearly described by novelists but is not conceptualised by
social psychologists or marital therapists because, lacking the two mode
concept, they could not talk about the
pattern even if they could see it.
See, for instance, Steve Duck's Human Relationships, 2nd ed
(London, Sage Publications, 1992) where on pages 87-101 he discusses what
happens when things go wrong in long-term relationships; having no concept of the agonic mode, the
nearest he gets is "What happens when disagreements are detected is that
people talk them out, so once again in everyday life conversation is an
important tool for developing and sustaining relationships" (p87); the only possibility which Duck considers
apart from this hedonic resolution by discussion is separation, preceded by a
period in which each party runs down the other to other people; there is total agnosia
for the agonic mode. In my contribution
I mention the novel September by Rosamund Pilcher, and I have just read The Rector's Wife by
Joanna Trollope (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1991; Black Swan, 1992, paperback), in which the
clerical marriage switches to the agonic mode after the rector's wife takes a
job against the rector's wishes - rather unfairly the author sidesteps the
resolution of the agonic episode by killing the rector off in an automobile
accident (although she is right in emphasising the adverse effect of the agonic
mode on attention and concentration) - and also, the novel is an excellent
description of a struggle for autonomy and the acquisition of the capacity for
saying "no". I think it is
true to say that the agonic mode in marriage is currently only described in
novels, being too subtle for the laboratory and even for the consulting
room. After all, in the nineteenth
century novelists were the only psychologists they had, and I do not think they
have been entirely replaced.
It
is interesting to contrast the agonic mode in humans and in Michael's
long-tailed macaques. We know from
introspection and the reports of others how it feels to be in an agonic
relationship. One feels angry with the
other, wants to hurt them and wants to lower their
RHP/SAHP/prestige/status. Macaques have
little in their behavioural repertoire to express these feelings apart from
actual fighting and possibly withholding affiliative behaviour such as
grooming. Human beings, on the other
hand, have quite an armoury of agonic techniques short of agonistic behaviour. We can, for instance, run the other down to a
third party, thus lowering their prestige.
We can hurt the other with a variety of techniques, and this is
particularly true when the agonic episode occurs in a relationship
characterised by affiliation such as a marital relationship. We can withhold love, or make statements
denying love, or we can be unfaithful, all actions which appear to be part of
affiliative behaviour but are in fact motivated by agonistic behaviour. This is one of the complex interactions
between attachment behaviour and agonistic behaviour. So the agonic mode, which is one of
orientation towards agonistic behaviour in the absence of overt fighting, is
far more complex in humans than in animals and deserves intensive study.
Having said thanks to Michael, who stays on the executive committee of
IASCAP in the capacity of past president, it is my pleasure to welcome John
Pearce on to the committee in the capacity of vice president. Any ASCAP readers who have not read the book
he co-authored with Kalman Glanz,
Exiles from Eden should certainly do so as it is full of ideas and
represents a pioneering attempt to apply evolutionary biology to
psychotherapy. I think he will be a very
valuable addition to our committee.
During
the year of my presidency I hope to set in motion the arrangements for a
meeting of our society, possibly as part of a larger meeting, and if anyone has
any ideas on this they would be most welcome.
I would particularly like to bring together clinicians who are
interested in across-species comparisons and scientists who are actually
working with animals.
In the
meantime, I would like to ask for the help of ASCAP readers in compiling an
anthology of episodes of agonic mode from fiction. If you encounter an episode in which friends,
marriage partners or family members switch into the agonic mode, are described
in it, or manage to get out of it by reconciliation or other means, please make
a note of it and let me know.
Apart from the novels mentioned above, my list
so far includes The Forsyte Saga, Trollope's Daniel Deronda,
Somerset Maugham's Merrygoround, Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
and Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn. I suspect there is still a long way to
go. END OF FAX