Subject:
Re: [evol-psych] Richard Dawkins: Our big brains can overcome our selfish
genes
Date:
Tue, 12 Feb 2002 15:52:34 EST
From:
"Lynn O'Connor"
To:
[email protected], [email protected]
In a message dated 2/12/02 12:16:31 PM, Frans de Waal writes:
<< The irony of it all is that Darwin himself was no proponent of
"short-term Darwinian selfishness." It is Dawkins' (and T. H.
Huxley's) cardboard version of Darwinism that is the problem. ...Darwin
himself was adamant, in "The Descent of Man," that human kindness and
morality belonged within an evolutionary framework. Instead of
ascribing these and other enlightened capacities to exterior forces -
an inherently dualistic, religious view - Darwin saw them as products
of nature. >>
Thank you for this comment. This misunderstanding of "human nature", ie
missing the centrality of human kindness, altruism, and morality, of
"groupness" or concern about the family, the group, is also rampant in
almost every clinical theory as well. It is very difficult to teach my
clinical psychology students who are therapists-in-training to understand
that most of their patients are often driven by unconscious altruism, rather
than unconscious "rage", "greed", "aggression", "selfishness", when the
clinical literature is so overwhelmingly focused on our more anti-social
motives. Its not just the gene-centered ("cardboard", that's a good one)
ultra Darwinists who seem to see only "competition" and ignore cooperation,
but the Freudians and most who followed, including the more modern "object
relations", "intersubjective" and even family systems and cognitive
behavioral kinds of therapists and clinical theorists. Scratch the surface,
and all these theories come up with the person fixated on the "self", worried
about the self, when in fact people are often really worried about "the
other".
>From my own clinical practice I have come to suspect that one reason people
make this mistake (ie Freud et al, and the Darwinists of whom you speak) is
that our anti-social thoughts and motives are the more conscious and on the
surface ones, and our altruistic, pro-social thoughts and motives are more
often under the surface, ie unconscious. Patients come into treatment well
aware of their resentments and jealousies, greed, anger etc., though they may
initially feel too guilty about how "bad" they think they are, to tell you
directly. That may take a while. But what I find my clients are usually
completely in the dark about is how much they hold themselves back in life,
to avoid being better off than a parent or a sibling, i.e, how much their
behavior is actually driven by some unconscious system of morality or
leveling, believing things should be equal. If their mother or father (or
sibling even more often) is limited, or unhappy, they believe they too should
be limited or unhappy. This is usually not a conscious motivation when
people come into treatment, its hidden, not immediately obvious. So I have
concluded that people (academics, darwinists, freudians, therapists, etc)
believe we are primarily competitive, because that's the conscious
motivation, that's what they consciously think about themselves. They miss
the cooperative motives because they are largely unconscious. I gave all my
students de Waals article on empathy that appeared recently in the Chronicle
of Higher Eduation, thinking they would finally get the point, and be able to
understand their patient's problems more effectively. But somehow, this very
central issue and fact of animal life (not just us obviously) doesn't get
across very easily.
Now my question for Dr. de Waal and others is this: why do our minds seem to
be more conscious of our antisocial, competitive motives, and less conscious
of our cooperative, altruistic motives? Ie, why do the cardboard Darwinists
maintain their position and have such sway with others, and why do the
anti-social obsessed Freudians etc, likewise hold so tenaciously to the view
of human nature as competitiive and anti-social? This makes guilt, shame and
self-hate major problems for many, leading to inhibitions and less than
productive and psychologically comfortable lives for members of our species,
at least in our culture. It makes it so difficult for therapists in training
to learn to understand their patients from the prosocial perspective. Is
this just a culture specific problem, ie are people in more collectivistic
cultures more conscious of their prosocial, cooperative motives and less
conscious of their anti-social motives?
Lynn
Lynn O'Connor, Ph.D.
The Wright Institute
2728 Durant Avenue
Berkeley CA 94704
e mail: [email protected]
fax: (415) 641-7047
phone: (415) 821-4760
(510) 841-9230, ext 127