Hair pulling (trichotillomania) IS a displacement behaviour

image by Steve Doria

Categorising hair pulling behaviour seems to be something that psychologists struggle with.
Of course, no one can make strong assertions without evidence. But from people who do pull out hair and have an 'inside take' on the problem, phenomenological information can be obtained.

From speaking to people who pull their hair out certain common feelings seem to be apparent.  A rise in anxiety prior to pulling, a relaxation following the extraction and an automatic sequence that is repeated which seems to restore some sort equilibrium until the anxiety passes.

This is exactly what displacement behaviours exist for of course.  In nature, animals demonstrate displacment behaviours when they are caught between

two behaviours, such as fight or flight.  The displacement behaviour lasts until the situation changes and the organism is no longer experiencing a conflict of mutually exclusive tensions.

In our household pets self-biting is common among dogs who are distressed.  This self-directed behaviour seems to offer a classic view of what displacement behaviour is.  Such a poor animal's distress might take the following course.

1.  a need to escape a threatening situation - but no escape is possible!

2.  instead of escaping, avoidance is attempted - but there is no away to

     avoid the stressor either.

With two key survival strategies frustrated the animal can find no control over its environment. Whatever it does, it cannot solve the problem and find comfort or safety.  The self-directed behaviour emerges as a final act by which the dog can exercise some control over its physiological state.  Self-biting is a means of disengaging from its environment (i.e.from the source of its stress) via an action which achieves some measure of equilibrium but by maladaptive means.

I believe that hair pulling in humans serves the same effect. The hair puller's environment is causing stress that the person cannot escape or avoid or findany solution to.  In young developing people where the brain is still wiring itself, such pressures can lead to lifelong hair pulling because the child is not psychologically strong enough  to cope with its situation.  Once the behaviour begins it becomes part of the intrinsic behaviour pattern of the individual concerned  and is hard to break - but not impossible if the conditions in which the child was embedded at the time the disorder developed can be uncovered and the original anxiety identified and worked through.

To say there is a cure is a bit of a misnomer.  Hair pulling can be stopped, but the original anxiety that led to its emergence is something that can never be taken away.  But it can be faced and coped with, so that the adult hair puller does not have to be a prisoner of the childhood environment in which hair pulling served as the self-comfort of last resort.

Instinct - Hollywood on the effects of captivity

There are not many movies that try to tackle truly big themes, such as why is civilisation so brutal and make a clear link between civilisation and life in captivity.  In this blog the idea of captivity is prominent because certain behaviours in animals emerge in captivity that do not appear in animals living wild.  And, for me, behaviours like hair pulling can be traced to environmental deprivation in both animals and humans.  So, it was a big thrill to watch a Hollywood movie that tries looks at how environments can undermine species specific behaviours and how these environments can turn people crazy.  

Dr. Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins) has been arrested and returned to the USA after committing a murder in Rwanda, where he has been living amongst a group of gorillas, who have accepted him as part of their family. He returns and appears violent and refuses to speak until a psychiatrist, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr takes on his case as a way of furthering his own career.  He hopes to maybe write a book based on this curious case.

In the high security section of the jail where Powell is kept with other 'psychotic' patients, there is a lot of brutality from the prison guards who have their own ways of keeping the prisoners in line. Due to staff and funding shortages only one prisoner is allowed out each day into the exercise yard.  They randomly award each inmate a card from a standard playing deck and the one holding the ace of diamonds gets to see the sun and sky whilst the rest have to stay inside.  However, in reality the same person gets to go outside each day because he is able to bully the ace out of anyone weaker than him...until Powell arrives.  He fights to keep his ace and establishes a new pecking order, which arouses the dislike of the senior guard.

Meantime, the psychiatrist has started to win Powell's trust and got him to slowly open up.  We begin to understand why he killed someone.  He was living in peace with the gorillas and they had accepted him - not as one of their own (i.e. a gorilla) - but as a member of another species they accepted into their ranks.  This, as the film points out, is an amazing act.  Eventually, soldiers come to find Powell who has been reported as missing.  They open fire and kill all the adult gorillas believing them a threat.  Desperate to protect them Powell attacks them and kills one.

Understanding his patient better, Gooding's character tries to get him out of prison but further fights break out and it looks as though Powell will never be let out. Powell also makes him understand how we all live in captivity and how all our behaviours are distorted by this because we lack control over our environment.  Powell, profoundly explains how civilisation is a form of trap because we can never get outside of it and how it rewards destructive behaviours such as hoarding and profit seeking.  

Towards the end Powell is able to escape captivity with the assistance of Gooding and some of the other prisoners and returns to life outside society in the African jungle.  Meanwhile, Gooding realises that his career path is all wrong and that his striving to reach the top means he can never truly be free from the objectives that civilisation set for him, but which he does not choose for himself.

Although there is no stereotypical behaviour featured in the movie it aims to get to the heart of why people and animal behaviour can become distorted by an environment that is not one that the organism evolved within and is an adaptation to. Hopkins and Gooding are great and carry the film, which could so easily have failed with a lesser cast.  So, well worth a look by anyone interested in behaviour and in need of some entertainment.