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As usual, Alice is a great resource. A further view: Who is most /
least disabled by PTSD?<br>
- preparation reduces PTSD. Special Forces troops in Viet Nam were
exposed to worse violence (like when the Cong cut off arms of children
the SF medics vaccinated) than grunts but had almost no PTSD. It was
because of the extensive training, compared with 16 weeks of Basic /
AIT. <br>
- story telling: Edna Foa found that repeatedly telling the story
reduced PTSD in rape victims. <br>
<br>
So PTSD may be nature's way of telling us we aren't preparing ourselves
and we aren't telling / listening to the story. Imagine a village in
africa. To the beat of a drum, a hunter is telling his story:<br>
Hunter: Then as I approached the antelope, I saw a lion!<br>
Villagers in unison: Boom-chucka, boom chucka boom chucka<br>
Hunter: The lion leaped!<br>
V: Boom chucka!<br>
H: It missed me but it got Steve!<br>
V: Aaargh!<br>
<br>
The youth are prepared (hunting is dangerous, lions are about) and by
sharing, in perhaps a ritualistic way, he masters the trauma.<br>
<br>
My dad, late in life, told his story of being a flight engineer on a
B-17 over Europe. While he told the story (as my mother wrote it down)
he cried for two days. It puzzled him. "It's been 40 years, it
shouldn't still bother me" but after that he was as relaxed and
peaceful as I had ever seen him. The storytelling had a ritual quality
(tell your story and I will write it down for the kids) and he found
some mastery.<br>
<br>
Lynn<br>
<br>
<br>
Alice Andrews wrote:<br>
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<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Howard, I really love
this! </font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">I </font><font
face="Times New Roman" size="3">had some alternative--or actually,
additional thoughts--not ones I necessarily want to champion, but
nonetheless I feel like sharing: Perhaps PTSD is adaptive for the
individual and ultimately the group. A young hunter is out on the
savannah and his brother/kin is savagely destroyed by lions, say. He
might experience all sorts of emotions in response to witnessing this,
perhaps the symptoms of PTSD. The emotions (as par Randy Nesse et al.)
guide his behavior--i.e. staying at 'camp' not going on hunts,
ruminating over and over the scene, etc etc. The symptoms like memory
loss are maybe just "mind-spandrels." </font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">The hippocampus goes into
obsessive overdrive on the old memories at the expense of new ones. The
hippocampus is still "carrying" the event. So...maybe the memory loss
just represents a reorganization of the brain. A traumatic event, of
course, can be life-altering. It takes a lot of brain power/energy to
restructure neuronal morphology. People literally change after such
events. Something new is being learned very quickly: a whole new way
of being. "Don't charge at lions. Don't trust men from the neighboring
tribe. Don't wear bones when hunting." <font size="4">*</font> For
such a thing to happen, the hippocampus can't be bothered with forming
new memories. So the symptoms are the means to, and also the signs of,
those changes. There's no doubt that a person suffering from the
symptoms of PTSD would have garnered support, fear, and elicited a
whole host of behavioral responses--as today. And that indeed an
individual with the symptoms of PTSD would have been a
marker--a reminding factor. Members of the group's physiology
wouldn't have gone thrrough such dramatic and intense changes like the
individual, but they (and their physiology to some degree) would be
influenced in some fashion, surely.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Another thought. I don't
actually know the statistics or have any data on this stuff, I can only
speak from impressionistic observation and experience. But it seems to
me that people who suffer with the symptoms of PTSD eventually stop
suffering. ** The changes finally get wired--so they're no longer
signposts for the group in that way...Though the group will have
experienced the person in that state for a while and have their new
state as reminding factor, too. </font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Anyway, to answer
question: tremendous survival value for individual and group if the
symptoms lead to 're-education' and changes in personality, behavioral
response, etc etc. </font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><strong><font size="4">*</font></strong>Magical
thinking and OCD are related to these things and also were quite
adaptive.</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">** Meds, of course, are
very helpful...but I imagine that the change that mother nature has
programmed the suffering person to go through doesn't actually happen
with meds. And, I actually have no particular feeling on whether one
way is better or worse..I don't have a romantic view that suffering
through the symtoms of PTSD in today's world could be all that
beneficial to the individual. I would look at it on a case-by-case
basis, I suppose. (I generally take the view that people (unless they
pose a threat in some way to self or others) need to experience such
emotions for a tiny little while without meds--even PTSD. (I suffered
with such symptoms (and then some!) for about 4-5 years without meds,
btw. Not something I would advise everyone to do!!!)</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">More to think about and to
write, but have to run! </font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">All best, </font></div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Alice</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
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<div
style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none;">-----
Original Message ----- </div>
<div
style="background: rgb(228, 228, 228) none repeat scroll 0%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none;"><b>From:</b>
<a title="HowlBloom@aol.com" href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</a>
</div>
<div
style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none;"><b>To:</b>
<a title="paleopsych@paleopsych.org"
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</a> </div>
<div
style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none;"><b>Sent:</b>
Monday, April 25, 2005 5:00 AM</div>
<div
style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none;"><b>Subject:</b>
[Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stressdisorder?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
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<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">If you have PTSD
(post traumatic stress disorder), your hippocampus works poorly and you
have a lot of trouble storing new memories.<span style=""> </span>It’s
your old memories that prevail, the memories of the horrid experience
that produced your trauma to begin with.<span style=""> </span>Is
this fixation with a danger in the past helpful to your personal
survival? Or is it helpful to something else—to the survival of society?<span
style=""> </span>If you suffer from PTSD, does your brain and body
inflict that suffering every day to turn you into a signboard--a
walking warning of danger to the rest of us?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Ted Coons
proposes that us old folks lose our ability to remember recent events
but still hang on to memories of our distant past for a reason.<span
style=""> </span>Not a reason that helps us aging elders,<span
style=""> </span>but a reason that helps the collective mind, the
mass intellect of society.<span style=""> </span>We elders, Ted
thinks, are storage jugs keeping antique memories alive not for the
sake of our personal survival, but for the sake of the younger folks
who’ve had no opportunity to experience or remember the days when we
elders were young and vigorous.<span style=""> </span>Those
youngsters have had no chance to remember the problems and solutions of
our childhoods way back when, the problems and solutions of an earlier
generation or two or three.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Can PTSD victims
serve a similar function, as danger markers for those of us who’ve
never experienced the horrors that the past-obsessed and
present-challenged PTSD patients<span style=""> </span>remember far,
far better than they’d like?<span style=""> </span>Are they walking
warning signs to the rest of us?<span style=""> </span>Are they, like
all of us, disposable modules in the mass learning machine of culture,
in the parallel distributed intelligence of the collective brain?</p>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div><font lang="0" size="2" ptsize="10" family="SANSSERIF">----------<br>
Howard Bloom<br>
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the
Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The
Big Bang to the 21st Century<br>
Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University;
Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.howardbloom.net">www.howardbloom.net</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.bigbangtango.net">www.bigbangtango.net</a><br>
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member:
Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project;
founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of
Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American
Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and
Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory
board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book
series.<br>
For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.paleopsych.org">www.paleopsych.org</a><br>
for two chapters from <br>
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of
History, see <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.howardbloom.net/lucifer">www.howardbloom.net/lucifer</a><br>
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the
Big Bang to the 21st Century, see <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.howardbloom.net">www.howardbloom.net</a><br>
</font></div>
</font>
<p> </p>
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