Family Code 6320 and Domestic Violence / Intimate Partner Violence Through Unique Means

 Mind-Body Connection and Decision-Making

        I've been fascinated by and studying the ability to make wise decisions that promote long term health and wellbeing in humans for a very long time. In fact its been a preoccupation of mine since I was child. One's ability to curb temptation in all it's forms--food, drug, alcohol, cutting, sexual behavior, displays of rage/angry outbursts, etc., predict long term wellbeing.

        Before turning to science, I'm sure I spent at least a thousand hours puzzling over the issue informed by reading spiritual literature about the freedom or bondage of the will (Martin Luther (the monk), Jonathan Edwards, Puritan writers, C.H. Spurgeon, and other. I studied Martin Lloyd Jones' works on Romans and Ephesians and studied all I could about temptation, Romans 7, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, I and II Peter, Revelation, etc. I've come to the ultimate conclusion that generally speaking religion confuses conformity with the group and group health with wise decision-making. 

        Aristotle's Golden Mean where balance and moderation win the race captures the boon to society and individuals who comprise the community that comes with what Barkley (2012) called executive function. Barkley's view of executive function drew upon Dawkin's (1982) ideas about adaptation, selective pressures (phenotypic expression of genes interacting with one's environment). 

        Herein lies where I'm at right now in this fascinating area of study which I believe is foundational to both individual and collective pursuits of health and happiness. 

        New research coming from evolutionary psychology is using metatheory informing the natural sciences (i.e. evolution) to explore this concept which I find in the writings of Bowen et al. on Differentiation of Self, Mischel and Schoda/Zelazo/Lieberman, and Banaji and Greenwald/Kanneman and Tversky and many others including the writing of Theodore Millon and his colleagues and Seymour Epstein. A happy sharing of information across academic / scholarly domains is facilitating a wealth of new information informing our understanding of this essential borderland between the mind and the body / the spirit and the flesh and the problem of self-regulation / emotional regulation / and wisdom.

        In reading from a Journal entitled Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences this morning published by the American Psychological Association I came across an article written by Professor Hill of Texas Christian University citing research on this issue. I had previously come across the idea that problematic use of drugs and alcohol (and by extension overeating, sedentary lifestyle, etc.) involved a trade off of gratifying behaviors by discounting cumulative effects on one's health. Use of drugs, alcohol, etc. make logical sense in dealing with bionegativity--"a personality constellation in which one or more part processes disturb the total function of the organism" (Angyal, 1941, p. 329). 

        Substance use disorders have been hypothesized as behaviors intended to establish positive homeostasis (Kaye, Gendall, & Strober, 1998; Magnavita, 2006; Van der Kolk, 1994, 2003, 2014). Growing up in dysfunctional homes where yelling, violence, and dysregulated emotions prevail so disrupts the nervous and associated systems of the body that bionegativity becomes the norm for the members of such families.

        All of which is to say I am really pleased this morning to see Gassen and his colleagues (2019) publish a cross-sectional research article on the relationship between inflammation (which can be quantified/measured by serum cytokine concentration) and the quality of one's decision-making, and, in particular the ability to delay gratification for greater long range pleasure/life enhancement--i.e. health and happiness. 

References

Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2013). Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people. New York: Random House

Barkley, C. (2012). Executive functions: What they are, how they work, and why they evolved. New York: The Guilford Press. 

Davies, P. T. & Martin, M. J. (2013). The reformulation of emotional security theory: The role of children’s social defense in developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 25, 1435-1454.

Dawkins, R. (1982). The extended phenotype. Oxford: W. H. Freeman and Company, Limited.

Gassen, J., Prokosch, M. L., Eimerbrink, M. J., Leyva, R. P. P., White, J. D., Peterman, J. L., ... & Boehm, G. W. (2019). Inflammation predicts decision-making characterized by impulsivity, present focus, and an inability to delay gratification. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-10.

Hall, M. C. (2013). The Bowen family theory and its uses. Chevy Chase, MD: International Psychotherapy Institute E-books.

Johnston, J. R., & Campbell, L. E. G. (1988). Impasses of divorce: The dynamics and resolution of family conflict. New York, NY: Free Press

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kaye, W., Gendall, K., & Strober, M. (1998). Serotonin neuronal function and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor treatment in anorexia and bulimia nervosa. Biological psychiatry, 44(9), 825-838.

Kerr, M. & Bowen, M. (1988). Family evaluation: An approach based on Bowen theory. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

Lieberman, M. D., Gaunt, R., Gilbert, D. T., & Trope, Y. (2002). Reflexion and reflection: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to attributional inference. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 34 (p. 199–249). Academic Press.

Magnavita, J. (2006). Personality-guided relational psychotherapy: A unified approach. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association

Mischel,W., Shoda,Y.,&Rodriguez, M. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244, 933–937.

Noone, R. J. (2014). Differentiation of self as a multigenerational process. In P. Titelman (Ed.), Differentiation of self: Bowen family systems theory perspective (pp. 96-111). New York: Routledge

Van der Kolk, B. A. (1994). The body keeps the score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 1(5), 253-265.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2003). The neurobiology of childhood trauma and abuse. Child Adolescence Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 12, 293-317. 

Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking.

Zelazo, P. D., & Carlson, S. M. (2012). Hot and cool executive function in childhood and adolescence: Development and plasticity. Child development perspectives, 6(4), 354-360.