Neu Rhetoric and Memory

Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik

If memory molds our perceptions and experiences from an early age, then the rhetorical canon of memory might be said to precede invention and arrangement, as personal and collective modes of perception and cognitive processes. Memory might even be considered a trump canon. Semantic, procedural, and episodic memories undoubtedly contribute to style as an acquired sense of the relationship between words and feelings. And, at the risk of appearing to be comprehensive for the sake of comprehensiveness, I also note the relationship between memory and the iterative nature of delivery.

The rhetorical quality of delivery from generic conventions to widely recognized performative rituals is heavily influenced by the fact of their repetition and our memory of that repetition. A generic convention of professional writing is persuasive because it appeals to our expectations as pre-existing cognitive templates. Similarly a performative ritual such as a sacred union, rite of passage, or initiation ceremony is largely meaningful, legal, and/or sacrosanct because of the fact of its repetition over generations, and unique because of variations on an established theme.

Though we tend to associate issues of perception with conscious cognitive processes, perception is influenced by all three types of memory. Over time perception becomes habitual, procedural. Also perception is influenced by emotion- and value-laden experiences as episodic memories. What is more, we are largely unaware of these influences as all these types of memories or traces can become unconscious (Solms 161).

As a means of self-regulation for survival, the purpose of cognitive processes is to reflect on the emotions. However emotions are also brought to bear on cognition in cases of psychological conflict, conscious deliberation, and virtually all value judgment. Indeed affective neuroscience suggests that emotions are the prime movers of all conscious brain activity. Both cognitive and affective processes can be consolidated into unconscious (procedural) memory, and these subcortical traces can subsequently influence perception and cognition without entering consciousness.

Emerging neuroscientific evidence for the existence and influence of unconscious processes has myriad ramifications for rhetorical theory and practice, though the challenge of integrating theories of unconscious with theories of rhetoric presents a unique challenge.

Talking to the Gene

From my forthcoming book.
Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik

Stress, Cortisol, and Genetic Expression

Physiologically speaking, stress is practically synonymous with the production of cortisol in the body. This hormone regulates the expression of various genes associated with the immune system. Too much cortisol inhibits immune responses; hence the commonly observed, and scientifically-grounded phenomenon of individuals becoming ill after a period of heightened stress (Andreasen 234-39; Martin 167-70). Cortisol production, however, can be controlled through cognitive framing and emotional regulation strategies, among them the explicitly rhetorical.

An experiment conducted by a group of psychiatrists at the University of Michigan showed a significant positive impact of cognitive intervention on subjects exposed to pentagastrin, a stress-inducing substance (Abelson 668). This intervention was obviously rhetorical, meant to lend subjects a greater sense of control by giving them more information before and during administration, as well as an opportunity to ask questions. Subjects in the CI (cognitive intervention) group received more detailed instructions accompanied by a five-minute conversation, a light that indicated pentagastrin flow, and options for controlling or stopping the flow (Abelson 670). Cortisol levels were markedly decreased in the CI versus the control group, even in subjects with panic disorder (Abelson 671). Interestingly, none of the subjects actually stopped the flow of pentagastrin (Ableson 670). These findings clearly indicate that stress responses may be psychologically inhibited and that such interventions could “help ameliorate cortisol-mediated deleterious effects of stress on health” (Abelson 674-75). This experiment also shows a direct connection between a rhetorical intervention, an increased sense of control, and decreased cortisol levels.

The connection between stress and illness is not news. The role of the genes in immune responses, however, is generally unknown, as is the fact that cognitive framing and emotional response can affect genetic expression through the fluid dynamics of hormones. The relationship between stress and cortisol suggests a continuum of various external and internal environments: the external factors causing stress; our personal psychological reactions to those factors; the biochemical environment of our bodies (presence of stress hormones); and the biochemical environment of our cells which afects genetic expression (Cloninger 279; Ridley Genome 150; Schneiderman). This continuum, furthermore, suggests various points of intervention—occasions when individuals can exert influence to reduce the negative psychological and physiological effects of stress. While most of the research on cortisol involves regulation of environmental factors by research scientists, stress can also be modulated by various strategies of emotional self-regulation (some of which are discussed in preceding chapters). To the extent that individuals can reduce their emotional stress responses they can also reduce the production of cortisol and boost their immune systems through autonomic genetic processes. This overall process, then, is paradigmatic of an individual’s ability to “talk back to the gene.” That is to say, individuals can affect genetic expression through cognitive, emotional, and rhetorical strategies.

Faith in Medical Science

From my forthcoming book; Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik

The legitimacy of medical science rests on faith as well as fact. That is to say the empirical grounds for the positive effects of conventional medicine are clearly reinforced by the rhetorical discursive practices in which they are articulated. Television advertisements for new drugs employ both technical and value language. These messages are compelling not only in terms of the medical information they convey but in the emotional presentation of various medical problems and cures. With compelling speech and visuals they not only promote a particular drug but the value of drug therapy in general. The drug industry itself, though criticized for being profit driven, is also accorded the respect of a cutting-edge scientific enterprise, partly through marketing and partly through a national pride in our research and development accomplishments. Other forms of medical technology also are accorded the same respect if not awe, when we consider and indeed pay related costs. The high cost of medical treatment in the US in general may, in fact, bolster the ethos of medical personnel, technologies, and related industries.

Researchers also suspect that the placebo effect is operative in the administration of conventional drugs and therapies, and there is empirical support for this hypothesis. That is to say conventional drugs and therapies are bolstered by the same factors that contribute to the placebo effect (Vase). Researchers have even speculated that in some cases prescribed drugs simply function as placebos. Antibiotics, for example, often work as placebos when administered for viral conditions, that would not typically require or respond to antibiotics (Hart). Researchers have also suggested that doctors could and should capitalize on the placebo effect by adopting a more psychologically sophisticated bed-side manner: “in practice such an approach could be implemented by interfacing standard treatments with attention to patients’ thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about the treatment and with attempts to optimize their perception of the treatment (Vase). Placebo researchers argue that such an approach would not only be more effective but also more ethical, given what we now know about the placebo effect (Vase).

The role of persuasion and faith is most evident in situations where, for various reasons, the subject is completely unaware that they are receiving a placebo. In most placebo trials the possibility that the patient is receiving a placebo engenders an element of doubt as well as faith—and results usually reflect that balance. In cases where subjects believe they are simply receiving an active drug, however, the percentage of positive placebo responses is typically much higher. Of course such conditions cannot be replicated in a conventional experimental setting for ethical reasons. However reviews of trials where subjects were given treatments later discovered to be ineffective, show startling results. In such cases positive placebo responses can be as high as 80 % (Hart).

The effectiveness of the placebo in this case, again, rests on a modern, scientific world view that associates drug therapy with medical cures, and values conventional medical practices. Ironically the findings of placebo experiments undermine these conventional practices to a certain extent, while implicitly legitimizing alternative approaches, especially those that integrate mind and body. Mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral therapy, support groups, and meditation capitalize on many of the mind-body connections now known to be operative in the placebo effect.

Placebo researchers have extensively studied the neurological substrates of the placebo effect and the relationship between various mind, brain, and bodily
responses. Whereas the placebo affect was once assumed to be the result of response bias, research shows not only dramatic changes in brain activity but also the release of endogenous opioids in response to placebo administration (Hart; Price; Vase). Placebo administration can change not only the perception and subjective experience of pain but also objective factors. In experiments where opioid production in response to a placebo was artificially blocked (through administration of naloxone, an opioid antagonist), patients did not typically experience a placebo effect (Hart; Vase). This is clear evidence that the placebo works on the body as well as the mind and the brain, and that analgesic placebo effects are very real (subject to objective verification). Thus psychological and rhetorical factors involved in the placebo effect are instrumental in actually producing a drug-like substance within the body. This information in addition to the likelihood that a placebo effect is operational in conventional drug therapies complicates the distinction between active and inert substances, and our assumptions about various types of therapy. Just as alternative therapies may be very effective for those persuaded of their efficacy, so too conventional therapies may capitalize on the faith which patients place in the medical profession and conventional approaches.

On Giving an Account of Oneself

(Excerpt from forthcoming book, Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik)

Ultimately, Giving an Account of Oneself affirms the importance of the narrative mode to developmental and therapeutic processes while questioning the “health norm” and medical ethics of requiring patients to give coherent accounts (53, 63-65). Butler observes that “hyper-mastery” can be as unhealthy as “radical fragmentation” (52). She also argues that the structure of address, in effect, undermines the coherence of the narrative account:

I would suggest that the structure of address is not a feature of narrative, one of its many and variable attributes, but an interruption of narrative. The moment the story is addressed to someone, it assumes a rhetorical dimension that is not reducible to a narrative function. It presumes that someone, and it seeks to recruit and act upon that someone. Something is being done with language when the account that I give begins: it is invariably interlocutory, ghosted, laden, persuasive, and tactical. It may well seek to communicate a truth, but it can do this, if it can, only by exercising a relational dimension of language. (63)

The “addressed” account of oneself is both a representation and “falsification” of life—an attempt to render in the terms of a coherent spatio-temporal logic precisely that which cannot be contained in such a medium. The language and stories which make us also have the capacity to break us if we are held accountable for telling “what cannot be narrated,” or confessing that to which we cannot bear witness because of our “partial blindness about ourselves” or because we are “ethically implicated in the lives of others” (Butler, Account 41, 54 , 64).

The following passage foregrounds the epistemological incapacity and emotional vulnerability involved in an ethic which requires us to risk becoming “undone”:

Perhaps most importantly, we must recognize that ethics requires us to risk ourselves precisely at moments of unknowingness, when what forms us diverges from what lies before us, when our willingness to become undone in relation to others constitutes our chance of becoming human. To be undone by another is a primary necessity, an anguish, to be sure, but also a chance—to be addressed, claimed, bound to what is not me, but also moved, to be prompted to act, to address myself elsewhere, and so to vacate the self-sufficient “I” as a kind of possession. If we speak and try to give an account from this place, we will not be irresponsible, or, if we are, we will surely be forgiven. (Butler, Account 136)

Giving an Account of Oneself illustrates the relationship between narrative production and subjectivity, while cautioning against an ethos of hyper-mastery. Butler’s critical perspective of the unconscious also foregrounds the dual role of language as a technology that enables communication, as well as a trained incapacity that may inhibit psychological growth. Finally Butler’s thesis supports my concept of the unconscious as an aporia, as well as the pitfalls of ignoring this primary source of ignorance.

Patterns, Figures, Archetypes

Affective neuroscience argues that basic emotional responses originate in our need to negotiate our relationships with others and objects in the environment. For example feelings of sadness correlate with greater neural activity than feelings of happiness, suggesting that negative affect is a motivated survival mechanism. It is also well known and documented that anxiety and anger correspond to greater neural activity (see OCD and testosterone studies). Sexual desire too, in contrast to satisfied contentment, is correlated with seeking behaviors and increased neural activity. Too much activity, however, is maladaptive and thus we seek homeostasis through various forms of sedation—ideally meditative and mindfulness techniques though also often substance forms of substance abuse among a variety of addictive behaviors (Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience).

Neuroscience reserach has also identified many levels of behavioral patterns associated with affect from patterns of infant/mother interaction to patterns of brain region communication and neural activity, employing dynamic systems, chaos, and self-organization models . If our affective lives as the seat of consciousness (another argument of affective neuroscience) involve patterns associated with both animate and inanimate objects within our environment, a foundation for a scientific theory of archetypes can be laid. Significant others and objects are of primary importance to us affectively. Affective response involves patterns of thought and brain activity. Through top-down processes our perception is modulated by previous experience. Thus we will tend to see important others and objects through established affective lenses, filling in the blanks with various conscious and unconscious assumptions. The greater the emotional stakes, the more likely we are to project details in an effort to maintain an illusion of epistemic advantage as a means of control (Solms and Turnbull The Brain and the Inner World on top-down processes of perception).

And while we can speculate about the heritability of archetypal patterns drawing examples from evidence related to instinctive fears and desires, this argument is not necessary to explain the continuity of archetypal influence. As long as objects in the environment remain relatively stable and our relationships to them remains stable (paradigmatic) archetypes will regenerate themselves with every generation. Moreover, “universal” narratives and images can go a long way in explaining the transmission of archetypal information and responses through conventional developmental process such as story telling (narrative co-construction) as individual and communal identity formation. Whether we inherit these patterns of thought and behavior through nature or nurture is certainly a fascinating line of inquiry, but in the age of neuroscience nurture is certainly sufficient to explain how “archetypal” patterns of behavior and brain activity can be inherited via cultural transmission processes, as narrative co-construction is recognized as both a midna nd brain activity (Cozolino, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships).

What then is the relationship between rhetorical figures, archetypes, and neurological patterns? Of course rhetorical figures represent and reproduce abstract patterns of thought—comparison and contrast for example (Fahenstock “Rhetoric in the Age of Cognitive Science”). But how is rhetoric involved in the transmission of archetypes? Questions for further consideration:

• What is the role of value language in archetypal narratives?

• How do archetypal narratives serve to mediate internal and external realities (for purposes of survival)?

• Do archetypal narratives encourage or discourage individuation?

• Do archetypal narratives reinforce “tribal” thought and behavior patterns?

• How do archetypal narratives reinforce or challenge social orders?

• How does rhetoric enable or inhibit the evolution of archetypal modes of thought on various levels?

Materialism, Determinism, Agency, and Rhetoric

Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik

Classical physics is characterized by two philosophical orientations as previously discussed: materialism and determinism. According to the assumption of materialism only material causes have material effects. Hence, consciousness can have no effect on the body, the brain, or matter in general. From this perspective mind and matter are fundamentally separated. The material world is a closed system. And many well-documented phenomenon in psychology and medicine as well as physics remain unaccounted for. There is no unified theory of the psychological and biological effects, nor any possibility thereof. Materialists search for a unified theory based on classical physics, but they do not admit influence from other disciplines. They want to keep the disciples in silos while asserting the hegemony of classical physics—the ultimate science—as empirical ground and pinnacle. Ironically it is leading scientists in biology and the medical sciences, rather than physics, who have become the guardians of materialist assumptions, as research physicists have moved definitively beyond this paradigm. Only a physics which succumbs to consciousness can articulate a coherent theory of the physical world and unified theory of mind and body, culture and the nature, information and energy.

Classical physics is also determinative. It imagines the evolution of the universe and life as a direct and singular result of an initial physical cause. Though that first cause remains mysteriously undefined, materialists assume that all of nature evolved through quasi mechanical processes in a direct line from this first cause. Because non-material forces can have no effect on material substances, human consciousness, if it exists at all, is not operative in evolution. Though the illusion of human consciousness might be admitted as an effect of evolution, it is not thought to play anything but an auxiliary role in our future development as a species. Human agency is similarly considered an illusion as all behavior is determined by the interaction of selfish genes and other non-human physical causes. And human beings can consciously affect neither their genes nor their environments in the interest of their own evolution of even survival as a species. Our futures are already determined by the first causes—the script is already written. Perhaps a large-scale cosmic event, like an asteroid, might deflect the course of human evolution, but even such a seemingly random event is regarded as a logical consequence of physical creation.

In this paradigm the human being is always the creature and never the creator of her or his own destiny. Individual responsibility might be a pragmatic social construct, but individuals can not seriously be held responsible for their actions in this kind of universe. Genetic research and medical science bolster this lack of responsibility, furthermore, by attributing all manner of social behaviors and physical conditions to genetics, while continuingly undermining or at least deemphasizing the role of human choice, habit, will, and spirit.

Under this paradigm rhetoric functions only within the purview of the mind, with no direct effects on the body, brain, or physical universe at large. Rhetorical research is limited to observing overt behaviors, and the rhetorical aspects of experimental research in physics and biology are patently ignored. And the study of rhetoric in general, as a humanistic discipline, is relegated to third-class academic status behind the sciences and social sciences. All rhetoric is “mere rhetoric,” and the relationship between rhetoric and human agency is a theoretical construct. Similarly the notion of rhetorical ethos is irrelevant as human actions reflect pre-determined conditions rather than a notion of a developed character or integrity.

In the second case, the quantum physical paradigm, there is a continuity and transformation of mind and body, information and energy, culture and nature. Material “realties” are no longer privileged. Rather physicists study the relationship between human consciousness and external forces. Mind and matter are no longer considered incompatible spheres of influence. Rhetorical messages become energy and information which organizes other forms of energy and information. And nature is not merely constructive of culture (as in a deterministic genetic and evolutionary paradigm), nor is culture determinative of nature. Rather each influences the other.

But most importantly this universe is non-deterministic. The laws of quantum physics are stochastic; their predictions rest on probability functions; and consciousness is represented in their equations. Human consciousness can actually affect the chances that elements of the physical universe will behave one way or another. Thus quantum physics allows a role for human agency and volition, defining a different relationship between mental, biological, and other physical realities.
Individuals can affect the flow of energy and information within their minds, bodies, and brains. We can also influence the flow of energy in other individuals. Our energy and information production becomes the context for the energy and information flow of other individuals. Within a family or work environment, as creators of culture, we create a context for other individuals which can have positive or negative effects. These effects, furthermore work on multiples levels: mind, body, brain, brain region, neuron, and even the gene. And these effects, which we can control to a large extent, can direct the course of our own individual development, that of our children and neighbors, our cultural, as well as biological evolution at large.

Within this paradigm rhetoric is efficacious not only as an extension of consciousness but as a constituent of consciousness itself. Processes of emotional self-regulation and self-directed neuroplasticity are dependant on both external and internal communication and persuasion. Rhetoric is integral to human agency as everything we say has the potential to affect our mind, brains, bodies, and the environments we inhabit, as well as the minds, brains, bodies and environments of our neighbors both near and far.

This new paradigm revives what are in many quarters considered outdated notions of individual responsibility, ethical choice, and individual and communal spiritual consciousness. As previously mentioned individual responsibility is inseparable from a notion of individual agency. Responsibility is the physical and philosophical ability to respond to any given situation. In a materialist and determinist paradigm responsibility is not possible. In a quantum physical paradigm it is a given. Our every choice has an effect and we must take responsibility for the effects of our choices.

The findings of research in neuroplasticity and quantum physics also foreground the role of a transcendent executive function that allows individuals to resist genetic, cultural, and other environmental determining factors, and regulate the body and the mind through various cognitive and emotional process, as well as overt physical behaviors and habits. Motivation for the information processing and general energy expenditure involved in emotional self-regulation, self-directed neuroplasticity, self-directed personal development, and socially conscious evolution emanates for this transcendent self, and its faith in its own value, integrity, and power. Spirit, spark, intent, will, faith, hope—however we recognize it, this independent variable tips the scales of the quantum universe at every moment of decision. This connection to self, others, and the universe enables us to hear the voice within in us and stay the course of the ethically-engaged and yet profoundly unfettered individual. At the same time it enables us to find a more comfortable location in the universe—not as masters or all we survey, but as components of a much larger, organically whole, and integrated system of systems.

In the future we may begin to collectively redefine what in means to be human according to such new paradigms, and find ourselves humbled by our conclusions as well as inspired by having come together to such wisdom. Our rhetorical assumptions and practices may change dramatically. Though rhetoric will remain instrumental in various contexts, we may also begin to understand and embrace a rhetoric of mutual influence and cooperation. Discourse could be directed to ever more profound levels of reciprocal understanding, and such understanding could be regarded as a prerequisite to negotiation. Our negotiations, furthermore, may be informed by a more developed perspective on our own interests as inextricably bound with those of our most distant neighbors and the environment at large.

(See Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley The Mind & The Brain . . . on materialism and determinism.)

Lacan, Rhetoric, Dreams

(Article in progress; Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik)


Lacan’s humanist sympathies are explicitly stated in his respect for the rhetorical and other liberal arts as opposed to various instantiations of “scientism” (Speech 91). His focus on unconscious processes, however, seems at odds with traditional humanist views of the rhetor as a superlatively self-conscious, and self-mastering ethical being. Nevertheless, like Burke (and in advance of Butler), Lacan strongly asserts various types of identification between rhetor and audience, analyst and analysand, the “I” and “the other,” which not only conflate the difference between speaking subjects, but also create irreducible points of empathic and rhetorical contact, congruent with a broad concept of humanism (Speech 51). Lacan’s conception of the psychoanalytic scene as a scene of seduction, and his articulation of the relationship between logos and eros further emphasizes the rhetorical and humanistic character of analytic discourse.

In general, Lacan, focuses on the role of language in the dialogic relationship between the analyst and analysand, as well as the conscious and unconscious processes of both parties. This dialogic view of analysis is partly connected to his interest in dialectic and partly to his interest in the concept of “the other.” The opening page of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis articulates both the dialectical and relational nature of psychoanalytic discourse: “I shall show that there is no Word without a reply, even if it meets no more than silence, provided that it has an auditor: this is the heart of its function in psychoanalysis” (9). Lacan goes on to charge the discipline of psychoanalysis with a responsibility to be acutely aware of the role of language in its practice, and to urge analysts to reflect on the relationship of language to their own desires (9).

The role of rhetoric in psychoanalysis is also clearly asserted in Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis when Lacan adds rhetoric, dialectic, grammar, and poetics to Freud’s “accessory disciplines” which include literary history and literary criticism. Lacan is fully cognizant of the historical roots of this configuration of disciplines: “And if these subject headings tended to evoke somewhat outmoded echoes for some people, I would not be unwilling to accept them as constituting a return to our sources” (51). He goes on to defend the relationship of psychoanalysis to “what was called in the Middle ages, ‘the liberal arts,’” by contrasting the humanities with early twentieth-century scientism: “Let this aspect of the early development of psychoanalysis not be disdained; it expresses in fact no less that the re-creation of the sense of man during the arid years of scientism” (51). This is not to say that Lacan is uninterested in the scientific status of psychoanalysis; on the contrary he repeatedly voices a desire for this status (30, 47, 51). His rhetorical/dialectic turn is both a return to “the study of symbols” at the heart of the development of psychoanalysis as well as a forward-looking call for the discipline to “lay down a scientific grounding” by formalizing “intersubjective logic and the temporality of the subject” (51).

Lacan’s knowledge of classical rhetoric is clearly illustrated when he comments on the unique communicative value of ordinary language in the psychoanalytic context. The following passage characterizes the analyst as a master of rhetorical interpretation (a reflection of Lacan’s own ethos):
"Moreover, it is the analyst who knows better than anyone else that the question is to understand which 'part' of this speech carries the significative term, and this is exactly how he proceeds in the ideal case: taking the recital of any everyday event for an apologue addressed to him who hath ears to hear, a long prosopopoeia for a direct interjection, or on the other hand taking a simple lapsus for a highly complex statement, or even the sigh of a momentary silence for the whole lyrical development it makes up for" (13).

Similarly in his discussion of the “rhetoric” of dreams which refers to the motives of the dream communication, he includes a long list of classical rhetorical figures (31). These figures, discussed in a reading of Freud, are related to the “syntactical displacements” and “semantic condensations” that reveal the “intentions—ostentatious or demonstrative, dissimulating or persuasive, retaliatory or seductive—out of which the subject modulates his oneiric discourse” (31). Of course all of these intentions can be understood as rhetorical or persuasive on some level, as can the communicative processes of the dream in general, which—as Burke also argues—is always figured in order to be accepted (Burke, Rhetoric of Motives 37-38). In this sense the dream might be seen as a master-trope of psychoanalytic discourse and possibly rhetoric in general, especially in the quasi-religious/quasi-mystical context of Burke’s sublime “Logos” and Lacan’s ubiquitous “Word” (Burke, Language as Symbolic Action 55; Lacan, Speech).

A clearly dialogic paradigm is articulated when Lacan connects dreams with desire and desire to “the other.” The rhetoric of the dream represents not only a communication between the unconscious and the conscious, but also an address to the other. Likewise the process of interpretation is addressed to “the other.” The context of the following passage refers to both the desire of the analysand and the analyst: “nowhere does it appear more clearly that man’s desire finds its meaning in the desire of the other, not so much because the other holds the key to the object desired, as because the first object of desire is to be recognized by the other” (Speech 31). Thus Lacan understands the dream as a contextualized response to “the other,” rather than a self-contained, unidirectional expression of desire.
As the relationship between analyst and patient evolves, dreams tend to become even more explicitly dialogic. During the transference process, “each dream of the patient requires to be interpreted as a provocation, a masked avowal, or a diversion, by its relation to the analytic discourse; and that in proportion to the progress of analysis his dreams invariably become more and more reduced to the function of elements of the dialogue being realized in the analysis [my emphasis]” (Speech 31). Thus, the dialogue between the unconscious and the conscious responds to the dialogue between the analyst and the patient—a four-way conversation, if we assume that the analyst’s unconscious also comes into play. This dynamic is obviously related to Burke’s comment that patients typically adapt their dreams to the methods and expectations of the analyst (Language 45-46). In one way or another (either through content or terminology) the dream, as symbolic action, adapts itself to the rhetorical context of the analysis. Similarly, in his comments on Freud’s success rate, Lacan notes that Freud’s patients were always primed by his explanation of his methodology (Speech 53). Their conscious and unconscious responses were in dialogue with the analyst’s expectations before the analysis (proper) began, as is the case with patients in most contemporary therapeutic contexts.

I Treat Dead People

Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik

One of the obvious and yet often forgotten lessons of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense is mutuality in healing. As the ghostly psychologist (Malcom Crowe) heals the boy (Cole Sear), the boy also heals the psychologist. Sear learns not to be afraid of dead people, while Crowe comes to realize that he himself is dead. Up until then Crowe has haunted his wife, in a sense protracting her grief. (He himself is haunted by a past professional failure—the homicidal and suicidal Vincent Gray.) The main relationship between patient and therapist in this film, though paranormal, is in some ways paradigmatic of therapeutic relationships between the living, as it emphasizes the bizarre combination of intimacy and distance in such contexts. It also serves to foreground the limits of a classical empirical epistemology in psychotherapy, and suggests the relevance of quantum physical paradigms to any relationship. Finally, the reversal of roles and authority at the end of the film undermines the concept of therapeutic authority and makes a strong statement about the possibility for equality in a therapeutic relationship even when one party appears so vulnerable.

Shyamalan’s dead therapist can be seen as a metaphor for the requirement of emotional distance and neutrality on the part of the typical psychiatrist or psychologist. Though the traditional Freudian paradigm of a blank screen onto which the patient projects archaic affective energy is rarely adhered to strictly, contemporary professional ethics still require a significant degree of emotional detachment. In this sense the psychological professional remains on some level dead to his or her patients. All patients can see beneath the professional death/mask; highly intuitive patients, however, might be particular disturbed by the discrepancies they encounter between their therapist’s overt behaviors and covert emotional responses. Like Sear they see the ghosts of their therapists.
The tension between psychological intimacy and distance is further emphasized by the fact that many therapists avoid all physical contact with their patients, consciously withholding a caring hug or healing touch, and even shrinking from a patient’s playful tap on the shoulder. The psychological rationale for this prohibition against physical contact is that absolute physical boundaries allow for maximum psychological intimacy, while any type of physical contact would make boundaries fuzzy and inhibit psychological interchange. Though most would agree that sexual touch is never appropriate in a professional context, a complete lack of physical contact is no guarantee of psychological intimacy. In fact such a prohibition may inhibit psychological intimacy. If a patient sees their therapist shrink from casual contact, they might feel like a leper. They might also conclude, perhaps correctly, that the therapist perceives them as a threat. Though a teacher or boss might do the same, this dynamic could be particularly damaging in a psychotherapeutic context as the patient will likely conclude that the therapist does not trust them because of their status as a patient.

Fundamentalist rules against future contact with patients can have a similar effect on the therapeutic alliance. Once the patient terminates therapy he may be banished forever from the therapist’s life (like a leper or a dead person), unless he wants to return in the zombie, living-dead, properly subjected, and possibly sedated role of a patient. How can he, then, aspire to feel whole, healed, or alive within or beyond the therapeutic scene? Doesn’t the therapeutic community categorically deny patients these attributes? The seemingly wise adage “once a patient always a patient” is truly frightening on various levels. Looking at the semantics out of context brings to light an astonishing truth: psychologists in some way damn their patients to second-class status for the rest of their lives. The rule suggests that the patient will never be considered capable of sound judgment in relationship to the therapist, or anyone else for that matter—if the patient cannot accept the patriarchal logic of the therapeutic “incest” taboo, for example. Quite simply, the patient can never be trusted and always remains subordinate to institutional psychiatry--remains “institutionalized” in a sense.

Ironically this rule also damns psychology, as it suggests that psychologists can’t reliably treat mental illness, or determine whether or not a former patient is emotionally stable enough for any type of non-professional relationship after-the-fact. Of course this barrier may be motivated more by legal issues than medical ethics. But psychologists who cooperate with such a marginalizing and, frankly, oppressive order should ask if their need to protect themselves overrides their interest in treating patients as living, breathing human beings.

Empiricism is a mixed blessing to psychiatry and psychology. Most advances in both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments in the last century are due to a scientific attitude and various new and wonderful modes of empirical research. The empirical mindset, however, encourages therapists to view their patients as material objects separate from themselves. Whether in prescribing drugs or in their relational stance, therapists aspire to “professional” objectivity. In the context of psychotherapy any experienced therapist knows that she cannot separate her feelings from the relational dynamic; the phenomenon of counter-transference is as old as analysis itself and almost as well scrutinized. And yet even this self-consciousness is intended to counter inappropriate subjective responses. Perhaps some psychiatric professionals would say they need to remain objective in diagnosis, but aware of their personal feelings and responses in the psychodynamic process. However, I believe this to be a false dichotomy. First, diagnosis and drug treatment are surely influenced by subjective elements such as professional training, identification, and experience. Second, the new physics (new empiricism, if you will) denies a separation of subject and object in any context. As neuroscientists begin to understand the quantum mechanical properties of the brain, therapists, I suggest, should be called to view their own work in light of this new science.

While the fictional plot elements of The Sixth Sense may seem strange and removed from every-day professional realities, they are no stranger than the scientific findings of quantum physics. The new physics reveals (among other phenomena) that observers affect “objects” in the mere act of observation, that this influence can happen at a distance and after a significant passage of time, and that “objects” can exist in two or more locations at once. I place the word “object” in quotes here because a critical mass of scientific evidence suggests that the classical (physics) relationship between subject and object is no longer tenable. Thus psychology, in its constant anxiety and aspiration to the status of a science, might look to physics for a model of a new empirical attitude: reverence and awe in the face of great mystery, as opposed to the old positivist arrogance. The patient is no longer an object. She never was. And the therapist can never be epistemologically separated from the patient. Today an attempt to remain “objective” might be considered naïve. In the future it may even be considered unethical. I am not suggesting, for a moment, that therapists let their positive or negative emotions override prudence in a professional context. Rather, I caution against the idea that a therapist can “fool” their patient. In trying to hide their emotional responses therapists undermine their patient’s judgment and agency, and ultimately damage their own ethos. Whether or not a patient is wholly conscious of the mixed signals they receive from a therapist, they are likely to doubt both themselves and their therapists in such a context. They are also likely to feel wounded or at least somewhat betrayed by their doctor.

At a critical moment in The Sixth Sense Sear asks Crowe, “How can you help me if you don’t believe me?” Similarly the paradigmatic patient might ask, “How can you help me if you don’t trust me?” How can patients come to trust themselves when authorities they have come to rely on illustrate so little faith in them and their recovery? How can they overcome their shame of being in therapy when they are treated like lepers by those from whom they seek help? How can they begin to live again, after a period of depression or anxiety or self-recrimination, when therapists treat them like dead people?
[ . . . ]
The man who kills Crowe in The Sixth Sense is enraged because the therapist didn’t protect him as a child. Gray (the former patient) was harassed by spirits of the dead; however Crowe did not believe him and thus could not help him. Gray could see dead people. Crowe could see neither dead people nor his patient—he could not trust or believe him. The former patient comes back into Crowe’s life to kill him before killing himself. Without reifying or debating the issue of “ghosts,” empirical skepticism affords protection for neither the child patient nor the adult therapist in this context. The child expecting protection from an authority figure, in the form of empathy at the very least, becomes the troubled man (Gray) carrying the frightened and abandoned child within him. The therapist is ultimately destroyed by his professional skepticism (as suggested by the coincidence of him receiving a professional award on the night of his death), and can only be redeemed in a twilight zone between life and death by a second troubled child, whom he comes to believe (trust) and help. In doing so he too is redeemed, through insight about himself, his profession, and his relationship with his wife.

The relationship between Sear and Crowe, however, appeals to me most as a counterpoint to the myth of professional authority. Initially we encounter Sear as a small, vulnerable, indeed, fragile child. We also see him as a victim of dark forces. As the film progresses, however, Sear comes to finds his voice and moves into “right relationship” with his therapist and his mother. He is able to persuade Crowe to take him at his word. In fact he becomes a conduit of profound wisdom for both adults. The fact that a child can heal an adult in such a relationship emphasizes that true healing is mutual, that any therapeutic relationship can be equal, and that apparent authority figures can often be corrected by apparent subordinates.

Crowe’s status as an authority figure is completely overturned at the end of the movie. First, we discover that he is dead. Second, we understand that he has been blind to that not insignificant fact for some time. The logic of his skepticism is completely turned on its head, as his questioning of Sear’s claim to see dead people is possible only because he (a dead person) is seen by the child. The paradigmatic therapist is enlightened only when he realizes that the patient can see his ghost.

Effects of Media-Modulated Stress and Desire

Excerpt from forthcoming book—Copyright © 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik

The media often presents stressful information and images and also modulates our reactions to this information. Among the most common types of media stressors are local bad news, international crises, and television violence on the news and in entertainment programs. Though moderate stress can provoke learning (stimulate neuronal activity) in controlled educational and therapeutic contexts, emotional reactions can also inhibit reasoning. When the emotional or limbic regions of the brain are excessively engaged the rational, cortical regions are disengaged. Hence viewing stressful images presented in a melodramatic light can inhibit rational, critical responses, and also compromise the immune system (Lane, “Neural Substrates” 108; Chiappelli, “Consciousness” 259-64).[1]

Conversely the media is also capable of lending consumers a sense of control, and political agency. As a primary source of information (a locus of control) about the causes of bad news and violence, the media can help the public cognitively reframe and emotional distance themselves from various types of content. However emotions must be modulated before such information can be rationally processed. Deliberations conducted in a context of pervasive fear and stress often lead to conclusions that seem unreasonable in hindsight.

Individuals are clearly capable of resisting emotional modulation, and regulating their emotional responses to painful or stressful images (Beauregard, “Neural Basis” 164-65). However, most people are relatively unaware of the effects of stress on their emotional, mental and physical health. And even fewer are familiar with strategies for resisting external modulation or adjusting their own emotional states. The degree to which we lack awareness of media-induced stress, is the extent to which we can be unconsciously influenced and even made ill by sensationalist news reporting and even stressful entertainment programming. How can we tell the difference between real and imagined or fabricated threats? How can we find a middle ground between responding inappropriately to distant and even fictional threats on one hand and a culture of complacency on the other? How can we indemnify democratic processes against market forces within an economy driven by consumerism?

Media-modulated desires may create unreasonable and even damaging expectations of self, others, and a warped set of aesthetic, ethical, and material values. Individuals immersed in popular culture may be seen as reacting to each other not on the basis of genuine compatibility but on media-generated appearances or personae (Wolf, 174-77). And rampant consumerism can harm individuals and communities through both their consuming and producing activities. Thus, emotional self-regulation is crucial to the maintenance of self esteem, interpersonal relationships, and even political economy.

A central issue of media-modulated desire which has received much attention is the female body. Feminist critical theory has clearly laid out the means by which aesthetic ideals of female beauty are constructed, as well as the manner in which such ideals reinforce racist, sexist, and economic stereotypes. The unattainable ideal of feminine beauty has also been discussed as a cause of anxiety and depression in adolescent and older women (Kilbourne 133; Wolf 110, 130). Constant media exposure, in addition to general self-consciousness, and ruminating about their appearance, contribute to depression and dangerous eating disorders, in young women in particular who are generally more vulnerable to media influence (Pechmann 203, 209-11). The fact that the media also tends to inhibit real rhetorical agency for women, while encouraging women to express themselves by projecting a sexually alluring image, can further damage women’s self-image, esteem, and ethos (Kilbourne 140-42).

But men are also at risk. As in the case of fear, strong desire inhibits critical thinking and rational decision making. In addition to making bad choices in cars, and a wide range of products and services promoted through appeals to sexual desire, men can also choose emotionally unsupportive or destructive relationships and unsuitable mates (Wolf 175-77). Men are also increasingly vulnerable to problems with self-esteem and depression relating to body image as the media appeals to female consumers with an increasing focus on the male body and masculine sexual appeal, though women are generally less likely to identify the personal value and attractiveness of a man which his physical appearance and men are less likely to be victimized as sexual objects (Kilbourne, 278-80; Wolf, 174). Ironically, too, multicultural advertising can exacerbate the problem as cultural groups not previously invested in a given body image are now exposed to models that represent a diversity of cultures and ethnicities while still reinforcing certain homogenous aesthetic ideals.

To what extent is it possible for us to escape these cycles of fear and desire? To what extent can we step outside of a media-dominated culture? Are there any antidotes? Does multicultural education help or is it too little, too late for our collective media saturated psyche? How can we access a more genuine spectrum of desires? Would we recognize our “genuine” desires, if we were able to access them? And does such genuine desire even exist? Can we set ethical, aesthetic, and pragmatic standards that coincide with our own interests, or are we generally too immersed in the given standards of the cultures we inhabit to see beyond media stereotypes?

By and large we are caught in a double bind of self-replicating desire and inhibited critical thinking. If there is no outside to a homogenous set of aesthetic values then we have no choice, and genuine desire is no longer accessible. And if media-modulated drives inhibit critical thinking then it is even more difficult to get outside of this fabricated desire. We might perceive the beautiful as ethically good even if it is bad, or no better than average, as we rationalize decisions based on media-modulated emotions (Wolf, 163). Maturity can enhance impulse control though and broaden perspectives. Individuals who are exposed to historically, geographically, and culturally diverse models may be freer to experience and appreciate a broader range of ethical and aesthetic phenomena. Fostering good habits can also help individuals respond more responsibly to media-generated cravings, and formulate better judgments in general.[2]that encourage sensationalist information and entertainment programming? Though specific answers to such questions are beyond the purview of this volume, increased media literacy and emotional self-consciousness are certainly steps in the direction of greater self-knowledge and more genuine political agency, as I will discuss in a later section of this chapter.

Angels and Demons: Affective Neuroscience and Trauma

[work in progress] Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik

According to the literature of affective neuroscience consciousness emerges from basic emotions as a means of monitoring internal experiences and external environments for purposes of survival (Damasio, LeDoux, Panksepp). Emotions help us to regulate bodily states and evaluate objects in our environment as either sources of nurture or potential threats. Cognition generally aids in this process, though emotions and memory also exert a top-down influence on perception and evaluation (Solms, Vygotsky).

Within this paradigm, trauma might be seen as a crises or failure of the emotions to navigate both threatening external conditions and overwhelming internal responses. Perhaps, such a crisis initiates a sort of psychological “back-flow” by which internal and external realities are simply altered in reaction to a perceived failure of emotional regulation, and in a desperate attempt to achieve homeostasis. In other words while emotions generally help us control ourselves and our environment, a failure of this regulatory system might engage psychological processes that effect “changes” to the environment through mechanisms of perception. The body is launched into an artificially heightened state of awareness and/or our perceptions of external reality are distorted to “create” safer environmental conditions.

Such a cognitive “back flow” or “override” might also lead to projections of others as either “angels” capable of protecting us, or “demons” who must be overcome or avoided at all costs. These are obviously coping mechanisms. Of course emotions are still exerting influence on cognition here as panic prompts cognitive distortion—the process is just unusual and the effects more extreme. Instead or making evaluations and decisions that may be somewhat distorted but fall within a spectrum of veridicality, we distort reality because we can no longer trust the faculties of discrimination which failed us in the past.

Helping a traumatized patient reestablish a sense of safety is the primary task of the therapist, and transference is obviously an integral part of this process. The same is true of every relationship. But both idealization and demonization are defense mechanisms, that must be “worked through.” Otherwise we can become dependent and the panic associated with the original trauma may become associated with the prospect of crises with a loved one: of loosing emotional connection with or being abandoned by the caregiver. The individual is not yet learning to deal with the trauma specifically or with feelings of helplessness in general. And these attachment issues play into basic survival fears that may very well be hard-wired into the brains of humans, as a species that simply cannot survive without strong early childhood attachments to caregivers.

Of course the process of attachment to a caregiver, therapist, or loved one may be considered, according to various developmental and analytic theories, a necessary step toward psychological health and independence. However to the extent that a strong transference is a distortion of reality, it is also a deferral or avoidance strategy. And since the transference plays into our most basic biologically-grounded fears and desires, the crises of the transference, may become as powerful as, or even more powerful than the initial trauma (if it strongly resonates with an early-childhood trauma, for example).

These arguments are not meant to suggest that transference should be avoided, but rather to foreground the deep biological roots of the transference and advise caution. The forces at work here are not merely the result of the cognitive work of therapy but of our most basic emotional drives and bodily responses. When transference or love becomes a psychological addiction a difference of degree may, in fact, become a difference in kind. A patient or lover may remain in a traumatized or dependent state indefinitely, having learned to either avoid or rely too heavily on their own “angels” or “demons.” Therapists, friends, and lovers may benefit from understanding the deep biological roots of emotional dependency and asking themselves if they are in a “co-dependant” relationship.