🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi Brett. I'd like to take issue with a few things you wrote. By the
way, I use quotation marks for terms throughout. I do not mean this in a
mocking tone but to highlight the term or quote it (sometimes it's hard
to tell the intention when it's written):

You wrote:
>  I think that the fairly recent emergence of behavioral genetics
> research has tremendous potential for informing our knowledge about
> particular disorders. For example, the high heritability of schizophrenia
 demonstrates the biological basis of this disorder and the resulting need to
 provide medical treatment.

With all due respect, the heritability of schizophrenia has been
supported more by research that paid no attention to environmental
effects of being brought up _in_ the family than by adoption studies
that are presumed to be the model. Furthermore, if one goes back and
takes a good look at the often-cited Swedish adoption study from the
'50s, one sees that these adoptions did not take place at birth, but at
an average age of about 3 yrs. One might be tempted to ask what it was
that led to the adoption in the first place. As I just wrote to one of
our colleagues, heritability of religion is even higher than that of
schizophrenia. Even granting the probable (but not settled) case that
there is a constitutional (prenatal? genetic? whatever) problem in
schizophrenia, this does not mean that the basis for its later emergence
is biologically based. People without schizophrenia in the family
develop it all the time, and most of those who share all of their
genetic material with their identical twin do not get it! What's the
point of focusing on genes and brains about something that emerges as a
result of the organism-environment interaction? A brain is required for
all sorts of things, all behaviors are biological if one chooses to look
at that level. To argue that something is "biologically based" as you do
assumes that biochemistry is somehow separate and "causal" to the mind.
The mind, though, also quite clearly "causes" biochemistry. And the
mind-environment interaction "causes" gene expression of proteins. The
"biologically based" argument is _strategical_, not based in "scientific
fact." I.e., it is a proposal for, as you put it, "medical treatment."
But the inference that because something systematic is happening in the
brain, we have to treat it with chemicals is totally erroneous.
Something systematic is happening in the brain when we continue to
choose cheeseburgers over hotdogs at cookouts. Just because we keep
getting stomachaches from lactose intolerance doesn't mean that we must
take drugs to "correct the chemical imbalance" in this choice, nor that
we must eat soy cheese. We can do any number of things, including not
going to cookouts, not going outside ever again, etc. What we choose to
do is determined by a great number of things. Again, resorting to a
biological or genetic "explanation" ends all discussion of the meaning
of behavioral problems, but does nothing but beg the question:"How is it
that this person's biology is screwed up?" This question does not in any
way have to be answered in reference to biology, since experience
dictates biology just as the other way around. In any case, we are not
concerned about their biology, nor are biological psychiatrists. I
worked at the NIMH in biological psychiatry research for 4 years before
grad school. They don't pretend to know what they're doing. They simply
load up the patients on what seems to work or what they've heard is a
good cocktail. Nothing scientific about it. Their concern, just like
ours, is "how do they feel? are they happy? can they live productive and
joyful lives?" We are no closer, with the biological line of research,
to more effectively curing or reducing these problems, but we _are_
getting more paternalistic and arrogant and cynical about these complex
human, social, economic and political problems.

> As far as alcoholism goes, Cloininger
> demonstrated that there are two types of alcoholics that differ >according to
 their genetic and environmental risk factors. Type I >alcoholics acquire
 alcoholism through a diathesis-stress model, while >Type II genetic
 predisposition alone makes sons of male alcoholics nine >times more likely to
 develop alcoholism.
>    I am not sure about whether or not a particular "alcoholism" gene >has been
 isolated. I am also not sure if this point is that relevant >since we know that
 there is some biological marker that predisposes an >individual to develop
 alcoholism. When psychologists fail to recognize >this finding, they are
 ignoring a fundamental and very important >characteristic of this disorder.

Is there really "some biological marker"? I know it's been said, but
it's also been retracted so many times in the research that the media
blitz about it being true wore off a long time ago. But, again, I take
issue not with research "results," but with methodology, assumptions,
and inferences about those results. For instance, you say that some men
are at 9X the risk of developing alcoholism. Do you mean 9X the risk of
women? of other men? What are the intervening causes between the male
genes and buying a six-pack of Pabst? More questions about the
assumptions need to be posed before stats are given as evidence for
genetic "Types." And again, genetic "markers" are weak statistical
probabilities relevant to population genetics, not to diagnosis of the
individual. The diagnosis for alcoholism is quite a more simple matter:
they drink a lot. The treatment is also simple: they stop or they
control it. How this happens on the biological level is irrelevant,
unless you want to take drugs to prevent alcoholism (a curious
solution). How this happens on the behavioral or interpersonal level is
everything.

> I agree with the idea that we should not go around labeling
> things with "diathesis-stress" unless such labels are empirically
> substantiated.

There is no way to verify or falsify the "diasthesis-stress" label
because there is no human that does anything or experiences anything
independent of either diasthesis or stress. Not only can it not be
"empirically substantiated" but it is not a scientific construct because
it is prima facie untestable.

> I do believe that when we fail to address biologically-
> related issues as possible alternate explanations of phenomena that we
> assume to be psychologically-related, the result is incomplete and not
> very good science.

When my next door neighbor comes back from Bosnia after 6 months, seeing
cartloads of bodies rotting, hearing screams of women being raped, and
being strafed with gunfire, you better believe that biologically (let's
say "limbically") speaking, he's gonna be pretty messed up. Are you
really concerned about the completion of this picture by a biochemical
analysis of his brain function? I'd say that if he _didn't_ get PTSD
there's an imbalance of some kind. In any case, the carnage of war and
the insanity of extreme circumstances of many kinds causes undeniable
suffering that occurs on a physiological, political, social, and a
hundred other levels. We choose what level to work on. The biochemical
doesn't "complete" anything to make it "good science." It is a
_strategy_ for conceptualization and treatment that is simplistic
because it assumes that symptoms are the "result" of chemical processes.
In fact, they are neither the cause nor the result. They are _both_ the
cause and the result. In fact, they are inextricable. One can change
chemistry through experience as well as the reverse. This has been
"empirically validated" in a number of studies. What the strategy
dictates though is a reductionism to the biochemical level as an
appropriate level for intervention. This is where all meaning of
experience disappears. And it is this dehumanization of suffering
through the appeal to biological understanding that I find so abhorrent.

> Unfortunately, the difficult thing about this process is that it  >requires
 that we become familiar with research areas that we do not >understand
 (behavioral genetics in my case), and some people may not >have the desire or
 the energy to make such an effort.

I agree. But the more we become familiar with these research areas, the
more obvious becomes the difficulty in reducing mental phenomena to any
particular model. All to the better! The assumptions must be questioned
regarding not only scientific falsifiability but also regarding the
intentionality of the approach. What is our intention in doing what
we're doing? Do we want to encapsulate our understanding? The intention
to understand is what makes us human, but the arrogance of actually
thinking that we've got it rather than that we have a need to feel as if
we've got it is dangerous indeed. As Asimov said, nothing can possibly
understand a system that is as complex as itself. It doesn't mean we
should give up, but it does mean we must be humble, and I think also
that we must question our intention and result of what we do. Are we
humanistic? Loving? Charitable to each other? Do we add mercy to the
world for people who have been devalued and made meaningless? There are
unsavory intentions afoot in biological psychiatry. A lot of money and a
lot of conflict of interest exists, which has been widely documented. (A
good starting point is P. Breggin's work, Szasz's work, and Lewontin's
work: check these for the wealth of primary sources contained in
them--see for yourself).

I hope I have added to this debate even though I understand that this is
far afield of your initial inquiry, Brett (to say the least!). I
appreciate any responses.
-Jason Seidel (jseidel@acsu.buffalo.edu)