More on unnatural environments - the family unit

Since most of us grow up within family units it is useful to consider this social context in which most self-directed behaviours emerge.

Hair pulling, for example, usually appears in later childhood and the early teen years and is more widely reported in girls than boys – a statistic that may reflect the greater cultural importance of hair to women. But the real point here is that developing humans are more at risk of developing odd behaviours than fully grown ones. This is because when we are growing our bodies and minds are growing into their environment and becoming 'wired up'. Once this process is completed the pattern of wiring is more stable or set and so there is less risk of new patterns emerging - but equally abnormal patterns of behaviour that emerge during this key window are more resistant to change.

Where a disturbed behaviour is linked to the mechanics of the family unit a doctor may recommend a family therapist be brought in to study the picture. Family systems therapy grew out of work in the 1970s when the family became viewed as a network of relationships that could be directly affected by benign intervention. Preceding such intervention parents commonly brought a child to their doctor, complaining that s/he was the black sheep of the family whereas everyone else was 'normal'. However, once the family therapist analysed the social transactions between family members a very different picture would often emerge. Often the 'problem child' was being scapegoated for a systemic failure in the greater scheme of the way family relationships were ordered. It would not be until a new social order was created within the household that the scapegoated child's behaviour altered for the better – along with new relationship balances among all the family members.

By viewing the family as a system or network that embodies a greater social order (and not as made up of separate individuals) it becomes easier to identify the emergence of self-directed behaviours. A classic example is the one of the aloof father who does not support the mother with the children so that she feels isolated and depressed. One or more of the children feel forced to take on the role parent towards the mother and may become overloaded with stress and more vulnerable to self-comforting behaviours as a result. In this instance family therapy would need to focus on the parents' relationship first and not be blinded by any symptoms exhibited by the child.

Where the social order of the family is so askew that it does not reflect the wider social order outside of the home a child may well feel isolated from parents and peers, feel unable to bring people into the home environment or trust anyone enough to talk about the situation. Such extremes might include cases of incest, severe emotional neglect and the consequences of serious economic deprivation such as alcoholism, domestic violence or prostitution. Where the family system has failed a child, one can expect that some form of compensation will be found in self-directed behaviour. But pinpointing precise causes to particular self-directed behaviours is, for now, elusive.

Social order is important to human beings and where it breaks down within family relationships feelings of isolation, rejection, distrust and shame rise to the surface. All of these feelings are warning bells that tell us something is wrong and that corrective action is needed. For example, isolation should promote social attachment seeking; rejection will lead to attempts at retrieving the lost bond or self-removal from the relationship; distrust signals the need for caution and tighter self-regulation; shame may increase the tendency for hiding and self-loathing. In short, these are feelings we cannot ignore or bury but in many cases people do just that because no course of action to resolve the problems may seem available. So, people try to block out the feelings or deny them. And it is at this point that I believe we are most vulnerable to developing self-directed behaviours.

Blocking or inhibiting any part of the self sets up the scene for internal conflict. When this conflict is between two opposing impulses a sort of short circuit may occur and out of this unwanted and unexpected behaviours emerge. These have been viewed in a number of ways by ethologists and psychologists over the years. For example, Freud saw in these strange behaviours the overflow of energy and its re-channelling (or displacement) into undesirable behaviour. But more modern thinking views self-directed behaviours as unconscious strategies of self-regulation (e.g. self-comforting/grooming) or 'mental programs' that become engaged in particular conditions.

Of course, the family in itself is not an unnatural environment. But under certain conditions (e.g. where no love or approval is available to a child) it can be experienced as a captive state, one of confinement and one in which normal social roles become obscured to the extent that people lose their social sense of place and function. These are the conditions that must be guarded against.