Re: Recovered Memory and Inner Child

March 15, 1999

Hi Jim

This has particular relevance for the science of addiction of course. Folklore

is full of stories of rats starving rather than stop using cocaine or whatever

but in reality it is actually very hard to get rats to use psychoative

substances voluntarily and will only do so when placed in extreme stress. The

using tends to stop on removal of the stress and hence these animals are not

addicted in the human sense.

Addiction is a very human phenomonon; other primates such as monkeys might gets

close to showing human type addictive behaviour I expect, but (as in so many

things) .

I beleive the problem comes from the intesnsely social nature of human beings

and their natural craving for love and affection as children not being met.

Neglect and abuse produce chronic distress (and quite likely organic brain

defecits) that render an individual prone to addictive behavior. It is ironic

that this can express itself in the form of obesity and bulimerexia.

It is also noteworthy that brain defecits are posited by disease model

theorists, but they invoke a genetic causation. In simple terms, they are

wrong.

P.

> Behaviorists thought all learning stemmed from reinforcement. From work

> with pigeons and rats, it was found that food was a powerful

> reinforcer. Behaviorists believed that feeding reinforced interaction

> with and attachment to the mother. It was thought that milk eventually

> generalized to all things " mother " , and that this generalization

> reinforced complex processes such as language acquisition. For a

> variety of reasons, primarily military funding, behaviorism was the

> dominant learning paradigm in the 40's, and 50's. Pete is quite correct

> that many scientist were surprised by the findings of Harlow. I believe

> that is were the phrase " monkey psychiatrist " came from ... scientists

> (rat psychologists), in disgust over those damn monkeys that didn't

> behave the way were supposed to, referred to Harlow as the monkey

> psychiatrist.

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Pete Watts

Grant me the Strength

To Change the Things I Can Not Accept

PERSONALITY-DISORDERS SUPPORT LIST:

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