When we react excessively to events, major or minor, we may be victims of a primitive survival mechanism gone awry, suggests research psychologist Joe Griffin. Despite often causing years of distress, it can be treated successfully — and usually remarkably quickly.

IN TIMES gone by, whenever people displayed wildly irrational behaviour or exhibited extreme emotional responses that did damage, they were said to be possessed by an evil spirit; a demon, fiend or even 'the devil' himself. Once inhabiting the poor unfortunates, these invisible malevolent beings could transform them into the very epitome of selfishness or self-destructiveness.

With the 'beast' in command, distressing manifestations could occur. It might induce previously peaceful individuals to become violent, producing sudden rages in the poor person or driving them to the most destructively devious activities. Others, once 'possessed', might starve themselves to the point of death, physically attack themselves or become quite hysterically fearful or mad. In some cases these demons would make people perform bizarre, lustful acts. But always supernatural forces were behind such goings on, or so it was thought for tens of thousands of years.

Today, of course, we talk differently. We speak of anger disorders, obsessions, personality disorders, depression, anorexia, self-harming, psychosis and sexual deviancy, such as cross-dressing, and so on. And yet, by changing our language we are no nearer to understanding or curing most of these conditions.

But suppose there was a hitherto unknown psychological principle at work, one that, once understood, made possible the removal of much of this suffering? One that, for example, could, in a single session of psychotherapy, cure an anorexic, or stop an unwanted perverse sexual obsession, or dissolve unreasonable and irrationally cruel outbursts of anger. If such were possible wouldn't much human misery be circumvented? In this chapter I am suggesting that such a psychological principle does exist and that using it may enable therapists to quickly cure at least some of these conditions.

Consider, for a moment, the following scenarios (I am sure that at least one will be familiar to you). You have a minor difference of opinion with your nearest and dearest about some entirely inconsequential domestic matter … and yet you are left with a seething rage that persists for hours. Someone close to you pokes fun at you or teases you and you are consumed with a sense of righteous indignation and respond by getting insanely angry with them. Or you are amazed to be accused by a partner or colleague of ‘winding them up' or 'pressing their buttons', after saying something you thought was completely innocuous. In other words, you sometimes (or even often) find yourself reacting emotionally in ways that are totally out of proportion to the circumstances — and no doubt you have seen countless others do the same.

Such seemingly irrational behaviour, both in myself and others, had often mystified and infuriated me over the years until, after much consideration and experimentation, I realised that 'over-the-top', 'neurotic' or otherwise inappropriate emotional reactions like these are actually the expression of a highly primitive survival mechanism: one that I have called the 'pain–pleasure recall' principle (to distinguish it from the 'pain–pleasure' principle beloved of psychoanalysts).

This principle, I suggest, is the key to understanding not only seemingly irrational outbursts but more serious pathological behaviour as well — habitual actions which lead to self-destructive behaviour or damage to inter-personal relationships. Most importantly, however, once understood we can change behaviour, fast. As we will see, using the pain–pleasure recall principle has already enabled me to help a woman recover her life by putting an end to 25 years of anorexia, a man in his 30s to deal with and stop his longstanding compulsion to cross-dress, and another man to stop putting his marriage at risk — each after only one session of therapy. And other experienced human givens therapists to whom I had explained this principle have since used it and reported back to me amazingly rapid progress with a range of cases previously considered difficult or intractable.

This chapter sets out the evidence to support this new finding: that it's the special way the brain has evolved to process the co-occurrence of pain and pleasure in a situation that shapes much human and animal behaviour.
I am, of course, not the first to consider the effects of pain and pleasure — countless thinkers from ancient and modern cultures around the world have speculated about the roles of pleasure and pain in motivating our behaviour. Freud famously developed the 'pleasure principle' — the demanding of immediate gratification of instinctive needs. And a wealth of evidence has been accumulated by distinguished learning theorists, such as Ivan Pavlov, B F Skinner and Edward Lee Thorndike, to show that, if an action brings us pleasure, we will choose to do it again, and that, conversely, if an action results in pain, we are reluctant to repeat it. Over the years, many laboratory experiments have shown how animals have learned to alter their behaviour in response to different amounts and types of both positive and negative reinforcements. But what has never been taken fully into account, is that, very often, an action may elicit both pleasure and pain.

Every animal must assess risk
All animals have needs that must be met if they are to live mentally and physically healthy lives (this is at the heart of the human givens approach). But to pursue needs without first making an assessment of the attendant risks — such as that of becoming another animal's lunch whilst in pursuit of your own — would lead, in all probability, to a greatly foreshortened lifespan. It would be surprising indeed, therefore, if evolution had left the assessment of risk to chance — the instinctive assessment of risk is key to the pain–pleasure recall principle.

We know that animals learn from painful experiences and are less likely to seek to repeat them. We also know that punishing animals, particularly human ones, for undesirable behaviour that they find rewarding is not as effective, generally, as rewarding the desirable behaviour that we would like them to perform instead. (If it were otherwise, we would have no repeat offenders in our prisons.) But, in the real world, desirable experiences almost always come at a price. Procuring access to a desirable mate may mean having to fight the alpha male, for example; hunting a substantial prey for dinner carries the risk of the predator getting injured by the prey being sought, and so on. Animals must, therefore, have evolved an instinctive method of gauging risk, using previous experience as a guide.

It was the failure of conditioning theory to predict how animals do this that has largely been responsible for the decline of pure behaviour therapy (which is based on conditioning or learning theory) as it was increasingly recognised that learning isn't just a mechanical association between things (such as the ringing of a bell when a steak appears, as in Pavlov's experiments when dogs learned to salivate on hearing the bell) but rather it comes about as a result of the perception of a meaningful relationship between different things.[1] For example, if a tone is sounded before laboratory animals receive an electric shock, they will learn to fear the tone. If, next, a light is also turned on at the same time as the tone sounds, and then a shock is received, the animals don't learn to fear the light; they continue to fear just the tone.[2] My colleague Ivan Tyrrell and I have argued elsewhere that it is just this perception of a meaningful relationship that generates consciousness.[3]

So behaviour therapy was superseded by cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), which is based on an uneasy alliance between conditioning theory and cognitive appraisal theory — the idea that the way we think and make our judgements affects our behaviour. This alliance arose because of the demonstrable failures of conditioning theory to account for neurotic types of behaviour, especially in humans. For instance, how could conditioning theory explain why people can develop a phobia about snakes, to the point of shaking when they see a picture of a snake, when they have never actually come across a snake in their lives? However, it has become increasingly clear that the cognitive system only takes computational decisions, such as calculating which product offers the best value for money, so the alliance is becoming more and more compromised. In complex or ambiguous situations, it is the emotional brain that takes the initial decisions.[4] We see an unfamiliar manlike shape looming out of the lonely field in the dark and instantly feel fear as our bodies mobilise for fight or flight. Then our cognitive system kicks in and only at this point do we realise that we are looking at a scarecrow, and call off the red alert. Thus we can see that, for our survival's sake, it is the quicker emotional process that guides our responses in such circumstances, even if they are later informed by the cognitive system.

Much of this confusion is due to a failure to understand the pain–pleasure recall principle.

The pain–pleasure recall principle
Pain involves negative or 'avoidance' emotions — we feel bad or we avoid a situation in which we might experience pain. Pleasure involves positive 'approach' emotions – we feel good or seek out an experience that will make us feel good. (This even includes the experience of anger because when we are angry we are both motivated to do something — go forward — and get satisfaction from feeling power.) The pain–pleasure recall principle holds that, when pain and pleasure are both experienced in connection with a given stimulus, irrespective of the order in which the pain and pleasure occur, the memory of that experience will be encoded so that the recall of the pain (the negative feelings) precedes the recall of the pleasure (positive feelings) associated with it. I have found it useful to call these memories ‘molar memories' because they have two emotional roots: the one that was painful and the other that was pleasurable. The pleasurable aspect of the experience has to stay outside of consciousness because, when a pattern match is triggered by a similar situation in the future, the negative feeling needs to be experienced first, so that risk assessment can take place. This order of events is essential, survival always being the top priority. Only if the negative feeling is defused by some response or not acted upon, mentally or physically — for instance, if we don't experience deep disgust or run away from the situation — will the positive feeling be aroused and come through to consciousness.

It is essential, I suggest, that pleasure and pain experienced in connection with the same event are coded separately like this (with the memory of the pain being accessed first, so that an informed risk assessment can be made before indulging in the pleasure again). If the negatives were not evaluated first, access to an expectation of reward might lead to a down-playing of the risks involved. This could prove fatal if, when the reward seemed sufficient, it led animals to ignore the lessons of experience.

If, however, after an automatic risk assessment, we perceive that the negative feeling which pattern matches to our current situation is not relevant, then the positive feelings will be activated by the memory. This triggers a dopamine rush, which we experience as desire. If we act upon this desire and experience satisfaction, the pattern is reinforced. If, however, pain is experienced as a further consequence of that action, this will become coded as part of our conscious, stored negative memories, strengthening their power. (For instance, if a child sneaks a biscuit from the jar and enjoys it but is told off by her mother, the telling-off is added to other tellings-off she has received for the same transgression and, the next time, she might decide not to sneak the biscuit.)

In other words, when a behaviour is punished this strengthens the negative root memory but doesn't alter the pleasurable aspect. This is why aversion therapy for a sexual deviancy for example, is not very successful outside of laboratory conditions. When the person returns to their home environment, where there is no immediate threat of punishment, the deviant impulse can resurface because they feel safe again.

Some bizarre outcomes
This universally applied principle has immense advantages for guiding risk assessment in animals, but there are circumstances where it can have distinct disadvantages, especially for humans. For example, a pleasurable feeling experienced at the age of five, shielded from consciousness by the pain that is also connected to the same event, may be dictating inappropriate or destructive behaviour in adulthood. Thus, the pain–pleasure recall principle may predispose us to some bizarre self-destructive behaviours and, because the motivations for them are normally outside our conscious recall, we are prevented from making a rational evaluation of them. (I will give several examples of this later.) CBT, as currently practised, is not likely therefore to be effective with these types of problems. One might suppose that the negative appraisal would stop the

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References

1.) Mackintosh, N J (1983). Conditioning and Associative Learning. Oxford University Press, New York.
2.) Rescorla, R A (1980). Pavlovian conditioning: it's not what you think it is.
American Psychologist, 43, 151—60.
3.) Griffin, J and Tyrrell, I. (2003). Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking. HG Publishing, East Sussex.
4.) Damasio, A (1994). Descartes' Error: emotion, reason and the human brain.
Avon Books, New York.

 
© Joe Griffin (2006)

This article is a revised version of an article which first appeared in Volume 13, No, 3 (2006) of the Human Givens journal.

JOE GRIFFIN is a psychotherapist who, with IVAN TYRRELL developed the human givens approach.

Choose a case study from a human givens therapist working with molar memories:
Case study 1 — Pamela Woodford
Case study 2 — Mike Beard

This article appears in the new human givens book An Idea In Practice: using the human givens approach

Choose a case study from a human givens therapist working with molar memories:
Case study 1 — Pamela Woodford
Case study 2 — Mike Beard

Return to top

Choose a case study from a human givens therapist working with molar memories:
Case study 1 — Pamela Woodford
Case study 2 — Mike Beard

Read how the pain-pleasure recall principle explains the riddle of conditioned taste adversion

This article appears in the new human givens book An Idea In Practice: using the human givens approach

Choose a case study from a human givens therapist working with molar memories:
Case study 1 — Pamela Woodford
Case study 2 — Mike Be

Return to top