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<DIV>I love this, too, Lynn! It fits so perfectly with my experience and
with some of what I know...</DIV>
<DIV>Telling and writing stories (the story) <EM>can</EM>
be healing to those suffering the symptoms of PTSD </DIV>
<DIV>(and other forms of mental unease) and the stories can also
be useful to the group...</DIV>
<DIV>For the person suffering, the 'new knowledge' eventually gets incorporated
and the new way of being eventually </DIV>
<DIV>happens, but perhaps it all happens sooner (and relief sooner, too) if the
sufferer's experience </DIV>
<DIV>is encoded in the group's system/collective knowledge/culture. Hence yet
another reason, <EM>maybe</EM>, </DIV>
<DIV>why some intensely creative writers have such burning desire to be
read by 'the group'. The validation closes the
circuit... </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Also, no question that an 'unprepared brain' with a </DIV>
<DIV>particular neurochem profile deals with shock and terror and stress
less well </DIV>
<DIV>than a prepared one....And aside from meditation, exercise, a happy,
meaningful life </DIV>
<DIV>with good relationships and not too many economic worries,
etc. (things that help keep brain </DIV>
<DIV>prepared for major stressors), having the collective wisdom of the group,
i.e., stories/narratives </DIV>
<DIV>which take many forms, e.g., gossip, fiction, news, etc., can
also help prepare...</DIV>
<DIV>all the best!</DIV>
<DIV>Alice</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>PS I'm afraid I was not quite able to articulate what I was
getting at, but I'm sending anyway...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>----- Original Message ----- </DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ljohnson@solution-consulting.com
href="mailto:ljohnson@solution-consulting.com">Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">The new improved paleopsych list</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, April 25, 2005 9:23
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Paleopsych] What's the
survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>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: 10pt arial; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none">-----
Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: rgb(228,228,228) 0% 50%; FONT: 10pt arial; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none; moz-background-clip: initial; moz-background-inline-policy: initial; moz-background-origin: initial"><B>From:</B>
<A title=HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; 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: 10pt arial; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none"><B>Sent:</B>
Monday, April 25, 2005 5:00 AM</DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none"><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> </SPAN>It’s your old
memories that prevail, the memories of the horrid experience that produced
your trauma to begin with.<SPAN> </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> </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> </SPAN>Not a reason
that helps us aging elders,<SPAN> </SPAN>but a reason that helps the
collective mind, the mass intellect of society.<SPAN> </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> </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> </SPAN>remember far, far better than they’d
like?<SPAN> </SPAN>Are they walking warning signs to the rest of
us?<SPAN> </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 family="SANSSERIF"
ptsize="10">----------<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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