Humans are superhuman animals
A reply by J. Price and R Gardner
to commentaries by J. Birtchnell and P. Gilbert
on
THE PARADOXICAL POWER OF THE DEPRESSED
PATIENT: A PROBLEM FOR THE RANKING
THEORY OF DEPRESSION
Submitted to the British Journal of Medical
Psychology
Humans are superhuman animals
A
reply to J. Birtchnell and P. Gilbert
With Paul Gilbert we have little quarrel,
because he shares our evolutionary approach, albeit from a psychological rather
than psychiatric perspective. We thank
him for his detailed discussion of our paper, both during its writing and in
the preceding essay. We also thank three
anomymous referees whose comments were helpful.
John
Birtchnell is asking questions (and providing answers) about the nuts and bolts
of relating. We are asking questions
(many would say unanswerable questions) about the evolution of the mechanisms
of relationships. That is one reason why
our models differ. Evolution is about
competition, and this mainly means social competition (intrasexual
selection). This is why our thinking is
mainly concerned with the competitive aspects of relating.
We
would argue that close and affiliative relationships have evolved in order to
help those who engage in them to compete with outsiders, but this ultimate (or
evolutionary) reason is not apparent or even relevant to the day-to-day
management of such relationships. We
have found Birtchnell's exploration of the dimensions
of upperness/lowerness and closeness/distance to be
enormously illuminating. If our ideas
appear to conflict with his, then an examination of the areas of agreement and
disagreement should be rewarding.
Is depression alerting?
Let us take the disagreements first. We would contest the view that depression has
an "alerting" function, and serves to signal to the individual that
one of their needs is not being met. Our
experience of depression is that it has a "non-alerting" function,
and tends to obfuscate its causes.
Sensations and emotions such as pain, grief and humiliation have an
alerting function, and are "other-focused" onto the source of
discomfort; but
depressed mood as we encounter it in depressed patients tends to be
self-focused, and attention is withdrawn from specific problems with
relationships. The kind of relationship
problem which depressives ruminate about, such as being unlovable, is not
something that can be addressed or remedied in a constructive way, and these
depressive attitudes need reformulating in cognitive therapy before they can be
tackled. On the whole depressed patients
do not know why they are depressed, and if they think they know, they are usually
wrong. Often depressed patients attribute
the depression to some aspect of the depression, such as feeling bad or not
sleeping. We think that the evolved
function of depression is to maintain a relationship, and this function occurs
without active help from the depressive, whose role is passively to accept
whatever is thrust on him or her by the other party. We think that the function of depression is
impossible to understand in terms of the individual alone.
Importance of closeness for the pursuit of
power
Ranking theory cannot ignore affiliation
because in most primates, and most of all in human beings, rank depends on
alliances with other group members.
Concerning non-human primates, Bernstein & Gordon (1974) wrote:
...animals living in a society depend more on
alliances and coalitions rather than on individual fighting skills to maintain
their social position. Thus a scrawny
old female supported by many generations of offspring and long associations
with other females and adult males may maintain a position of unquestioned
superiority over young males of much greater fighting ability. So, too, may an old male retain his high
rank, eventually losing to a challenger not because of his failing fighting
abilities but because of the successful recruitment of support from group
members by the challenger. After such a defeat, a new order is
established incorporating all animals into a society that recognises the new
relationships.
This dependence of rank on alliances has been
amply confirmed by more recent primate studies.
Bernard Chapais (1992) sums up his review of
ranking behaviour in female Cercopithecine monkeys as
follows:
Perhaps the most general principle emerging
from the present review is perhaps that any female seeks to outrank any other
female against whom she is given sufficient alliance power.
In their introduction to their book on
alliances, Harcourt and De Waal (1992) sum up their view of alliance formation
and agonistic behaviour in man and other primates:
If we view the dominance
hierarchy as the vertical component of social organisation, the network of
affiliative and kinship ties can be viewed as the horizontal component. In many species these two components exist
side by side without much interplay. The
remarkable social complexity of human and non-human primates is brought about
by their capacity to (1) alter competitive outcomes and dominance positions
through collaboration, and especially (2) establish social bonds for this very
reason.
Relationships can be equal
We agree with Birtchnell that relationships can
be equal and reciprocal, and in this way humans differ from most animal
species, which are unable to sustain equal relationships between members of the
same sex. We do not say "up is good
and down is bad" although the up position is often more rewarding, and on
average is associated with increased fitness (reproductive success); we would prefer to say that symmetrical
relationships are good, whereas coercive asymmetrical relationships are
bad; but this is a moral judgement and
is not science.
Humans
have a unique capacity for symmetry in relationships, but they also have strong
urges to dominate, and this makes equal relationships very difficult to
sustain, particularly if contentious decisions have to be made. Most British and Americans might agree that
it is desirable for husband and wife to be equal; and yet they recognise that a marriage
is like any organisation that requires executive decisions to be made. The British did not vote for a political
party that had two equal leaders, nor would they buy shares in a company that
had two equal managing directors, in the unlikely event that such a company
were to get into the position of offering shares to the public. Symmetry in marriage is sometimes only
achieved in the context of paradoxical power relationships, such as those in
which "The husband thinks he is in charge, and the wife knows she is in
charge."
Making
equal marriage work is one of the most pressing problems confronting our
society; and
yet those who advocate it do not seem to realise the difficulties it faces, nor
the pinnacle it represents in the evolution of relationships.
Depression as a reaction to loss of lowerness
Our theory sees depression as a reaction to
loss of what Birtchnell (1993) calls "upperness". Therefore we may seem to be in conflict with
his scheme in which depression is a reaction to the frustration of all relating
needs: not only the loss of upperness, but also the loss of closeness and distance, and
even of lowerness.
In fact there is no conflict here, and to explain why not may help to elucidate
the complex interactions of variables in the two dimensional space of upperness/lowerness and closeness/distance.
Our
theory deals with depression as an involuntary subordinate strategy, in
which an individual is coerced or manipulated into a one-down position, from
which there is no escape. Birtchnell
rightly points out that there are needs for lowerness,
and that lowerness may be sought freely and even
joyfully. For instance, there is
security and comfort to be obtained from lowerness to
the Queen and to God, to whom most people are willing to bend the knee.
We may
like support, but we also like to get our own way. We may use support from A to get our own way
with B. And even with A, if it is a
choice between support and own way, we may well jettison the support.
If
security from an important patron is not forthcoming, and therefore the need
for lowerness is frustrated, depression may
follow. In our scheme, this is because
the individual wants security, and is not getting their own way in this regard,
and the depression assists them in "not getting their own way"; it prevents the
individual from rebelling against the patron for not providing the desired
security. To put it in different terms,
there has been a conflict between the individual and the patron about the
amount of security to be provided by the patron - they have offered different
definitions of the relationship, the individual defining the relationship as
one providing more security, the patron defining it as one providing less. The individual is forced to accept the
patron's definition, and being forced into the acceptance of an unacceptable
definition of a relationship is one way of defining the proximate trigger of
depression (Price, 1992).
Depression as a reaction to loss of closeness
or distance
The same applies to conflicts over the
closeness/distance dimension. If X
defines the relationship as having p units of closeness and Y defines it as
having q units of closeness, one of the two is likely to be forced into
accepting the other's definition and therefore may get depressed. There may also be a coercive quality over the
definition of distance: one partner may
take the view, "I will not tolerate you having so much
distance." This is especially true
when a request for distance is a denial of exclusivity, rejecting, say, the
definition, "Our love excludes either of us loving another." For the individual caught between the demands
of two others demanding exclusivity, it does not much matter whether the
demands relate to the horizontal or the vertical dimension; the demand, "Love me and not her (or
him)" can cause as much distress as the command, "Obey me and not her
(or him)."
Since
differences of definition and their resolution are the material of the upperness/lowerness or vertical dimension, me may speak of
a "reversion to the vertical dimension" when needs in other areas of
relating are not met;
this reversion, or "switch from the hedonic mode into the
agonic mode" (Price, 1992) has been recognised as "disassuagement" by Heard and Lake (1986):
"Psychological distancing which is
uncomfortable and distressing arises; firstly, when a companion or
support-giver fails to recognise or acknowledge a request for supportive or
companionable interaction, or having recognised it, devalues or rejects
it; and secondly, when someone assumed
to be either a support-giver or -seeker refuses to accept the expected
role. In contrast, uncomfortable and
distressing closeness arises when individuals, as seekers, are pressurised to
accept unsolicited support and/or support they construe to be inappropriate or
inadequate; or
as support-givers, are subjected to intense demands which they cannot
satisfy. In each instance, giver and
seeker put each other under painful pressure to accept the meaning and point of
view of the other. Giving in to such
pressure is frequently experienced as submission, with loss of autonomy which
increases the experience of disassuagement." (p.
435)
We agree with these authors, and think that they
are describing an important phenomenon - the breakdown of agreement about
closeness. We would just add that the
"giving in" can be experienced at two different levels of
consciousness: there can be a conscious
giving in which may be painful but over which the individual has some
control; or there may be unconscious
giving in which takes the form of clinical depression. Elsewhere we have given the name
"involuntary subordinate strategy" to this unconscious form of giving
in (Sloman et al., 1994;
Gilbert et al., 1995).
It is
a common clinical observation that coercive relationships may cause depression
while they continue, whereas non-coercive relationships may cause depression
when they are discontinued. It does not
matter all that much whether the discontinuation is by separation, rejection or
death. One way of accommodating all this
to our theoretical scheme is to say that the definition of a relationship
normally contains the unspoken requirement that it continue. Therefore to leave a relationship or to die
is to offer an alternative and unacceptable definition, and to be forced to
accept this unacceptable definition puts us in the situation in which the
depressive response is triggered. The
unconscious mental mechanisms which have evolved to reconcile different
definitions of relationships may not be sufficiently fine-tuned to recognise
the difference between wilful rejection and death; or perhaps in evolutionary terms the
difference is not important.
As
might be expected, given that we are dealing with the same phenomena, there is
a lot of common ground between Birtchnell's scheme
and our own. In particular, we both
recognise certain factors which we predict are prophylactic against
depression. These include: the resolution of differences in definition by
negotiation and compromise (thus avoiding a switch from the hedonic to the
agonistic mode), the freedom to escape from disputed definitions, and the
readiness to accommodate to other people's needs with voluntary subordination
if necessary.
Summary
Maybe the difference between us is one of
levels. We think Birtchnell is right to
say that depression follows the failure to satisfy relating needs, whether
these be for closeness, distance, upperness
or lowerness.
The problem for us is that we cannot see the adaptive function of
depression in this role, except in the case of the need for upperness,
in which case depression accommodates the person to unwanted lowerness. We can get round this
problem by postulating an over-riding relating need: the need to get one's own way. This evolved in the context of intrasexual
selection, and depression is an adaptive response to the frustration of this
need, as we have argued in the preceding pages and elsewhere (e.g., Sloman et
al., 1994; Gilbert
et al., 1995). If one does not get one's
own way in terms of closeness, distance or lowerness,
in spite of using all the negotiating and manipulating devices at one's
command, and if one cannot leave the relationship, one has to accommodate to
not getting one's own way. This can be
done at a conscious, rational, voluntary level in terms of willing
self-sacrifice, or it can be done at a far more primitive level through the
incapacity of depression;
if one does not wish to shiver, one can turn on the central
heating. The reason we appear obsessed
with the vertical dimension is that this dimension reflects 300 million years
of evolution during which our ancestors got their own way viz
a viz their peers.
No amount of religion or philosophy can banish in a few thousand years
the battle cry which echoes down the generations: "My will be done!"
References
Bernstein,
I.S. & Gordon, T.P. (1974) The function of
aggression in primate societies. American Scientist, 62, 305-311.
Chapais, B. (1992) The role
of alliances in social inheritance of
rank among female primates. In Harcourt,
A.F. & De Waal, F.B.M. (Eds.) Coalitions and Alliances in Humans and
Other Animals
De
Waal, F.B.M. & Harcourt, A.H. (1992) Coalitions and alliances: a history of ethological research. In Harcourt, A.F. & De
Waal, F.B.M. (Eds.) Coalitions and Alliances in Humans and Other Animals.
Gilbert, P. (1992) Depression: The Evolution
of Powerlessness.
Gilbert, P., Price, J. & Allan, S. (1995)
Social comparison,
social
attractiveness and evolution: how might they be related? New Ideas in
Psychology: An
International Journal of Innovative Theory in Psychology, in press.
Heard, D.H. & Lake, B. (1986) The attachment dynamic in adult
life. British
Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 430-438.
Price, J.S. (1992) The
agonic and hedonic modes: definition, usage,
and the promotion of mental health. World Futures, 35, 87-115.
Sloman,
L., Price, J., Gilbert, P. & Gardner, R. (1994) Adaptive function of depression: psychotherapeutic
implications. American Journal of
Psychotherapy, 401-414.