What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [128]
Pervasive anger is probably somewhat less deep than pervasive anxiety. It has a clear evolutionary value, and there is some evidence for its heritability. If you believe you are being trespassed against, you can usually find evidence for it: The targets of your anger are sometimes out to get you. But you will also get some disconfirmation too, since sometimes the targets of your anger turn out to be manifestly innocent. The belief in trespass is powerful when it is a general belief like “Others are out to get me” or “The world is full of people who only care about themselves.” It is of low power when it is only a specific (“My boss is a jerk!”) belief. The therapy evidence is far from conclusive, but anger seems somewhat—although not sweepingly—modifiable.
Sexual preferences (called paraphilia when disordered) are at middling depth. They seem to be evolutionarily prepared. They are easy to obtain confirming evidence for once adopted—they are great fun—but they are narrow beliefs influencing only your erotic life. Once adopted, they do not wane spontaneously, but they can be modified somewhat in therapy.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder also has middling depth. The thoughts and rituals seem to be evolutionarily prepared (cleaning and checking, dirt and violence, were all issues for pretechnological humans), and there is some evidence for heritability. The obsession is extremely hard to disconfirm: An efficient ritual ensures that you don’t sit around to find out if your ritual—unperformed—results in disaster. But the obsessions are not powerful: They are limited to germs, violence, explosions, and the like. Therapy helps quite a bit but usually does not cure.
Sex role may have some brain and fetal-hormone contribution. When you are a child, evidence pours in to support your stereotyped beliefs, and they are powerful beliefs, organizing much of childhood. But the evidence and their power wanes dramatically with maturity, when you can better appreciate the virtues of tolerance, justice, and individuality. Sex roles are inflexible for young children, but increasingly flexible as children grow up.
Depression is also of middling depth. Sometimes the beliefs are distortions and are easy to disconfirm: for example, the belief of a wealthy woman that she is a bag lady.3 But often the beliefs are based in reality; indeed, depressives are more accurate at judging their success and failure than nondepressives.4 Sometimes depressive beliefs are of low power: “She doesn’t love me;” “I’m a hopeless golfer.” Sometimes they are powerful and pervasive: “I’m not worth loving;” “I’m a total failure.” There is some mild heritability and possibly an evolutionary basis for staying in the cave and conserving energy for a while after a loss. At any rate, with therapy or drugs, moderate relief ensues, but your battle against depression—even then—can still be life-long.
Social phobia and agoraphobia lie nearer the surface. They make some evolutionary sense, and there is some evidence of mild heritability. The underlying beliefs are easy to confirm since they are not wildly inaccurate: Shy people do get embarrassed by others; if you have one of your panic attacks in public, it may very well be that you will be sick as a dog and no one will help you. If you avoid social gatherings or do not leave your apartment, these beliefs will not get disconfirmed. The social-phobic beliefs have moderate power: Seeing yourself as socially unskilled or unlikable may explain a fair amount of what happens to you. The agoraphobic belief that you will get ill and no one will help you has relatively low power. With therapy and drugs, some relief ensues for both, but not a complete cure.
Problems of sexual performance change quite easily with the right therapy, and I consider them problems near the surface. There is no biological basis for the sexual dysfunctions,