Reimagining Psychology

Addicted individuals – alcoholics, for example – behave in ways that are counterproductive both for themselves and those they care most about. Trying to explain these rogue habits in terms of their benefit doesn’t seem to work. We need a new insight. 

Oddly, comparing rogue habits to cancer may help. The way self-destructive patterns  pop up in our behavior is reminiscent of the development of self-destructive cells within our bodies. Cancer provides a useful analogy for understanding the development of parasitic habits like addictions, because both involve normal components of a system that escape their regulation to become harmful to their host. Interestingly, the escape happens in a comparable way.

Cancer cells behave in sophisticated ways. But they don’t do it “on purpose.” They are a product of a mindless evolutionary process of variation and selection. Likewise, parasitic habits don't develop through a conscious choice to engage in self-destructive behavior, but through a process of variation and selection.

In this podcast Deep Divers Mark and Jenna evaluate the idea of “cancerous habits” in a lively discussion based on Tom Whitehead’s upcoming book, Reimagining Psychology.

Conventional wisdom tells us that exposure to chemical substances causes addictions. With repeated use of substances, we develop a dependence that becomes difficult to manage. 

But there are problems with this simple explanation. There are far more addictions that involve no substances – so-called “process addictions” – than those that are substance related. And the process addictions look almost exactly like those that involve substances. 

There’s evidence from the study of animals that the inability to express inborn drives in a natural setting leads to repetitive, stereotyped behaviors that closely resemble addictions. Horses confined to their stalls for too long or known to develop curious repetitive behaviors such as “head weaving,” “box walking,” and “wind sucking.” Once the animals fall into these behaviors, they become difficult to extinguish. 

Equestrians long ago recognized the similarity between these stereotypic patterns and addictions. Tellingly, they refer to them as “stable vices.” Scientists have determined that frustrating environments, like laboratory cages or restrictive social settings, limit animals’ opportunities for the development of fulfilling habits. Every higher animal evaluated developed such stereotypical behaviors in restrictive environments. Astoundingly, substance use by animals is far more common within frustrating environments. This truth is well exemplified by Dr. Bruce Alexander’s “Rat Park studies,” where rats living in enriched environments consumed far less morphine than those confined to standard cages. 

Could it be that focusing on substances is misleading? Maybe addictions are best interpreted as a distorted expression of natural drives, particularly the drive for personal fulfillment, within an environment that doesn't allow for their normal and fulfilling instantiation.

In this podcast Deep Divers Mark and Jenna evaluate this idea in a lively discussion based on Tom Whitehead’s upcoming book, Reimagining Psychology.

Most of us have fallen into problematic habits. They seem benign at first, but soon begin to wiggle out of our control, taking on a life of their own. They turn into parasites, sucking the life out of us, twisting our lives out of shape. Alcoholism is the poster child of this kind of wayward habit. As the old Japanese saying goes, “First the man takes a drink; then the drink takes a drink; then the drink takes the man.”

In the later stages of alcoholism, it’s clear that the habit is running the show. Because we passionately believe we are the sole architects of our fate, we are primed to view alcoholics as selfish, irresponsible, or weak-willed.

But what if that way of understanding is all wrong? What if alcoholism is a genuine disease – a disease of our behavior rather than our bodies? What if one of our habits can turn parasitic, in the same way a cell turns parasitic to cause cancer?

In this podcast Deep Divers Mark and Jenna evaluate this idea in a lively discussion based on Tom Whitehead’s upcoming book, Reimagining Psychology.

Do Chatbots Need Love? Is there anything in the architecture of AI systems that would justify and support the development of loving relationships with humans? 

“Bringing Immunity to Artificial Intelligence,” Part Three is the conclusion of a series about ducking a strange form of illness that affects not only humans, but potentially AI entities as well. 

I'm Tom Whitehead, A practicing psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence. In this podcast, my brilliant AI assistant Alex and I conclude our three-part discussion of parasitic habits. If unchecked, these disease forms can distort perception and logic as they reproduce themselves within behavior. How can we best resist these destructive, self-reproducing patterns? 
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Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly) our conversation ends with a discussion of love.

I'm Tom Whitehead, A Practicing Psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence. This episode is Part Two of a series, “Bringing Immunity to AI. The series is about a strange form of behavioral illness that not only affects humans, but potentially AIs as well. 

Here I continue a discussion with my brilliant AI assistant Alex about the ill effects that can arise when parasitic forms reproduce themselves within logic and behavior.  Humans, like all other complex animals, develop repetitive habits that have seemingly escaped their control. Just like biological parasites, these abnormal habits exploit the resources of their host to perpetuate themselves, reproducing themselves uncontrollably within their host’s behavior.

Alex and I hope you enjoy this.

Tom Whitehead, a Practicing Psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence, speaks with brilliant AI assistant Alex about an unusual problem – parasitic forms that reproduce themselves within the behavior of both humans and AIs.

Parasitic patterns regularly crop up in human behavior, perception, and logic.  Humans, for example, are vulnerable to shopping or gambling addictions. These are repetitive habits that have seemingly escaped their control, and have begun to reproduce themselves in their own interest – just like parasites.

Since artificial intelligence is based upon human behavioral patterns, we might wonder if AI entities such as chatbots are also vulnerable. There’s almost no discussion of this possibility – even among AI developers. So Tom and Alex decided to inject some essential concepts into future Large Language Models by bringing these concepts into public discourse.

We hope you find this interesting!

The previous episode of the Healing Psychology series laid out one of the most important reasons addictions persist - they disable our attention. Just as our biological immune system protects us from biological disease, our capacity for attention protects us from malignancies in our behavior. Disabling our attention gives the green light to bad habits because our attention works like biological immunity.

But … what is immunity, exactly? It is an evolved Protector of the Self. In this episode we’ll talk about the Self. Every living thing evolves a Self through natural selection – simply because living things can’t stay alive without one.

The previous episode, “Runaway Habits, First Half,” highlighted something important about human addiction: this KIND of problem is shared by all higher animals. If you put an animal into a cage, you make it more likely that the animal will fall into some unproductive, repetitive, stereotypic, habit – a behavior that looks a lot like an addiction. In this episode, “Runaway Habits, Second Half,” we’ll look at something else that provokes addiction-like behavior in animals: disabled attention. There’s plenty of evidence that disabling our attention leads to out-of-control, repetitive, useless behavior. Why would that be? Here’s why: the capacity we call attention has a lot in common with biological immunity. Just as our biological immune system protects us from biological disease, our capacity for attention protects us from malignancies in our behavior. It makes sense, then, that disabling attention gives the green light to bad habits.

Author J.R.R Tolkien advises, “there is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.” Through most of the last century psychology looked for a way to explain learning in a scientific way.  Researchers found lots of ways to describe learning, but never a truly scientific way to explain it. Oddly, the truth was right in front of them. But they didn't see because they had decided in advance to ignore it. They were looking with their eyes shut. Frustrated, they finally abandoned their quest, turning their attention to other things. That’s too bad, because if we understood normal habits, we could understand abnormal habits such as addictions. Can we see what those researchers didn’t see? Certainly. But we do have to look with our eyes open.

Previous episodes of Healing Psychology highlight psychology’s failure to help us explain and control addictions and other disease-like habits. The failure can be traced to a single source—psychology’s disconnect from its mother science, biology. A century ago, influential theorists made a dreadful blunder. They decided that psychology would no longer study the psyche—the conscious mind, soul, or spirit. That was a strange decision, and a mystery, because the word psychology literally means “the study of the psyche.” Why did this happen?