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| Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome |
This posting is about the psychological response to the
Covid-19 situation. I am using Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome to talk about our psychological response to the
world being suddenly a different place – I don’t know enough about virus response to
even know if Selye’s Syndrome applies to Covid-19 itself.
Selye’s General Adaptation or Stress Response Syndrome was originally created to
describe how the body’s immune system reacts to invaders like viruses and germs that are attacking it. It has been adapted for use to describe
psychological response to stress as well.
Walt Menninger pulled out an article he had written where he
had changed the terms and called it the “morale response curve” when I arrived for a
Post-Doc at the Menninger clinic. He
predicted that our morale would slump as we tried to find our way around town
and get used to the routine at the clinic.
I was actually pretty jazzed about being there, and Topeka isn’t too
hard to navigate, so I didn’t find it all that useful at that time.
But it does seem applicable to my own current experience,
that of my students, and of my patients, at least as I can ascertain so far, as
we adjust to social distancing and the specter of a pandemic and its economic and social consequences.
Selye suggested that, when we are faced with a challenge,
our immune system is essentially shocked by that. In the immediate wake of the shock, we are
less capable of dealing with things than we were before the shock. Our antibodies are a bit knocked off their
pins.
I think this has happened to us psychologically on two levels with Covid-19. One is existential. I reported on my experience a week or so ago
(though it seems much longer ago than that).
There is the sense that the world will be a different place. And the anxiety associated with that leads to
our ruminating about all that will happen and that is one level of stress.
The second level is that everything is different. We are no
longer going to work. We have five
adults living in our house together where only two weeks ago we had three (our
oldest daughter is taking a gap year and saving money by living at home). I keep think there is somewhere that I’ve got
to be, but if there is, it is generally on a screen.
Mark Solms has taken the position that what Freud meant by
the unconscious included routines that we have learned to deal with stuff – and
these are learned and deployed unconsciously – in part because they are learned
as procedures and stored in procedural memory – which is the memory where we
store the ability to ride a bike. This
stuff takes a long time to learn, but once learned, it stays around for a long
time.
Solms maintains that the reason for this is that it is very
expensive to do things consciously – it requires a lot of energy and a lot of
things are always competing for our consciousness. So we have to prioritize – what do we want to
think of now? And now? And now?
Better to just have most stuff running on the back burner – to trot out
a routine to deal with and do the stuff unconsciously.
Well, we have had to do a lot of things consciously
lately. We have had to figure out how to
have meetings with our clients by phone, and to figure out the legalities of
that. We have had to figure out how to
have discussion classes by Zoom – easy with a class of eight – not so much when
there are twenty people in a virtual room.
And we have had to figure out how to unpack our groceries without contaminating our homes.
So we are tired. We
have been expending a lot of energy dealing with the big questions and
addressing a hundred tiny details – and deciding which of those details are
worth attending to and which we will let slide for a little while.
The nice thing about Selye’s curve is that he suggests that,
once we recover from getting knocked back on our heels – we will actually
improve our defensive functioning. We
will, in the world of illness, figure out how to fight the invading viruses or
bacteria – and, in the world of psychology, figure out how to make those
unusual processes become habitual – turn the conscious problem solving into
unconscious procedures which will help the whole system hum.
In fact, we will be better able to manage novel situations
for having survived this one. We will
have discovered new tools and the system will be better prepared than it was
before.
Well. Isn’t that a
happy thought?
But there are some nagging concerns. Some people have taken the position that this
will change the way we do things in fundamental ways. On the macro scale – we are living in an era
when epidemics are not a big deal.
Our local radio station ran a story that, in the eighteen
hundreds, it was not unusual for there to be an epidemic – of typhus, or
cholera, or influenza – every few years.
And often these would take 10 per cent of the population. In the 1500s, as the Renaissance was swirling
through Florence, so was the plague and twice during that one century the city
lost half of its inhabitants – and continued to become the place that would
produce some of the greatest art the world has ever known.
But we don’t live in such an era. Death is rare for us. So is, at least for those of us who are doing
well, economic hardship. To practice
social distancing will cause economic problems across the spectrum – though of
course, those at the bottom of the scale will suffer more (though those at the
top may scream louder about it). Some
are beginning to propose that we should not “flatten the curve”, but simply be
done with it. Take the huge losses and
move on with our economy in tact.
If we don’t choose to do that – and I hope that we don’t –
we will have thrown down a gauntlet. We will be stating that human life is, indeed, quite valuable. The cost per person saved will surely be
calculated, and it will be very high.
And we will know – even if we later deny it – that this is an essential
value that we share.
But there are smaller scale issues that will emerge as
well. For instance – a Psychology Today
blogger has proposed that we will move to having all psychotherapy take place
virtually.
Some of the therapists I work with like this idea. There is less rigmarole about having to go
out to the waiting room to get patients. This
feels more efficient. And for patients,
too. They don’t have to drive across
town to see their therapist. Isn’t that
more convenient?
But, no, some of my patients, students, and the biggest part
of myself screams. We need to be in a
room together. How are we going to feel
our ways into each other’s lives if we can’t hear each other breathe? If we don’t have the same shared world? Especially in talk therapy – especially when
we use a couch and there is very little eye contact, saying hello and goodbye
becomes more, not less, critically important.
At least at the initial stages, for those of us who are not
sick yet and who do not yet have family that have been severely affected, the
biggest change is the social isolation of social distancing. Will we find that we prefer this? It sounds like an introvert's dream. But my sense is that even those among us in
whom the urge to be in contact with others beats more faintly will discover
that the sound of that drum will increase as the time of our separation
extends.
I really do think absence makes the heart grow fonder. Perhaps we will emerge from this a stronger,
gentler and kinder group of humans.
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Other COVID posts:
I: Apocalypse Now my first posting on COVID-19.
II: Midnight in Paris is a jumping off point for more thinking about COVID. (Also in Movies).
III: Hans Selye and the Stress Response Syndrome. COVID becomes more normal... for now.
VI: Get back in that classroom Paranoid ruminations.
VII: Why Shutting Classes Makes Fiscal Sense A weak argument
XIII: Ennui
XIV. Where, Oh Where have my in-person students gone? Split zoom classes in the age of COVID.
XVIII. I miss my mask?
IXX. Bo Burnham's Inside Commentary on the commenter.
XXVIII. How will we move on from our Empire of Pain? (Also in books)
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