Monday, November 15, 2010

Relationships, Attachment and Hostage Taking

    I was originally attracted to the article in question because of its mention of the alluring taboo "Polyamory' in the title "Polyamory chic, gay jealousy and the evolution of a broken heart". The article itself reflected an interesting perspective, but the ideas that stirred my own subjectivity and elicited an impulse to comment were those where reference was made to the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.
    Bio-Psychology deals with the formation of neural nets, and the interactivity of the nervous and endocrine system, and particularly how the neurons themselves transmit chemical information from one to the other, and how  certain chemicals released across the synaptic gap activate the endocrine system to discharge hormones into the bloodstream and convey information that engages the activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.  
    In speaking about  the 'protest stage'  regarding the human heartbreak experience relative to human relationships, Mr. Bering states that in the wake of a break-up, "at the neurobiological level, the protest stage is characterized by unusually heightened, even frenetic activity of dopamine and norepinephrine receptors in the brain, which has the effect of pronounced alertness similar to what is found in young animals abandoned by their mothers". It seemed to make sense to me, in light of the work done on attachment by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and more recently Mary Main, that what might be at the bottom of post break-up suffering, are really unreconciled maladaptive attachment  issues.
    If the child's Trust vs. Mistrust (Erikson) task had not been resolved, then it is likely that one or both of the players in a couple dyad may be using the relationship as the battleground to resolve their own attachment issues. Unbeknownst, the significant other may be surreptitiously cast as the surrogate parent of the one whose attachment bonds were never imprinted in a healthy, satisfying manner, and so they are carrying forward into all future relationships the only model available to them upon which to pattern subsequent relationships.
    So many emotions are elicited in the drama of relationship, each with its own accompanying brain neurochemical plasticity potential. Positive relational experiences patterned on a healthy model of early trust imprinting and bonding will tend to build neural connections that will activate and reinforce positive emotional states of well-being. On the other hand, brains that are building according to the effect of "pronounced alertness' hypervigilant and in continuous survival mode, may have more a tendency to develop Depression, lethargy, despondency and despair, as the continuous enslaught of those particular chemicals support a brain design network supporting maladaptive strategies for human engagement and relationship.
    In any event, the emotional structures that are built throughout our lives hinge upon the models provided in the earliest years of life by our primary caregiver. It would seem to make sense that unresolved issues in the earlier stages of human development would naturally be carried forward into subsequent  stages. It does not matter that the mind is not in sync with the biological demands of each subsequent stage. The 'beat goes on' as they say and is most obvious as we experience a seemingly grown adult acting like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum when their emotional needs are not being met in an adult relationship.


Based on the article: Scientific American Mind magazine, research psychologist Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast August 25, 2010. Title: Polyamory chic, gay jealousy and the evolution of a broken heart By Jesse Bering

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=polyamory-chic-gay-jealousy-and-the-2010-08-25

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Prayers for Bobby: An Analysis

Prayers for Bobby: A Coming Out Story for a Son and A Coming of Age Story and His Mother

    Prayers for Bobby is a true story based on the life of Bobby Griffith, a young man who from age 16 to 20 struggled with being gay while being raised in a devout upper middle-class Anglo-Saxon fundamentalist evangelical Christian family, before finally ending the struggle by allowing himself to fall off a bridge into the path of oncoming traffic, tragically ending his life in 1983.  
    It was his family's and his community's religious intolerance that drove Bobby to take his own life, yet it was his mother Mary who redeemed his memory as she herself, through gay right's advocacy, came to grips with the effects of her own internalized bigotry in the wake of his death. After seeking solace and understanding from the local Metropolitan Community Church, ultimately she redeems both herself and her son's memory,  eventually denying the religion that fueled his self-loathing, and coming to accept and acknowledge Bobby's orientation as a gift bestowed on him at conception. 
    Bobby was a typical all-American boy who began to question his sexuality (according to records found in his journal) around the age of 14-15. This journal entry reveals how around the age of 18,  he was ensconced in a terrible conflict between contrasting values of expected religious ethical behavior, and his own inner desires and longings:
    "What's wrong with me? I wish I could crawl under a rock. God, do you enjoy     seeing me stumble around this world like a stupid idiot? I think you must.         There's probably some kind of pill somewhere that would heal my brain or there's probably some kind of vitamin that I'm not getting enough of. -- Bobby's diary entry for Sept. 28 1981"
    Clearly, Bobby was caught in the tension of conflicting contrasts between psychic imprints of  'normalcy' , and the influence of local cultural values and customs imposed on him and his family. Unaware that these types of values are socially constructed, he and his family unquestioningly bought into the ideas that had been inculcated as part of their values system through frequent, repetitive religious and cultural reinforcement.
    As the matrix of Bobby's values system, his mother Mary provided the source material for his conflict. She herself had been raised in a religious environment in the 1950's, a period of time that thought suspiciously about homosexuality in general. The general attitude of the times condemned gay people as being sinful and destined for damnation. Bobby himself was born into the ascendency period of the Moral Majority's right wing evangelical movement's ideology which made the topic of homosexuality one of its more vocal targets of attack, thereby increasing the climate of hatred and bigotry around the topic of homosexuality in general.  Bobby's mother had absorbed these ideas into her own value system, and imparted these negative attitudes to her own family, as they had been imparted to her. Sadly, she failed to adjust her own bias, even though the American Psychological Association had stricken homosexuality as a mental illness from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual in 1973. Reparative Therapy began to be valued as the solution for 'curing' homosexual tendencies.  Some of those who failed to reap the promised effects of these therapies were left to struggle with the cognitive dissonance of homosexual attraction and subsequently were left feeling rejected (by God), betrayed (by their own bodies) and abandoned (by the community) when their prayers to be changed were left unanswered and their attempts at resistance were met with failure.
    Bobby's central life stage challenge at the time of his blossoming sexuality would require reconciliation of the biopsychosocial tasks inherent in the Identity versus Role Diffusion phase of his development. According to Erikson, this is a time when adolescents proceed to establish a sense of personal identity relative to their particular systemic connections, or they become confused about who they are and what they want to do in life. It was perfectly obvious that Bobby, under the circumstances, would not be able to meet the challenges of this phase, reconciling his rising biological impulses with those of the social environment he was enmeshed with. As a result, his own psychological development and balance would be interrupted and inhibited from further integration, leading him to exist in a state of constant conflict and unresolved psychic tension.
    Further contributing and undergirding his conflict was the authoritarian manner in which institutional influences dominated his environment, as regards the demands placed on him to adhere to their set of behavioral requirements. His own mother stated "I won't have a gay son" which to a 16 year old with no other recourse, would seem like an ultimatum and an indictment. The pastor at his church preaching about the 'evils of the flesh' and the local school culture cracking jokes about 'fags'  would further incriminate him and support a rationale for suppressing his true nature. In an effort to 'fit in', he experiments with heterosexuality, but he quickly realizes this is not his true self, and is obviously repulsed when his date encourages him to make a pass at her. Later on, when he moves away from home, Bobby finds a boyfriend and enjoys a dinner together at their family home.  As he observes the nature of their transactions,  he notices the stark contrast between how accepting they are of their own son's orientation and how rejecting his own family. Ultimately, this realization supports what he has already come to accept as true about himself: that there is something wrong with him that cannot be fixed, and from this point on, his own self-loathing becomes a permanently fixed. Unfortunately, Bobby does not resolve and reconcile the tasks associated with the Identity versus Identity Role Diffusion stage.
    Though not apparently explicit in the story, the film did hint at the violent  consequences that Bobby would suffer if he were to reveal publicly his true self. At one point after he confides in his brother about his struggle with his homosexual feelings after trying to kill himself by taking a bottle of Bufferin, it becomes apparent that the community finds out, and at a scene where Bobby attends a school dance, the supporting characters are seen exchanging furtive whispers as he mingles with the crowd, and at one point he is intentionally bumped by the shoulder of another boy who looks at him with loathing, daring him to meet the challenge of defending his own dignity. Bobby slinks away, aware that to do so with no support to back him up, would be suicide.
    How ironic, since Bobby's life was inundated with patterns of suicidal themes and tendencies. After all, his entire life up to this point had been formed and shaped within the aegis of a religious and environmental culture that killed the initiative impulse. Rather, the forces that controlled him, placed so many restriction on the types of activities that were permitted and those that were not, that this would have caused him to fail to resolve the tasks of the earlier Initiative versus Guilt developmental stage, and may well have impeded his ability to resolve those required in the Industry versus Inferiority development stage as well.
    As a result, when Bobby leaves home to live with his cousin in a different part of the country in order to escape the strictures of his repressive life, he finds himself at a crossroads. His new life exposes him to an environment that is the antithesis of everything he had been bred to embrace. He starts hanging out in unhealthy sexually permissive environments that are more exploitative than nurturing. He frequents a strip bar; he begins to drink alcohol, and while he himself is not shown to engage in risky sexual encounters, in a later scene he observes his boyfriend leaving an establishment arm in arm with another male. This crushes Bobby's spirit and apparently  is the 'straw that broke the camel's back',  as the next scene in the movie shows him at the bridge when he commits suicide.
    For Bobby, the breach of trust was too much to take. The rejection by his own mother, whose attachment bonds were conditional, the strength of which depended on her approval of him and his behavior, had a devastating effect. The larger themes of abandonment and rejection dominating his life had reached their apex, and he found himself faced with the irresolvable conundrum that he could not change himself to align with the expectations of God, mother and society, and so he ended the conflict once and for all in a tragic act of self-destruction.
    The roots of Bobby's conflict did not begin in adolescence. They began far sooner than that in the earlier stages of his development and the issues arose for him primarily from within the authoritarian style of upbringing. No matter what the stage of development, Bobby had not be allowed to learn from his mistakes, and all his behaviors were closely monitored and controlled. His trust bond with his primary care-giver was conditional. His Autonomic power was limited by the range of values that could be explored within the context and confines of his family milieu; shame for this family was a powerful inhibitor of behavior. As mentioned earlier his Initiative was suppressed as he was discouraged to develop interests that lay outside the range of his own white fundamentalist family value system, encouraging him to avoid 'bad' things  not approved by the family value system, and therefore developed a 'negative' style of engagement with life. Assuming all the challenges inherent in the previous successive stages of development had been satisfied and resolved, Bobby's life would have carried on in a much different manner.
    Had a favorable trust bond been immutably imprinted without condition,  he would have proceeded through subsequent sequence of life stages with far greater success. He might not have questioned his own capability and potential; he might not have lived with the ultimately unbearable stress and strain of internal conflict that caused him to end his life.
    Out of the ashes of Bobby's life arose a new dove, a phoenix of hope that helps us all to see that when we question those values we've assumed as sacred truth, our survival is not at risk. Certainly, Bobby's mother clung to a value system that kept her psychic life in tact as she refused to compromise it, but, in a strange ecosystem quirk of morality and values, her refusal to risk compromise caused something else to die: her son.  Had she been open minded enough to question her rigid mindset, and instead  engaged an objective dialogue when first presented with the issue as a contrast of conflicting values, her son may be alive today.   Even though she went on to transform her ignorance favorably for those who, like her son, struggle with the negative messages transmitted culturally around LGBTQ issues, it still remains that as long as those who hold the power of governance to shape and mold the attitudes that define what is culturally acceptable according to some arbitrary moral system based on dogmas and outdated, unfounded attitudes and superstitions, then the values of social justice upon which this nation were predicated will be mere empty lip service impotent to empower those most vulnerable to the rapacious thrust of majority rule. 


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The Novel: Middlesex by Jeffry Eugenides

On 'Middlesex'  by Jeffrey Eugenides
    The character I chose as the hypothetical client is the main character of the novel. Born Calliope Helen Stephanides into a Greek-American family of strong Greek Orthodox Immigrant influence and heritage, “Callie", unbeknownst to the family, is intersexed for many years, and subsequently is raised as a girl until he makes a decision to present himself as the male he believes himself to be.
    The novel was written as a memoir from Cal's point of view as 41 year old man, though throughout the novel, the narration modulates back and forth between the perspective of the girl, Callie, and the voice of the present-day Cal. However, the first half of the story is based on events that occurred prior to Callie's birth. As emigrants,  Cal's grandparents (his grandmother, Desdemona, secretly married her blood brother Lefty), after fleeing riots their homeland in Asia Minor upon arriving in Detroit Michigan, lived with a cousin who had migrated earlier from Smyrna, their birthplace.
    One of the major themes of the novel is the subject of incest between the two siblings, however, that did not seem to hamper their functioning as a married couple making a family of their own.  As a result of Cal's grandparents' diligence and hard work ethic, the family developed into an upper class immigrant family. They spawn and raise two children and after building up a successful family bar and restaurant business, the family moved into the Grosse Point neighborhood, at the time, a well established upper class neighborhood. As the grandparents fade into the background, Cal's father takes over the family business and continues to provide the same standard of living to which he had become accustomed.
    All three generations shared the same living quarters, assimilating into a culture surrounding them that was in the process of becoming homogenized, while in private maintaining their strong cultural ethic  and customs of dress, speech and superstition. Callie's grandmother refused to learn the english language, and at the point when Callie was about to be born, the narrator, Cal, explains how his grandmother, Desdemona , dangling a spoon tied to a string over the pregnant mother's stomach, predicted by the arc of its movement that Cal would be a boy, while his parents made preparations for the birth of a girl. They were delighted when Callie emerged as female, because their first child had been born male.
     As it turns out, Callie inherited the mutation for a gene that causes 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which impedes the conversion of testosterone hormone ( causes the brain to become masculine) and dihydrotestosterone (molds male genitals). The condition was not apparent at the time due to the under-developed status of her genitals at birth, and so Callie was raised as female. However, as she begins puberty and adolescence, she begins to wonder why she has not begun menstruating like her peers, and why her breasts are not developing. She has all of her other faculties in tact and is performing within the range of full functionality. Intellectually she is bright and  creative, but her body does not seem to be flowering as she anticipated that it would. Callie adapts to the deficits by becoming somewhat precocious in her social interactions, seeming mature and wise beyond her years, in spite of the fact that being an underdeveloped late bloomer, might cause her to feel inferior in high society adolescent culture.
        Now for the first time, we begin to see an identity beginning to form and take shape. As Callie's personality begins to emerge in adolescence, she seems to have liberal views, and this becomes apparent when she develops a 'crush' on one of her female classmates, whom she refers to only as the "Object Obscure". The Cal identity however seems to be invested in the social construct of binary gender relationships, and feels fear, guilt and perhaps shame at her attractions to her female friend. In her mind only boys and girls make valid relationship partners, and she sets out to align her outsides to match her insides.
    Still, in the secret of Callie's taboo attraction to the 'Object Obscure" she seems to find strength, and never once does she apologize for that attraction. Perhaps her fortitude and self-confidence are rooted in her bargaining power as a well adjusted young girl third generation immigrant girl having been born and bred in the crucible of a thriving, well established immigrant family.  Under-girded by the socio-economic potentates inherited in a life of privilege, unhindered self-determination and unfoiled self-efficacy, she rose above the obstacles inherent in her particular human struggle, unimpeded by the foibles of her fate.
    Cal, in retrospect, writes that he is a man trapped in an hermaphrodite's body, meaning to say, that while his genitalia are primarily seen as female (though his breasts are not well developed), his sexual attractions are toward females. When Callie reaches puberty, her testosterone levels increase, resulting in the formation of a larger Adam's apple, deeper voice, broader muscles, and a larger clitoris that resembles a penis. Eventually, Callie's parents bring her to New York City to see a foremost expert on hermaphroditism, who believes she should retain her female identity. The doctor determines that she has the XY chromosomes of a male after inspecting Callie's genitalia. He plans a gender reassignment surgery to make her female. However, Callie knows that she is sexually attracted to females, and decides to run away to pursue a male identity as Cal.
    In comparing Callie's life experience with mine, her life was very different than mine, almost quite the opposite, although we did share more than one thing in common. The primary similarity was our struggle with sexual identity, and our orientation being at odds with cultural expectation and strong family religious ethic. The other thing we shared was the manner in which we struggled as a result of our late-blooming process of adolescent development. I never shaved until I was 21 and had very little body hair, and for a long time, this caused me to carry a lot of shame at not having developed like other males.
    Culturally, Callie was born to the breed, and very well connected in lineage to her generational Greek Orthodox family. My parents on the other hand, had no real knowledge of their generational lines, and our class was in the lower economic sphere. Callie was one of two offspring, and I was one of eight who survived a thirteen year run of twelve births by my Roman Catholic mother. As mentioned, In one respect we shared the value of religiosity and did all of the things required of our religion, but like the characters in the Stephanides clan, we too had our secrets, and our ethical expression of those values were incongruent to the ideology that belied them.  Our parents told us not to smoke cigarettes, but they themselves did; they also told us not to use expletives, but they themselves did. Cal's grandparents knew incest was a taboo subject, but they made the choice to marry anyway. Callie's life exposed her to privileged degrees of educational experience, and my experience was in the local Roman Catholic parish church school. Even though Callie's grandparents appeared to be religious and had strong religious ethics, her own parents clung to the traditions merely out of habit. Because Callie was exposed to a higher degree of soci-economic currency, she was privvy to a broader range of opportunity than I, as the son of a hard working blue collar worker. Callie and I both however did seem to inherit the 'hard work gene'.
    When I think of the circumstances under which Callie might have had the occasion to become a client of mine, I would think that it would be at the point at which she runs away as a young minor when faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery. My effectiveness as a social worker might be compromised were she assigned to me.
    My initial impulse would be to want to shield her from the harm that she was facing in being forced to undergo the sex reassignment surgery. But I would also be conflicted about having her placed in foster care unless the placement was in a situation that would match the standard of living to which she had become accustomed and with care givers who would honor her right to self-determine. I would want for her comfort, and I'm not certain where this consideration falls in the specter of priority, or if in fact it does.
    I would definitely want the decision to have the surgery or not be hers alone and I would support her in whatever choice she made. However, my support, though noble in its intent, would not be springing from a sense of objectivity, but rather from my own desire to not have my own rights stripped away in such a dismissive manner. My ability to be objective would be at stake, since I would be too emotionally involved in her plight, and would be desiring to shield her from the struggles she faced.