Some thoughts on child abuse recovery counseling, AA, PTSD and related matters

One prescriptive tool a number of these counselors recommend is writing with one’s alternative, non-dominant hand in order to recover one’s “inner child.”

But, does this actually have any benefits?

First, Ph.D. psychologist counselors, as compared to M.D. psychiatrists, let alone Ph.D. neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, aren’t renowned for their attachment to empirical research rather than feel-good theorizing. That’s why I have “inner child,” whether advocated by such counselors, Alcoholics Anonymous members talking about their recovery ideas, or others, in scare quotes.

Personally, and having done moderate or more left-handed writing off an on over the past few years, I doubt it.

First, I think the idea of an “inner child” is a construct. That’s not to say the idea isn’t still useful. Nor is it to say that we don’t have some subself that is more childlike (regular readers have read my numerous posts on the idea of subselves), and that, in at least some persons among people who have had childhood traumas, this subself isn’t larger and more active than in the general populace. But that’s all.

Anyway, to the degree alternate-hand writing accesses a child self construct, even then, it is probably not accessing a lot of unconscious or subconscious thought from this subself. The idea probably works in one of two ways.

Some people may be malleable or pliable enough in personality to un/subconsciously incorporate this idea wholesale from their counselors. In that case, what nondominant writing is accessing is most likely what the people subconsciously thinks their counselors want to hear about their clients’ inner children. In other words, outside of affirmation and “strokes” from a therapist, in these cases, nondominant writing is pretty valueless.

In other cases, though, where people who recognize, whether more subconsciously or consciously, the nature of a “child self” as a construct are involved, they may be able to go with the flow and project this constructed child self into the nondominant hand. That’s likely more valuable, but in this case, then what we are getting is an acted role which our own “daily show” consciousness believes is what this “inner child” is like.

A couple of caveats here, too. First, if one is too conscious about this, any insights will be forced. Second, the insights, as noted, may well be from one’s daily consciousness, and not any interior source.

Now, back to the idea of a “child self” and the idea, promoted in drug and alcohol recovery as well as developmental psychology, that this “child self” gets “frozen” by childhood trauma and never develops. (This leads to some AAers, and possibly some counselors, saying that one must “start again at age 13” or whatever, and then one “recovers at one year per year,” implying the whole person (if there actually is such a thing) is ultimately all behind the age-development curve because of the “frozenness” of this “child self.”

Well, first, I simply don’t believe human development happens that way. Even if a child trauma is great enough to produce some sort of actual, “split” or “partially split” child self, that subself is going to continue to develop, whether up, down or sideways. The deeper it appears to remain “frozen,” it seems more likely this is a subconsciously willed (yes, the subconscious has will) decision than an artifact of the original trauma.

Now, someone else might claim that subconscious willing is itself an artifact of the trauma. I say no.

Rather, it reflects differences in personality types — differences with a fair-sized genetic component, as illustrated by differences in post-traumatic stress disorder susceptibility in adults, to adult traumas.

Neuroscience and cognitive science have demonstrated such differences being reflected in differences in brain architecture in the amygdala and elsewhere. And the genetic research, while still somewhat weak evidentiarily, is coming along.

Hence, treatment such as anti-PTSD drugs, along with new directions in PTSD talk therapy, are important.

Counselors, even especially those leaning heavily on warm fuzzies, need to become cognizant of the research in this area and modify their treatment accordingly. And, armchair psychiatrists in AA and elsewhere need to take a page from Wittgenstein and stop dispensing advice that is not only clueless but potentially harmful, or at least detrimental, if they don’t know, and don’t try to know, what they’re talking about.

Reflections on Redwoods beaches and fog

On of the places I camped while on vacation was in Redwoods National Park’s Nickel Creek primitive campground, less than 100 yards from the ocean, the night of Aug. 3. The glow of a late-night moon seen on that beach, along with a foggy sunrise the next morning, prompted the following extended haiku poem.



REDWOOD BEACHES

Redwood coastal beach
Is serene in moonlight glow
Peaceful, quiet night.

People sleep above
Lulled by crashing breaker roar
Sea-sound lullaby.

Morning comes anew
World wakens as sun rises
Reveals diff’rent beach.

The creamy breakers
Salmon-glow in early morn
With foggy sunlight.

Last-look lingering,
Loath to leave, a parting glance,
I hike up the hill.

Stop and shoulder-glance,
A last trinket of mem’ry
Turn back, trudge once more.

With mem’ry secured,
Painted, not photographic
The essence remains.

— August 8, 2006

Redwoods — trees of living history

The analogy with which I start this poem struck me in the face when I saw a downed redwood in Muir Woods National Monument Sunday.


REDWOOD HISTORY LESSON

Like a phonograph
Awaiting a needle for playback,
The trunks of fallen redwoods
Have music to play.

Of course, the needle is already there,
Attached to the living tree
The playback only has live stereo sound
When played live, or alive.

Please don’t cut the redwoods.
Living history is more than just a figure of speech.

— August 8, 2006

Two observations on religion from the national parks

I saw two conspicuous examples of religion in national parks while on vacation, both disconcerting, but for different reasons.

Both were in California’s redwoods country.

The first, in a coastal section of Redwoods National Park, was a cross about 6 feet high, made out of two pieces of steel I-beam. The cross appears to have no historical significance itself, nor does it commemorate a historically significant site; no marker, plaque or other object is at the site.

The second, at the adjacent Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, was a string of Tibetan prayer flags wrapped around a redwood fern. New Ageism (assuming an Ager and not a Tibetan lama left the string of flags) no more should be commemorated in national parks than orthodox Christianity. Plus, leaving prayer flags like that is, by legal definition, littering.

New Agers have been angering American Indians by doing this at places like Sedona for years. Stop it.

Besides, it’s metaphysically illogical. If you’re really into “detachment” as a metaphysical principal, it’s illogical to consider one place “sacred” over another; in so doing, you “attach” to that place.

Thoughts from Olympus

Written while hiking in Olympic National Park:

Mount Olympus stands enshrouded,
Wrapped in a wreath of cloud.
Pull back the cumuli, and what do you see?

No throne, no thunderbolt, no Zeus.
The gods have fled Olympus,
And Sinai and Sagarmatha,
Because we have pulled back the veils,
Exposed the Most Holy Places
And revealed what was never there.

Look closely at the peak, in the glacial ice.
See how it mirrors yourself,
As it always did.

I'm baackkk

From a jam-packed 11-day trip to the Pacific Northwest. I'll post some comments in the next 48 hours or so, after I get caught up to speed on knocking out this week's issue of the old newspaper.

Got one poem completed during the trip, one in the hopper and ideas for two others. Look for at least some of them here within a week.

The “ineffability” argument for the existence of god — the modern-world version of the “god of the gaps” — yet another logical failure

A stout charge, indeed. How do I justify it?

First, as a recent discussion board at Pharyngula has demonstrated, “ineffability” appears to be the holdout of the modern ardent theist, one who may well accept some version of evolutionary theory and a Big Bang-dated age and proximate cause of the universe, but still believes in a theistic creator behind it all.

Such a person will often claim, as part of his or her defense of theism, that “emotion/aesthetic value/value judgment A” is ineffable. The first minor premise of the syllogism (not long enough to be a sorities) is that something ineffable cannot have a naturalistic cause. Intermediate conclusion is therefore that ineffability is a mark of supernaturalism. The second minor premise is obviously that a cause that transcends nature has a final cause in a theistic creator. (Note: The same claim and chain or argumentation may be made, and is, about morality or ethics, but as the discussion at Pharyngula focused on appreciation of the arts and enjoyment of nature, I don’t want to lose a tight focus.)

But, this argument has a number of holes in it, both from definitions and from strength of reasoning. Let’s read through them, from left to right in the argumental chain, both warrants and reasoning at the same time.

First, the whole question of what it means for something to be “ineffable” must be examined carefully. In part, ineffability is, per modern theories a mind, an issue of private mental states. Ergo, what is ineffable for you may well NOT be ineffable for me. Therefore, to sound scholastic, ineffability is a particular, not a universal. Under general standards of informal logic, if one particular instance of ineffability can be shown (with reasonable scientific polling/sampling work) to be ineffable for less than 50 percent of people, then the ineffability argument, at least for this particular class of ineffable mental states, is invalid.

The second problem is the failure to recognize the temporal specificity of many ineffable mental states. In short, what is ineffable today for John Doe or Jane Roe may well not be so tomorrow. Again, the 50 percent rule holds true — if “ineffable mental state A” eventually becomes effable for more than 50 percent of the people in such a state, the argument is invalid.

The third factor involves human psychology. Contrary to such rationalist standard-bearers as the associates of the Cato Institute and other denizens of modern political libertarianism, humans by and large aren’t rational economic actors. Economists from the generally libertarian-touted University of Chicago have taken the lead in painstaking demonstrating this.

Political angle aside, and the “brights” nomenclature of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins aside as well, we homo sapiens aren’t that rationalistic about a lot of our behaviors.

Where is this headed?

Well, the person who believes that Event A is ineffable, or, as I phrase it, the person who is in mental state of ineffability, is usually acting emotionally. Ergo, he or she may not be conducive to rational persuasion. Now, even in informal logic, one probably can’t assign percentages of truth value to such ineffable belief except in the roundest of numbers. However, there’s probably enough evidence to list this as no better than weakly inductive.

Next, we have a question of epistemology, one in which “ineffabologists” are eventually hoist on their own first-minor-premise petard. For, if ineffable experiences ultimately have a supernatural cause, then how can “ineffability” be defined in terms amenable to naturalistic explanation, discussion and analysis?

Oops.

Acceptance of the first minor presence as essential to the argument automatically lifts it out of the world of science.

In short, this “argument from ineffability” that appears to developing into more a stock of trade is as logically invalid as its many predecessors.