Unnatural environments

photo by Dave Adams

Evolution tells us that all life is in competition to be the best adapted to its environment in order to obtain the most resources and leave behind offspring. In this respect we can say that all life is programmed to function to these ends (physical growth and reproduction) under normal conditions. But conditions can change and are not always optimal for survival – just think of the dinosaurs!

I am interested in what happens when conditions are unnatural.  In other words, what happens when you take an organism that has evolved to thrive under certain conditions and place it in ones that it has not evolved to cope with.

One scientist who did just this with monkeys was Harry Harlow.  He took these highly social animals as infants and placed them in prolonged states of isolation and other forms of sensory deprivation.  The aim of the experiments were to see what would happen and whether any negative behaviours could be rectified once the  monkeys were returned to normal environmental conditions (i.e. back with their social group).

The effects of Harlow’s experiments were most disturbing.  Keeping young, developing animals in conditions that they were not genetically programmed to cope with led to a lot of self-directed behaviours such as prolonged self-rocking, self-biting, hair pulling and eye poking.  When returned to their peer group they were developmentally behind and found it impossible to re-integrate themselves.  Later, impregnated females who produced offspring displayed little or no interest in their young, whereas males did not manifest mounting behaviours towards fertile females.   In short, the early unnatural environment had led to the inhibition of genetic expression.  Brain rewiring in an attempt to cope with being placed in such an unnatural situation was also evident.

One of the things that makes me interested in self-directed behaviour is because it tells us that something is wrong with the environment of the person who displays them.  We know that someone who sucks their thumb has been weaned too quickly or been forced to separate from the mother before they have had the chance to emerge fully from behaviours directed towards the mother’s body. But  I believe environments that directly contradict genetic programming are particularly damaging – such as placing a social animal in isolation!

The point is that the body and all behaviour requires a supportive environment if it is to fully develop.  No animal lives in a vacuum; a species is what it is because it is a response to a particular environment that it has taken millions of years to become successfully adapted to.  For a social animal, its environment is other members of its species too.  Take these away and the animal loses its raison d’etre.  Eye poking suggests to me that without a proper environment from which the body part in question can derive and fulfil its functions, it is experienced as something superfluous, bothersome and even aggravating.  Imagine having a limb attached to your body that you do not know how to use and which you feel has no purpose.  Wouldn’t you resent it and attack it too? 

I think that when an environment is damaged then an organism must be damaged too because it cannot grow and realise itself fully.  This means that certain types of behaviours just can’t happen.  You cannot develop speech without someone talking to you.  You cannot develop a healthy self-image without someone who experiences pleasure in how you appear and behave.  The (nurturing) Other is your natural environment!

For me hair pulling suggests that something must be wrong too.  A child left alone too much, with no one to relieve feelings of loneliness is forced to compensate in some way to ward off a sense of abandonment that brings stress that s/he has no adaptive way of dealing with, i.e. by approaching a carer and seeking physical contact. Hair pulling may be an effective strategy for obtaining relief from an environment that is permanently deprived because it promotes tactile engagement and oral comfort from combing off the hair roots.

 A person denied any way of developing a healthy self-image may well cut or hurt themselves as an act of repudiation of those aspects of themselves for which there is no apparent function.   As a by-product self cutting or self-hitting may promote the release of hormones or opioids that would otherwise be released through regular social mechanisms. Ultimately, an environment that points an organism away from itself, or makes an organism seek flight from others, or doesn't allow goal states of safety, or comfort to be attained will inevitably produce undesirable behaviours.

In my last post I asked people to get in touch who had experienced hair pulling.  To find out about the kinds of environmental factors that produce this kind of behaviour is something I would like to do.