Mind Hacks

While looking through the Journal of the American Medical Association, I found this fascinating and glowing review of Rachel Maines’ book ‘The Technology of Orgasm’ that uncovers the history of how vibrators were originally popularised created to cure ‘hysteria’ in women as a Victorian medical treatment.

Hysteria has had many medical meanings through the millenia, but at the time Maines was writing about, it was a catch-all anxiety-related diagnosis usually applied to women.

While perusing turn-of-the-century magazines such as Modern Priscilla and Woman’s Home Companion, Maines was surprised to find any number of advertisements for electric vibrators. As early as 1899, she writes, machines that closely resemble modern sexual aids were marketed to women as health-promoting, antiaging devices. “All the pleasures of youth will throb within you,” proclaimed one such advertisement for White Cross vibrators in 1913. Was this early vibrator, which predated the invention of the vacuum cleaner and electric iron by a decade, merely a sexual toy sold under the guise of a medical device?

Not so, according to Maines, who describes how the vibrator was invented in the 1880s as a medical appliance. In a scrupulously researched chapter‚Äîone of the best in her book‚ÄîMaines provides a unique and fascinating history of hysteria, ending with Freud’s revision of the diagnosis in the early 1900s. Maines shows that hysteria is described in medical texts as early as 2000 BC in Egypt. Although physicians throughout history disagreed about the exact symptoms of hysteria, “anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema, and vaginal lubrication” were said to be among its many manifestations.

Believing hysteria to be caused by sexual frustration, physicians proposed that the uterus became engorged with “seed” and wandered upward inside the body until it threatened to choke its host. Treatments for hysteria, described as early as the fifth century, include stimulating the vagina and labia of the afflicted patient in order to induce a “hysterical paroxysm.” This “crisis,” during which a patient might thrust her pelvis suggestively, utter cries of pleasure, and briefly appear to lose consciousness, was thought to return the uterus to its rightful place. Maines goes on to say that treatment for hysteria was protracted, with patients typically seen weekly for an indefinite period.

Probably for those cases of treatment resistant hysteria I would imagine.

Slate has a NSFW slideshow tracking the early history of the vibrator with photos of some of these original adverts and ‘medical aids’. Although, it’s NSFW, it’s not really that erotic I’m afraid. Sorry about that.

The review is from 1999 and it turns out that the book won two prestigious academic history awards after publication.

Sadly the JAMA book review is closed-access and behind a pay wall. Don’t the American Medical Association know information is like love? It’s better when it’s free.

Link to JAMA book review, closeted behind a pay wall.
Link to Slate slideshow on the history of the vibrator.
Link to more info on Rachel Maines’ book.

Pure Pedantry has picked up on a wonderful study that has found that incidences of road rage correlate with the number of bumper stickers a person has on their car.

The abstract below suggests that bumper stickers are potentially an expression of territorial markers and that aggressive people are more likely to use more, but I think we all know it’s just down to the fact that “my other car is a Ferrari” just isn’t funny any more.

Territorial Markings as a Predictor of Driver Aggression and Road Rage

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol 38 (6) p1664-1688, June 2008

William J. Szlemko, Jacob A. Benfield, Paul A. Bell, Jerry L. Deffenbacher, Lucy Troup

Aggressive driving has received substantial media coverage during the past decade. We report 3 studies testing a territorial explanation of aggressive driving. Altman (1975) described attachment to, personalization of, and defense of primary territories (e.g., home) as being greater than for public territories (e.g., sunbathing spot on a beach). Aggressive driving may occur when social norms for defending a primary territory (i.e., one’s automobile) become confused with less aggressive norms for defending a public territory (i.e., the road). Both number of territory markers (e.g., bumper stickers, decals) and attachment to the vehicle were significant predictors of aggressive driving. Mere presence of a territory marker predicts increased use of the vehicle to express anger and decreased use of adaptive/constructive expressions.

Link to Pure Pedantry on the study.
Link to abstract of scientific study.

News that a neuroimaging study has found that the brains of gay participants more closely resemble those of their straight, opposite sex counterparts is being widely reported, but one of the most interesting details is largely being ignored.

The study was completed by neuroscientists Ivanka Savic and Per Lindstrom and had two parts.

The first and most widely reported part compared the brain structure of 25 homosexual men, 25 heterosexual men, 20 homosexual women and 20 heterosexual women.

The punchline is that in a measure of brain symmetry, straight men and gay women were similar, and gay men and straight women were similar.

But this isn’t the most interesting part in itself. Structural brain differences between gay and straight participants have been reported before, although this new study was better designed as it included both males and females.

What is most intriguing about this new study is a further investigation assessed amygdala function in each side of the brain. In particular, it looked at the balance of activity between the two hemispheres when the participants were asked just to breath in unscented air.

The study found that straight men and gay women had greater right sided activity, whereas gay men and straight women showed equal activation on both sides. As with the structural comparisons, the measurements from homosexual participants were similar to their straight, opposite sex counterparts.

The reason this new study is interesting is because it found a functional brain difference in a task that was not specifically linked to sex or attraction.

Previous studies have found functional differences in the brains of gay and straight people, but they have tended to use experiments where participants were presented with either sexual images, gender specific faces, or stimuli linked to sexual activity, such as pheromones.

These are interesting findings, but they may be the result of same-sex sexual activity, rather than an explanation for why people seek it out.

If you have experience of sleeping with same-sex partners, it’s hardly surprising that you may have a different response to same-sex material.

These new findings were from a neutral task. Now it’s possible that lots of same sex experience could affect your brain response to fresh air, but it’s highly unlikely.

It is possible, of course, that same-sex experience could alter the function of specific brain circuits which affects even non-sex related tasks, but these results also suggest the possibility that some more general differences in brain organisation are responsible for a number of effects, including sexual orientation.

This last explanation is what the researchers suggest, and it is another clue that sexual orientation is not simply the result of experience.

Of course, it’s not definite proof, but it is an interesting and important pointer.

Link to abstract of study.
Link to write-up from New Scientist.

The Atlantic magazine has an interesting article on how conspicuous consumption – the practice of showing off luxury goods – differs across social groups and seems to be more common when your peers are low earners.

The piece discusses work led by economist Kerwin Charles who was interested in why, despite being less well off on average, black and latino Americans spent a larger proportion of their income on visible goods.

Their research found that race, in itself, wasn’t important, as conspicuous consumption was explained in all racial groups as being almost entirely due to the wealth of the community in which the person lives.

It turns out that the poorer the community, the larger the level of conspicuous consumption. In other words, people from less well off communities have a greater need to advertise their wealth through the visible goods they buy.

The full paper is available online as a pdf if you want the full details, but the Atlantic article goes on to observe that in higher-income communities people tend to spend their money on luxury goods others can’t see, but which provide experiences.

Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff describe a similar pattern in their book, The Middle-Class Millionaire, which analyzes the spending habits of the 8.4million American households whose wealth is self-made and whose net worth, including their home equity, is between $1 million and $10 million. Aside from a penchant for fancy cars, these millionaires devote their luxury dollars mostly to goods and services outsiders can’t see: concierge health care, home renovations, all sorts of personal coaches, and expensive family vacations. They focus less on impressing strangers and more on family- and self-improvement. Even when they invest in traditional luxuries like second homes, jets, or yachts, they prefer fractional ownership. “They’re looking for ownership to be converted into a relationship rather than an asset they have to take care of,” says Schiff. Their primary luxuries are time and attention.

Based on nothing but complete speculation, I wonder whether this simply provides a form of consumption which is conspicuous through other means – conversation or public display of action.

A study published last year (and covered by the Economist) found that priming people with ideas about attracting members of the opposite sex did trigger conspicuous consumption, at least in men, but also resulted in conspicuous altruism.

Perhaps a more subtle form of economic signalling, but with a similar intent – to display our status to others.

 
Link to Atlantic article ‘Inconspicuous Consumption’.
pdf of full text of study.
Link to Economist article on ‘conspicuous altruism’.

Neuroanthropology has an excellent article on how culture influences the experience of trauma, particularly in light of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

We tend to think of trauma as being similar across cultures. Something awful happens, we have ‘trauma’. In actual fact, both the experience and expression of trauma are heavily culturally influenced.

The Neuroanthropology piece makes the point that what counts as traumatic differs between individuals because not all dangerous situations are perceived as traumatic whereas some have a deeply personal and disturbing effect.

The author is apparently doing research on US combat veterans and has noted a common element in his interviews:

The classic example of this, and a running theme in [non-commissioned officers’] trauma stories, occurs when a lower-ranking soldier is hurt while following orders to which the NCO personally objects. For example, one veteran told me about the day when one of ‚Äúhis‚Äù soldiers was wounded while following the unnecessarily risky orders of his superior, orders that he protested at the time but ultimately felt compelled to obey.

His story, and others like it, reveal that the trauma of these events lies not only in the wounding of a fellow soldier, but in the inability to protect a subordinate for whom one feels deeply responsible, and the sense that the damage might have been prevented. Thus the meaning of events creates much of their resonance, and their cultural embeddedness – e.g. in the communal socialization and strict power structures of the military – is partially responsible for the emotional overload that defines trauma.

The expression of trauma is also culturally influenced as can be seen in the differing presentation of combat stress in Western soldiers during the last 150 years.

During the American Civil War and the Boer War, most expressions of trauma took the form of heart troubles and were diagnosed as ‘soldier’s heart’, ‘effort syndrome’ or Da Costa’s syndrome.

However, it quickly became clear that the majority of affected soldiers had no physical problems with their hearts, and seemed to be expressing their psychological stresses as physical problems.

During these wars, trauma seemed most commonly expressed as problems with the autonomic system (heart function, breathing, blood pressure etc), while by the time the First World War came round, the expression seems to have largely shifted to problems with motor function and the senses.

Labelled ‘shell shock’, film footage shows that the effects were dramatic, but despite early theories of brain disturbance caused by ‘concussion’, no neurological damage could be detected in most cases.

The UK government quickly banned military psychiatrists from diagnosing ‘shell shock’, and as as World War Two approached combat stress was labelled as ‘psychoneurois’, ‘neuraesthenia’ and a number of other non-specific labels instead.

It wasn’t just the labels that changed though. Dramatic ‘shell shock’ presentations were rarely seen during the Second World War, with the effects of trauma more commonly resembling how we think of it today: intrusive memories, intense anxiety, disrupted sleep.

The Vietnam War was a turning point for the diagnosis of trauma, as veteran’s pressure groups, not unreasonably, wanted, medical care for psychological problems when they returned from service.

They successfully lobbied to have a new disorder included in the diagnostic manuals so the problems could be officially diagnosed and treatment funded. Originally called ‘post-Vietnam syndrome’ in the literature it was quickly renamed to post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD for its official diagnosis.

For many people today, including clinicians, PTSD is trauma, but its construction owed as much to political expediency than cut-and-dry scientific evidence.

That’s not to say that traumatised people aren’t suffering or don’t exist, just that our ideas about trauma are fluid, malleable and culturally influenced.

Indeed, a recent review of the assumptions behind the definition of PTSD concluded that “virtually all core assumptions and hypothesized mechanisms lack compelling or consistent empirical support”.

When watching the debate unfold over trauma and mental health in the current wars, it’s possible to see some striking parallels in the push and shove of cultural influence.

In 1922 the UK government stopped doctors diagnosing ‘shell shock’ to reduce war pension costs. A recent leaked email from the US Veterans Administration advised doctors to avoid diagnosing PTSD to reduce disability payment costs.

World War One ‘shell shock’ was originally thought to arise from concussion from nearby explosions but was later attributed largely to trauma. Physical problems after mild traumatic brain injury in Iraq have been attributed to nearby explosions but are largely explained by depression and PTSD.

One of the most powerful things to come out of both a historical view and contemporary research is that our beliefs about how should trauma affect us, partly dictates how it does.

In other words, our bodies, beliefs and culture are bound together and when damaged, each contributes to how disability expresses itself.

Needless to say, with this much diversity from a relatively short space of time in similar Western cultures, the difference across cultures can be even more striking.

While being traumatised is a universal experience, the experience of trauma is not, and our expression of distress is a reflection of both our common humanity and our cultural diversity.

Link to Neuroanthropology on Cultural Aspects of PTSD.