Scott

I want to bring our discussion back to Pavlov.  I began thinking of this with regard to neural modulators.  The chemical changes that a person is having based on not just ATP, but if you are expecting fight or flight then your digestive system is going to do things totally different as well.  Peter, when you are talking about prediction there is an environmental stressor component. The world that people are living in is just as impactful as their nutrition.

Peter

Absolutely, that is what it is really about. You have to have some expectation of a decent life.  While preparing my memoir, I began thinking back about my own childhood. I asked my mother why she raised me as she did. She mentioned that it was because of Dr. Spock.  So, I went to the library and brought back an old edition of Dr. Spoke’s book.  This was the original 1945 edition of his book. –to see what he recommended.  With regard to childcare. It is very interesting. I wish she had followed his advice. He indicated that the infant up to age 12 months needs a lot of love and attention.  A lot of touching.  To form a secure base.  John Bowlby came up with the idea of forming a secure attachment. And that is fundamental to the rest of your life.  If you don’t get this attention during your first year, then you are going to have a lot of psychological trouble during the next few years.  Spock says don’t hassle the kid, don’t’ bother them, don’t shame them. You don’t need to hit them.  If you want to correct them, then do it in a friendly manner If you can resurrect those behaviors in a family and help people achieve them, then you are contributing to their health. There is one other thing.  This book is written for the mother. Yes, fathers can benefit from the advice, but this book is directed specifically to the mothers—who do not have their own mother’s and grandmother’s or their own aunts and uncles, to help them.   This is the beginning of real social isolation. Of the family. And the family has not evolved to raise children in the single, isolated family system.  That is one thing that my own anthropological studies have taught me.  You need a lot of people to do the raising of children.  So, now, for a mother to do it all alone is nearly impossible.

Bill

Peter, you seem to be saying that we need predictions of love and safety. There are adjustments made in our body when we have this prediction of love and safety. Whereas, if there is a prediction of punishment there is a quite different set of adjustments of our body. Another thing. Scott brought up about fight/flight. So much in psychology is now about freeze. The most common thing for human beings living on the African Savanah is to freeze, because we weren’t strong enough to fight or fast enough to flee from a menacing animal (such as a lion).  When I was in South Africa, they said that human beings are one of the slowest things out there.  So much like little marmots, and other rodents, we mostly learn how to freeze.  We hope that if we sit there very quietly than maybe the lion will just pass us by and not be interested in us.  It becomes powerful if the prediction is that I am powerless—then I will instruct my body to freeze.  This adjustment in turn produces a whole host of physiological responses.