Speaker 1: Induction. A posteriory would have brought phrenology to admit an
Speaker 1: innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something
Speaker 1: which we may call perverseness for want of a more
Speaker 1: characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is in
Speaker 1: fact a mobile without a motive, a motive not motivert
Speaker 1: through its promptings we act without comprehensible object or, if
Speaker 1: this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we
Speaker 1: may so far modify the proposition as to say that,
Speaker 1: through its promptings we act for the reason that we
Speaker 1: should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable.
Speaker 1: But in fact there is none more strong. With certain minds,
Speaker 1: under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not
Speaker 1: more certain that I breathe than that the assurance of
Speaker 1: the wrong or error of any action is often the
Speaker 1: one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us
Speaker 1: to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do
Speaker 1: wrong for the wrong sake admit of analysis or resolution
Speaker 1: into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse,
Speaker 1: elementary welcome to stuff to blow your mind, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios, how stuff works. Hey, you welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And if you recognize that
Speaker 1: opening reading, you must be into the deep cuts of
Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe. The story didn't even have him burying
Speaker 1: anybody alive. Yeah, this is This is not like you said.
Speaker 1: This is this is not going to be a hit
Speaker 1: single from Poe by any means. This is this is
Speaker 1: more of a deep cut. Uh. You're probably far more
Speaker 1: familiar with the Tell Tale Heart or the Black Cat,
Speaker 1: two stories that contains similar elements, and then we'll touch
Speaker 1: on later in this episode. Yeah. So this is from
Speaker 1: Edgar Allan poet short story The Imp of the Perverse,
Speaker 1: And we start with this today because in this short story,
Speaker 1: Poe brings up this concept of the imp of the
Speaker 1: perverse or this, uh, this motive toward perversity, the idea
Speaker 1: of doing something exclusively for the reason that you know
Speaker 1: it should not be done and not for any other reason.
Speaker 1: And in this story the Imp of the Perverse, there
Speaker 1: is actually a murder. You don't get to the murder
Speaker 1: for a while. Poe makes you wait before before any
Speaker 1: plot there's just this long musing complete with lots of
Speaker 1: references to the pseudoscience of phrenology. But it's amusing on
Speaker 1: this particular impulse of perverseness, the powerful urge to do
Speaker 1: what we should not and to do it simply for
Speaker 1: the reason that it should not be done. And so
Speaker 1: Pope goes on to analyze this concept throughout the sort
Speaker 1: of s say section of the story. He calls it
Speaker 1: a radical primitive impulse uh, and he contrasts it with
Speaker 1: other types of drives that we have, which he frames
Speaker 1: in terms of the pseudoscience of phrenology. Again, he says
Speaker 1: it's different from mere combativeness because combativeness stems from an
Speaker 1: instinct for self defense. Right, It's rooted in the desire
Speaker 1: to be well and to protect yourself from injury. So
Speaker 1: Poe writes, quote, but in the case of that something
Speaker 1: which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is
Speaker 1: not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.
Speaker 1: So I take that to mean he's trying to make
Speaker 1: clear he's not talking about any kind of self defensive
Speaker 1: combativeness or antagonism, but rather a kind of suicidal antagonism,
Speaker 1: a thwarting of one's own best interests simply because you
Speaker 1: have a desire to do something that you shouldn't do. Now,
Speaker 1: the example that Poe uses here, of course, is one
Speaker 1: that I think most of us can't directly relate to,
Speaker 1: the idea of of of this impulse to confess a
Speaker 1: secret murder that you committed, but the the idea of
Speaker 1: being tempted to do something that you absolutely know you
Speaker 1: shouldn't do, like for for no logical reason interest, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think we can all relate to that on some level.
Speaker 1: Like I often think about this kind of thing when
Speaker 1: I'm in meetings. If I'm saying, like a one on
Speaker 1: one meeting with my boss, I say it's a you know,
Speaker 1: a performance review or you know, what have you, I'll
Speaker 1: suddenly I'll be sitting there nodding, listening, absorbing the information,
Speaker 1: and then like this random thought will occur, like what
Speaker 1: if I licked the desk right now? But if what
Speaker 1: if I started eating an ink pen, just chewing on it,
Speaker 1: but just like really uh, you know, showing down on it.
Speaker 1: And I'm not logically tempted to do these things. But
Speaker 1: then once the ideas in my mind, uh, I just
Speaker 1: keep thinking about it. I mean it's different from like,
Speaker 1: they are two very different ways to have a desire
Speaker 1: to say something inappropriate during a meeting with one's boss
Speaker 1: or something. One reason would be, well, maybe you've you know,
Speaker 1: you've got all these kinds of pent up feelings about
Speaker 1: your boss, and you're very angry and you think you've
Speaker 1: been wronged or something like that, and then that would
Speaker 1: be a sort of natural desire to express your feelings
Speaker 1: and rebel against some kind of injustice or get revenge
Speaker 1: by saying what you really think. That would be one thing.
Speaker 1: You're talking about something different and post talking about something
Speaker 1: different when when all those feelings aren't even necessarily they're
Speaker 1: just wanting, having this impulse to say something or do
Speaker 1: something completely inappropriate for no good reason at all. I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking about. I often have this
Speaker 1: thought when I'm in like a meeting or you have
Speaker 1: something's going on. Sometimes something just flashes into my head,
Speaker 1: like I could utter the following sentence and it would
Speaker 1: destroy my career, yeah, or or just do you think, like, well,
Speaker 1: what if I, like crab walked out of this meeting
Speaker 1: right now? You know, it wouldn't be that difficult to do,
Speaker 1: and yet it would totally uh, it would it would
Speaker 1: totally change everyone's perceptions of how I, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: how I experience reality and you know, the seriousness with
Speaker 1: which I take my job, that sort of thing. Um
Speaker 1: And and I guess, as as we'll come back to
Speaker 1: in this episode, a lot of it comes down to
Speaker 1: just that that weird dividing line between thought and action. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost as if whenever you do this, you're exploring
Speaker 1: what it means to contemplate an action without doing it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same way. It's almost like you're
Speaker 1: feeling the texture of something in those moments where you
Speaker 1: wonder what it would be like to swerve into oncoming
Speaker 1: traffic or to jump off of a tall ledge. I mean,
Speaker 1: you remember a while back you did an episode with
Speaker 1: Christian about the idea of the call of the void,
Speaker 1: and I think this touches on some similar stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily that people, I mean, people do have
Speaker 1: suicidal ideation that is more deeply rooted in in in
Speaker 1: ongoing problems they have, but there's also just the sort
Speaker 1: of like momentary fleeting impulses that don't even seem to
Speaker 1: be connected to anything larger. Yeah, yeah, that was I
Speaker 1: definitely recommend listeners go back to that episode because we
Speaker 1: touched on not only know how that we get these
Speaker 1: ideas in our head, this weird temptation when we're saying, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a top of tall building or on the
Speaker 1: cliff side. But in that episode, I shared how in
Speaker 1: the past I've also felt like this weird feeling like
Speaker 1: I need to press my wallet to the bottom of
Speaker 1: my pocket for fear that I'll take my wallet out
Speaker 1: and say throw it, throw it over the railing of
Speaker 1: the Empire State Building, And you know, which is something
Speaker 1: I definitely don't want to do. But then once the
Speaker 1: idea has entered my head, it does sort of feel
Speaker 1: like I should take steps to keep it from happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you almost feel like you wonder, for a second,
Speaker 1: am I going to be able to stop myself. In
Speaker 1: this long section where Poe talks about the idea of
Speaker 1: peering into an abyss in in the story, he says, quote,
Speaker 1: there is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient as
Speaker 1: that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice,
Speaker 1: thus meditates a plunge to indulge for a moment in
Speaker 1: any attempt at thought is not to be inevitably lost
Speaker 1: for reflection, but urges us to forbear. And therefore it
Speaker 1: is I say that we cannot if there be no
Speaker 1: friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in
Speaker 1: a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backwards from the abyss,
Speaker 1: we plunge and are destroyed. So it's this weird thing
Speaker 1: where he's almost like saying, you've got to depend on
Speaker 1: some kind of part of you to suddenly be the guard.
Speaker 1: What if that part of you the guard, isn't paying
Speaker 1: attention in some moment. I believe I mentioned this in
Speaker 1: the call the Void episode, but stuff like this always
Speaker 1: makes me think of uh. The author Robert Graves his
Speaker 1: partial autobiography Goodbye to All that he talks about his
Speaker 1: experiences in the war, but also of a mountain climbing,
Speaker 1: and if memory serves, there's this one part where he
Speaker 1: talks about climbing scaling these uh you know, these cliff
Speaker 1: sides with some friends and how like the scariest moment
Speaker 1: was when birds were sailing close by and and having
Speaker 1: to sort of wrestle with this this weird illogical feeling
Speaker 1: of love. What have I let go? What if? What
Speaker 1: if like the birds were sort of tempting them with
Speaker 1: this siren song of like, you know, let go and
Speaker 1: fly with us. I don't know if this is inspired
Speaker 1: by that, but I seem to recall a kind of
Speaker 1: stock scene and a lot of cartoons, like Wiley coyote
Speaker 1: type cartoons where a character, often the kind of bumbling,
Speaker 1: you know, prone to injury kind of character, would be
Speaker 1: out over allege on a precipice or on a tight
Speaker 1: rope or something and would be harassed by a bird
Speaker 1: fluttering fluttering around nearby. There's something that does seem to
Speaker 1: go deep about you being vulnerable at the edge and
Speaker 1: then a creature that has powers that you can't just
Speaker 1: floating around as light as a breeze. Oh yeah, I've
Speaker 1: definitely experienced it. Say, standing at the edge of the
Speaker 1: Grand Canyon, We're not the edge, several feetback, but still
Speaker 1: watching a bird traverse these to this drastic change in
Speaker 1: elevation with without any issue at all. Now, personally, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you find yourself to be I think the term
Speaker 1: would be criminophobic and having a fear of sharp drop
Speaker 1: offs and precipices. Yeah, at times, Yeah, like we we
Speaker 1: have another episode that we are currently researching and recording
Speaker 1: soon on mountains, and just looking at certain pictures of mountains,
Speaker 1: looking at um specifically walkways carved into the sides of mountains,
Speaker 1: at times, they made me cringe a little bit because
Speaker 1: and I could just imagine myself crawling upward down those
Speaker 1: stairs as opposed to you know, walking up and down
Speaker 1: them like a normal pilgrim or something. This is funny
Speaker 1: because I have tons of fears. I'm full of anxieties
Speaker 1: about all kinds of things in the world, but not
Speaker 1: this I I do. I'm almost kind of drawn to
Speaker 1: sharp drop offs. I always want to go right up
Speaker 1: to them and look over. Yeah, well, not not me,
Speaker 1: but of course it's always it's always a challenge taking
Speaker 1: a small child to these places because because my son
Speaker 1: he definitely wants to go up and check out the edge,
Speaker 1: and it just that that annurbs me even more. Well,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that would change everything I I my
Speaker 1: whole life. I've had the experience of being told to
Speaker 1: stay away from the edge even now. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: I had this issue before a kid was in my life,
Speaker 1: for sure, though, it's just the the edge is too close.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, sorry, So to come back to the ed
Speaker 1: Garland post story. Uh, the story goes on to tell
Speaker 1: of how the narrator he goes he gives this long essay,
Speaker 1: this kind of speech about phrenology and about the mp
Speaker 1: of the perverse, and then he tells a very brief
Speaker 1: version of his story, which is that he came up
Speaker 1: with an ingenious plan to get away with murder, and
Speaker 1: the way he did it was he murdered someone with
Speaker 1: a poisoned candlestick because he knew they would light a
Speaker 1: candle to read in bed at night, and so he
Speaker 1: gets away with the murder undetected. But then years later,
Speaker 1: having totally gotten away with it, he is seized with
Speaker 1: this uncontrollable urge to confess in public, which he does
Speaker 1: kind of raving in the middle of a public you know,
Speaker 1: marketplace type area, which of course lands him in chains
Speaker 1: and sentenced to hang for his crime. And that's where
Speaker 1: he is as he tells the story. But the story
Speaker 1: itself might not be all that remarkable as far as
Speaker 1: post stories go, but it does bring up this interesting
Speaker 1: idea personifies this imp of the perverse, the idea of
Speaker 1: wanting to do something simply because it is something that
Speaker 1: should not be done, either like morally, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a violation of norms, or because it's against one's
Speaker 1: own interest. That there's just some compelling force telling you
Speaker 1: not to do it, and that's the very reason you
Speaker 1: can't stop thinking about doing it. Yeah. I mentioned the
Speaker 1: tell Tale Heart earlier, and I think that's that's I
Speaker 1: think most would agree that's probably a better story that
Speaker 1: deals with with with with a very similar premise. The idea,
Speaker 1: of course, and that if you haven't read it, is
Speaker 1: that this guy killed an old man and buried him
Speaker 1: under the boards, and is what is living room. I
Speaker 1: believe the police come to ask questions and he just
Speaker 1: hears the thumping of the heart until it drives him bonkers,
Speaker 1: and he just starts pulling up the boards right or
Speaker 1: or or telling the the investigators like, look, he's under there,
Speaker 1: pull up the boards. I killed him, and his you know,
Speaker 1: his heart is beating um uh. And in that he's
Speaker 1: dealing with the imp of the perverse as well, manifested
Speaker 1: as this this nagging beating heart. Now, it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I've read The tell Tale Heart. Maybe you
Speaker 1: can answer this better than I, um, do you think
Speaker 1: that does guilt play a role in that story? Is
Speaker 1: he guilty for about what he has done and is
Speaker 1: a feeling of guilt driving him towards his confession, or
Speaker 1: is it more like the imp of the perverse where
Speaker 1: he doesn't even seem to feel bad about it, He's
Speaker 1: just got this urged to tell Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: been a once since I've read it, or I remember
Speaker 1: seeing like a stage adaptation of it as as a kid. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since i've I've I've interacted with either,
Speaker 1: but I remember I used to think it was more
Speaker 1: the guilt issue, because that seems like the the obvious trope, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that you're you're just you've done this horrible thing,
Speaker 1: and the weight of the thing you've done eventually pulls
Speaker 1: out the confession. But having become acquainted with the imp
Speaker 1: of the perverse now, which which I've before reached researching
Speaker 1: this episode I was not familiar with, I think it
Speaker 1: really makes me realize that Poe was probably thinking about
Speaker 1: other ideas here, and he was dealing with something a
Speaker 1: little more complicated in the human mind as opposed to
Speaker 1: this more cliched Uh. Imbalancing in the human heart. So
Speaker 1: maybe his his urge to confess was not a moral
Speaker 1: urge but more just kind of uh, the imp of
Speaker 1: the perverse, it was a neuroticism. Yeah, So one thing
Speaker 1: I think about, especially given all the references to phrenology
Speaker 1: in this post. Sorry, I guess you know, before you
Speaker 1: had psychology, you had pseudoscience like phrenology, And it makes
Speaker 1: me think about me, you know, what's the kind of
Speaker 1: bridge between these two worlds, you know, getting getting to
Speaker 1: modern psychology, and that makes me go to Freudian is Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know if your brain kind of goes to
Speaker 1: the same place there, but I mean you see echoes
Speaker 1: of things like the imp of the perverse in the
Speaker 1: writings in the psychoanalysis style of Freud, right, where he
Speaker 1: talked about things like a death drive or or a
Speaker 1: death instinct. Right, And would that be sort of related? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe so, and I've and I found you know,
Speaker 1: a few authors that have chimed in on this. So
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud, just to refresh it, lived eighteen fifty six
Speaker 1: through nine nine, and he's best remembered for his work
Speaker 1: on the unconscious mind, but he also theorized about the
Speaker 1: role of powerful instincts that energize the mind. And these
Speaker 1: instincts are numerous and varied, but he grouped them into
Speaker 1: two main categories. There's aros uh the the life instinct,
Speaker 1: and then there's Thanatos, the death instinct. And these names,
Speaker 1: of course refer to the Greek mythological gods of life
Speaker 1: and death. So the sexual influence of the libido only
Speaker 1: concerns only connects directly to the instincts of aros of
Speaker 1: One of the instincts of Thanatos focus on aggression, self destruction,
Speaker 1: and cruelty. So I think it would be reasonable to
Speaker 1: situate the imp of the reverse within the Freudian instinct
Speaker 1: family of Thanatos. Now, I was looking around for papers
Speaker 1: on this and I found a really good one from
Speaker 1: Laura Lai Carraman, and she explored this in a two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen paper titled the Urge to tell Versus the
Speaker 1: need to conceal confession as narrative desire, impose the black Cat,
Speaker 1: the tail, tale Heart, and the imp of the Perverse,
Speaker 1: And this was published in American and British Studies Annual,
Speaker 1: and as the title indicates, um the author Karaman points
Speaker 1: out that that Poe considered the drive to confess in
Speaker 1: not only The Imp but also in the more well
Speaker 1: known Black Cat and the tell Tale Heart quote. What
Speaker 1: is noteworthy is the nature of these confessions, their inexplicable,
Speaker 1: irrational quality, as if driven by a certain kind of
Speaker 1: urgency by a foreseemingly independent of their will. If the
Speaker 1: crimes committed appear more or less calculated, their confessions, by contrast,
Speaker 1: are almost unaccountably impulsive. That's yeah, that's totally accurate to
Speaker 1: the actual writing of the story, the imp of the perverse.
Speaker 1: I mean, the author is cold and calculating and psychopathic
Speaker 1: about the crime. You know, he thinks it through, he
Speaker 1: plans it out, he doesn't appear to feel bad about it.
Speaker 1: But then the can the desire to confess comes on
Speaker 1: as just this kind of like obsession from out of
Speaker 1: nowhere that he can't keep his mouth closed. He's running
Speaker 1: around thinking I'm about to blurt it out, and then does. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In this paper, the author points out that the past critics,
Speaker 1: such as Author Brown and Henry Sussman, have taken you know,
Speaker 1: all of this apart, with the latter Sussmen pointing out
Speaker 1: that the actor can of confession in these tales is
Speaker 1: a quote transgression of the boundaries between the private and
Speaker 1: the public kind of way. Again, that that that gray
Speaker 1: line between thought and action of essence. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: in these stories we see something that exists in the
Speaker 1: mind leaking out. Uh, you know, the desire to tell
Speaker 1: overpowers the desire for concealment. Um. Well, you know, one
Speaker 1: thing I wonder about with the references to phrenology in
Speaker 1: the story is that in the nineteenth century there could
Speaker 1: easily have been anxieties about the idea of an emerging
Speaker 1: science of the mind. Do you ever think about this
Speaker 1: like that? You're so a person always has their private thoughts,
Speaker 1: their thoughts or their own or maybe there between them
Speaker 1: and the god they believe in or whatever, but their
Speaker 1: private in some way other people can't know about them.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if you live in a world where
Speaker 1: there are all these burgeoning sciences, and the sciences are
Speaker 1: increasingly uh, intruding into domains like light and you know,
Speaker 1: in the social sciences and the mind itself, and you know,
Speaker 1: the emerging fields like psychology, you have to start to wonder,
Speaker 1: will people be able to read my mind with these sciences?
Speaker 1: Is there is there going to be a diminution of
Speaker 1: the private privilege with one's own thoughts? How Yeah, when
Speaker 1: we see this kind of anxiety reflected in so many
Speaker 1: works of science fiction over the years, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of of thought police, um, you know, determining what
Speaker 1: what's going on inside your head, of of passing through
Speaker 1: that boundary between action and thought. I was, in fact
Speaker 1: just reading a Peter Watts short story about this very topic. Um.
Speaker 1: But but but in these stories, something that Carmen point
Speaker 1: points out and drives home and referencing the work of
Speaker 1: these other um scholars, is that, you know, it's ultimately
Speaker 1: it's not as simple as oh, this character is mad
Speaker 1: well and that's why they did their crime and or
Speaker 1: blurted it out, but that there's something going on in
Speaker 1: the unconscious that is by definition unreadable. And that's the
Speaker 1: ultimate spooky, scary, mysterious part. That there's something, uh, there's
Speaker 1: something going on in there, that there are these contradictory
Speaker 1: drives in the subconscious and uh, and we don't really
Speaker 1: know what to expect from them. Well, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see this story situated again in kind of a bridge
Speaker 1: land between an old model that might often like an
Speaker 1: old model of the mind that might have often said,
Speaker 1: if you have drives or desires that don't feel like yours,
Speaker 1: that's a demon, you know, like that you could actually
Speaker 1: have the devil whispering in your ear, that it's an
Speaker 1: imp you know. And there then you've got devil possession
Speaker 1: and all that. And then you've got this, uh, this
Speaker 1: new way of thinking about things where where well, maybe
Speaker 1: you don't consciously understand all of your own drives and
Speaker 1: desires and motivations. Yeah, absolutely, um, you know, and all
Speaker 1: of this I can't help but think back to Um.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the exact biblical whole passage, but the
Speaker 1: basic idea that you see reflected in a lot of
Speaker 1: Christian theology that um, if you do something in your heart,
Speaker 1: it is is it is as if you did it
Speaker 1: in real life, as if you actually committed the act.
Speaker 1: And um again like even that without getting into kind
Speaker 1: of like the you know, the theological discourse on it,
Speaker 1: that's kind of dealing in this this this thin line
Speaker 1: or this time seemingly thin line between thought and action,
Speaker 1: between contemplation of theological and and the you know, and
Speaker 1: committing the illogical. Yeah, and in in that whole thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can see arguments on on both sides
Speaker 1: of the whole like if you are whoever has felt
Speaker 1: wrath against his brother has committed murder in his heart.
Speaker 1: On one hand, I mean, that seems like that's kind
Speaker 1: of almost kind of a very bad lesson to teach people,
Speaker 1: right like that, you know, it's it's just as bad
Speaker 1: to think about doing something bad as it is to
Speaker 1: actually do it. It kind of blurs the line of
Speaker 1: like resistance to evil, right, and especially as we proceed
Speaker 1: through the there's this episode, we're going to get into
Speaker 1: some areas where it really shows how problematic that is.
Speaker 1: Because I don't think that, you know, try to think
Speaker 1: something else. But I mean it does highlights even if
Speaker 1: we can say that's maybe bad advice, it does highlight something.
Speaker 1: And what it highlights is that, um, you know, if
Speaker 1: you allow yourself to contemplate something that you know you
Speaker 1: should not do a lot, you may very well wear
Speaker 1: down your resistance to doing it right. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we will chase the imp a
Speaker 1: little bit more through this subconscious than Thank alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: So We've been discussing this idea of the imp of
Speaker 1: the perverse that comes from this Ed Garland post short
Speaker 1: story from the eighteen forties, where there is this strong
Speaker 1: impulse to do something just because you shouldn't do it
Speaker 1: and not for other reasons. So I was reading an
Speaker 1: article about this in Psychology today by Meal Bruno, who
Speaker 1: is a professor at u PEN, and it brought up
Speaker 1: a few interesting things. So this article tells an interesting
Speaker 1: story about the imp and inhibition and neuroscience. And the
Speaker 1: story starts when Bruno was in graduate school and he
Speaker 1: talks about how he witnessed a neuropathology examination of a
Speaker 1: deceased patient. And so a neuropathology examination involves cutting open
Speaker 1: the brain and examining it and figuring out, you know it,
Speaker 1: was there any damaged tissues or a neural degeneration. And
Speaker 1: also present at this examination was a social worker who
Speaker 1: had known the patient before he died. And so the
Speaker 1: autopsy revealed degeneration in the prefrontal cortex, especially of the
Speaker 1: dorso lateral prefrontal cortex. And this is the outer part
Speaker 1: of the brain, starting above the temples and sort of
Speaker 1: reaching up onto the outside of the forehead, and Bruno
Speaker 1: mentions that this area is important for cognitive control. I
Speaker 1: was reading about its role in cognition and behavior, and
Speaker 1: it's generally believed to have a lot to do with
Speaker 1: many different kinds of executive function. This includes things like
Speaker 1: selective attention, choosing what to pay attention to and what
Speaker 1: to think about, things like working memory and meta memory.
Speaker 1: So meta memory is the cognitive management of memories, like
Speaker 1: judging whether a particular memory is relevant or correct. But
Speaker 1: this area also appears to have things to do with planning,
Speaker 1: with regulating and overriding emotions, and crucially with inhibition. And
Speaker 1: the management of inhibition also appears to be a major
Speaker 1: function of the prefrontal cortex in general, which remember, showed
Speaker 1: damage all over in this patient. So because of this
Speaker 1: physical neuropathology, the doctor performing the autopsy asked the man's
Speaker 1: social worker if he had had any issues with impulsiveness
Speaker 1: and control, and the social workers said yes. In fact,
Speaker 1: later in life, this man had repeatedly had a problem
Speaker 1: with jumping out of moving cars. Jumping out of moving cars,
Speaker 1: and I thought that's really interesting because that's not just
Speaker 1: something like, you know, taking food out of somebody's hand.
Speaker 1: Or or sexually inappropriate behavior, things that are certainly wrong,
Speaker 1: but that you can see how disinhibition would allow just
Speaker 1: sort of natural urges that people have otherwise to to
Speaker 1: come out without being mediated by the thought I shouldn't
Speaker 1: do that. With jumping out of moving cars, you have
Speaker 1: to wonder more like, where does that urge come from
Speaker 1: to begin with? And in fact, this kind of thing
Speaker 1: is more common than we might normally imagine. Berno himself
Speaker 1: rights that quote. Fifty seven percent of people with fronto
Speaker 1: temporal dementia, which is neural degeneration that targets the frontal
Speaker 1: and temporal lobes violate social norms, engaging in sexual transgressions
Speaker 1: and public nudity, shoplifting in front of store managers, eating
Speaker 1: out of the trash. It is common knowledge in the
Speaker 1: field of neuroscience now that these behaviors are due to
Speaker 1: a problem of disinhibition because of a deterioration of the
Speaker 1: cognitive control network of the lateral prefrontal cortex. And so
Speaker 1: I was looking into this more uh and I found
Speaker 1: even more support for the role of the prefrontal cortex
Speaker 1: and inhibiting imp like behaviors, and more evidence that when
Speaker 1: the prefrontal cortex is impaired, inhibition suffers, and we be
Speaker 1: we begin to act out transgressive and inappropriate behaviors. So
Speaker 1: one study I looked at was called Diagnosis and Management
Speaker 1: of Behavioral Issues in front of temporal Dementia by Menu,
Speaker 1: Carry and Huey. In current neurology and neuroscience reports from
Speaker 1: and they write that behavioral disinhibition is a classic hallmark
Speaker 1: of the behavioral variant of fronto temporal dementia quote. Within
Speaker 1: the first several years of symptoms, patients can behave contrary
Speaker 1: to social norms. They may inappropriately touch or aggressively approach strangers,
Speaker 1: or even engage in theft or other criminal behaviors. Patients
Speaker 1: may also disregard al or social norms to make offensive
Speaker 1: jokes or sexual remarks, encroach on the personal space of others,
Speaker 1: and exhibit childish behavior and a general lack of etiquette.
Speaker 1: Disinhibition may also be exhibited in the form of rash
Speaker 1: or impulsive actions like gambling or repeatedly falling for financial scams.
Speaker 1: The largest autopsy confirmed study of b v F t D,
Speaker 1: or behavioral variant front of temporal dementia, found seventy six
Speaker 1: percent of patients exhibited behavioral dis disinhibition or impulsivity. So
Speaker 1: it seems like when something happens to this part of
Speaker 1: the brain, when you've got impairment of the front of
Speaker 1: temporal area. You see this almost all the time, that
Speaker 1: there is there is a problem with regulating one's behavior,
Speaker 1: and you see people acting out things that they might
Speaker 1: think about but wouldn't normally do. And this is all
Speaker 1: quite an impt to consider because again we're getting back
Speaker 1: to the the idea that the choice is kind of
Speaker 1: being taken out of our hands, right, Um, in this case,
Speaker 1: it's we're getting down to uh, essentially in a brain injury. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this kind of thing really always makes me
Speaker 1: consider stuff like criminal justice, you know, the the idea
Speaker 1: that um that okay, so we we say we want
Speaker 1: to live in a society where people are held accountable
Speaker 1: for their actions, and that that seems to make sense
Speaker 1: to me intuitively. You don't want people to just go
Speaker 1: around wantonly harming other people and getting away with it
Speaker 1: and not facing any consequences. But then at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's hard to look at stuff like this and and
Speaker 1: think that it really makes sense to punish people for
Speaker 1: their behaviors when our behavior, you know, we can we
Speaker 1: can go out and hurt people because we have a
Speaker 1: tumor in a certain part of our brain, or because
Speaker 1: we're experiencing we're experiencing dementia due to old age or
Speaker 1: some kind of brain disease, or because we have a
Speaker 1: head injury, all kinds of physical facts that we would
Speaker 1: agree people are not at all to blame for control
Speaker 1: tribute to them doing things that violate social norms and
Speaker 1: harm other people. And so if that's the case, also
Speaker 1: people didn't I mean pick the brain they were born with.
Speaker 1: Either you didn't, you didn't ask to be born with
Speaker 1: a brain that makes you more likely to be aggressive
Speaker 1: or invade people's personal space. And yet then again we
Speaker 1: can't like encourage those behaviors. I don't know it. This
Speaker 1: kind of thing leaves you in a real pickle in
Speaker 1: thinking about how to deal with with human misbehavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do feel like a lot of it does, kind
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, spring forth from older ideas about
Speaker 1: you know, in which you know, committing a you know,
Speaker 1: an improper act is a is a statement on a
Speaker 1: you know, a pure moral failing. Yeah, um, you know,
Speaker 1: some problem in the soul as opposed to something that
Speaker 1: is you know more that is a medical issue. But
Speaker 1: I was also further wondering about the the idea of
Speaker 1: like impulses and impulse control, because Okay, so we know
Speaker 1: that certain parts of the brain are very corton for
Speaker 1: keeping the imp of the perverse from taking control of
Speaker 1: the wheel, right from the prefrontal cortex, the frontal temporal regions.
Speaker 1: These play some kind of major role in inhibition, and
Speaker 1: if there's injury to them or something is wrong in there,
Speaker 1: you can suddenly start doing things that you normally would
Speaker 1: stop yourself before acting out. But I wonder about the
Speaker 1: first half of the equation, like the urges themselves, Where
Speaker 1: do the urges to do the wrong thing come from
Speaker 1: in the first place? In this article I was talking
Speaker 1: about a minute ago, Bruno identifies the orbitofrontal cortex is
Speaker 1: a likely seat of impulses like this, and he he
Speaker 1: links this to the way that like tumors in the
Speaker 1: orbitofrontal cortex can sometimes cause people to suddenly start engaging
Speaker 1: in criminal behaviors that they never would have before. And
Speaker 1: like the the awful history of of frontal lobotomy, you
Speaker 1: know that went into the orbitofrontal cortex and severed connections
Speaker 1: in there through the eye socket, and the idea that
Speaker 1: this would reduce aggression and inappropriate behaviors, which it often did,
Speaker 1: but also just did general damage to people's brains and
Speaker 1: personalities in many cases. And that's a that's a kind
Speaker 1: of horrible story in the history of medical neuroscience. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the real life horror stories
Speaker 1: kind of circling around all of this. Yeah. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: so I looked this up, and based on all the
Speaker 1: literature I was reading, it also seems like the orbit
Speaker 1: of frontal cortex placed some major role in decision making
Speaker 1: and emotions and behavioral inhibition, such that injuries or tumors
Speaker 1: or degenerative disease in the o f C can lead
Speaker 1: to disinhibited behavior. Though I'm no neuroscientists, obviously, but reading around,
Speaker 1: I can't see quite exactly the reason that the imp
Speaker 1: would necessarily be there, except to say that, like the
Speaker 1: lateral prefrontal cortex, the orbit orbit of frontal cortex is
Speaker 1: generally important for value based decision making and behavioral control.
Speaker 1: For example, I was looking at a paper in Social
Speaker 1: Cognitive of an affective neuroscience by Corpina at all, they
Speaker 1: just found a strange thing that it increases in the
Speaker 1: volume of the prefrontal cortex and intra prefrontal functional connectivity
Speaker 1: were related to impulsive and antisocial psychopathic traits. But anyways,
Speaker 1: multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex do appear to play
Speaker 1: a significant role in the generation of impulses to act
Speaker 1: out and in the control and inhibition of those impulses
Speaker 1: when we judge them inappropriate. You want to do something bad,
Speaker 1: but you stop yourself from doing that bad thing. A
Speaker 1: lot of what's going on there seems to depend on
Speaker 1: and happen in the prefrontal cortex. But I guess in
Speaker 1: any of these cases you do have to ask the question,
Speaker 1: is this the imp of the perverse or is this
Speaker 1: just a desire for something that you would normally be
Speaker 1: able to inhibit with your with you know, with your
Speaker 1: behavioral control, with your executive function, or is it really
Speaker 1: the perversity that motivates the action in the first place,
Speaker 1: Like they're all kinds of things we could do in
Speaker 1: order to get something that is an otherwise normal intrinsic desire.
Speaker 1: People with disinhibition patterns. Violet norms and act inappropriately to
Speaker 1: get food, to get sexual gratification, to get revenge, or
Speaker 1: to get items, they want to express power over people,
Speaker 1: and they're they're good reasons for not doing all these
Speaker 1: things based on our morals, But the underlying motivations to
Speaker 1: do them exist independently. So I wonder what provides the
Speaker 1: impulse to act perversely in the true spirit of the
Speaker 1: post story. Are there cases where we can only understand
Speaker 1: why the brain would act contrary to its awareness of
Speaker 1: norms for the reason that that action is contrary to
Speaker 1: norms with no identifiable other motivation. Cases where the perversity
Speaker 1: is clearly what causes the action in the first place. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: we have a very interesting theory to discuss about where
Speaker 1: a lot of this is coming from. Yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna take one more break. When we them back, we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss the ironic process of mental control. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, Robert, we're asking the question, have we
Speaker 1: ever been able to identify any cases where there is
Speaker 1: something like the imp of the perverse where the perversity
Speaker 1: of a thought or impulse or action actually does tend
Speaker 1: to cause the brain to favor it. And one place
Speaker 1: we can take this line of thought is to the
Speaker 1: Harvard psychology professor Daniel M. Wagner, who passed away in
Speaker 1: but who wrote about this idea of the ironic process
Speaker 1: of mental control. That's right, and he actually begins the
Speaker 1: paper with a passage from Po from them of the perverse.
Speaker 1: But the first paragraph of this paper is just pretty
Speaker 1: spot on, I think, and in terms of like sort
Speaker 1: of you know, striking a chord with with something that
Speaker 1: we can all relate to quote, it sometimes seems that
Speaker 1: our desires to control our minds are met by an
Speaker 1: inordinate measure of failure. Whether we want to stop a worry,
Speaker 1: concentrate on the task, go to sleep, escape a bad mood,
Speaker 1: distract ourselves from pain, be humble, relax, avoid prejudice, or
Speaker 1: serve yet other mental goals, we find ourselves faltering again
Speaker 1: and again. Indeed, our attempts at mental control falls short
Speaker 1: so often then we may stop to wonder, along with Po,
Speaker 1: whether there is some part of our minds, an imp
Speaker 1: of the perverse, that ironically strives to compel our errors.
Speaker 1: The theory of ironic processes of mental control make precisely
Speaker 1: this claim, and so in his Ironic process theory which
Speaker 1: he presents in this paper. He argues that quote, the
Speaker 1: ironies of mental life or not just happenstance examples of
Speaker 1: the frailty of human endeavors, but rather are logically entailed
Speaker 1: by the nature of mental control. So he's arguing that
Speaker 1: the very nature of the way cognition happens tends to
Speaker 1: favor us thinking about things that we're trying not to
Speaker 1: think about. Exactly. Yeah, he's saying that, you know, when
Speaker 1: we attempt to exert mental control via what he refers
Speaker 1: to as the operating process, to fill the mind with
Speaker 1: the desired array of emotions or thoughts, you know, like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cheer up, where I'm gonna, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: into a calm state of mind, whatever the desires worrying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop wearing UM. When we do that, the
Speaker 1: monitoring process kicks in to ask is this the case?
Speaker 1: Is this the is this working? Is this how I'm
Speaker 1: actually feeling? Um? So it not only searches for failure,
Speaker 1: but quote tends to create the failure. Yes, yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's what he's saying. It's not just that we're not
Speaker 1: very good at controlling the contents of our brains. Often
Speaker 1: the attempt to control the contents of our not just
Speaker 1: our brains, our minds. The attempt to control the contents
Speaker 1: of our minds backfires spectacularly. Yeah. It's like we're saying,
Speaker 1: I would rather not be sad right now. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and load happiness, and then the monitoring
Speaker 1: process says, let me check. Nope, you're sad. We're gonna
Speaker 1: schedule down for another hour of set. Uh. So this
Speaker 1: is this is a wonderful paper. The title is Ironic
Speaker 1: Processes of Mental Control by Daniel M. Vegner W E
Speaker 1: G N E R. Published in the Psychological Review in
Speaker 1: and if you if you search around, you can you
Speaker 1: can find this one online pretty easily. Um. But he
Speaker 1: presents some other individuals work just to support this idea.
Speaker 1: One of them is UH is the work of French
Speaker 1: chemist Michel Chevroule, and he is UH known for Chevroule's pendulum.
Speaker 1: So he debunked a spiritualist illusion in eighteen thirty three
Speaker 1: in which awaited body suspended by a string from the
Speaker 1: fingers was found to oscillate back and forth when concentrated upon.
Speaker 1: Similar to this is pretty well, it's the same the
Speaker 1: best way to explain it, because I think most of
Speaker 1: us have probably not manipulated this pendulum. But if you've
Speaker 1: ever played with Auiji board, well then you have experienced
Speaker 1: the same thing. It is a kinesthetic illusion. The you know,
Speaker 1: the the idea the causation of movement is is occurring
Speaker 1: without the perception of our own conscious muscle movement, also
Speaker 1: known as the ideometer phenomenon, and it's connected to automatic writing,
Speaker 1: to dowsing, and other alleged supernatural acts. Anything that involves
Speaker 1: you not moving something, feeling like you're not moving something,
Speaker 1: but actually moving something. Yeah. Though it also reminds me
Speaker 1: of the psychomotor problem known as target fixation, which I'd
Speaker 1: read about years ago but just recently came to my mind.
Speaker 1: So this is something that occurs in driving and piloting.
Speaker 1: I've read about it primarily with respect to operating a
Speaker 1: motorcycle for some reason. I don't know why a motorcycle specifically,
Speaker 1: and not other vehicles. But here's the basic idea. Robert,
Speaker 1: and you're steering a vehicle and you suddenly notice an
Speaker 1: obstacle or threat that you need to avoid, and then
Speaker 1: you steer directly into the obstacle and An example I've
Speaker 1: read about is that say you're on a motorcycle in
Speaker 1: a motorcycle race on a closed track, and then one
Speaker 1: cycle veers off the track and crashes. UH. It's apparently,
Speaker 1: in this case not unusual for cycles going along behind
Speaker 1: it to steer off and follow the crashed motorcycle. And
Speaker 1: this is usually described as a panic reflex, Like you
Speaker 1: see an obstacle or crash or something threatening or dangerous,
Speaker 1: and you immediately, because it's threatening and dangerous, focus all
Speaker 1: your attention on that thing so as not to run
Speaker 1: into it. But because you focus all your attention on
Speaker 1: that thing, you unconsciously steer your vehicle directly toward it.
Speaker 1: I am curious why this UH is mainly talked about
Speaker 1: with motorcycles and not so much with other motor vehicles.
Speaker 1: It could just be that the motorcycles and motorcyclists who
Speaker 1: talk about this are often operating at a faster speed.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It does seem to line up with
Speaker 1: a number of the principles we're talking about here right
Speaker 1: in Vegnar's theory, And now Vegnar also brings up Freud's
Speaker 1: counter will to bring it back to segment freud Um
Speaker 1: Freud's read on what's happening here is that we can't
Speaker 1: do the thing we want to do sometimes, uh, as
Speaker 1: if there's another will within us countering the will to
Speaker 1: do the thing. Uh. And he employed this in his
Speaker 1: consideration of hysteria. He also brought up the law of
Speaker 1: reversed effort by Charles Bodwin from and this is kind
Speaker 1: of an early hit on the same ideas of involved
Speaker 1: in the ironic process theory, but but in the ironic
Speaker 1: process theory paper, Vegner lays out a model of how
Speaker 1: this goes down, for first with the effortful operating process
Speaker 1: and then the effortless monitoring process. And that's part of
Speaker 1: the maddening thing about it, right, It is like you can,
Speaker 1: you can, you can exert so much will to try
Speaker 1: and change your mind state, but then the resistance is
Speaker 1: just it's it's it's like it's an alien force that
Speaker 1: has its own reserves of energy to draw on limitless
Speaker 1: even and then he goes on to consider the evidence
Speaker 1: from experiments into movement, prejudice, self presentation, belief, disbelief, sleep, wakefulness, pain. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's really a robust paper in this regard, and
Speaker 1: he did a bunch of empirical research in this area,
Speaker 1: I mean doing experiments to show directly uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: in some ways it is not hard to demonstrate. For example,
Speaker 1: by asking people to verbalize a stream of consciousness, you
Speaker 1: can find quite easily the people are who are told
Speaker 1: to try hard not to think about something end up
Speaker 1: thinking about it a lot. And in this section on
Speaker 1: chronic production of ironic effects, he discusses how all of
Speaker 1: this can potentially lead to a positive feedback loop of
Speaker 1: ironic effects, wearing you down with increased mental load as
Speaker 1: everything quote is magnified toward uh, psychopathological extremes um which
Speaker 1: you know, even though you know he's talking about something,
Speaker 1: he's talking about this in the sense that you know
Speaker 1: this is how our minds seem to work. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, this sounds just completely awful. This sounds
Speaker 1: like like a terrible system right where you just keep
Speaker 1: running up against, you know, a potential positive feedback loop
Speaker 1: of of you know, increasingly worrisome effects like this. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of you know, of what is
Speaker 1: referred to in psychology as catastrophic thinking, you know, where
Speaker 1: you end up obsessing over extreme and or irrational worst
Speaker 1: case scenarios. Yeah, catastrophizing. Yeah, this is a tendency to
Speaker 1: always look out for and your loved ones or when
Speaker 1: you catch yourself doing it, because I mean, it can
Speaker 1: be a sign that something's really wrong with your thought
Speaker 1: patterns when you you're always trying to imagine what's the
Speaker 1: worst way things could possibly go. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: brings me back again to something we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: show before. You know, we talked about chronosthesia mental time travel,
Speaker 1: all right, as well as theory of mind and uh,
Speaker 1: and how both of these playing in our ability to
Speaker 1: uh sort of run uh simulations of how the future
Speaker 1: might go. Uh. And so when we're going into that
Speaker 1: meeting with our boss, you know, we have various simulated
Speaker 1: ideas of how things will go. Uh. You know, probably
Speaker 1: some that are very reasonable, but then you're gonna have
Speaker 1: some that are extreme. Maybe you're you're overly optimistic, and
Speaker 1: there's one that's just a fantasy where you get like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the billion dollar raise or something. And
Speaker 1: then there are the ones that are more catastrophic in nature, uh,
Speaker 1: ones that are maybe getting into the territory of the
Speaker 1: the imp of the perverse. What if I look at
Speaker 1: the table or eat a pin, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But then aren't we not like wasting our efforts on
Speaker 1: these models when we should be using our mental energy
Speaker 1: towards the models that are more possible. I mean, on
Speaker 1: one hand, yeah, it does seem like it. There is
Speaker 1: adaptive value in being able to simulate future events, but
Speaker 1: it does seem like we waste a lot of this
Speaker 1: uh potential, we have this ability, we have to simulate
Speaker 1: future events in our minds on yeah, just just ruining
Speaker 1: ourselves and ruining our emotional state by obsessing with things
Speaker 1: that are not helpful. And yeah, it can be hard
Speaker 1: to understand exactly why that happens. Anyway, back to Wagner here,
Speaker 1: he yeah. He ultimately argues that the ironic process theory
Speaker 1: could explain a lot of about our mental control, but
Speaker 1: he also brings it back to the imp saying quote.
Speaker 1: The theory also accounts for one further class of effects,
Speaker 1: the class that cries out for explanation and from which
Speaker 1: we often cry out for relief. The theory suggests that
Speaker 1: the ironic monitor is responsible for the instances in which
Speaker 1: we find that we do, say, think, or feel precisely
Speaker 1: what we least intend. Yeah. I mean I think when
Speaker 1: you consider, like the model we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: that clearly within the brain there are probably there are
Speaker 1: subsystems for generating impulses to action, and then there are
Speaker 1: other systems that provide inhibitory control. You know, executive function
Speaker 1: of the brain says, to some impulses, no, let's not
Speaker 1: do that. But when there is a when there is
Speaker 1: say a thought that you were repeatedly returning to, especially
Speaker 1: because you're trying to avoid thinking it due to the
Speaker 1: ironic process of mental control, you keep thinking, am I
Speaker 1: not thinking about it? And every time you think that
Speaker 1: you think it that that's bringing it constantly to mind.
Speaker 1: And then if there's ever a failure of inhibition for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, you know, either just a kind of like
Speaker 1: momentary glitch or because you've got a neurodegenerative disease or
Speaker 1: a tumor or whatever, that impulse generated by the ironic
Speaker 1: process by checking on your own mind to make sure
Speaker 1: you're not thinking about the thing you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: think about, turns into an action. Now all of this
Speaker 1: sounds overwhelming really, Uh, Like, OK, I guess the MP
Speaker 1: wins like you know that what what can one do
Speaker 1: against this? Uh, this kind of situation? How can we possibly?
Speaker 1: It's depressing to think that we would we have such
Speaker 1: a difficulty in in changing our mind state, even though
Speaker 1: we we obviously put a lot of energy into trying
Speaker 1: to do so. Um. So it might lead some of
Speaker 1: you to wonder, well, Okay, well what did Wagner have
Speaker 1: to say about this? Did he have any advice for
Speaker 1: dealing with these forces? Yeah? And so Wagner actually gave
Speaker 1: a presentation about the imp of the perverse and about
Speaker 1: thought suppression to the American Psychological Association in two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven where he reviewed his research over his career on
Speaker 1: this subject. And there was an article discussing this presentation
Speaker 1: in the A p A Journal by Leah Weinerman uh,
Speaker 1: and it discusses how Wagner said in his presentation that
Speaker 1: is clear from the research that attempting not to think
Speaker 1: about something not only doesn't work, it makes you more
Speaker 1: likely to think about that thing. But what people always
Speaker 1: want to know is what you're just asking about, Robert. Okay,
Speaker 1: if the imp is there, and simply attempting not to
Speaker 1: think about something will make you think about it more
Speaker 1: and maybe even make you more likely to do it. Possibly,
Speaker 1: is there anything you can do to defeat the imp
Speaker 1: There does not, unfortunately, appear to be a fool proof method,
Speaker 1: But Wagner laid out several methods that he and his
Speaker 1: colleagues had discovered which had some degrees of success and
Speaker 1: empirical support. UH Number one is, instead of trying not
Speaker 1: to think about the thing you don't want to think about,
Speaker 1: think about something else. Busy your mind with other contents.
Speaker 1: Wagner and colleagues found in at least one other study
Speaker 1: that when they asked people to think about a red
Speaker 1: Volkswagen instead of a white bear, the people were somewhat
Speaker 1: more successful than when they were just told not to
Speaker 1: think of a white bear. Trying not to think about
Speaker 1: something is a losing game. But if you positively think
Speaker 1: about something else instead, then you then you have a
Speaker 1: better chance. And I'd say this is one case where
Speaker 1: the empirical research he does seem to line up with UH.
Speaker 1: With I don't know, at least the what seems to
Speaker 1: be reasonable conventional wisdom. Right, you can't just obsess about
Speaker 1: not wanting to feel what you're feeling. You should find
Speaker 1: something to do. Right when you find something to do
Speaker 1: when you find another project, then your mind become sort
Speaker 1: of full of other things rather than just like avoid
Speaker 1: or a vacuum that you're trying to keep the bad
Speaker 1: stuff out of. Next thing he recommends is mentally postpone
Speaker 1: unwanted thoughts. I thought this was kind of interesting. Apparently,
Speaker 1: some research has found that if you just give people
Speaker 1: a designated period of thirty minutes to worry about something,
Speaker 1: they worry less about it at other times. So if
Speaker 1: the imp of the perverse is continually turning your mind
Speaker 1: to an unwanted subject, Wagner suggests telling yourself, I'm going
Speaker 1: to think about that, uh sometime next Wednesday, and I
Speaker 1: won't think about it until then, And somehow this is
Speaker 1: actually or at least apparently this is somewhat effective. Another
Speaker 1: strategy he recommends is lighten your mental load or avoid multitasking. Quote.
Speaker 1: One study found that people under increased mental load show
Speaker 1: an increase in the availability of thoughts of death, one
Speaker 1: of the great unwanted thoughts for most people. Uh, though,
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of wonder about this one. I mean,
Speaker 1: this could be seems like it could be resulted distress
Speaker 1: and a lot of different things. Next one apparently is
Speaker 1: exposure therapy. You think about the unwanted thought deliberately in
Speaker 1: controlled ways, in controlled settings, and it may become less
Speaker 1: intrusive at other times. And this strikes me as perhaps
Speaker 1: one of the benefits that benefits of something like traditional
Speaker 1: talk therapy. It provides a positive and controlled setting to
Speaker 1: pay attention to unpleasant and unwanted thoughts so that they
Speaker 1: become less persistent and intrusive at other times. And then finally,
Speaker 1: the last one is he recommends mindfulness meditation, learning how
Speaker 1: to manage your attention and consciousness through mindfulness meditation practice.
Speaker 1: That this does appear somewhat helpful, and this makes sense
Speaker 1: to me. If you've never tried mindfulness meditation, it's worth
Speaker 1: I think everybody should try to give it at least
Speaker 1: one shot and see what you think about it. There
Speaker 1: are many different kinds of meditation practice. Mindfulness specifically is
Speaker 1: about attention and experience. It's usually done by having an
Speaker 1: object of focus. Your own breath is a common one,
Speaker 1: and you just try to pay intense, unbroken attention to
Speaker 1: a thing. Now, of course you will, you know, your
Speaker 1: mind will wander, and then you just sort of continually
Speaker 1: notice your own mental experiences and return your attention to
Speaker 1: the object of focus. It tends to make you calmer
Speaker 1: and better at understanding the way your own attention works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course what we've we've discussed meditation on the
Speaker 1: show before. Uh So, if if anyone wants, you know,
Speaker 1: a deeper dive into that, certainly look back in the
Speaker 1: archives for this show. But this gives us a little
Speaker 1: bit of hope. It it does provide hopefully we can
Speaker 1: we can close out this episode with some hope for
Speaker 1: all of us dealing with our own personal imps totally
Speaker 1: and especially feel for for me, and I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of people these days, their internet imps, the
Speaker 1: internet imps come in at us all the time. I
Speaker 1: feel like our brains are especially vulnerable these days because
Speaker 1: of social media and online headlines and all that. Our
Speaker 1: electronic connectedness has made us all the more vulnerable to
Speaker 1: uh to, to impish behavior from the information world. Now,
Speaker 1: in this episode we talked about intrusive thoughts a good bit.
Speaker 1: We talked about, you know, the call of the void, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So I think it is good to to to a
Speaker 1: close out by just reminding everybody that if you know,
Speaker 1: if you're dealing with intrusive thoughts of of say suicide. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, a sympathetic ear is only a phone call away.
Speaker 1: In the United States, consider calling the National Suicide Prevention
Speaker 1: Hotline at one eight hundred to seven three, eight to
Speaker 1: five five, and visit UH Suicide Prevention Lifeline dot org
Speaker 1: for additional resources tailored towards general and specific needs, such
Speaker 1: as those of youth, disaster survivors, Native Americans, veterans, lost survivors,
Speaker 1: l g B, t Q, and attempt survivors. You'll find
Speaker 1: a list of international suicide hotlines at suicide dot org.
Speaker 1: But to close things out on a lighter note, Joe,
Speaker 1: the imp of the perverse? Did you imagine it looking
Speaker 1: like a googley, a gremlin, a hobgoblin, or some other
Speaker 1: cinematic diminutive monster. Oh, the imp of the perverse is
Speaker 1: job of the huts. Little buddy. What's it called? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, I'm blanking on his name. Something like a
Speaker 1: little beak dog, Yes, yes, uh, something like scarlets fudge,
Speaker 1: but not scarlets fudge. Why what did you picture? Robert?
Speaker 1: I pictured a hobgoblin from the movie hob Goblins. For sure,
Speaker 1: that's very, very good choice, but a Gremlin or Google
Speaker 1: would also be acceptable. I know you're partial to Googley's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Googies are pretty terrifying. Uh that yeah, that's
Speaker 1: probably what came to my mind when I first imagined
Speaker 1: the MP of the perverse. Alright, so we're gonna close
Speaker 1: it out. If you want to check out more episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over to
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Speaker 1: an invention by invention. Uh, exploration of human technoe history.
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Speaker 1: If you like this show, we think you'll love that one.
Speaker 1: So anyway, huge thanks to our excellent audio producers Alex
Speaker 1: Williams and Tor Harrison. If you would like to get
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