Raine, Samenow, Fallon: Neuropsychology & The Work

[aragorn]

I might be getting ahead of myself (having not read all the recent recommended books), but after reading Ressler and Samenow, I'm not sure what to think about the possible causes for criminality, thinking errors etc. I mean, from Ressler I got the impression that he emphasized way too much the role of "nurture" and the persons early history and environment. Samenow on the other hand dismisses the "nurture" aspect almost completely. Or, at the very least, he doesn't think it's productive to try and understand the past traumas – that it's more important to correct the thinking errors, no matter what their cause is.

Then again, Ressler is describing really sick and pervert individuals, who do really horrible things (serial killers etc). Perhaps in their case both "nature" and "nurture" plays a role? Still, even with the great results Ressler got with his profiling, I find his explanations a bit naive. For instance, we know that psychopaths can come from any type of family environments. If I remember correctly, he does mention this in passing, but still he insists that the profiling almost always found traumatic events in the individuals history. Perhaps the individuals lied (as Samenow points out), or perhaps these individuals created the traumatic surroundings themselves?

Right now, I think that past traumas do have a significant role for us "ordinary" people, how we turn out and how we formulate our thinking, but that the solution for treatment doesn't solely (if at all) lie in understanding and re-living these past traumas.

What's your take on this whole "nature" vs. "nurture" thing?

 

[Altair]

Samenow on the other hand dismisses the "nurture" aspect almost completely. Or, at the very least, he doesn't think it's productive to try and understand the past traumas – that it's more important to correct the thinking errors, no matter what their cause is.

After reading "Healing Developmental Trauma" by L. Heller and A. LaPierre I tend to think that such approach might be too simplistic.

What's your take on this whole "nature" vs. "nurture" thing?

Having read only Raine and Samenow so far, my understanding is that it's a combination of both (to various degrees depending on the person). But in both cases the person does has a choice and theoretically is able to lessen negative effects from both "nature" and "nurture".

 

[Approaching Infinity]

I might be getting ahead of myself (having not read all the recent recommended books), but after reading Ressler and Samenow, I'm not sure what to think about the possible causes for criminality, thinking errors etc. I mean, from Ressler I got the impression that he emphasized way too much the role of "nurture" and the persons early history and environment. Samenow on the other hand dismisses the "nurture" aspect almost completely. Or, at the very least, he doesn't think it's productive to try and understand the past traumas – that it's more important to correct the thinking errors, no matter what their cause is.

Then again, Ressler is describing really sick and pervert individuals, who do really horrible things (serial killers etc). Perhaps in their case both "nature" and "nurture" plays a role? Still, even with the great results Ressler got with his profiling, I find his explanations a bit naive. For instance, we know that psychopaths can come from any type of family environments. If I remember correctly, he does mention this in passing, but still he insists that the profiling almost always found traumatic events in the individuals history. Perhaps the individuals lied (as Samenow points out), or perhaps these individuals created the traumatic surroundings themselves?

Right now, I think that past traumas do have a significant role for us "ordinary" people, how we turn out and how we formulate our thinking, but that the solution for treatment doesn't solely (if at all) lie in understanding and re-living these past traumas.

What's your take on this whole "nature" vs. "nurture" thing?

I think the bolded bit is the best way to read Samenow. Samenow is way too dismissive of environmental factors, but for his purposes, they're not important. (Then again, his therapy might have been even more effective if his patients had been taking fish oils, getting rid of heavy metals, watching their diets, etc.) That said, Raine is right, IMO, in pointing out all the factors that affect the brain, which affect behavior and post-hoc rationalization for criminal impulses and behaviors.

Interventions of the sort suggested by Raine will have a statistical effect on crime levels by making the brain function a bit better, but it's still up in the air whether those things will change a person's personality and thinking patterns, or just make them less likely to act out in extreme ways that break the law. So perhaps a "jerk" who breaks the law will just become a jerk who doesn't break the law. Overall, that's a plus for society, but doesn't eliminate the problem completely.

The only way to actually change character is to ACTUALLY learn to think, which is a top-down process. Create new thoughts which result in new behaviors.

 

[Laura]

The only way to actually change character is to ACTUALLY learn to think, which is a top-down process. Create new thoughts which result in new behaviors.

Indeed. And it might help to read "Healing Developmental Trauma" and then "The Righteous Mind" by Haidt. He has a lot of brain science in there and talks about the studies in a thorough and entertaining way. You won't be bored with this last one. What is interesting is how he began pretty much as a "liberal" (US style) and ended up a conservative. The science apparently convinced him.

 

[Gaby]

The only way to actually change character is to ACTUALLY learn to think, which is a top-down process. Create new thoughts which result in new behaviors.

Yeah, focusing on past traumas when your attitude is selfish, childish, narcissistic and generally character disturbed, will only enhance victimhood and prevent any real progress. This is what Samenow points again and again, the criminal mind always finds excuses to not confront itself.

However, reading Healing Developmental Trauma does clarify a lot more on the Top-Bottom and Bottom-Top approach.

In a way, if your Top-Bottom approach hits the preverbal wall, you know you've neglected the Bottom-Top approach.

I think that the key is committing to learn and change for the better. If you have fundamental thinking errors that blind you to even that, no Top-Bottom or Bottom-Top approach is possible if you're unwilling to do any work of any kind.

My 2 cents.

 

[Altair]

The only way to actually change character is to ACTUALLY learn to think, which is a top-down process. Create new thoughts which result in new behaviors.

Yeah, focusing on past traumas when your attitude is selfish, childish, narcissistic and generally character disturbed, will only enhance victimhood and prevent any real progress. This is what Samenow points again and again, the criminal mind always finds excuses to not confront itself.

However, reading Healing Developmental Trauma does clarify a lot more on the Top-Bottom and Bottom-Top approach.

In a way, if your Top-Bottom approach hits the preverbal wall, you know you've neglected the Bottom-Top approach.

I think that the key is committing to learn and change for the better. If you have fundamental thinking errors that blind you to even that, no Top-Bottom or Bottom-Top approach is possible if you're unwilling to do any work of any kind.

My 2 cents.

I agree that top-down approach is much more important than bottom-up and I think that the proportion of both in the process of change highly depends on each individual. Here are some related quotes from "Healing Developmental Trauma" by L. Heller and A. LaPierre showing the differences between both approaches.

Many systems of psychotherapy are based on the medical model of disease, and as a result they focus on psychopathology; commonly, psychotherapy investigates a person’s past and seeks to identify the dysfunctional cognitive and emotional patterns that underlie psychological problems. However, as new information emerges on how the brain and nervous system function, traditional psychological methods have come into question and the need for new clinical approaches has become increasingly clear. It now appears that it is a misguided assumption to think that if we know what has gone wrong in a person’s life, we will also know how to help that person resolve their difficulties. For example, we now know that when we focus on dysfunction, we risk reinforcing that dysfunction: if we focus on deficiency and pain, we are likely to get better at feeling deficiency and pain. Similarly, when we focus primarily on an individual’s past, we build skills at reflecting on the past, sometimes making personal history seem more important than present experience.

Healing Developmental Trauma introduces the NeuroAffective Relational Model, a somatically based psychotherapy that focuses on supporting an individual’s capacity for increasing connection and aliveness. It is a model for human growth, therapy, and healing that, while not ignoring a person’s past, more strongly emphasizes a person’s strengths, capacities, resources, and resiliency. NARM explores personal history to the degree that coping patterns learned early in life interfere with our capacity to feel connected and alive in the present moment.

The focus is less on why people are the way they are and more on how their survival style distorts their experience and their life in the present. Avoiding the trap of making the past more important than the present, NARM uses a dual awareness that is anchored in the present moment while exploring cognitive, emotional, and physiological patterns that began in the past.

To understand how a distress cycle is set in motion, it is important first to comprehend how information flows both top-down and bottom-up in the nervous system. The term top-down refers to how cognitive structures of the brain impact the emotional and instinctive systems of the body. The term bottom-up refers to how regulation in the nervous system impacts cognitions. Top-down, our thoughts, judgments, and identifications affect how we feel and impact the nervous system’s capacity for regulation. Bottom-up, regulation/ dysregulation in our nervous system affects our emotions and thoughts.

Bottom-up mechanisms are involuntary, most often unconscious, and related to the physical effects of environmental stimuli upon the body. In contrast, top-down mechanisms can be voluntary, conscious [this is similar to Samenow's approach to correct thinking errors only and to ignore bottom-up/somatic factors], and pertain to how memory, motivational relevance, emotion, attention, and imagery shape perception. Top-down therapeutic approaches focus on the cortical functions of cognition. Bottom-up therapeutic approaches focus on the body, the felt-sense, and the instinctive responses as they are mediated through the brain stem and move upward to impact the limbic and cortical areas of the brain. Continuous loops of information travel from the body to the brain and from the brain to the body. Similar loops of information move among cognitive, emotional, and instinctive structures within the brain. (see attached image "Top-Down and Bottom-Up Information Flow")

Most therapeutic and personal growth traditions tend to focus on either top-down or bottom-up aspects of the circular flow of information, working either from the body to the brain or from the brain to the body; as a result, they do not address the self-perpetuating aspects of the information loop and, by not doing so, often miss the pernicious links that keep the distress cycle in operation. NARM integrates both top-down and bottom-up orientations, explicitly working with the information flow in both directions. This disrupts the self-perpetuating closed loops of distress and supports the shift to a healing cycle.

NARM presents a broader clinical application of mindfulness than is found in cognitive therapy by separating the story related to the distress states from the physiological distress itself. As the nervous system becomes more regulated, many cognitive distortions drop away. Elements of cognitive therapy are useful in working with the top-down aspects of the distress cycle, but particularly when working with someone who has experienced early trauma, it is essential to work with the distress cycle both top-down and bottom-up.

Traumatized individuals, which includes most of us to differing degrees, need both top-down and bottom-up approaches that address nervous system imbalances as well as issues of identity.

With developmental trauma, NARM works concurrently with both top-down and bottom-up dynamics that are fundamental to the healing process. Top-down, we address identity distortions resulting from shame-based identifications and pride-based counter-identifications. Bottom-up, we work with nervous system dysregulation. We continually keep in mind the distress cycle, which involves the interplay of top-down and bottom-up dynamics.

 

[mkrnhr]

The only way to actually change character is to ACTUALLY learn to think, which is a top-down process. Create new thoughts which result in new behaviors.

Yeah, focusing on past traumas when your attitude is selfish, childish, narcissistic and generally character disturbed, will only enhance victimhood and prevent any real progress. This is what Samenow points again and again, the criminal mind always finds excuses to not confront itself.

However, reading Healing Developmental Trauma does clarify a lot more on the Top-Bottom and Bottom-Top approach.

Not only selfish but also useless if there is no real action behind. Learning how to think (and act accordingly) gives a different meaning to the proverbial "mind over matter". It's not some magical Harry Potter style superpower but the acquired skill to outsmart the programs and past thinking-error imprints. That would be being like an Odysseus of the mind in other words.

 

[Mandatory Intellectomy]

I'm finishing The Psychopath Inside, and I just came across this:

One other close friend, Mary Beth, a younger woman I’ve written a couple of papers with, told me straight up, “You’re a psychopath and I don’t want to be around you anymore.” She has left my life, apparently for good, even though we had always had a good relationship.

This woman... is doing it right. You identify the psychopath, you tell him straight up that you don't want him around, and you cut all ties. Done. Countless future disasters averted.

 

[Laura]

I'm finishing The Psychopath Inside, and I just came across this:

One other close friend, Mary Beth, a younger woman I’ve written a couple of papers with, told me straight up, “You’re a psychopath and I don’t want to be around you anymore.” She has left my life, apparently for good, even though we had always had a good relationship.

This woman... is doing it right. You identify the psychopath, you tell him straight up that you don't want him around, and you cut all ties. Done. Countless future disasters averted.

I agree. And he writes it in a way to extract pity. Typical. The whole book is a pity ploy.

 

[Mandatory Intellectomy]

What's your take on this whole "nature" vs. "nurture" thing?

I'd say it's something like this:

Nature good, nurture good - you'll probably turn out fine
Nature bad, nurture bad - you'll probably turn out pretty messed up
Nature good, nurture bad - nobody can say what will happen
Nature bad, nurture good - nobody can say what will happen

If you haven't read Raine's Anatomy of Violence yet, he has more to say about this, but the bottom line is that there is no bottom line.

One problem is that the terms nature and nurture are too wide and vague and could be broken down to any number of factors, and there would always be some good and some bad ones. But you can't get any meaningful result by just lining them up and doing a count. There's pretty much an infinite amount of influences that can line up in an infinite amount of ways, to the point that I think even one event in your life could flip the switch one way or another.

My impression from Raine's book is that no matter what theory you come up with about this, you'll always find an exception.

Both nature and nurture have an impact, but to what extent and how exactly things will turn out seems rather hard to predict. Fallon's case has plenty of the bad markers, but he turned out relatively OK, and as he himself admits, a lot of it was due to sheer luck, which is an interesting factor in itself.

And as Altair said, there's also your own choice, or free will, which can play a significant role, but here, again, is a caveat. If you have high intelligence, you can probably understand your position quite well and your will can make a lot of difference, but on the other hand, if life deals you really shitty cards on all levels, we may question how much free will you really have (with bad genes, low intelligence, terrible environment... see Donta Page).

So except when everything lines up really good or really bad for you, it's really hard to draw any conclusions.

 

[Gwenllian]

I'm finishing The Psychopath Inside, and I just came across this:

One other close friend, Mary Beth, a younger woman I’ve written a couple of papers with, told me straight up, “You’re a psychopath and I don’t want to be around you anymore.” She has left my life, apparently for good, even though we had always had a good relationship.

This woman... is doing it right. You identify the psychopath, you tell him straight up that you don't want him around, and you cut all ties. Done. Countless future disasters averted.

I agree. And he writes it in a way to extract pity. Typical. The whole book is a pity ploy.

Yes, it is one big pity ploy, especially the last chapters were rough, OSIT, in which Fallon wrote that people that are close to psychopaths should support them or something like that. Also, the fact that he is part of a military think tank does not bode well.

 

[Ant22]

I'm finishing The Psychopath Inside, and I just came across this:

One other close friend, Mary Beth, a younger woman I’ve written a couple of papers with, told me straight up, “You’re a psychopath and I don’t want to be around you anymore.” She has left my life, apparently for good, even though we had always had a good relationship.

This woman... is doing it right. You identify the psychopath, you tell him straight up that you don't want him around, and you cut all ties. Done. Countless future disasters averted.

I agree. And he writes it in a way to extract pity. Typical. The whole book is a pity ploy.

Yes, it is one big pity ploy, especially the last chapters were rough, OSIT, in which Fallon wrote that people that are close to psychopaths should support them or something like that. Also, the fact that he is part of a military think tank does not bode well.

Agreed. There were multiple moments where I just thought "is he actually being serious?". Take the quote above about Mary Beth. She must have had reasons to do what she did and yet it didn't even cross his mind that what he considered to be a "good relationship" clearly was the opposite for her.

Like Samenow's criminals, Fallon fails to recognise the impact his behaviour has on other people yet he expects the reader to feel sorry for him because he got hurt by the friend's rejection.

There was also a part where he talked about flirtatious relationships he had with other women, which hurt his wife. Somehow I doubt those relationships remained in the sphere of platonic flirtation. He quoted one of his friends who told him that he couldn't even be relied upon to show up to parties and get togethers if something more exciting came up so he didn't strike me as someone whose moral brakes and consideration of other people could have stopped him from moving further. That's just my speculation of course.

All in all it was a very useful reading. Not as useful as Samenow (at least for me) but it did provide quite a lot of insight into thought patterns of individuals like him.

 

[Cosmos]

While I was reading Raines Anatomy of Violence I kept thinking that something seems to be missing there. I listened to the line of argument he put forward about a whole number of possible contributing physical factors of why some people might be prone to psychopathic behaviour and thinking and kept wondering what is about the people who obviously also share the same physical characteristics and circumstances and do NOT embrace the same psychopathic thinking and behaviour. How can one reconcile that, I was thinking? And how could Raine reconcile that? I couldn't quite put my finger on what it exactly was, that bugged me there. I kept thinking of a close family member of mine, who most definitely has a "broken brain" since birth and stayed a developmental stage of ca. 6-7 year old boy, but yet, perfectly knew from the get-go what is right and what is wrong and behaved decently his whole live, showed remorse and changed into a positive direction when things were pointed out to him. There must be more then physical attributes that determine how a person thinks and behaves and Raine seems to be somewhat stuck in the purely scientific approach there.

Then I was thinking about what Collingwood said about being in the scientific mode of thinking/being and the errors in it. I think Collingwoods points might explain the thinking Raine develops about the subject and especially his last chapters on "how to make things better", basically again through the scientific principle. From a historical/philosophical mindset, there clearly must be more then materiality involved there. It seems Raine can't go there.

Now I'm almost finished with Samenows The Criminal Mind and he pretty much spells out what I was wondering about in Raines book. I'm surprised how obvious (and objectively true) the line of argument is, that Samanow develops in there, through his many decades of directly working with criminals. I mean, I'm surprised because it is again something that stares us right in the face every day and it is only now that Samenow spells it out so clearly, that we can be aware of it. Best way to describe it is : "how in the world could I have missed this obvious fact?". What Samenow presents also puts a whole number of things in a new light. For example, how come, that in the last decades a whole host of new categories of "conditions", "mental illnesses" and "anxieties" where created, which would have previously fallen under more simple explanations in the line Samenow arguments. How come that our society missed that obvious fact? How come that in the last decades more and more money and resources are spend on "helping" criminal minds through strengthening their self-esteem rather then work with the tools Samewow provides? How is it that our society is doing its utmost to protect and help criminal minds while decently thinking and behaving people are neglected in so many aspects? I mean, Samenow and his tutor explain this simple fact for over 50 years now, and what has changed? In fact, it is getting worse.

And yes what Samenwo describes is a very clear reminder for us all on the principles of the work and that it is clearly what we think that leads to what we do. As he correctly and eloquently explains, the criminal mind is a matter of degree and we all exhibit similar thinking patterns to one extent or the other. But yet again he makes it very clear that "BIOLOGY IS NOT DESTINY"!

It all seems to come down to choices and free will, which is another thing that probably bugged me in Raines account of what is going on. Some people seem to be determent to consciously make decisions towards STS while others strive for STO, while consciously making the right decisions. If one would only read Raine, one could easily get away with the idea that biology is all that exists and we have pretty much zero free will. Samenow makes things much clearer. I also noticed that Samenow speaks shortly about Raines new work in the 2014 edition of his book.

Listened to a couple interesting interviews and presentations from Samenow yesterday (see attachment below) in which he answers a number of interesting questions. He also speaks about Raines new book at some point and that he finds his research pretty interesting. At some point he also speaks about the mind and that many scientists seem to miss the obvious fact, that it can also work the other way around, namely, that what our mind/thinking does, effects biology. I get the impression that Samenow thinks there might be more to the story then pure materiality. It is also interesting that he states at some point, that the deterministic viewpoint off many scientists doesn't correspond with what he discovered and that a number of them don't want to engage with him because of that (paraphrasing).

The point Samenow brings up in the book and in the interviews about the "why" question is also pretty interesting in light of what we know from "the work" and from Collingwood. It seems like we are all prone to first ask "why" and this makes it hard for us to see "what is actually happening". I think it is in line with what Collingwood described in regards to finding what is true, that asking "why" is contra productive in certain aspects and that we should rather ask "what does it mean?". I think that maybe the soul/seed question and the choice between STS and STO is behind what we see here in regards to some people being willing to change and others willing to embrace the criminal mind. I think Samenow comes much closer to the gist of what is going on with the thinking errors and that basically what kind of information we embrace shapes how we behave. It somehow seems to come down to this: Do we choose to embrace lies or the truth?

I recommend listening to the Samenows interviews attached below. Some are a bit blurry, but if you tune them up, you can hear what Samenow is saying.

Samenow Interviews here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_0SXQ_oqc5-nzQEqlILzdmnlUSQU2WZ-?usp=sharing

 

[Altair]

And as Altair said, there's also your own choice, or free will, which can play a significant role, but here, again, is a caveat. If you have high intelligence, you can probably understand your position quite well and your will can make a lot of difference, but on the other hand, if life deals you really shitty cards on all levels, we may question how much free will you really have (with bad genes, low intelligence, terrible environment... see Donta Page).

Probably, not much but we can acquire it through our conscious efforts:

Q: (MM) Don't you get more free will by assimilating knowledge?
A: Yes!! Yes!!
Q: (L) So, in other words, knowledge and awareness makes you aware that you have free will, and also makes you aware of what actions actually ARE acts of free will, and therefore, when you know or suspect the difference between the lies and deception and truth, then you are in a position to be in control of your life?
A: Yes.

From Casswiki:

The question of free will has many levels. At the level of the universe, we could say that the only reason why anything exists is free will. The creative will of the All mediates between the thought centers of being and non-being, creating a dance of all possible forms.

The concept of free will becomes much more ambiguous when applied at the human level. We could postulate that anything with some degree of consciousness somehow retains some spark of the uncreated, primordial free will. If this were not so, we could not define concepts of responsibility, which after all are central to any ethics.

The greatest problem for manifested free will at the human level is that man is not one: One I wills, another does not, a third is not even aware of the whole question.

Free will has nothing to do with desires, it is unconditioned, it is for its own sake, yet it is not arbitrary or random, it may have a direction which is a reason unto itself. The free will possible to man in this sense is far from the possibility of arbitrary indulgence which is often the only thing modern Western discourse understands with freedom.

 

[987baz]

I recommend listening to the Samenows interviews attached below. Some are a bit blurry, but if you tune them up, you can hear what Samenow is saying.

Samenow Interviews here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_0SXQ_oqc5-nzQEqlILzdmnlUSQU2WZ-?usp=sharing

Thanks for the interviews Altair!