Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:10:58.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Neurodynamics of Behavior

A Phylobiological Foreword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Trigant Burrow
Trigant Burrow*
Affiliation:
The Lifwynn Foundation, 27 East 37th Street, New York 16, New York.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As individuals and as communities we have suddenly awakened to find ourselves enveloped in a welter of unprecedented changes—social, political, economic and scientific. If our minds are to keep pace with the restless current on which we are being carried along, if our senses are to become alert to the teeming dislocations that mark the present, it will be necessary to raise our sights to the farther reaches of a rapidly oncoming future. In this hurrying hour the outstanding domains of man's thought are found wanting. Accepted tenets in many fields of his activity are giving way to rapidly broadening concepts. In this moment of new assessments it is safe to predict that the field of psychopathology must also gird itself for very radical alterations. It is safe to predict that present-day preoccupations with interpersonal affects, domestic transferences, sexual irregularities, marital conflicts, psychotic episodes, and the vast array of neurotic symptoms that comprise our psychiatric systems will in the scientific reckoning of the future appear to us quite obsolete and inept. They will appear to us as humdrum and archaic, I feel sure, as old wives' tales when contrasted with the basic and encompassing constructs of an organismic phylobiology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , October 1943 , pp. 271 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1943

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

∗

Paper read in outline before the Thirty-third Annual Meeting of the American Psychopathological Association, New York, May 15, 1943.

†

This essay contains material introductory to a book soon to be published.

References

1 How difficult it is for the psychiatric mind to achieve a phylic sense of its own involvement in a social neurosis The Lifwynn Laboratory has had ample opportunity to observe in the rock-bound inertias of those of its students who are psychopathologists. Not that the behavior of psychopathologists is any less basic or unified than that of others, but as the accredited guardians of the community's health of mind, any ineptness of adaptation on their part is more outstanding. Naturally psychiatrists are no more immune to a disorder intrinsic to man than the rest of the community.

2 Burrow, Trigant, The Biology of Human Conflict—An Anatomy of Behavior, Individual and Social, New York and London, The Macmillan Company, 1937, xl + 435 pp.

3 Gibbs, Willard, Collected Works of J. Willard Gibbs, London, Longmans, Green, 1928, two volumes.

4 Rukeyser, Muriel, Willard Gibbs, New York, Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1942, xl + 465 pp.

5 The term orthogenic refers to the organism's primary pattern of reaction, while epigenic refers to reactions that are secondary and accessory.

6 Speaking of behavior, through some ineptness in habits of human reckoning, the position of phylobiology is not infrequently confused with the school of the Semanticists. The position of Korzybski is, of course, rightly described as an attempt to explain disorders of behavior as a confusion and inconsistency in the use of symbols or language. Needless to say, I would not for a moment wish to deprecate the notable work of Count Korzybski. But I must demur at the persistent tendency among students of behavior to align the researches of my associates and myself with the principles of the Semantic school. The method of phylobiology does not make contact with the school of the Semanticists at any point. It is our explicit position that the attempt to account for neurosis by disparaging the symbols of language is putting the cart before the horse. Contrary to the teaching of Korzybski we have insisted upon the essentially veridical character of man's verbal forms of interchange within the social setting in which they are employed. Far from concerning ourselves with the symbol, our attack has centred solely upon the affects with which the symbols of language are commonly cluttered. Rather than seek to explain the evidences of man's distorted behavior-motivations on a purely ideational basis, it has been our effort to trace these disorders to their physiological substrate. We have regarded the verbal frames on which the community's behavior-distortions are hung as relatively quite innocuous epiphenomena, and have consistently emphasized the biophysiological basis of behavior-disorders. In our finding it is not the letter but the spirit of the word that betrays the underlying pathology of its meaning.

The plausible explanation offered by the legendary youngster who, contrary to orders, ventured into the gooseberry patch may be trivial but it is to the point. She had followed her mother's instructions to the letter. Having been tempted by the devil to disobey, she had done exactly as she had been told and promptly cried out: “Get thee behind me Satan.” Yes, she had adhered to the letter religiously but, as she herself explained, that was the whole trouble. Satan did get behind her but from this advantageous position straightway pushed her into the gooseberry patch! What, indeed, avails the letter of the symbol against the spirit of the affect? Does any of us in his heart of hearts doubt the answer? But “the heart” is not consulted. The truth is, we are not interested in the organism's basic mood or empathy, but are completely caught up in the social reflexes of the part-brain and its affecto-symbolic habits of motivation.

7 Burrow, Trigant, “Social Images versus Reality,” The Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology, 1924, Vol. XIX, pp. 230–235.

8 As it happens the term numen possesses special etymological aptness in the present context because both in form and pronunciation it presents a sharp contrast linguistically to the word nomen from which it differs by only a single vowel.

9 The casual employment of the numen may be seen in the habitual intonation accompanying such early nursery admonitions as “Mother said no,” the implication being that “mother” is some sort of rare, transcendent spirit, a being not of this earth. Usually the ultimatum is supported by a look of relentless finality as prolonged as it is devastating.

The reader will recall how Columbus consciously invoked the numen for his own practical purposes when, in anticipation of a lunar eclipse, he affected to possess supernatural powers and thus coerced the Indians to his will by threatening to extinguish the light of the moon.

10 There can be no societal science in the absence of societal material. One might as well propose a science of chemistry in the absence of the elements that are the material of chemistry. Since the inception of the work of my associates and myself there have arisen many schools of group-therapy. I wish, however, to state once more that contrary to prevailing assumption there exists no common principle between the organismic research in human behavior comprised under phyloanalysis and the interpersonal exchanges that comprise these more recent methods of group-therapy. From nursery to forum recourse to the remedial benefit of interpersonal exchange has been as automatic as any other community or tribal reflex. Whatever merit these various talking cures may possess socially, it is important that the method of phyloanalysis be very clearly differentiated from such inter-symbolic forms of psychotherapy. It is the special distinction of phyloanalysis that verbal interchange per se has no part in it, that these symbolic expressions are epiphenomena which are implicitly discredited from the point of view of the organism's motivation. The sole aim of the phyloanalytic technique is to demarcate between tensions which are partitive and falsely motivated, and tensions which are biologically integrated and organismic.

11 This phylobiological obstruction is doubtless indicated in the symbolic record of man's original sin as related in the Book of Genesis. According to etymological authority the primary meaning of sin was a missing of the mark, a faux pas.

12 Burrow, Trigant, “The Law of the Organism—A Neuro-Social Approach to the Problems of Human Behavior,” The American Journal of Sociology, 1937, Vol. XLII, pp. 814–824.

Idem, “The Organismic Factor in Disorders of Behavior,” The Journal of Psychology, 1937, Vol. 4 pp. 333–341.

Idem, “Bio-Physical Factors in Relation to Functional Imbalances,” Human Biology, 1938, Vol. 10, pp. 93–105.

13 In the phyloanalytic interpretation this anthropormorphic mechanism represents the biological origin of the clinical manifestations long known to psychiatry as persecution mania, ideas of reference, and delusions of grandeur.

14 Galt, William “The Male-Female Dichotomy in Human Behavior—A Phylobiological Evaluation,” Psychiatry, 1943, Vol. 6, pp. 1–14.

15 In its basic etymology the word belief means a preferred manner of thinking, or an emotional choice of opinion. Cf. Anglo-Saxon, geleafa, also leóf. Such “beliefs” should be carefully discriminated from inferences regarding objective data based upon inconclusive evidence.

16 As I remarked some years ago, “The transference or the social image is not a sporadic phenomenon. It is by no means limited to the neurotic personality. It is the early and persistent prepossession of every individual living under the sway of our present social system.” “The Problem of the Transference,” The British Journal of Medical Psychology, 1927, Vol. VII, pp. 193–202.

17 Syz, Hans, “The Concept of the Organism-as-a-Whole and its Application to Clinical Situations,” Human Biology, 1936, Vol. VIII, pp. 489–507.

Lillie, Ralph S. The Problem of Synthesis in Biology,“ Philosophy of Science, 1942. Vol. 9, pp. 59–71.

18 An interesting discussion of the phylobiological implications of language may be found in William Galt's “Our Mother Tongue—Etymological Implications of the Social Neurosis,” The Psychoanalytic Review, 1943, Vol. 30, pp. 241–262.

19 Burrow, Trigant, “Preliminary Report of Electroencephalographic Recordings in Relation to Behavior Modifications,” The Journal of Psychology, 1943, Vol. 15, pp. 109–114.

20 Galt, William, “The Principle of Cooperation in Behavior,” The Quarterly Review of Biology, 1940, Vol. 15, pp. 401–410.

21 Syz, Hans, “Burrow's Differentiation of Tensional Patterns in Relation to Behavior Disorders,” The Journal of Psychology, 1940, Vol. 9, pp. 153–163.

22 Burrow, Trigant, “The Determination of the Position of a Momentary Impression in the Temporal Course of a Moving Visual Impression” (Doctoral Thesis), The Johns Hopkins Studies in Philosophy and Psychology, No. 3, Psychological Monographs, 1909, Vol. XI, pp. 1–63.

23 Burrow, Trigant, “Kymograph Studies of Physiological (Respiratory) Concomitants in Two Types of Attentional Adaptation,” Nature, 1938, Vol. 142, p. 156.

Idem, “Kymograph Records of Neuromuscular (Respiratory) Patterns in Relation to Behavior Disorders,” Psychosomatic Medicine, 1941, Vol. III, pp. 174–186.

24 See Note 19, p. 283.

25 Burrow, Trigant, “Neurosis and War: A Problem in Human Behavior,” The Journal of Psychology, 1941, Vol. 12, pp. 235–249.

26 In his learned and delightful article, “Man's Long Story” (The Scientific Monthly, 1943, Vol. LVII, pp. 155–165), Lewis G. Westgate reviews the life span of the genus homo and assembles an imposing list of its vast assets and achievements. No one has better described the progress of man's mental growth. But toward the close of his impressive summation the author pertinently adds: “Millions are spent for research in technology, for improving glass, rubber, corn and hogs; very little for the study of man himself. One sickens at the billions now necessarily given for war, all of which would be unneeded in a decently ordered society; and thinks what tremendous advances the wide use of a fraction of that wealth would bring about if devoted to the problem of man.” Finally he asks whether man shall not readjust his behavior in the interest of a better world for all people. In answer he says:, 'There is no question but that he has the necessary intelligence. The mind that can weigh the infinitely distant stars and tell their make-up, that can track down the minute carriers of disease ... can solve its social problems when and if it decides to do so.“

But the mind of man can solve its social problems only when and if he decides to examine objectively his habitual social numina, his own false mood. This disordered mood of man the author does not reckon with. He does not reckon with man's sick will, or with the obstacle the will of man stubbornly opposes to the clear operation of his intelligence wherever it is question of his own behavior. That man can accomplish all that he has accomplished in intellectual fields, and yet spend billions upon a world-war which would be unthinkable in a decently ordered society is due, in the finding of phylopathology, to the present impassable gulf between the mind and the mood of man. Yet in spite of the manifest inadequacy of the part-brain in dealing with disordered human relations, man continues to employ this behavior-segment with all the unconscious affects or mood-impediments with which it is beset. Whether or not man likes to challenge his own cherished mood, it is the mood of man and its distortions upon which his observations need most urgently to be directed.

27 A phylobiological discussion of the function of the projective segment or part-brain of man may be found in the author's essays, The Structure of Insanity—A Study in Phylopathology, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1932, p. 25 ff. and “The Human Equation,” Mental Hygiene, 1941, Vol. XXV, pp. 210–220.

28 See note 25, p. 286.