Hair Pulling In Ancient Literature - Part 4: Aristotle

Aristotle is a central figure in Western thought whose writings have shaped scientific and philosophical of our culture.  Interestingly, heo contributed to zoology in A History of Animals.  In it he focuses on hair and also hair plucking.  In the following passage Aristotle describes hair pulling and hair root extraction in a way that reveals he is talking from direct experience.

Hairs if plucked out before maturity grow again; but they do not grow again if plucked out afterwards. Every hair is supplied with a mucous

moisture at its root, and immediately after being plucked out it can lift light articles if it touch them with this mucous.

(Book 3, Part 11)

The final comment about the mucous moistness of lipid fat hair roots is something that many hair pullers would instantly recognise and is one of the most fascinating aspects of hair pulling to my mind.  Hair pullers develop a very intimate relationship with hair roots, which they explore orally.  Licking, sucking, tooth combing and eating roots is a central component of the hair pulling sequence and one that is often not mentioned very much because doctors focus more on hair extraction itself and its consequences, i.e. bald patches.  The white root, which Aristotle describes as have 'mucous moisture' is something of an edible delicacy to people with trichotillomania and the moist white lipid fat greedily consumed.  

Why is the lipid fat eaten and prized by hair pullers?  No one seems to know.  All we know is that the eating aspect forms an integral part of the cycle or sequence the behaviour.  Some psychologists have offered a symbolic interpretation - that the root represents the mother's breast.  But there is no way to verify this.  All we know is that the root offers comfort and also provides the appetitive reward that ensures the hair pulling cycle is endlessly repeated.  

All behaviours need a pay-off - appetitive or sexual - if they are to continue.  Maybe the hair root provides it.  Aristotle captures well the moist attraction of hair roots.

I'm a nomadic hunter gatherer...Get me out of here!

Home sweet home?  A settled (sedentary) lifestyle which replaced nomadism.

A major theme of this blog is what happens to organisms that are trapped or confined and unable to adapt to the situation they find themselves in.

A recent lecture by distinguished archaeologist Prof. Robert L. Kelly of Wyoming University outlined some of the reasons that led humans to give up their nomadic (roaming) way of life and become sedentary (staying in one place). 

Why is this line of enquiry important? Because historically humans have dealt with problems such as overcrowding, stresses related to food security and social inequality by simply getting up and moving on to some place new.  But if you can't change your environment you are forced to live in a situation where the pressures and stresses are ongoing - perhaps with no hope in sight.  

In such cases young organisms are especially vulnerable to psychological and physiological stresses that can produce self-directed behaviours. 

The main reason humans gave up on their roaming way of life is that we ran out of space - it was impossible to move on without encroaching on the territory of another group or tribe, according to Professor Kelly.  So you would have to be in a fairly desperate state (i.e. starving) for the conflict that comes with taking new lands to be worth the risks involved.

Robert Kelly outlined another major problem of having to remain in one location - you have to work harder to maintain the same standard of living.  Resources become more scarce and the land less fertile over time.  As a result women (who did the gathering) had to work harder and children were reared by their siblings and peers whilst mum was out labouring.  In time, slavery and loss of autonomy would follow as more and more labour was needed to keep production high.  This meant forcing people to remain in a situation that tested them to the psychological limits.  Another aspect of remaining in one place was that over time the population rose and with population pressure people became more aggressive and competitive towards the resources that were available.

Of course, the loss of the nomadic lifestyle had benefits too.  There would be less disease, food production would be streamlined and cultural advances would follow too.  But at a cost...

In modern life humans trapped in psychologically stressful situations can rarely solve the problem by walking away and starting afresh some place new.  Ongoing stresses relating to mortgage payments and job security mean families under pressure usually suffer a lot. Also families and social support networks are less strong once people are not living in smaller groups where people are more dependent on one another for survival.  In large settled towns people can come to feel isolated, powerless and insecure.  It also means that adaptive mechanisms that served our survival and well-being are less effective.  Regulating safety and comfort via approach v. withdraw behaviour is much more difficult if the dangers are embedded within an environment that you cannot escape from, e.g. a ghetto or a slum.  Social life means goal states (such as seeking comfort, safety, food security etc.) need to be negotiated socially, which places greater stress on attachments and social bonds.  If these relationships go wrong, due to illness or poverty there is a greater chance of self-directed behaviours emerging in my view. 

A sedentary lifestyle is clearly a source of great stress and though this state of affairs may be historically inevitable it must be remembered that our psychology was shaped by our nomadic past. This mismatch between where we historically came from and where we are now is fertile ground for evolutionary psychologists wishing to understand many abnormal behaviours that fall under the label of obsessive compulsive disorder, displacement behaviour, eating disorders etc.

References:
Prof. Robert L. Kelly,  (2013):  The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum (Cambridge University Press)

Hollywood and...er hair pulling?

Sam Peckinpah's 1970s western which features a hair tugging scene

Noted for his aesthetic of violence, hard drinking and not too gentle use of actors and animals, the movies of Sam Peckinpah are some of my personal favourites. The depiction of men struggling to survive in harsh landscapes, of males co-operating as well as competing and a whole catalogue of  characters from the low down and mean to the brave and stoically noble make his films a rich experience.

A friend bought me a DVD copy of Pat Garret And Billy The Kid a while ago and this week I got to watch it...it had been a long time since I had last seen it (VHS era). One hour and 20 minutes in I was really amazed by the use of hair tugging in one particular scene which perfectly fitted with the notion of this behaviour as a displacement action.

The plot leading up to the hair tugging is briefly this...A big landowner called Chisholm is buying up whole swathes of land to graze his cattle. It is the beginning of a new capitalist era in America – the big money is moving in and turning everyone who once lived freely on the land into salary men and tenants. A few men refuse to be reined in and aim to keep to the old way of life – which consists of living off the land (i.e. killing animals to eat), wandering freely without heed of fences and generally having a grand ol' time. Once such man is Billy The Kid. However, his former friend and mentor Pat Garret, has decided to give up the old life and for the sake of financial security has signed up to be a law man - paid to bring in outlaws and generally tame the west.

Pat Garret travels around in search of Billy. And one hour 20 minutes into the film is in a bar when three of Billy's associates enter (one of whom is Bob Dylan, or Alias). He commands Alias to knock out one of his colleagues with the butt of a rifle before ordering him (he calls Alias 'boy') to read from a shelf of canned food labels (it is one of the the most famous scenes of the film, with Bob Dylan reading out, 'beans', 'quality plums' and 'finest quality...beans' in the background). Pat Garret is then left to sit down and play a few 'friendly' hands of cards with the remaining cowboy, who hequestions about Billy's whereabouts.

As the situation gets more intense and the tension rises Billy's associate itches to go for his knife (Garret has already confiscated his gun). And yet he knows he must bide his time. This sets up an inner conflict whereby he wishes to kill Garret but must also oppose this impulse until the moment is right. At this point he begins to play with his hair, gently tugging at strands in a way that people diagnosed with trichotillomania might recognise. Pat Garret clearly understands human body language because as soon as he sees the displacement behaviour emerge he instantly knows that his opponent is caught in two minds. Being a natural dislacement behaviour, as opposed to a stereotypical behaviour Garret also realises that the hair pulling marks a temporary transitional state and is a precursor to the cowboy making his move. The eyes of Garret (played by James Coburn) widen as he watches intensely, waiting for the slightest sign that a move will be made – and soon it comes. The hair tugger suddenly goes for his knife but no sooner than it is drawn Garret shoots his opponent down. From a psychological perspective it is a brilliant scene and the only one I have ever seen where hair pulling features in a meaningful way.

Coburn, Dylan, Kristofferson, Peckinpah...displacement behaviour...wonderful! It is just a shame that they don't make them like that any more.

Hair pulling in ancient literature - Part Three: Epictetus

Epictetus (AD c. 55-135) the Ancient Greek stoic philosopher made an interesting mention of hair pulling in his writings. In The Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 1 (Of finery in dress) he is concerned with human vanity and fashion. It begins with, ‘A certain young man, a rhetorician, came to see Epictetus, with his hair dressed more carefully than was usual and his attire in an ornamental style.’ What follows is a philosophical statement on human nature and an affirmation of rationality as the one aspect above all others to be cultivated in a man. For Epictetus this is to be held more dear than mere appearances, such as how a person’s hair is worn. In short, a man should be more than decoration. In pursuing this point Epictetus takes issue with men who seek be what they are not, i.e., hairless.  He argues: 

And in a man it is monstrous not to have hair; and if he has no hair, he is a monster; but if he cuts off his hairs and plucks them out, what shall we do with him? where shall we exhibit him? and under what name shall we show him? I will exhibit to you a man who chooses to be a woman rather than a man. What a terrible sight! […] Indeed I think that the men who pluck out their hairs do what they do without knowing what they do. Man what fault have you to find with your nature? That it made you a man? What then? was it fit that nature should make all human creatures women?

The message is clear: a man or woman must be content with what they are and not seek to be what nature has not intended them to be. Such advice might be of more benefit to someone labelled with body dysmorphic disorder rather than trichotillomania. But what is of note in the above passage is the idea that hair pulling can occur unconsciously or ‘without knowing’. Normal grooming is understood as a premeditated action but hair extraction that is not appears to indicate a nature at even greater disharmony with itself. For Epictetus hair pulling, and perhaps unconscious hair extraction most of all, would seem to constitute a mode of self-negation borne of deeply embedded shame towards a sexual characteristic.