James W. Prescott is a developmental neuropsychologist and cross-cultural psychologist. For fifteen years he conducted research on origins of violence for the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, NIH, and has given testimony on the origins of violence before the U.S. Congress; the Senate of Canada, and many other legislative and professional organizations.
Michael Mendizza is a documentary film-maker and co-founder of Touch The Future.
http://ttfuture.org/bonding/interview
M: If there was one thing that you could do to reduce
violence, what would that be?
J: There are two fundamental issues. One is the issue of the
bonded and unbonded child. The other is full gender
equality. Until women are able to control their own body,
and not just reproduction but the whole spectrum of her
sexuality, it will be very difficult to achieve the first
step which is the bonded child. Just look at all the
violence against women, the rapes, domestic violence,
battered women, it's epidemic, as is child abuse and
neglect.
M: Most people would say that we males cause most of
this violence.
J: So, we have to trace the roots of what produces the
violent male? And also ask the question, why more and more
women are being violent against their own children? What
causes the anger and rage which leads to violence? What
encodes the brain for anger and rage, as opposed to peace
and tranquillity? We have answers based on substantial
scientific data. Yet the deeper question remains. What
prevents us from acting on the data we have gathered over
the past twenty-five years?
M: David Bohm and our Dialogue project looks at this
question. Professor Bohm points out that we have constructed
very deep and powerful defense structures which distort our
perception and these barriers are built into the nervous
system.
J: Wilhelm Reich, the German Psychoanalyst, who had major
differences with Freud, saw sexuality, when abused in
childhood, leading to what he called the emotional plague;
and the “armor” we develop is to protect this
emotional-sexual core.
M: For example?
J: With the ability to experience joy and pleasure, you have
a more openness toward life and change. People who are
rigid, highly armored, are limited in their capacity to feel
empathy, compassion or to change. Bohm's work or any attempt
to deal with adults who are already structured, already
armored, requires an enormous amount of work. From a purely
statistical point of view we have to question if this will
bring about an significant change.
M: The ability to experience pleasure is blocked by this
armor. Yet, pleasure is natural and necessary.
J: Unfortunately our society and culture are based on
philosophical and religious world views and values. We have
a moral philosophy which says that pleasure and the body is
evil and the spirit or soul is good. There is a division
between the natural state of the body and our ideas about
good and evil. We are at war with our own bodies and in many
ways women, her body and children are the targets in this
war.
The very idea of Mother Earth carries the archetype of the
body which implies pleasure, particularly, sexual pleasure.
The Body, Woman and Pleasure however, have been equated with
evil and wickedness by Plato and Pythagoras, in the old
Testament and in most, if not all theistic religious
traditions. There's no major religion that affirms the full
equality and dignity of woman with man. She's always
subordinate.
These religious systems have been used to control the
individual and therefore society. This control is achieved
by limiting access to pleasure. When young children are not
touched, held or surrounded with affection, the neural
systems required to experience pleasure are not developed
which leads to an individual and a culture that is self-centered,
violent and authoritarian.
M: Let's go into that.
J: When the experience of physical pleasure is morally
sinful, this impacts on the ability of adults to rear their
children in environments of pleasure and affection, as
opposed to pain and suffering. Then couple this with a value
system that is racist, sexist, anti-Semitism, etc. and you
have a package that establishes both the “engine” and the
“guidance system” for violence. The repression of pleasure
sets up the reservoir of rage; and the belief system or
values create the target. Both work together and it is this
bi-directional system which has to be changed.
M: It’s easy to accept the need for being touched, which
is pleasurable, when responding young children who are
pre-sexual. When sexuality clicks in however, touch often
becomes taboo.
J: We have to look at sexuality in quite a different
context, that is, as an integral part of who we are.
Children are punished for touching their genitals which
creates a neural-dissociative state in the brain. The
sensory deprivation of pleasure results in the failure of
certain neural pathways to develop to develop properly.
Sensory stimulation acts like a nutrient for brain growth
and development. The richer the networks, the greater the
interconnectivity and neural integration of the brain. The
integration of our sexuality with our total “persona” is a
critical aspect of our development as human beings.
M: Simply stated, in order for the brain to grow and to
develop, it needs to be stimulated?
J: A rich array of sensory stimuli, of all the senses,
maximizes development of the brain. If we do not get the
sensory stimulation we equate with love, bonding and
intimacy during the formative periods of brain development,
we're going to be impaired, if not crippled in our ability
to experience and express this “language of love” later in
life.
M: When we first met I suggested that love is a
hardwired capacity, everybody has it. You said, "Yes,
“But”-- If a child has not been exposed to these specific
sensory (love) experiences the neural-perceptual pathways
needed to experience and to express love are not fully
developed. You compared it to being color blind. One might
be surrounded by color, but if your brain system hasn't
plugged itself together in such a way to experience color,
all that is seen are shades of gray.
J: Our sensory systems have a genetic pre-disposed structure
for function. When light hits the eye the iris will dilate.
You don't control that. We have a natural propensity to
avoid pain and to seek pleasure. Following the path of
pleasure provides the basic building blocks which ultimately
lead to the experience of what we call love. The ultimate
foundation for a system of ethics therefore, has to get back
to the neuropsychology of pain and pleasure. If we violate
these basic principles, which many of our philosophies and
theologies have done, by creating a war against the body,
against women and children -- then we pay a very high cost.
M: Let's create the best hypothetical world we can, the
most enriching, nurturing, affectionate, bonded environment
for a human nervous system to flourish. Describe what those
characteristics might be.
J: First, every pregnancy would be wanted and every child is
a wanted child, which gets back to our first point, that
woman must have control over her own body.
M. Thousands of babies that are being born to unwed teen
mothers. These young girls think that they want to have a
baby until they get pregnant. Actually the majority of
pregnancies are unplanned, regardless of social or economic
conditions.
J: Many teenagers seek sexual relationships to get the
physical contact, affection and pleasure they were denied as
infants and children which is a major driving force behind
teenage pregnancy. Secondly, they want a child who will love
them in return because they didn't get love in their own
infancy and childhood. With many, the intention of the
pregnancy is to fill a need in the young mother, to give her
self-respect, to give her pleasure, to fill a void. It goes
right back to the same common ground, a failure of
affectional bonding to meet the basic, fundamental,
emotional needs of the infant and child.
M: We often miss the impact fear and anxiety have on
human development.
J: Fear has been used by our religious systems for centuries
to control pleasure. Today the medical and scientific
community use fear very effectively to keep woman, her
pregnancy and birth under their control. We force them to do
all sorts of unnatural things. Having her lay flat on her
back during delivery, for example. No other mammal gives
birth on its back. We know that premature cutting of the
umbilical cord is damaging and the benefits of placing the
infant to the breast of the mother right away, and of
maintaining close physical body contact. But the medical
profession routinely intervenes and takes the baby away from
the mother. Deny direct contact with the mother and we set
the stage for fear, anger and rage right at the start. No
other mammal separates the newborn from its mother at birth.
M: Isn’t this what Harlow did back in the 50’s - he
separated mothers and infant monkeys at birth with
devastating consequences?
J: We need to begin before Harlow. Rene Spitz , John Bowlby,
and Wayne Dennis noticed that that many children reared in
orphanages or institutions had arrested emotional, social
and intellectual development. Bowlby found a link between
these early separation experiences and later delinquincy--findings
that my cross-cultural studies, which we will go into
latter, supported. Spitz noticed that these many of these
institutionalized infants, who had the best medical and
physical care but no “mother love”-- nobody touched, held or
hugged them, had depressive and autistic-like behaviors.
Spitz called this Marasmus--sickness and death due to
depression associated with loss of mother love. With
deprivation of physical affection and body contact, which is
the biology of love, these infants and children withdrew
into their own world and in extreme cases, they gave up and
died.
M: How did you get involved in this field?
J: Harlow was attempting to find a cost effective way to
raise monkeys for research so he separated infants from
their mothers and housed them alone in cages. These infants
would immediately protest being separated by crying and by
being agitated. When nothing changed, they became profoundly
depressed, engaged in chronic rocking behaviors,
self-stimulation, and tactile avoidance behavior. By
depriving intimate body contact between mother and infant,
Harlow created emotionally, socially and sexually
dysfunctional animals.
As the animals grew older, Harlow saw them developing more
abnormal behaviors, self-mutilation, and then pathological
violence as juveniles and adults. They could not engage in
normal grooming and sexual behavior. Their reproductive
system was intact, but the emotional and social skills that
goes with normal sexual behaviors were destroyed.
Drs. Bill Mason and Gershon Bersken also studied infant
monkeys reared in isolation but they added a surprising
variable. Some of the surrogate mothers, a fur-wrapped
Clorox bottle with a pie pan attached to the bottom, could
move and others were stationary. A rod was placed through
the Clorox bottle which could be moved by a cam operated
device or it was bolted to the floor. That one simple
change, adding movement had a tremendous impact. The infants
reared on the moving surrogate did not develop the broad
range of emotional-social psychopathology that had been so
well described in isolation reared monkeys.
They were not autistic, they were not depressed, they were
alert, they were inquisitive and would physically touch and
interact with human attendants which the “none-moved”
infants could not do. There was no anger or rage or violent
behaviors observed in these animals. Clearly, “movement” had
a powerful affect on the emotional, sexual and social
centers of the brain.
M: And the only difference was clinging to a moving
rather than stationary Clorox bottle.
J: Yes. The areas of the brain which control emotional,
sexual and social development, including pleasure, pain,
rage, peace, affection were being affected by stimulation
from the Vestibular Cerebellar Complex, which is the brain
system that mediates body movement in space and balance.
M: And love?
J: When touch and movement are added “love” reflects an
integrated system of complex neural responses involving the
frontal lobes which are deeply connected with the Limbic
system. My hypothesis is that pleasure, which occur through
touch and movement, becomes integrated in the higher brain
centers of the frontal cortex and leads to the altered state
of consciousness we experience as love.
To explore this and to reveal the consequences of not
providing the essential stimulation for this full
integration of the brain, I obtained several adult,
isolation reared violent monkeys. We were the first to
discover brain abnormalities in these mother deprived
monkeys and our research implicated the cerebellum, which
had not previously been linked to emotional, sexual and
social behaviors. Further analyses revealed that all of the
sensory systems are not equally important for healthy
emotional development of the infant and child. In other
words, congenital blindness or congenital deafness will not
lead to these devastating emotional disorders, provided
there is somatosensory affectional stimulation, that is,
body touch and movement between mother and her infant.
M: What else did you learn.
J: Two other consequences of early sensory deprivation need
emphasis. One is the tactile avoidance and the other is
impaired pain perception.
When the two sensory systems for primary socialization are
damaged: pain and pleasure, the consequences of this damage
is asocialization and violence. Early sensory deprivation
also leads to stimulus-seeking behaviors. The animal will
engage in behaviors that seek the sensory stimulation which
it was deprived of early in life. Thus, the self-stimulation
of stereotypical rocking, toe and penis sucking,
self-mutilation and violence, so common in Harlow’s monkeys.
M: When deprived of normal affection, being touched and
held, what takes place internally?
J: A small stimulus evokes a big response. When these
deprived animals are touched their response is explosive.
Ordinarily, a light touch doesn't produce that kind of
response, but in sensory deprived animals it does. That's
what sensory deprivation does. It produces a hyperexcitable
state which demands sensory stimulation which may include
the chemical stimulation of drugs.
M: How does this translate into the explosion of human
violence we see today, increasing rates of anti-social
behavior, car-jacking, gangs, aggressive-sexual media and
increased drug abuse?
J: All of those reflect stimulus-seeking behaviors. We need
sensory stimulation and will get it one way or the other. We
have to look at the brain in terms of the “engine” and the
“guidance system”. The engine is the emotional center -- the
Limbic system and the brain stem which includes the arousal
system. The emotional-arousal system creates the energy but
doesn't tell you where that energy is going. That comes from
the cognitive brain, the neocortex with its values and rules
of behavior.
Sensory pleasure deprivation builds up in the system as an
anger or rage reflex. The thinking brain, the cognitive
system gives direction to that reflex. If you happen to have
a racist ideology or sexist ideology, that reflex-rage
response is going to be directed at women or blacks or
minorities, or whatever. They become the target. The
cognitive map, or values, create the “guidance system”. Keep
in mind however, that our ideas, our religious and
philosophical beliefs have a tremendous impact on the
sensory environment we are exposed to as children, which, in
turn, sets the stage for rage and violence or for joy and
peace. It is religious values and customs, for example, that
dictates genital mutilation, for example the circumcision of
children.
M: Lets to back to the mother and her new baby.
J: Given this research, the single most important
recommendation I would make that would reduce violence would
be that every newborn should be carried on the mother’s body
as much as possible and for extended periods. That movement
provides continued vestibular cerebellum stimulation which
is the dominant form of stimulation in-utero. And it's that
movement and close physical contact with the mother that
creates the sensory-environmental umbilical cord of “Basic
Trust”.
If this bond is suddenly broken at birth, that sensory loss
is a profound shock. The brain is not receiving the
stimulation it needs for normal growth and maturation.
Deprivation of this sensory connection with mother
significantly alters brain development resulting in a
predisposition to anger, rage and violence. When provided
however, this stimulation is incorporated into other sensory
systems which create the foundation for human love and
affection.
M: Tell me about your cross cultural studies.
J: Mason's and Berkson’s study involving the swinging mother
surrogate was crucial for the formulation of my
cross-cultural studies. Clearly, vestibular cerebelluar
movement of the infant was the most important variable. The
question is, how to test this on human populations? I wanted
data base that would involve entire human cultures. At that
time John Whiting, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at
Harvard, happened to be a member of our National Advisory
Counsel of the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development. He pioneered many of the basic studies of child
rearing practices in primitive cultures. So I asked if he
knew of any information on child rearing practices.
Fortunately, a book had just been published by R. B.Textor
in 1967 which contained systematic correlation’s between
every behavior that cultural Anthropologists had measured on
“primitive” cultures. This information provided a
statistical database to test my hypotheses that
maternal-infant affectional bonding was related to adult
peaceful or violent behaviors.
There were three variables in my study. First, I selected
every culture in which there was information on the practice
of carrying or not carrying the infant on the body of the
mother. The second variable was data on peaceful or violent
behaviors. And the third involved sexual behavior,
specifically whether adolescent sexual expression was
permitted or punished. In the 400 culture data base,
information was available on both child rearing practices
and violence in 49 primitive cultures, which became my
study. To my great surprise there was a 73% accurate
classification of cultures as peaceful or violent based on
that single variable, whether the infant was carried on the
body of the mother throughout the day.
M: That's pretty high.
J: Once I published that data, cultural anthropologists
corrected several errors in the database which resulted in
80% of the cultures being accurately classified as either
peaceful or violent.
M: Just based on whether or not the infant was carried
by the mother.
J: It's that powerful.
M: Our entire culture is moving closer to what you're
calling a sensory deprived state. It's not just happening
with generation X. It's been building for a number of
generations, to a point now when we are looking and asking
what have we done?
J: In 1979, I published correlations between our
infant/child mortality rates with homicide rates for the 50
States and D.C. which were calculated from 1940 to 1967. As
we progressed from the 40's, 50's, to the 60's, the
correlation's become stronger and stronger and more
statistically significant.
M: And what are the implications?
J: Our infant and child mortality rates, as they progress
from the 40's, the 50's and 60's, contain higher and higher
homicidal factors, and the implication is that the reports
of infant/child homicides are significantly underestimated.
There is something in common between the rise of the
relationship between homicides and our infant mortality
rates, and it is growing.
M: Are we creating, because of a lack of true intimacy a
radically different perceptual system. Is human perception
being altered fundamentally by this?
J: Not only perceptions, but our social and moral value
systems.
M: How so?
J: I think they're obviously linked. The increase in violent
behaviors is a direct result of pleasure deprivation, which
implies a lack of empathy, caring for others, a lack of
compassion for the pain and suffering of others. It creates
children without conscience and adults without conscience.
Children are now killing children. More parents and adults
are killing children. This depravation is fundamentally
altering our entire human social context - the basic
assumptions that guide human relationships and society.
M: Is there any link between this massive change taking
place and technology. By that I mean the media, television
and computers, in terms of pure stimulation?
J: There's only one kind of media stimulation, it's
visual/auditory and that is not the important sensory input
for the emotional and social-sexual development of the
child. The enormity of media violence, however cannot help
but shape the cognitive and emotional brain for violence.
M: So riding on mom is much more of a dance than riding
in an automobile, dangling in a car seat or watching TV.
J: Close, intimate body contact with the mother provides the
foundation for emotional trust upon which other
relationships will be built. Without that first foundation
all other relationships will flounder or fail.
M: Let’s say we provide this nurturing stimulation,
being carried, close to mom, breast feeding, and then we
throw the kids in school at age 4 or 5. Is it okay to cut
the cord then?
J: You'll never really cut the cord because you will have
established a basic intimate relationship which continues
throughout life. When you establish a firm foundation of
basic trust, that foundation will endure, provided it is
reinforced through childhood and adolescence.
M: You mentioned that our higher states of consciousness
are achievable through this maturation.
J: It's more than that, it's neural integration.
M: What's the difference between neural integration and
maturation.
J: Integration implies that multiple sensory systems are
being connected with one another in complex ways. The more
rich it is, the more connection it's going to have with
other brain structures. The subtly of potential mental
states or experiences is increased by developing more
complex neural networks.
M: How were your cross-cultural results impacted by
belief systems?
J: I found that cultures which are nurturing to infants and
are matrilineal and tend not to have a High God who
interferes in human affairs. With patrilineal cultures
there's a harsher treatment of children, and repressive,
punitive attitudes towards sexual expression. In the
patrilineal cultures the High God is very much involved in
human reality. The divine becomes an instrument of
individual and social control through control of physical
affection and pleasure, first, in the maternal/infant
relationship and, secondly, in the sexual relationship. We
have to understand that moral philosophical and theological
religious systems become the gate keeper of our sensory
experiences, particularly those that involve pleasure and
pain. That's where they have their real control. They don't
care whether we see three dimensional color. There's no
theology involving visual or auditory perception.
By controlling pain and pleasure during the formative
periods of development, you control the structural and
functional development of the brain and also moral and
social values associated with pain and pleasure which
becomes embodied in the whole body, not just the cognitive
mind.
M: Are you suggesting that our full development as human
beings is being limited by the religious traditions of
Western Civilization?
J: Yes. Only by taking a cold, hard look at the biological
impact that these beliefs have, and by examining what occurs
when we have a moral outlook where pain is good and pleasure
is evil, will we arrive at the much needed and obvious
affirmation of the unity of the body, mind and spirit. The
warmth of human touch and security of body contact, are
without question, the most effective way to reduce violence
in our culture. Fragmentation and isolation of human
relationships, the denial of true intimacy and the pleasure
it implies, builds into the brain a predisposition for
anger, rage and violence. The opposite is also true. It is
really that simple.