The Human Animal

Most of the time, the phrase, “like an animal,” (as in “She ate like an animal.”) evokes disgust, filth, depravity, even contempt. I’d wager to say that Skinner’s bad reputation has to do with his animal studies, and people’s resistance to compare themselves to pigeons and rats. People find it really threatening to think of themselves as animals. We (myself included) love to speak loftily about “what makes us human, whereas we eat animals for dinner. We are most complex; however, it is sometimes a better survival strategy to embrace our simple side. Our discussion of behavioral treatments last week and this week’s readings on a cure for insomnia, relapse prevention, and the “recipe” for college kid depression show us that closing the space we impose between humans and animals opens up a range of incredibly effective therapeutic possibilities. When we admit that we’re subject to the same rules of operant and classical conditioning, we can really evolve.

Bootzin & Epstein’s Stimulus control instructions are an air-tight example of this. Synch bedroom cues for falling asleep (cues we may not even notice are cueing our wakefulness) and they’ll stimulate our slumber. Yes, in addition to sometimes working in bed, it may be the distinctly human ruminations that keep us awake. But what human can perfect their life so that they never ruminate in bed? It’s cheaper, more efficient, and productive to deal with insomnia at the surface level of stimulus control. Bootzin and Epstein have offered us a perfect example of self-help without the self.

I shudder to write that the other two articles on the Dynamic Model of Relapse and the risk-factors of college campuses convincingly let humans off the hook for their vices and largely implicate the environment. This implied scoff at free will threatens both religious senses of free will and our vaunted American individualism. But these articles show us how in confirming these basic human urges affirms our basic human innocence. Bogey the black lab mix who’s been staying with us for the last three weeks sometimes lunges at food garbage on the sidewalk. I pull her back and yell “No!” because an old sandwich could make her sick, but can I blame her? An old sandwich is probably a lot tastier than her normal food. And sex and drugs are like old cheese sandwiches for college kids, with sex doubling dopamine levels and cocaine increasing dopamine release 400-500%!!! Stress, sleep deprivation, and social pressure all diminish self-control, which is why the psychiatrist in the article says that “we can’t separate these things out.” The Dynamic Model of Relapse knits these things together with a great deal of complexity and says the future of relapse prevention should be based on these complex interacting “urges, cues, and automatic thoughts.” Their model is a wonderful example of how humans should use their big smart human frontal lobes to leverage their animal nature.