You may think that you’re a pretty positive person. But we’re betting no matter how hard you try, you wouldn’t be able to out-happy Matthieu Ricard, a French Buddhist monk who’s been nicknamed “the happiest man on earth.”
Seem like a stretch? We’re not just claiming that title based on the fact that Ricard is never seen without a smile, or that monks are generally a pretty beatific bunch – he’s got science on his side, too. In 2004, researchers at University of Wisconsin conducted a study on the brain patterns of hundreds of volunteers from different walks of life. The bell curve of the MRI measurements fell between +0.3 (a Sylvia Plath acolyte, no doubt) to -0.3 (Richard Simmons, perhaps?). But Ricard alone achieved an astonishing score of -0.45 – a level of joy so far above the others that his score was nearly off the chart.
So how did Ricard become the world’s happiest man? The 60-year-old monk didn’t always live a quiet life in the Himalayan mountains – as a young man, he was lauded as one of the world’s most promising biologists. But in 1972, he dropped out of the stressful world of French academia, trading in his laboratory for a monastery in Darjeeling, India, where he studied under Tibetan master Kangyur Rinpoche. In the years since, he has become well known as an author and photographer, and he serves as the Dalai Lama’s personal translator in France. He has devoted his life to the study of Buddhist philosophy and the art of happiness – and he firmly believes that the rest of us can achieve his incredible level of joy, too.
“The mind is malleable,” Ricard told The Independent. “Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.”
To fill your life with joy, he said, you must recognize what already makes you happy, and work to change your mental balance. “You have to identify what it is in that situation that makes you happy. It’s as though you’re making a journey, and you look in your rucksack to find it half filled with provisions, half with stones. You need to take out the stones and put in more provisions.”
In his new book, Happiness, Ricard serves as your own personal cross-trainer in the art of happiness, with advice on meditative exercises to increase peace of mind, and his own philosophies on how to fill your life with joy. With his help, you might just be able to tune out your noisy neighbor’s Metallica cover band for a few minutes, and imagine you’re relaxing on a private beach instead. If you can’t make it out to visit a Buddhist monastery any time soon, his book might just be the relief you need.
<a href=http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/191>Here</a> is video of Ricard speaking at the 2004 TED conference.
Day Two: Expectations And Realities - Getting To Grounded Work
Having seen on Day One that psychology could be applied successfully in organizations, today I want to look at a couple of the biggest movements in work psychology that arose out of work psychology rather than management thinking.
The first led to the OD movement, Organization Development began with action. Two types of action: Action Research and Action Learning. In a sentence both emphasize self-awareness as the key to organizations developing a strategic edge over the competition and to sustained growth and the strength to cope with change and when things go wrong.
Kurt Lewin [1890 - 1947]
Action Research was the child of one of the most brilliant minds ever in psychology, Kurt Lewin. Lewin was simply a brilliant mind, and a very good scientist. Many attribute the growth and impetus of social psychology and organizational psychology to him, and he influenced many outside of his specialist areas with his ideas and thinking.
The most famous example being his work on genidentity, also known as counterpart theory, that looks a the commonality between physics and biology to explain how objects arrive to be as they are - and whether they remain the same when the original materials are gone - for example, new cells in the human body, or the famous logic puzzle of the Ship of Thesus, where all parts of the ship are replaced - is it still the same ship? Fpr physicists these are important questions. It was no doubt this line of thought that seems to have turned Lewin from being a behavorist to a gestalt psychologist.
Behavorism initally looks very promising in psychology. It was, by far, the most influential movement in lab and experimental psychology in the early parts of the twentieth century, especially in America. Behavorism relies on scientific evidence, observation, and denies subjective experience. It you can’t produce the same result again it ain’t valid.
The only problem with this is that much of what psychology deals with: why do we think about things differently, what is the mind, why do we make decisions differently etc; are subjective.
Franz Brentano [1838 - 1917]
This gave rise to the Gestalt school in Berlin with its roots in Franz Brentano’s very influential lectures in Vienna from 1874 - 1895. Among Brentano’s circle that he is known to have directly influence include his most famous student Sigmund Freud, as well as the founder of anthroposophy Rudolph Steiner, the originator of the phemenology school, Edmund Husserl, which stated that all we know about the world is how our mind’s experience them, and the originator of the idea of the Gestalt, Christian von Ehrenfels. Bretano’s idea that the relation between the mind and the outside world is the relationship of the human condition was a hugely influential one.
Christian Von Ehrenfels [1859 - 1932]
Von Ehrenfels’ idea of the gestalt, along with Husserl phenomenology, found a champion of his cause in Max Wertheimer with is two of his colleagues Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka at the University of Frankfurt in 1912. Wertheimer began by looking at the phenomenon of human sight and light and kept wondering how we are able to piece together images from patterns rather than the whole.
Max Wertheimer [1880 - 1943]
These three went on to establish the Gestalt movement in Berlin. (Not to be confused with gestalt therapy also called empty chair therapy.) Wertheimer has read Ehrenfels’ work where the term gestalt (Literally: form) was coined to mean that sum of the whole is not only greater than its parts, but is also not simply put together in sequence, like say a computer, but rather arises organically from all directions. While juxtaposed to this, but in conjunction, structure does make up wholeness. It was influential thinking that and eventually would lead to cognitive psychology replacing behavorism..
In his own words:
“The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clearcut cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole.”
Social Research, 11 (translation of lecture at the Kant Society, Berlin, 1924).
Gestalt was obviously a pretty useful way to think about how the mind and brain work. It was also a way to think about synergy and our social interactions in groups and organizations as surely the whole idea of the effect of an organization is to achieve something greater than the sum of the parts. It is also very sueful in problem solving as it asks who the parts relate to the whole, and how the whole relates to the parts; it also considers the gaps to be important
So back to Kurt Lewin.
Lewin had begun as a behavorist, but found in Gestalt what he had been missing: why groups work. He argued that group work should be better than it was, that group work should produce results, and that with self-awareness the group should get better and better at what they do.
Lewin began by looking at what stops us achieving our goals. He developed the idea and called it force field analysis. Asking what forces were stopping or helping us to go from our current state to our desired state helped groups to see the invisible problems more clearly - but identifying the problems alone wasn’t enough.
Lewin had the gumption to ask what about the people themselves? Aren’t we as often as not ourselves responsible for creating the force fields, for putting barriers in the way and making life difficult for the group?
Here, force field analysis helped, but the fact remained that though we see the fault in others easily we are slow to acknowledge it in ourselves.
The issue is not just how to tell someone what they need to do to change, or even get them to listen and understand that, the problem is to keep working with them effectively afterwards.
So Action Research.
Action research is a way of framing group work that allows people to create a learning environment, or in Lewin’s phrase a “community of practice”, it is both problem solving and a strategical tool that allows organizations to become more self-aware.
How does it work?
Well, it works on a learning loop. Loops are common in quality: plan, act, check, re-evaluate, we learn as we’re doing. They range from a simple plan-check-do cycle to more advanced cycles like Six Sigma and OODA loops. The latter helped fighter pilots to predict likely behavior of enemy pilots in Vietnam, six sigma developed by motorola reduces error to six parts or less in a million, handy in manufacturing.
Lewin coined the term feedback from electrical engineering to mean constructive criticism. More than that though action research is about building a non-judgemental culture in an organization where people genuinely listen to each other rather than simply pushing their viewpoint.
Revans was originally an astrophysicist studying with both Rutherford and Thompson at the Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge University. I am lucky enough to have met those who knew Revans well, and the most common trait I have heard is that he was genuinely a humble man. He chose to leave his work in Cambridge to move instead to the Essex education board as he was convinced that he was an educator. He went on to beome the director of education between 1945-1950 of one of Britain’s largest employees: the National Coal Board.
While there he developed his ideas around Action Learning.
He developed a simple formula to express why people don’t succeed at work, and what they needed to do to remedy that:
L = P + Q
L is for learning. P = programmed knowledge (What we have been taught) and Q is for insightful questioning. So learning is a combination of knowledge and good questions. There are four major questions Who? Where? What? When? which should cover most aspects of the Q part of the equation.
Revans’ and Lewin’s point is entirely valid: we would rather damage our relationships in an organization rather than use some simple tools to acquire the wherewithal to learn how to genuinely learn and develop that organization effectively.
While it helps to have a practioner as an impartial facilitator the point is to find the heart and willingness to genuinely learn from each other. Management philosophy has picked up on this as we move more and more away from command and control structures to praticipative work.
Work psychology seeks to bring out the best in the organization, and Lewin and Revans both spent their lives dedicated to the idea that work should not be grey, crushing, or boring.
The other major point of the Action schools is that it moved work psychology into the workplace as a strategic tool to help individuals and companies develop strategies for excellence.
Day Three: Moving Beyond Humanistic Psychologies To The Modern Workplace
Day One: Re-Evaluating The Origins Of Work Psychology
Work psychology as discussed in the Course Introduction arose out of a need to accept that profitable work meant understanding how to get the most out of people at work.
This was not just about the relationship between people but also the relationship of people to an organization, and what working together means.
To see where to start we need to see how organizations arose, and where the work psychologist came from. Firstly, where it did not come from.
Henri Fayol [1841 - 1925]
Not surprisingly the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the need to organize the work force - and for that we need look no further than Henri Fayol - he might truly be called the father of modern management. His fourteen rules, published in 1917 as Administration Industrielle Ét Génerale while he was managing director of the Compagnie De Commentry Fourchambeau Decazeville mining company, are still relevant:
Specialization of labour. Specializing encourages continuous improvement in skills and the development of improvements in methods.
Authority. The right to give orders and the power to exact obedience.
Discipline. No slacking, bending of rules. The workers should be obedient and respectful of the organization.
Unity of command. Each employee has one and only one boss.
Unity of direction. A single mind generates a single plan and all play their part in that plan.
Subordination of Individual Interests. When at work, only work things should be pursued or thought about.
Remuneration. Employees receive fair payment for services, not what the company can get away with.
Centralization. Consolidation of management functions. Decisions are made from the top.
Chain of Superiors (line of authority). Formal chain of command running from top to bottom of the organization, like the military.
Order. All materials and personnel have a prescribed place, and they must remain there.
Equity. Equality of treatment (but not necessarily identical treatment).
Personnel Tenure. Limited turnover of personnel. Lifetime employment for good workers.
Initiative. Thinking out a plan and do what it takes to make it happen.
Esprit de corps. Harmony, cohesion among personnel. It’s a great source of strength in the organisation.
(Taken from Irwin Gray’s 1987 translation)
Fayol’s thinking when aligned with Max Weber’s bureaucracy and Fredrick Taylor’s scientific management gave all the impetus that was needed for classical management to thrive. However, it was noted to have drawbacks.
Why didn’t seem to make workers work harder simply because they wanted too?
And why was reward or punishment the only way to get them to work?
How could this new science from central Europe, psychology, with its emphasis on human behaviour, help?
Hugo Münsterberg [1863 - 1916]
One of the, if not the, psychologists who established the field of work psychology was Hugo Münsterberg. Münsterberg was noted for his scientific rigour, his keen mind, and an an emphasis on experimental psychology (That is psychological evidence garnered from experiments).
He not only worked at Harvard, but he was president of the American Psychological Association. (There is an excellent page from Muskigum College, OH; on him, that has been up since 1997, here.)
In 1913 he published in quick succession firstly a German version Psychologie und Wirlschaftsleben: Ein Beitrag zur angewandten Experimental-Psychologie (Leipzig: J.A. Barth) that he produced in English (And claimed from the off was not simply a translation but was adaptated to American culture) Psychology and Industrial Efficiency.
(Just to show life is stranger than imagination: the work is dedicated to one Harold F McCormick, then Chairman of The International Harvester Company, heir to the McCormick newspaper fortune, beneficiary of Chicago University, a man who had married the prototypical US tycoon John D Rockerfeller’s daughter, Edith, and then divorced said Edith to marry the notoriously bad opera singer, the truly marvelous Ganna Walksa, who married six times, including a Russian count, two millionaires, and the leading US Tibetan Buddhist scholar of the day. Orson Welles would later say that both Harold, along with other leading industrialists, and Gatta, in particular, were inspirational for the characters of Charles Foster Kane and Kane’s second wife, Susan Alexander, in his 1941 classic.)
Over twenty-four chapters, Münsterberg showed through experiments with electrical railway, telephone, and shipping workers that fitting the right person to the right job produced more satisfaction that F W Taylor’s scientific management, which has sought to find universal working conditions that would make work work for everyone.
The other major problem with Scientific Management he noted was that it was open to abuse: it could be used to not increase efficiency, but rather to increase work rates, and productivity in a machine like fashion (And he wasn’t half right either).
As a footnote: it wasn’t until 1966 that J W Brehm published his famous paper A Theory Of Psychological Reactance that the other major drawback to Scientific Management was fully noted.
Reactance is a cognitive bias (Why we think in certain ways, or act according to certain cognitive processes) that says humans naturally act opposite to what they believe will curtail their personal choices.
In Taylor’s defense he never meant Scientific Management to be abused, and did honestly believe that time and motion studies, and clocking in clocking out would improve work.
I actually remain a fan of Taylor’s writings, but not Taylorism. I believe that Taylor was right fundamentally right: it isn’t what we do that matters half as much as how we do it - and there are some universal rules that make work work. What makes others see us as professional will apply no matter what type of work we do: competence, composure, commitment etc;
Münsterberg died in 1916 and would no doubt have appreciated the Hawthorne Experiments more than most. It is a tragedy that history concentrates more on Fredrick W Taylor and the Gilbreths than on Münsterburg.
A re-evaluation of his major contribution to modern HR is long overdue. His idea that if you find people who will love their work you will create a brilliant organization is very valid.
Then something happened that changed the way we think about people at work. At, in a fit of irony worthy of a Greek comedy, what began as an experiment to put people into artificially lit buildings and so make GE good pocket money in the proceedings, turned into one of the most important discoveries of work psychology
G Elton Mayo, F. J. Roethlisberger, and the Hawthorne experiments for General Electric, from fall of 1924 through to the spring of 1927, remain proof that if we approach science experimentation with an open mind we can truly contribute. The idea was originally a short study to see if brightness of light bulbs affected workers’ efficiency. Not suprisingly it was thought brighter bulbs brighter workers, dimmer bulbs dimmer workers.. The experiments were sponsored by the National Research Council of the National Association of Sciences in co-operation with The Illuminating Engineering Society’s Committee on Research.
The result was unexpected and could have been ignored in favour of the original premise, luckily Mayo had scruples, and a good solid scientific background in experimental psychology. His team and he discovered that giving the workers control over the light bulbs was way more effective way to get more work out of that individual than any increase in brightness, and in fact, under those circumstances, the wattage and luminosity of the bulb mattered not a jot. What he discovered is important: we want control, we want to be trusted to take control, we value being treated as adults, we want to be trusted to be allowed to have input and control over our environment.
Being a meticulous and good psychologist it took eight years in total, until 1932 for Mayo, and two further experiment designs (Involving relay assembly and bank wiring) to provide a set of data that showed that the right to individual determination in our choices creates cultural change in organisations. The conclusions, which deserve to be read slowly, wisely, and with an open heart, are here:
1. Work is a group activity.
2. The social world of the adult is primarily patterned about work activity.
3. The need for recognition, security and sense of belonging is more important in determining workers’ morale and productivity than the physical conditions under which he works.
4. A complaint is not necessarily an objective recital of facts; it is commonly a symptom manifesting disturbance of an individual’s status position.
5. The worker is a person whose attitudes and effectiveness are conditioned by social demands from both inside and outside the work plant.
6. Informal groups within the work plant exercise strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of the individual worker.
7. The change from an established society in the home to an adaptive society in the work plant resulting from the use of new techniques tends continually to disrupt the social organization of a work plant and industry generally.
8. Group collaboration does not occur by accident; it must be planned and developed. If group collaboration is achieved the human relations within a work plant may reach a cohesion which resists the disrupting effects of adaptive society.
Not bad, eh?
Tomorrow we will look at how the social psychology movement created new thoughts about what work can be; but we will also look a the practical problems of work, and start to ask how work psychology can contribute to make work more than just a growing experience for the individual, it can also help companies to be strategically poised.
Day Two: Expectations And Realities - Getting To Grounded Work
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d
Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
“I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
This first stanza from George Herbert’s (1593-1632) most famous sonnet, Holy Sonnet’s X, reflects on Love gently persuading us to love once more. The metaphysical poets were consumed with how we might express the deepest emotions lightly, and the search to understand the physiology of those emotions has long been a goal of medicine.
The history of emotions has been a chequered one. Rather than talk about elements, or humours, or a full history let’s jump in with the person considered by many scientists to be the Einstein of the 19th Century, Charles Robert Darwin (1809 -1882). British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, said “What Galileo and Newton were to the Seventeenth Century, Darwin was to the Nineteenth.”
Darwin’s scientific methodology was a superb mix of observation, analysis, and deep, deep thought. His written output, including publication, was very prolific, and wide-ranging. They included works on the variation caused to domestic animal by selective breeding, books on orchids, geology, tributes to fellow scientists, manuals on the scientific method, including in 1849 the wonderfully entitled On The Use Of The Microscope On Board Ship.
The work that bears directly on our topic was published in 1872, with a second edition edited by Francis Darwin in 1890 The Expression Of Emotions In Animal And Man. It has a precursor in 1867 and 1868 when Darwin published three works that are grouped as Queries About Emotions. By the time Darwin comes to 1872 he has developed a keen interest.
The Expression Of Emotions In Animal And Man is divided into fourteen chapters. The first three cover the general principles of emotions and Darwin then goes from the introduction on to discuss emotions in animal in chapters 4 & 5, which many pet owners should love to read, and then turns to man, looking first at Suffering and Weeping (Ch.6); Low Spirits, Anxiety, Grief, Dejection, Despair (Ch.7); Joy, High Spirits, Love, Tender Feelings, Devotion (Ch.8); Reflection, Meditation, Ill-temper, Sulkiness, Determination (Ch.9); Hatred And Anger (Ch.10); Disdain, Disgust, Contempt, Guilt, Pride etc; Helplessness, Patience, Affirmation And Negation (Ch. 11); Surprise, Astonishment, Fear, Horror (Ch. 11); Self-attention, Shame, Shyness, Modesty: Blushing (Ch. 13) and finally, a final chapter for conclusions.
It is a fascinating read. The full-text is available online with all of Darwin’s publications and a vast number of letters and correspondence at Cambridge University’s Darwin Online Project. Dr John Van Whye and his team have done an outstanding job; and well deserve the 20 million hits the site has received to date.
Darwin’s work was incredibly influential from the earliest days of psychology. Even the William James, as well as E Thorndike, and John B Watson, and then finally B F Skinner of the behaviorists, as well as Ivan Pavlov, along with Vladimir M Bekhterev, Pavlov’s arch nemesis (Who made a very important contribution to neuroscience through his work on the hippocampus and memory), were all deeply influenced by Charles Darwin’s work. There is an excellent book that covers the tale by Robert Boakes called “From Darwin To Behaviorism” (Cambridge University Press 1984).
To quickly illustrate the point, Darwin’s précis of the first chapter reads as follows: “The three chief principles stated–The first principle–Serviceable actions become habitual in association with certain states of the mind, and are performed whether or not of service in each particular case– The force of habit–Inheritance–Associated habitual movements in man–Reflex actions–Passage of habits into reflex actions– Associated habitual movements in the lower animals–Concluding remarks” One can see the origins of operant conditioning, think Pavlov’s dogs, here!
At the same time that Darwin was studying the outward appearance of emotions Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880), a French anatomist was looking for emotions from the inside out. Paul Broca, as he preferred to be known, has from an early age shown exceptional aptitude. He was enrolled as a medical student when he was only 17 and graduated by the age of 20. Even given that his father was a doctor himself it is still a remarkable achievement. By the time he was 24 he had been appointed professor of surgical pathology at Le Sorbonne.
He is best known for identifying the key speech area, named after him, and which
along with the Wernick area, discovered by Carl Wernicke, (1848-1905) make up the two main language processing units in the brain.
However, as significant, and possibly even more so, was Broca’s discovery of the limbic pathway. The limbic pathway looks like a loop running from the hippocampus just above the brain stem at the bottom of the brain. If you took a picture of the brain and drew a ring from bottom center, then went back, and then up forward and round, it would pretty much look like the limbic pathway. the important thing to note is that it transverses many functional areas of the brain - in other words, it has a big effect.
Broca began firstly with otters. And he thought that the olfactory tract and smell were directly involved. But he also know that in animals without smell and so olifactory tract, e.g. dolphins, the limbic tract was still fully developed. He wrote:
“. . . il constitue dans le manteau une division primaire, une division fondamentale qui est plus qu’un lobe, qui renferme d’ailleurs plusieurs lobes, et que le simple nom de lobe ne caracteriserait pas suffisamment: je l’appellerai done le grand lobe limbique.”
Broca never achieved full support for his idea that here was the emotional tract until 75 years later when the Papez
Pathway was discovered by American neuropathologist and MD James Papez (1883 - 1958). He took the accumulated evidence and began working on the problem. He developed his hypothesis by injecting rabies into animal brains and seeing how it progressed. He was a particularly brilliant lecturer according to accounts with a special interest in paralysis. The Papez circuit is one of the main pathways of the Limbic system and is responsible for emotions. It also plays a major role in memory.
The limbic pathway runs through much pf the brain’s main influencing architecture for homeostasis and cognition. For example, the cingulate gyrus takes care of blood pressure and heart beat, but also plays a role in attentiveness. Both motivation to succeed and fears are in the amygdala, sleep, sexual arousal, hormonal release are in the hypothalamus, and the thalamus itself. The best analogy I have heard of the thalamus is that if the frontal cortex is the boss, doing all the thinking and solving, then the thalamus is a super-secretary as there along with the cerebellum all afferent (incoming) signals get cleared.
1. Language and Reasoning 2. Frontal Eye Field and Speech 3. Emotions and Personality
Ok, So what does this mean for us? How does knowing the anatomy of an emotion help us to deal better with our emotions? Well, it does have an important health aspect as the Limbic pathway is known for its influence on the endocrine system, as we discussed on days one and two, and lights up during sex through its connections to the nucleus accubens - the brain’s pleasure center, and is one of the main hitting points for drug effects. As it is also attached to the amygdala, as we discussed on day two, the fight /flight center, and the hippocampus the memory center (Think of a hippo running through a camp, and picture that it has the letter M for memory tattooed on it), we begin to see how recreational drug use creates wild euphoria, followed by depression, or the need for another feeling kick, and affects the memory. The one thing we have learned from the limbic system is that a happy brain is a healthy brain.
This brings up-to date with Dr Martin Seligman. As the main influencer in a key movement in modern psychology, positive psychology, he is a hugely influential and an important figure in psychology. A former head of clinical training at the University of Pennsylvania, and President of the American Psychology Society. He was also named the 13th most cited psychologist of the 20th Century Why? Well, his work has led to psychology being about positive prevention and well-being rather than dealing with the problems that humans have. Traditional fields of clinical, forensic, criminal, development, cognitive etc; have all integrated his approaches. It is very important to note that the field of positive psychology and happiness, more accurately called eudaomonia, is founded on rigourous scientific principles and is not some self-help, folk-psychology movement.
There is a wonderful video, which pokes fun a the difference a century in psychology has made, of a Seligman’s learned optimism on an elderly patient: Sigmund Freud. It is fun, but also very instructive.
As we learn more and more about happiness, well-being, and positiveness we see something: empirical proof from fMRI scans that happy brains produce healthier bodies it keeps the body in better homeostasis. As we discussed on day one and two the HPA-axis produces stress hormones, and it sees the limbic pathway balances or augment this depends depeding on whether we are happy or depressed. Extraordinary really. Happiness is the key to a healthy life.
Tomorrow, we will look at our known strategies that can be used in positive psychology, in particular Appreciative Inquiry, to understand that stress is conquerable.
Day Four: Strategies for happiness, as opposed to strategies for stress
Day One: Introduction to the Neuroscience and Medicine of Stress
Welcome to Business Intelegant’s five day open course on stress, moods, the brain, and the neuroscience behind it all. There also plenty of sites on stress, aren’t there? But not that many that really get into the meaning of it all in well, a deeper way.
What will help us to understand the neurobiology - and what is going on? What’s happening to our physical bodies? How and why does it alter our mental state? What does it do at a, literally, fundamental level to our cognitive abilities? How do those various hormones, neurotransmitters, and proteins react, and what are they anyway? How can our understanding change?
So, let’s go instead deep into the human brain and suggesting some tools that will define stress more clearly, and show how understanding the physiology of stress makes a difference.
Before we get there we’ll need to look at an aspect of the history of medicine in the first half of the twentieth century.
Or rather one man.
Hans Selye (1907 - 1982)
Hungarian-Canadian Endocrinologist
Hans Selye was born in Hungary in 1907. He may be considered the first to understand, evaluate, and promote the meaning of stress. He even coined the term stress, much like the founder of organization development, Kurt Lewin, (see Business Intelegant’s iGuru guide) coined the word feedback in 1930s from the fact that output feedback to input allowing for self-correction in electrical circuits, from engineering. Obviously engineers use the word stress. Measured in Pascals, in continuum physics all matter is subject to forces (Gas, liquid, plasma, solid) and so stress. In tensile physics, it has come to mean how much pressure a body can withstand before it breaks. And we all get that analogy.
Claude Bernard (1813 - 1878)
The Father Of Modern Physiology
More correctly Selye borrowed from homeostasis as developed by the father of modern physiology Claude Bernard in his famous statement “La fixité du milieu intérieur est la condition d’une vie libre et indépendante.” (A stabile internal environment is the condition for a free and independent life). Homeostasis is more than just how the body controls its temperature, it is how a system, open or closed, regulates its internal environment. And your body is an open system. Food in - Non-food out for starters.
Walter Bradford Cannon (1875 - 1945)
Walter Bradford Cannon, another major influence on Selye, invented the term, homeostasis, in 1932, in his book The Wisdom of the Body. There is a wonderful page on Walter here.
Selye had begun, as early as his second year in medical school to wonder about forces on bodies, internal and external. It is important to note that he never considered stress to be en emotive word, it was simply an indicator that something was happening, good or bad. For example, simply flexing a muscle is stress, as is a feeling of anxiety. Both exert forces.
Selye experimented on mice with various toxins and noticed that even though they developed different diseases they seemed to share some fundamental symptoms, which we will come to in a moment. These are the symptoms of stress, or the General Adaptive Syndrome.
Selye went on to notice the same held good for humans: many different diseases, but the same symptoms boxes were consistently there along with those symptoms peculiar to that specific disorder. He died in 1982, having set up with Alvin Toffler (See Business Intelegant’s iGuru Guide for more details) and Richard Earle, the Canadian Institute of Stress.
For an outstanding personal reminiscence of Hans Seyle look no further than fellow Hungarian Dr Istvan Berczi’s wonderful accounts of his experiences. Just wish all webpages were so good at recording personal history.
OK. So far, so good.
So, what are the symptoms we’re talking about?
Well, Selye describes these, based on observation. He noted that before any major disease was fully apparent patients
“felt and looked ill, had a coated tongue, complained of more or less diffuse aches and pains in the joints, and of intestinal disturbances with loss of appetite.” They also generally “had fever, enlarged spleen or liver, inflamed tonsils, a skin rash.”
So, what are these symptoms caused by? That’s the right question. We have a set of observable symptoms, all common, across the sample population (Our observed patients), who then all go on to develop different conditions.
So, our first conclusion, is that it’s something that’s happening internally.
Generally, but not always, as a result of external stresses.
How do we know that?
Because some sick people with the same diseases seemed to not develop these symptoms, and the observation was that they seemed far more at ease. But we’re jumping some 10 years ahead of ourselves.
His initial observation was that their homeostasis was better. They were, literally, more in control.
Ironically, he was only a second year medical student and admitted quite cheerfully that with more education he would have had no interest in these general symptoms. His intelegant moment lay in the question: why in the history of medicine had so little thought been given to the “syndrome of just being sick”. He observed later in life that it was only observation and deduction, and could have been made anytime after the Renaissance.
Even more ironically, his ideas were poo-poo’d by the supervising staff at medical school. Until ten years later. Like any good scientist he never forgot his Prague patients.
The scene now switches to Canada, where Selye lived the rest of his life. And he got lucky. His real interest by this time lay in the endocrine system. Think glands.
The clever thing about glands is they work whether there are nerve endings between organs or not. They are molecules that signal each other. You could say that the glands are the flight towers and the molecules the planes and they’re going from a specific airport to airport. They’re carried in the blood.
They include steroids, (Androgens, estrogens, glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids, progestagens), peptides and proteins (Lots of amino acid residues including, for example, insulin from the pancreas, follicle-stimulation, and any hormone from the pituitary gland - more on that later), and the rather significant amines (Such as noreprephine, epriphene, dopamine, and throxine) which are floating around the brain and perform the marvelous trick of being neurotransmitters too. (They make the neurons fire across the synaptic gap and so create the electricity that makes our brains, well, conscious. Smart, huh!)
So Selye looked at these symptoms and the endocrine system. And had his Eureka! moment. Being a good scientist he did test it for on while on small, furry creatures, and his initial hunch was confirmed. Yes, hormone release, when thrown into overload causes the unhealthy symptoms of stress.
He had also observed that some general medical care seemed to help everyone: easily digestible foods, keeping the room at a comfortable temperature, relaxation etc;
The genius was to put it all together.
He recognised that stress symptoms were caused by the hormonal overload which was augmented by a non-caring environment.
That on it’s own was significant.
But luck and hard work really do make for good inductive reasoning. Selye was trying to hard isolate hormones in from the placenta at the time. Here, I’ll let Istvan Berczi tell the tale:
“For a while it was thought that the adrenal enlargement and involution of lymphoid organs was specific for a particular hormone, but attempts to purify it always failed as the activity was lost. At some point it occurred to Selye that this, in fact, could be a nonspecific response to noxious agents, and, indeed, when he performed the control experiments, that was the case. He published a short note about his findings in Nature in 1936. During the same year a longer article was published by him in The British Journal of Experimental Pathology, where he demonstrated that the involution of the thymus was in fact mediated by the adrenal gland as it was absent in adrenalectomized animals if stressed. His experiments in chickens revealed that the Bursa of Fabricius is also extremely sensitive to steroid hormones.”
In other words, he had found out that it was not one hormone, or even one gland, and that was what had been confusing everyone, but rather the work of a combination of glands. More work followed between 1936 and 1946, he published an overview as a paper The general adaptation syndrome and the diseases of adaptation in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology, which identified the ternary causes of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal glands all working together. A triple whammy as it were.
So here goes:
You get stressed because:
The hypothalamus (It is the base of your brain and acts as the link between the brain and the endocrine system)
talks to
The pituitary gland, which releases ACTH (Adrenocorticotrophic Hormone) into the bloodstream and is pea-sized and sits at the base of the brain and is responsible for control of homeostasis - ah!)
Which activates the adrenal glands, just above the kidneys, to release the villain of the piece, corticoids.
In a study that may significantly advance the understanding of how cognitive-behavioral therapy affects the brain, researchers have shown that significant changes in activity in certain regions of the brain can be produced with as little as four weeks of daily therapy in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The discovery could have important clinical implications, according to principal investigator Sanjaya Saxena, M.D., Director of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, whose findings are published on line this week in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
“The study is exciting because it tells us more about how cognitive-behavioral therapy works for OCD and shows that both robust clinical improvements and changes in brain activity occur after only four weeks of intensive treatment,” said Saxena.
OCD is an anxiety disorder in which individuals have unreasonable fears or worries that they try to manage through ritualized compulsive behaviors to reduce the anxiety. For example, a patient may experience the urgent need to engage in certain rituals, such as hand washing or repeatedly checking that the oven is off or the front door is locked.
Past studies using functional brain imaging studies of patients with OCD have demonstrated that elevated activity along the frontal-subcortical circuits of the brain decreases in response to treatment with serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI) medications or cognitive-behavioral therapy. However, clinical improvement of OCD symptoms was expected to require up to 12 weeks of behavioral therapy or medication treatment, the standard treatments for OCD. Only a handful of studies have looked at how therapy affects brain function, and all previous studies had examined changes over several months of treatment.
Saxena and colleagues at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA made two novel discoveries in their study of 10 OCD patients and 12 control subjects.
“First of all, we discovered significant changes in brain activity solely as the result of four weeks of intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy,” said Saxena. “Secondly, these changes were different than those seen in past studies after a standard 12-week therapeutic approach using SRI medications or weekly behavioral therapy.”
The researchers obtained positron emission tomography (PET) scans of the ten OCD patients both before and after they received four weeks of a therapy known as “exposure and response prevention,” which gradually desensitizes patients to things that provoke obsessional fears or worries.
“This is the primary kind of therapy used for OCD. It teaches patients to pay attention to their internal experiences and tolerate scary thoughts without having to act on them,” said Saxena. “They learn that nothing terrible happens if they refrain from their usual compulsive behaviors.”
The normal control subjects received no treatment and were scanned twice, several weeks apart, and metabolic changes in the brain were compared between the two groups. After four weeks of therapy and without any changes in medication, the OCD patients showed significant improvements in OCD symptoms, depression, anxiety and overall functioning.
The PET scans of OCD patients demonstrated significant decreases in glucose metabolism — a measure of brain cell activity — in the right and left thalamus after treatment. These are areas of the brain involved in OCD and where changes have been seen in numerous past studies after longer-term treatment.
However, the PET scans in this study also showed a significant increase in activity in an area of the brain called the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in reappraisal and suppression of negative emotions. Increasing activity in this region corresponded to the OCD patients’ improvement in clinical symptoms after the four-week course of intensive therapy. Activity in this area had previously been found to increase after cognitive-behavioral therapy for major depression. Therefore, the researchers theorize that response to cognitive-behavioral therapy across a variety of disorders may require activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, according to Saxena.
Additional contributors to this study include E. Gorbis, J. O’Neill, S.K. Baker, K.M. Maidment, S. Chang, A.L. Brody, J.M. Schwartz and E.D. London, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA; M.A. Mandelkern of the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, and N. Salamon, Department of Radiology, UCLA. The study was funded in part by a grant from the National Institute for Mental Health.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - San Diego.
MLA
University of California - San Diego (2008, January 22). Rapid Effects Of Intensive Therapy Seen In Brains Of Patients With Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 22, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/01/080117164133.htm
Going to speak to Toastmaster is like being a lion, who made a good living out of Saturday afternoon’s in the Colisseum, suddenly confronted by the Lamb Himself!
Toastmasters are the world’s largest speakers’ organization. Anyone can join - all you need is a curiosity, and a desire to try speaking. If you’re already a great speaker then go - they hold competitions - you could become known for being the best speaker in the world! For the good they’re tough: one could perhaps say more Roastmasters than Toastmasters? But for the beginners they are instructive and kind: and above all for everyone it’s fun, and supportive.
I was invited for the second time by Chapter 58 - Section G, which covers among other areas Gothenburg. Gothenburg is the second largest city in Sweden and is the center for some of Sweden’s largest companies such as Volvo, both Volvo Cars and Volvo Truck, Astra Zeneca, and SKV, one of the world’s largest producers of ball bearings and tyres.
I was asked to speak on effective / inspirational leadership.I offered some maxims of leadership for clubs, which are different from the norm for business, though they share much in common:
In ambition: Want others greatness, not their own.
In goals: Make Leaders, not just followers.
In attitude: Treat others wonderfully and with deep respect.
In temperament: Don’t annoy or get annoyed: they coach.
In criticism: Are brief, and loving.
In their hearts: Value Truth.
In vision: Make a difference.
While exploring values and talking about simply getting the job done, there were some good laughs and a lot of interested faces. It wasn’t all roses, a couple felt there were was too much IT. I am at fault on this: I guess I work too much with youth who love the slideshows and yes I do like my Mac toy - but overall the thank you’s after were generous and genuine.
I would like to thank especially Alexandra Ohlsson for sponsoring the event, Elisabeth Nostedt, and Susanne Stensson, and Paul van der Vliet for their lovely praise.It was good to come home, as always, and I hope to be more involved with Toastmasters: it is a wonderful way to have my speaking evaluated!
The following from Karen Kaplan at the LA Times is worth flagging:
Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping.
As Major League Baseball struggles to rid itself of performance enhancing drugs, people in a range of other fields are reaching for a variety of prescription pills to enhance what counts most in modern life.
Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions.
“There isn’t any question about it — they made me a much better player,” said Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than $2.3 million as a poker player.”
Unlike the anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and blood-oxygen boosters that plague athletic competitions, the brain drugs haven’t provoked similar outrage. People who take them say the drugs aren’t giving them an unfair advantage but merely allow them to make the most of their hard-earned skills.
In the real world, there are no rules to prevent overachievers from using legally prescribed drugs to operate at peak mental performance. What patient wouldn’t want their surgeon to be completely focused during a life-or-death procedure?
“If there were drugs for investment bankers, journalists, teachers and scientists that made them more successful, they would use them too,” said Charles E. Yesalis, a doping researcher and emeritus professor at Pennsylvania State University. “Why does anyone think this would be limited to an athlete?”
