Listen to thisIt is always a delight to see Thom Garfat’s name in my “inbox.” When I saw it was a request for an article I immediately started reminiscing about cherished conversations with Thom. He was always good at encouraging me, challenging my reasoning, even challenging my choice of words. These memories put me to recalling my own past development and to further analyzing my current musings. My choice in topic is admittedly selfish, as most readers will have traveled a similar path, but possibly there are some unique connections to be made and at least it might encourage others to pause and ponder their own professional and personal development, where they started, how far they have come, and what might be next; not just in accomplishment, but in thinking. (Ideally, it might trigger a chat (debate?) with Thom.)
I started working with youth in the late ‘70s. Some of those years were in more clinical residential settings, such as a treatment center, but the majority of my experience has been in ranch or wilderness settings. The last twenty-two years have been at Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch where I am the Chief Operating Officer.
Currently, I believe I have reached a new phase in my thinking and perspective on life in general. The shift largely revolves around the brain, biology, and behavior. But, before delving into the current argument raging in my head, I think I should give some context.
I came about my fascination with the brain honestly. I was in my late twenties and had been working with youth locked in self-defeating behaviors. At that time, I don’t ever remember considering any type of neural functioning in regard to the behavior of those with whom I worked. It was my parents’ brains that ultimately took me there.
First, it was my mother. She had minor, hardly noticeable, tremors for years, but then they started to increase in magnitude, and she was experiencing strange difficulties with movement. She also was experiencing an increase in anxiety. It was misdiagnosed for a significant period, but eventually, she received the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. So, I soon learned about the devastation that a degeneration of neurons in the brain that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine could cause. It was long before Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with the disease, and it didn’t seem that the general public, nor I, was that aware of the oncoming misery. For a long time, it was treated with an overwhelming cocktail of medications. Then, a new remedy was offered. A thalamotomy, a neurosurgical procedure that involves creating a functional lesion in a part of the brain known as the thalamus. During thalamotomy, a hole is bored through the front of the skull and a tiny electrical probe is placed in the thalamus to create a lesion that can alleviate symptoms such as involuntary movements and tremors. Interestingly, the patient must remain conscious during the procedure. This allows the surgical team to interact with the patient and monitor their neurological responses in real time, ensuring the accuracy of the procedure and minimizing potential damage to the surrounding brain areas. The patient's awareness and ability to respond can be crucial for the success of the operation, as it helps the surgeon to target the correct area of the brain more precisely. The procedure was relatively new at the time, sometimes initiated on both sides of the brain and, at times, only in one hemisphere. A procedure on the left hemisphere would improve functioning on the right side of the body and, conversely, a procedure on the right hemisphere would improve functioning on the left side of the body. Unfortunately, because of age and other factors, she did not qualify for the procedure on both hemispheres. A decision had to be made – left or right. Her symptoms were worse on the left side of the body, but she was right hand dominant. The decision was made to improve the functioning on the dominant side. The surgery was successful and provided some immediate relief for a period. For years the shocking barrage of medications was continued, but eventually the disease ravaged her body and mind and had her begging her son for his pocketknife so that she could end her misery. (I denied her the relief.)
While the brain scans, neurosurgical procedures and drugs were uncomfortably intriguing, it was all physiological (brain/body) and totally logical while tragic. During the time of my mother’s positive reaction to the surgery and before she returned to her previous misery, my father was considering retiring early to have more quality time with her (both in their early 60’s). Despite his good intentions, he had a major stroke instead. He lost a brain mass the size of a tangerine in the right temporal lobe. (Surprisingly, during the surgery, they discovered he had unknowingly suffered a previous aneurism which had destroyed a brain mass the size of a golf ball.) The neurosurgeon emerged from the operating room and reported the loss in brain mass (both in the right hemisphere). Channeling some medical tv drama, I asked, “What’s the prognosis, paralysis on the left side of the body?” The answer was yes, arm, leg, total left side, but hopefully with little effect to speech. I’ll never forget what happened next. He said, “One more thing, he may lose his inhibition.”
Whoa, what? Lose a few neurons and synapses in a specific area and you can predict the loss of inhibition? He related a story of a successful business executive who sustained loss in the same region. The executive recovered and returned to work. He maintained his substantial knowledge of financial expertise and had no issues in recognizing a vast array of clients and coworkers. However, evidently the neurons he did lose were responsible for telling him not to get up from the table during a business meeting and urinate in the potted plant in the corner of the board room. The surgeon then excused himself to make his next operation and suggested I read Oliver Sack’s book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” I was stunned. Sure enough, just as predicted, my father indeed lost a significant amount of inhibition if not all.
I think the reason that I found this so unsettling was my dualistic perspective on mind and brain at that point in time. I held that mind was a non-physical entity that could not be fully explained by the workings of the physical brain. I totally separated the physical and the mental. I did not see subjectivity, intentionality, and consciousness grounded in biology.
My parents passed decades ago and in those subsequent decades I continued to work with youth. The seemingly endless line of young men and women I worked with taught me much and challenged me to learn more. My obsession with the brain continued and my bookshelves became loaded with Drs. Oliver Sacks, Joseph Ledoux, Antonio Demasio, V. S. Ramachandran, Luis Cozolino, Daniel Kahneman, and the like. Much of this proved superfluous in regard to my work, but there was a thread of learning that proved invaluable.
Meanwhile, Reclaiming Youth International, the International Child and Youth Care Network, the Child Trauma Academy (later to become the Neurosequential Network), and the Search Institute provided me with an invaluable network of incredible teachers, mentors and colleagues. Through that network, study, and experience the factors that help someone “thrive” became clearer. As did the factors that challenge a life. I learned the extreme importance of the fetal environment, the early years of development and then that of the adolescent years. All of this within the context of the developing brain. I acquired a new respect for the lasting effects of trauma, neglect, and poverty. I was fascinated by Sapolsky’s work on stress (Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers) and, as I watched his Stanford lectures on YouTube, I was struck by his warning of what can happen when you look at behavior through the narrow lens of a single discipline.
Patterns and themes kept emerging, things kept connecting and when a concept or an approach didn’t resonate with the establishing patterns it was tossed. The more the puzzle pieces came together, the more the pieces made sense. And the more the puzzle pieces came together and made sense, the more obvious it became that certain pieces were not meant for this puzzle.
One of the most useful things I learned was the importance of framing questions. In trying to solve a challenge, how you pose the question has a massive influence on shaping the answer.
All of this proved helpful, and I hope I at least provided some assistance to those who deserved so much more than I could provide. I also hope that my interaction added some value to the amazing teams and individuals with whom I have been fortunate enough to work.
So, here I am today, still struggling to improve my work but, honestly, my thinking on these matters had pretty much stagnated. And then, Sapolsky reentered the scene. That would be Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky with his take on “free will” (“Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will”). It took my obsession with the brain, wove together most of my previously formed beliefs, and provided the possibility of an even broader structure of exploration and understanding. It challenged me and twisted my brain up like nothing else has for decades. Even if you don’t totally “buy” his premise, it is an incredible thinking experiment. Personally, I find it extremely convincing while seriously difficult to imagine and, when I struggle to imagine it, I wonder if it’s not my ego getting in the way. Even Sapolsky states, “This is what I’ve concluded, for a long, long time. And even I think that taking that seriously sounds absolutely nutty.” and, “As I said, even I think it’s crazy to take seriously all the implications of there being no free will.” He doubts that he will convince many that they have no free will but hopes that they will realize that they have much less than they thought.
His perspective is drawn from interdisciplinary research – biology, neuroscience, psychology, and environmental studies. Bottom line, he presents the argument that our behavior is determined by a complex interplay of our genetics, environment, and experiences while free will is a post hoc illusion. Sapolsky posits that the deterministic nature of these factors leaves little room for the concept of free will as traditionally understood.
He argues that the biological determinants of behavior extend across time and space, influenced by events that occurred long before and far away from the individual's immediate context. This perspective suggests that our actions are the sum of influences that we have no control over, such as our evolutionary history, genetic makeup, and early environmental exposures.
The notion is that every aspect of behavior has deterministic, prior causes. “Prior to a behavior, there is an action of neurons in this or that section of the brain in the preceding second. And in the seconds to minutes before, those neurons were activated by a thought, a memory, an emotion, or sensory stimuli. And in the hours to days before that behavior occurred, the hormones in your circulation shaped those thoughts, memories, and emotions and altered how sensitive your brain was to particular environmental stimuli. And in the preceding months to years, experience and environment changed how those neurons function, causing some to sprout new connections and become more excitable, and causing the opposite in others.” Further back, possibly decades, even more antecedent causes. During adolescence, a key brain region was still being constructed, shaped by socialization and acculturation. Further back, early childhood experiences shaped the construction of your brain and as well as the fetal environment before that. Even further back, you have to factor in the genes you inherited. Your childhood was massively influenced by culture which came from centuries of ecological factors that influenced what kind of culture your ancestors invented and evolutionary pressures that molded the species you belong to.
All of this you had little or no control over. You cannot decide all the sensory stimuli in your environment, your hormone levels, whether something traumatic happened to you in the past, the socioeconomic status of your parents, your fetal environment, your genes, whether your ancestors were farmers or herders.
In offering a counter argument he would accept, Sapolsky states, “Show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past, and for the purposes of this book, you’ve demonstrated free will.”
Sapolsky also addresses the implications of accepting determinism over free will, suggesting that it could lead to a more compassionate society. If people recognized that behaviors are often the result of uncontrollable factors, there might be a shift in how blame, responsibility, and even praise are assigned. In the absence of free will, moral judgments become illogical and unjustifiable.
When it comes to a societal shift in understanding and reaction, Sapolsky reminds us that we have already been making steady progress along this same trajectory. He starts by reminding us that, once upon a time, when the village was hit by a hailstorm, it was assumed that someone had enacted a curse on the village and the old, toothless lady at the edge of the village was burned at the stake. For thousands of years, if a person was to collapse and convulse in a seizure, it was assumed that the individual was possessed and they had to be burned as well. Fast forward to more recent times and consider what was too long considered the cause of schizophrenia, schizophrenogenic mothering, mothering so bad that all the child could do was retreat into schizophrenic delusions and fantasy. Similarly, autism was of course the fault of “refrigerator mothers.” Or consider the child who struggled in school, especially with reading, and kept reversing letters; they were considered lazy and unmotivated. In all these cases, when a better understanding of the predicament was obtained, fault and personal responsibility were subtracted from the equation and the world became a better place.
All these shifts seem quite logical in hindsight and the previous perspective seems a bit outrageous. But shifting to a perspective of no free will seems much more implausible. So, how many decisions am I making daily, none? When I walk into an ice-cream shop was that a choice or “determined?” Which ice-cream flavor? Is that not a choice we make? I am quite curious about how someone came to be the person that chooses vanilla ice cream – everyone else knows they should have picked Rocky Road! My wife says this is actually strong evidence for her. She doesn’t “choose vanilla” - it is a biological, psychological reaction, shaped many years ago by her father who was always making homemade “vanilla” ice cream. With all those cherished memories held tightly by a plethora of synapsis, there is no choice to be made. There you go Dr. Sapolsky further evidence!
In “The Vocation of Man,” (1800), Johann Gottlieb Fichet says, “you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby… changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.” Most might be more familiar with the idea of the “butterfly effect.” It is fascinating to consider the immeasurable cascade of factors and events that led to who anyone of us might be. As a dear friend phrased, “How the stage was set for our lives.” And once who you are is determined, there is the infinite flow of possibilities to determine who you might become. Sapolsky is not proposing this is “predetermined,” but instead “determined” by this flow of influences – each new day, there is an immeasurable number of possible outcomes. I have generally compartmentalized the outcome of decisions I’ve made to the immediate or adjacent context. For example, decisions I made regarding education influenced my vocation and decisions I made regarding employment influenced future employment and vocational and professional pursuits. However, those early decisions determined everything else. A choice in education not only determined my subsequent vocation, but where I lived, who I married, my children. If I think back on what I thought were decisions and contemplate the possibility of them having been “determined” by previous causes, it gets even more interesting.
For the sake of a thinking exercise, accept for a moment that the extreme is true – we don’t make choices. We are the subject of our biology, environment, and experiences. A strong element of our environment and experiences is our relationships. Do our relationships (others) then shape us more strongly than we shape ourselves? Is it possible then that we could bear more responsibility for each other than for ourselves?
Think then how this understanding might relate to relational CYC practice. It may or may not alter the approach or components, but, regardless, it underscores its importance.
