What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [125]
Mind the pattern. A pattern of mistakes is a call to change your life. The rest of the tapestry is not determined by what has been woven before. The weaver herself, blessed with knowledge and with freedom, can change—if not the material she must work with—the design of what comes next.
15
Depth and Change:
The Theory
IT IS TIME for a review and for the theory. When we survey all the problems, personality types, patterns of behavior, and the weak influence of childhood on adult life, we see a puzzling array of how much change occurs. From the things that are easiest to those that are the most difficult, this rough array emerges:
Panic Curable
Specific Phobias Almost Curable
Sexual Dysfunctions Marked Relief
Social Phobia Moderate Relief
Agoraphobia Moderate Relief
Depression Moderate Relief
Sex Role Moderate Change
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Moderate /Mild Relief
Sexual Preferences Moderate/Mild Change
Anger Mild /Moderate Relief
Everyday Anxiety Mild/Moderate Relief
Alcoholism Mild Relief
Overweight Temporary Change
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Marginal Relief
Sexual Orientation Probably Unchangeable1
Sexual Identity Unchangeable
Clearly, we have not yet developed drugs or psychotherapies that can change all these. I believe that success and failure stems from something other than inadequate treatment. Rather, it stems from the depth of the problem.
Depth, an old but elusive notion, is, I believe, the key. We all have experience of psychological states of different depths. Sometimes when I have been on the road for weeks and I come home fatigued, something strange happens to me in the middle of the night. It is called depersonalization. I wake up and can’t remember. I don’t know where I am. I can’t remember what year it is, or even the season. I don’t know what kind of car I drive. I don’t know who is sleeping next to me. When the phenomenon is really extreme, I don’t know how old I am. (But I always know that I am male.) This state passes in a few seconds, and my memories come flooding back to me—at least they have so far.
If you ask someone, out of the blue, to answer quickly “Who are you?” they will usually tell you—roughly in this order—their name, their sex, their profession, whether they have children, and their religion or race. Underlying this is a continuum of depth from surface to soul—with all manner of psychic material in between. Lest the purists among you be put off by my using the word soul, let me remind you of Freud’s terminology. Freud’s word for his subject matter was not psyche (as it has been rendered in English by his medical translators), or mind (as the modern cognitivists prefer), but die Seele, the soul—an entity connoting much more than cold cognition.
I believe that issues of the soul can barely be changed by psychotherapy or by drugs. Problems and behavior patterns somewhere between soul and surface can be changed somewhat. Surface problems can be changed easily, even cured. What is changeable, by therapy or drugs, I want to speculate, varies with the depth of the problem.
What exactly does depth mean? How do we know if we are dealing with a deep issue or a superficial one? Depth, as I intend it, has three aspects. The first is biological. The second has to do with evidence. The third concerns power.
The biological aspect of depth is evolutionary. Is the state prepared? Prepared learning, you will recall from the sauce béarnaise phenomenon, occurs with but one experience, is not rational, is not conscious, is resistant to change, and is selective only for objects of adaptive significance. Phobias about animals and insects display these hallmarks and are, therefore, prepared. So are obsessions about infection or violence, fetishes about female legs or breasts, and depression over the death of a child. Biologically deep problems