[ This form is supposed to be a place for a free exchange of ideas on the work of Silvan Tomkins. Toward that end I share this essay. It is meant as a statement as well as an invitation to further dialogue. These are, of course, my ideas and not one has to agree.] My interest in this subject was piqued the other day by something I read. Silvan Tomkins was a diehard scientist. In his work he was stringent about the limits of his work. He wanted to explain the human being in all aspects. To me that is the overall picture but we live, each of us, in the world that we hope is progressing. We may not be progressing. A reminder that evolution does not necessarily imply progress it implies change. We have to work at guiding conscious evolution. How do we read Tomkins and best improve the human condition? One has to be very careful in parsing this out. Central to Tomkins’ understanding of how we maximize interest and joy is his formulation of the central blueprint which is: 1) We want to maximize interest and joy. 2) We want to minimize punishing feeling. 3) We achieve the first two by minimizing the inhibition of punishing feeling. (We do not want to suppress it as much as possible. We want to express bad feeling as much as possible.) 4) We need to institute interpersonal processes that will foster the achievement of these goals. We have affect and we have ways of expressing it. Donald Nathanson formulated the Compass of Shame in an attempt to formulate the ways in which we behave if we do not achieve the Central Blue Print. I formulated the Compass of interest as a guide to achieving the Central Blue Print. Tomkins also brilliantly formulated the idea that humans have two basic and major ideological stances. One is called the normative and one is called humanist. We are all mixtures of the two. The normative, it can be said, as a gross generalization, is the person that believes we are born wild, or even bad, and we need to be made good buy a higher authority. The humanist takes the stance that man is the measure of all things and that we need greater degrees of freedom to express ourselves and grow. Tomkins does not necessarily show his hand as to whether one of these ideologies is better than the other. I think it is clear, from the logic of the entire work what he felt. Or I will rephrase that. I think the logic of the entire work, brought to its logical conclusion leads in one direction to one more than the other. That said my feeling is he certainly had an opinion and that opinion would be that the humanist route is the quickest and most royal road to maximizing interest and joy in our life. His logic leads us to see that the two poles, humanist and normative, are in no way equal, yet we are all a combination of the two. Again, he certainly does not come out and say this is good and this is bad, however, it is certainly implied by his conclusions. I base this on the clear importance of the need for early attachment via interest. This brings me to a central debate in psychology and the ethics of psychology. Does psychology have a responsibility to champion certain agendas that fallout from the research? This is a two side sword. For example the APA’s involvement in post 9/11 activities. (See review ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3200196/) It would seem that here is an example of taking research and taking it into the world to do harm. I certainly think it is an absurd position to state as policy that one can renounce their ethics in the face of countervailing law. What then is ethics? I argue that when research shows that we might do well it is our duty to promulgate it. But not only promulgate it but stand against that which does harm on the basis of the same research. Psychologist did participate in interrogation and as advisers as to how to approach people and apparently participated in torture. In contrast the AMA has a long standing ethic that prohibits physicians from participating in capital punishment. One of the oldest ethical guidelines in Medicine is “First do no harm.” How does Affect Psychology fit into these questions? If the psychology does not lead us to take solid stances on how to improve humanities lot then why bother? The counter argument is that everyone has a right to their ideology, their opinion, and that needs to be respected. I say to a point. I think it becomes ridiculous at some point if we follow the science. It becomes a postmodern, New Age idea that nothing really matters in the physical world; that we can just have an opinion and everything and everyone has the same right to their opinion. This seems indeed to be the cancer of our age. This ends in such ridiculousness as “The Secret,” et al, where people are duped into believing that they can will anything as long as they try hard enough. They can cure their cancer. They can run twenty miles without water and if they can’t then they “should die.” They are “weak.” It is a bit limited the idea that if we just expressed our affect and tolerate each others affect then everything will be okay. The problem with that is that its clear that those of certain persuasions are not of that mindset and I think its clear Im talking about the more normative person. The more normative the person is the more invested they are in their ideological structure and the more rigid that structure is. The less likely that structures is to change with any argument. An example of research in this area is: brianlynchmd.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=703&sid=c658393392241f2e1114a86f6dee70b5 Belief systems are dearly held and the more they are challenged the more fact is disregarded and the more people will dig in their heels. I am never saying the humanist cannot be guilty of this but I am definitely saying they are much less likely not to accept new information. I am not saying that we need always directly challenge harmful ideas as I just showed that that often leads nowhere and an even worse situation. On the other hand if AP leads us to see that certain attitudes and practices increase shaming experiences and limit the healthy growth of interest then we need to say so directly and in no uncertain terms. I remind people that interest and joy can come from any situation. Willie Sutton enjoyed robing banks. Shame can come from any situation. I will always remember Don Nathanson explaining that we must understand that an SS trooper can feel shame and joy in very particular ways. Shame for maybe not killing his quota of Jews that day and he would feel joy for having done so. So too a congressman can feel glee about helping pass a bill to reduce school lunch funding. Tomkins wanted to be very clear about this setup, about how complicated we are. Yet, it seems certain he wanted us to take away the lesson from his “human being theory” that we must needs be about the business of maximizing interest and joy for everyone. No, there will never be Nirvana but there are better and worse ways to approach an ideal society. Im not saying that people dont change. We have seen over and over with reconciliation councils etc. that people can change and this is exactly what AP in practice is about. We do see dramatic change in people. But, I am not speaking about the aftermath and such of reconciliation councils or humane treatment of everyone. I am speaking of taking a stance about how not to get in these situations that will end in needing reconciliation in the first place. We need to accept that to maximize interest and joy we need to start with the best humanistic childrearing possible. People should not misunderstand that this does not mean we do need to set limits and teach children to modulate both positive and punishing affect but it is all in how we do it. And we need to be boisterous about it. I dont think anyone is really disagreeing with me but it seems that many do ignore the practicality, the necessity of taking this stance on many political issues that impede the progress of child rearing. As well as championing those proposals that foster interest-joy for everyone. It seems that when its obvious that when people are hurt by political action, when their need for basic care ;food shelter ,clothing ,nurturing are threatened then this is anathema to what Tompkins has shown us. Tomkins cannot be pounded into compliance with Anne Rand. Its a general problem in therapy and psychology that is fostered by a new age and postmodern philosophy that indeed anything goes. It is whatever floats your boat, what makes YOU happy. If whatever your interest is makes you happy then go for it. Of course people will add the proviso as long as it doesnt hurt anyone else. Unfortunately it seems people live in great disavowal of the harm they do do in putting the emphasis on self. We speak so much of feeling – affect- that we keep in the background reason. Certainly reason is always first at the service of affect but maturity is bringing them into balance as much as possible. The science, brought to us thanks to reason, is showing is that the fostering of interest-joy in the parent child dyad is essential for our survival.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 16:22:44 +0000
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