Philosophy Out of Sorts
David Begelman
begelman33@gmail.com
In the realm of what we may casually reference as “voluntary action” it strikes me as wrongheaded to contrast “free decision-making” with compulsive, addictive, hypnotically induced, kleptomaniacal, unconsciously produced patterns or brainwashing. Philosophers, largely without exception, describe such behavioral patterns as those diminishing what in their view is the ordinary elasticity of human action. Thus, they insist, compulsive persons lack the “freedom” to make quite commonplace “choices” available to others. Is it high time to correct the record about the alleged restrictions such clinical patterns have on free decision-making? This does not speak to faulty reasoning in the higher reaches of the determinism/free will debate. It only amounts to choosing unfortunate examples with which to score philosophical points.
Take compulsions. What philosopher has not referred to what is termed “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” (coded 300.03 in DSM-IV) as seriously limiting “the freedom to act”? The difficulty here is that compulsions (whatever the range of severity in their clinical presentations) cannot be contrasted with free acts should we construe these maladaptive patterns as “being beyond control” or “lacking a sense of alternative possibilities for choice.” Here it might be useful to distinguish “lacking a sense of alternative possibilities” as a belief on the part of the compulsive person from an actual feature of his or her behavioral repertoire or capacity. Thus, the conviction a patient so diagnosed has no choice—in the sense that he or she is incapable of exercising it—has little bearing on whether or not this is true.
The possibility of a freely undertaken act in the ordinary, not contra-causal, sense is the assumptive underbelly of chosen therapeutic programs, and not only of compulsions, but addictive patterns as well. OCD patients make remarkable progress in reducing their maladaptive patterns by undertaking voluntary decisions to resist impulses philosophers proclaim have them virtually straightjacketed in patterns over which they have no control! This remedial approach, dubbed “exposure and response prevention” strategies (supplemented in some, not all, cases by antidepressants or benzodiazepines to lower anxiety levels) is currently the effective treatment of choice. It replaces an ineffectual nostrum for the condition, psychoanalysis, of which we shall have more to say.
OCD patients are capable of stepping up to the plate in effecting what many philosophers believe is beyond the range of their capability, as though those academics assumed the maladaptive pattern in question is “coerced” in the manner of a falling body obeying the law of gravity. As an example, the compulsive checker or hand washer is encouraged to resist engaging in the very patterns in question. This is accomplished by scheduled sessions in which progress takes place in stages, each of which is marked by freely undertaken decisions to refrain from emitting the target behavior (Abramowitz, 1996, 1998; Emmelkamp et. al. 1994; Foa & Kozak, 2004). In a very real sense, the compulsive person is troubled by a pattern that persists because he or she has never cottoned on to the advantage of voluntarily resisting urges. Because of this, the latter are perpetuated indefinitely. In instances of severely deteriorated OCD patterns, as in the case of Howard Hughes, his disadvantage was, inter alia, the dictatorial control he exercised over allowing alternative therapeutic approaches to his problem.
There are other clinical conditions which are said to restrict freedom. Take epilepsy. How, it may be asked, can we hold an individual responsible for a pattern which is, after all, one in which behavior is the consequence of electrical circuitry in the brain suddenly going haywire? Ironically enough, even here freedom and responsibility cannot be entirely preempted.
What about cases in which we hold persons responsible for their seizures when they are irresponsible in adhering to a prescribed regimen of anticonvulsive medication? In such cases, responsibility for one’s seizures seems justified, and grounded in the idea of voluntary action. The same applies when seizure activity itself is either created or exacerbated by alcohol abuse. Of course, such examples do not shed light on the larger philosophical debate; but is the hunch about compulsive and epileptic persons that, “They cannot help themselves” or “They are not free to act in any way other than the one they do” a bit hasty for the reasons outlined?
Another problem in fixing the boundaries of “freedom” in compulsive patterns is the difficulty in determining what areas of human behavior should be demarcated. For example, if a criterion of a compulsive pattern is its repetitive and strong motivational character, why are only maladaptive or treatable conditions accorded the mantle of lessened freedom? Is a tendency to overeat driven by a “coerced” pattern? What about a tendency to eat regularly simpliciter? If the anorexic patient is not “free” due to a compulsion not to eat, why are the rest of us accorded greater freedom to act, when we are only her counterparts on the other side of an appetitive pattern, i.e., a population of individuals who cannot stop eating? Perhaps the difference here is not one relating to different strains of “freedom,” but classifications of adaptive v. maladaptive patterns.
Addictions are another example of patterns sometimes relied on by philosophers to illustrate lessened “freedom of choice.” But commentary here is heavily influenced by pieties that are the stock and trade of rehabilitation programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (Pattison, Sobell & Sobell, 1977). These treatment programs have been more successful at generating sound bites than they are in relation to therapeutic successes. They also broadcast the view that persons with serious drinking problems have, mirabile dictu, “diseases” (Peele, 1989) that cannot be cured unless they face up to their “permanent condition,” rely on something called a “higher power,” and commit themselves to 12-step treatment programs involving supportive group discussions, sponsors and frequent meetings.
The research on the subject hands in a quite different verdict. There is a high recovery rate among addicted people, whether drinkers or druggies. Heroin addicts break their habit by themselves on the average after about a decade of using. Half of serious drinkers terminate their pattern, although only 10% of this population have committed to a treatment program of any kind. One study revealed that 80% of alcoholics who become abstinent for a year or more are cases of spontaneous remission: they do it on their own, some after unsuccessful treatment. Over half reported that a variety of factors led to the termination of their addictions: blackouts, health problems, family, financial and vocational problems, and the like (Harvard Mental Health Letter, 1995, p. 3). So much for bromides about “Everyone needs a support group” and “Nobody can do it alone.” The facts indicate otherwise, yet philosophers often reference addictive patterns as leaving little room for “freedom.” Again, this poses no serious challenge to incompatibilism; it’s just a batch of sorry examples with which to illustrate something about reduced freedom.
And what philosopher would pass up the chance to illustrate lessened freedom as instanced by the so-called hypnotic trance? (In many of their discussions, they conceive of the trance state induced by the procedure supposedly saddling the hypnotized subject with acts over which he or she has no control.) But until experimental psychologists get a conclusive fix on just what hypnosis is—whether it amounts to something involving a “trance state,” as opposed to an elaborate form of role-playing—it may be premature to use it as another example of abridged “freedom.” A satisfactory theory of processes involved in so-called hypnotic “trances” has been long in coming, and nowadays there are too many contrasting formulations about its nature to justify citing it as a useful example of behavioral restriction in the determinism/free will debate.
In recent years, and with some exceptions, research on hypnosis is largely divided among “state theorists” (Hilgard, 1965, 1973, 1991) and “non-state theorists” (Barber, 1964, 1969a, 1969b; Sarbin, 1950, 1992; Spanos, 1982) who have debated such issues as to whether hypnosis actually consists in an altered state of consciousness like dissociation, or whether the suggestibility assumed to be one of its defining features differs appreciably from the same function in non-hypnotized controls.
When it comes to kleptomania and brainwashing other subtexts bearing on a presumed loss of freedom enter the picture. In kleptomania, one might distinguish between the psychiatric definition of the disorder (coded as 312.32 in the DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association) and the expanded meaning of the term often employed in ordinary parlance. The latter is extended to a multitude of cases in which there is a pattern of stealing or shoplifting. However, on the technical definition of the term the disorder is a rare, uncommonly observed type of what clinicians call “Impulse Disorder.” On this definition of kleptomania, there is a build-up of tension before an act, and pleasure or gratification at the time of committing the theft. Here, objects stolen are not needed for personal or monetary value, and the act is a solitary one, without assistance from confederates. (Confederates or shills in shoplifting are a frequently documented pattern in cases mistakenly diagnosed as kleptomania.) With respect to the implications for “freedom” or “the inability to resist,” this alleged form of compulsion involves “overpowering impulses” that seem to disappear in the presence of authorities like police officers. So much for the hapless kleptomaniac saddled with irresistible impulses. Evidently the latter can be made to evaporate in the vicinity of uniformed officials. It’s irresistible impulses with riders!
Kleptomania is intriguing from yet another standpoint. The deployment of the diagnostic label is rich in exculpatory possibilities, especially for the socially prominent. For example, when celebrity actresses (13 shall go unmentioned) are caught stealing merchandise from shops, a diagnosis of “kleptomania” is at hand to characterize their venture, although such offenders may not meet strict criteria for the diagnosis. On the other hand, when a ghetto youth is apprehended filching trinkets from five-and-dime stores, the wisdom is that he or she is only a “shoplifter” or has an “antisocial pattern.” Evidently, the highly placed person is subject to urges that are overwhelming—not so the anonymous adolescent. The implication is clear. The well-placed are conveniently judged as persons with upstanding characters, were it not for being unfortunately assailed by uncontrollable impulses. Unlike ghetto youngsters, they are supposedly not “free” to resist the urges they are subject to—arguably another example of the modern tendency to invent “illnesses” with alibi or exculpation as covert subtext (Szasz, 1961; Halleck, 1971). The legacy is a dependable one when it comes to the addictions.
So-called “brainwashing” is likewise another pattern rich in subtext. When one considers the most systematic attempts to brainwash individuals originally hostile or indifferent to the belief system forced upon them, the result must be counted a resounding failure. This was the verdict in the programs of the captors of American servicemen during the Korean War whose efforts to “brainwash” were largely futile (Schein, 1958). Yet the campaigns in question were pervasive: they sought to control every aspect of the thinking and living conditions of the servicemen.
Allegations of “brainwashing” most of the time subserve a moral/political aim. They represent covert judgments about what belief-systems or institutions should be negatively evaluated. As we might expect, the allegations are frequently coupled with terms like “cult,” the liberal use of which is close on the heels of inveighing against suspect programs of mind control. On closer consideration, the disparagement seems to verge on nothing less than indictments of religions or belief systems we find personally disagreeable.
When we attempt to distinguish what are commonly designated as “cults” from the belief systems of favored institutions, the effort is unavailing. One descriptor of “cults” might be insularity. But insularity is a distinguishing feature of orders within the major religions: cloisters, nunneries, yeshivas, mosques, etc. And running through a slew of other defining characteristics like torture, mind-control, social isolation or sexual improprieties, the baleful judgment about differences between them and accepted systems meets the same fate. We find similar traditions of torture within our own military and endorsed by both the Bush and Obama administrations, insularity within Amish and Hasidic communities, sequestered nunneries or monastic orders and sexual impropriety among the ranks of pedophiles in a major religion that has insulated them from prosecution. Yet no one characterizes Catholicism, Judaism, or the American presidency or military as “cults”—unless, of course, these curry disfavor on the other side of an ideological divide.
The term “cult” is consequently one with more of a polemical than descriptive tincture. In a recent tome on “strange and unusual” belief systems flourishing across the commonwealth, Stollznow (2013) targets groups ranging from fundamentalist Mormons to Quakers without, it should be noted, comparable reviews of darker strains within major religions. In this regard, why are Scientologists, Branch Davidians, or schismatic Mormon groups “brainwashed,” but not those in the thrall of the often fiery priests, rabbis, imams, or pastors dotting the broader American landscape? Of course, for talking heads in Ted Patrick’s now defunct Cult Awareness Network, it’s only the former groups that have the earmarks! What about toddlers in evangelical Sunday schools who announce their repudiation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory (without even understanding at a tender age what it is)? Why is the indoctrination called “education” by their fundamentalist tutors, not “brainwashing?”
Do cults entice impressionable and unsuspecting youngsters into their toxic folds? Or do many of these regretful prodigals turn out to be cases of sour grapes when fed up with their charismatic gurus? Do they need to be “deprogrammed” as though they were miswired computers? Or are their decisions to get out from under strategically morphed into a face-saving stance as harrowing escapes from wicked influence? There is no rigorous research evidence showing that belief stabilization or modification in so-called “cults” is mediated by psychological processes any different from those in mainstream religious or political groups.
Then we come to the unconscious, a hotbed of challenges to “freedom” by philosophers, on any accounting. However, commentary on the subject is a mixed picture, covering rubrics we might characterize as (1) contemporary neuroscience (2) a broader tradition of experimental research about the cognitive unconscious initiated in the nineteenth century, and (3) Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Older memorable commentary about the last of these categories was authored by Hospers (1961) and Lazerowitz (1961). Maybe it’s a bit unfair to lay siege to the philosophy-cum-Freud fortress a half century after the fact, but the intellectual tradition represented by these two spokespersons is, unfortunately, still alive and well. It is brokered by a wider group of diehards parochially loath to consider that the snows of yesteryear have long since melted away.
(To be continued)
