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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><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </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><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </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><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </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><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, April 25, 2005 5:00
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] What's the survival
value of post traumatic stressdisorder?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<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="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>It’s your old memories that prevail, the memories of the horrid
experience that produced your trauma to begin with.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </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="mso-spacerun: yes"> </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="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>Not a reason that helps us aging elders,<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>but a reason that helps the collective
mind, the mass intellect of society.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</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="mso-spacerun: yes">
</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="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>remember far, far better than they’d
like?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Are they walking warning
signs to the rest of us?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </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>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<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:
www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT>
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