Reviewing the Complexity of the Human Condition

Human nature is extremely complex.  We run the risk of much misunderstanding, if not considerable trouble, if we simplify that reality too much in every field from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, from interpersonal to international relationships.  Interpersonal relationships, and indeed the relationship of individuals with their own self, that is, their self-identity, are often critical, if not very tortured ones. This we have seen in my last three posts on mental disturbances, especially psychotic disorders, as represented mostly in schizophrenia.  In general, apart altogether from such disorders, quite often the behaviours of so-called normal individuals within their own families and communities are often hard enough to understand, and when we magnify such interactions to a global one between nations, we cannot be too surprised that disagreements can escalate quite unreasonably and very quickly into war.  It would seem that we have depraved depths within us, and do not trust sufficiently our rational capabilities to lead us on the road to more reasonable resolutions of our problems and conflicts. 

I have quoted in these pages many times my favourite quotation from Dr Karl Rahner, SJ, a contention he imbibed as a student from his philosophy professor Dr Martin Heidegger, that is, that “Man himself is the question.”  Of course, in these more politically correct days, we would rewrite that statement as “Humanity itself is the question.”  By stating it in such an open-ended manner, they intended to get humanity to question its own nature, its very purpose and goal, its morality and its ethics, and, of course, that is, to question how it acts in the world in all its aspects from fauna to flora.  It would seem that we have no patience with teasing out the complexity of the question that is humankind.  Again, at the risk of boring my readers, there is another quotation that is very much germane to my argument here, and it comes from the wonderful American theoretical physicist Dr Richard Feynman: “I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.” This statement champions curiosity, scientific scepticism, and intellectual freedom over dogma, suggesting that enduring uncertainty can be better than accepting rigid and unquestionable "truths."  Philosophers quite rightly see the questioning of such truths as part of their professional work.  We should see such questioning as part of our moral duty as human beings with responsibility to discern, interpret and determine the most fruitful paths towards our future as a peaceful and harmonious human family of 8 billion souls on a lonely pale blue dot drifting through infinitely expanding space.

However, so many people today, especially those on the extreme right or ultra-right, prefer to see things in black and white terms with no shades of grey in between at all.  I very seldom stray into politics in these posts as I dislike controversy and polarised and polarising positions. At its worst, ultra-right movements often oppose liberal democracy, promote ideologies such as neo-fascism, white supremacy, and exclusionary xenophobia.  However, I have to take on board some insightful comments about our efforts to avoid being political.   For instance, the novelist Thomas Mann declared that “everything is political,” that is, it is simply impossible to avoid being political.  Then I feel I must be cognisant of the feminist slogan, indeed a humanist slogan now, that “the personal is political” from the 1960s.  This quotation can be owned by any human being, though it was first popularised by Carol Hanisch in 1969.  My arguments over the last three posts were essentially against attributing singular causes or origins to schizophrenia, as it simplifies its sheer complexity.  Professor Anthony Clare fulminated against the dichotomisation or polarisation of psychosis into a Sane versus Insane debate, and that modern psychiatry looked on such issues as being a spectrum of varying intensity between such possible extreme poles.  Moving beyond possible causes into diagnostics and treatments, the experts insist that we should employ a multitude of complementary approaches and therapies and approach complex mental disturbances and disabilities on as broad a front as possible. Added to the complexity of the human person and his or her motivations, there are obviously further complexities of diverse interpretations.  In my experience working on a team of special educators over a period of ten years in an autism unit, it took a whole team working together to get our assessments and strategies for helping students as good as we possibly could.  This often required ongoing liaison with psychologists, a psychiatrist on several occasions and a plethora of others, including speech therapists and occupational therapists.  Only through such a team effort, complex and time-consuming though it was, some good strategies were put in place that helped many of our students.

This brings me, after a lengthy introduction, to a book I want to review here.  It is the second book from the pen of the Sunday Times Best Selling Author, Kerry Daynes, who is a forensic psychologist.  The title of the book reads: What Lies Buried: true stories of Madness, the Bad and the Misunderstood. (Endeavour Publishers, London, 2021.)  Again, it is a book which seeks to make as balanced a diagnosis as possible, without rushing to write off the mad, the bad and the misunderstood as just the garbage of society.  It is inspiring to read about her bravery (once having had one of the male ex-offenders in a step-down facility stab her with a kitchen kebab skewer) and her commitment to her clients, and to seeing that justice was done in all cases.  Throughout the book, her sense of propriety, her extensive knowledge of the psychology of the so-called normal human mind, as well as that of the so-called abnormal, are all very much to the forefront of her reflections.  Like Professor Clare, she would see a spectrum between the poles of normal and abnormal in most cases.  I am impressed by her humanity and compassion for all, an amazing attribute to have.  She nails her principles to the mast from the outset: “I don’t think of my clients as broken bits of apparatus with a metaphorical screw loose.  They are people.  People with differences, people with problems.  My job was to work out what these problems were, where they came from and, most importantly, what could be done to keep the ex-offenders on the right track….  My hope in writing my reflections is to give some compassion and humanity back to those who are often denied both” (p. 2 – 17). Her motivation to take up forensic psychology came from three sources: (i) a desire to help people and to lessen the number of victims in the world, (ii) intellectual curiosity about the psychological complexities of human beings and (iii) undoubtedly, a certain attraction “to the darker side of life” (p. 3).

In the prologue, she gives the reader a brief history of The Criminal Lunatics Act 1800, which allowed juries to find defendants "not guilty by reason of insanity" and ordered their indefinite detention in a lunatic asylum.  We see in this early distinction between mad and bad a growth in the understanding of the complexity of human behaviour.  Daynes warns us against jumping to hasty conclusions and judgments about people.  The colloquial terms “murderous psychos” and “evil monsters” do not sit easily with the diagnostics of the psychological vocation nor the learned disquisitions of the legal profession.  They prefer more accurate and less inflammatory terminology.  An important point she goes to pains to stress throughout this book and her first one is that “not all ‘mentally disordered’ people are dangerous and not all dangerous people are ‘mentally disordered.’” (p.14) This is important for us to bear in mind because in the vast majority of cases, so-called ‘mentally disordered’ people are merely good people suffering grievously.

As a forensic psychologist, Kerry Daynes is quite biased against the cataloguing of mental disturbances and disorders.  This is a common enough prejudice among psychologists, as they often disagree with certain psychiatric approaches and interventions as being too biochemical or pharmacological.  Speaking of the DSM or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, she avers that “determining who is and who is not ‘normal’ is a contentious business” and points out that it was not until 1973 that its authors dropped homosexuality from its list of disorders.  However, I would not see this as a very strong point against it, but rather the opposite, as we are constantly growing in knowledge of the human mind.  Any good science is always self-correcting.  She also quotes the former editor of DSM 4 as startling journalists by saying: “There is no definition of a mental disorder.  It’s bullshit.  I mean, you can’t define it.” (p. 33) Again, she does not give the circumstances or context of this quotation, and it appears to be an angry throw-away comment of a dismissed expert with a personal axe to grind.  Like Professor Clare’s criticism of the Anti-Psychiatry Movement, not having core definitions as appear in the DSM leaves the profession floundering in a sea of confusion, undermines patient care, and eventually neglects severe illness.  I would think that “constantly evolving psychiatric constructs” (p. 33) is a good thing.  However, I do understand what Dr Daynes is getting at; a rush to label someone with a diagnosis too hastily also has the potential to do damage.  Furthermore, the context of her remarks occurs in a case dealing with a client/patient/murderer called Michael, who was assessed by five different psychiatrists and ended up with four different diagnoses.  Two of the experts for the defence gave him a diagnosis of schizophrenia (displaying both delusional beliefs and auditory hallucinations), one had opted for brief psychotic disorder and the fourth schizoaffective disorder, all of which would have committed him to a maximum-security hospital for life after having been acquitted of murder due to diminished responsibility.  He would instead have been convicted of manslaughter. This verdict (often under the Criminal Law Insanity Act 2006) acknowledges that a mental disorder reduces the defendant’s culpability, allowing the judge to impose a discretionary sentence, most likely at a maximum-security hospital.  However, a fifth psychiatrist, instructed by the crown, argued that the defendant had hoodwinked his colleagues and, in fact, had what is called an “emergent psychopathic personality disorder’, and further that such a personality disorder did not ‘substantially impair’ his criminal responsibility.  Personality, apparently, is who you are essentially, and as such, you are obliged to be able to control your proclivities.  In the other four diagnoses, the defendant would not know the difference between reality and what is delusional or hallucinatory.  Dr Daynes was given the task of deciding whether the defendant was “mad or bad,” namely, whether he was lying about hearing voices or not.  After doing a raft of psychological tests on the criminal, Daynes wrote up her report, of 47 pages, arguing that a person can be a bit of a psychopath and a psychotic at the same time.  That, needless to say, was an inconvenient conclusion for the Crown Prosecution Service, which opted instead to reject the defendant’s diminished responsibility plea, and a jury was left to decide.  Michael was found guilty of murder and attempted murder.  Hence, he was sentenced to life in prison, not a secure hospital.  Dr Daynes is arguing that in a prison, the defendant would not get sufficient medical care, if any.  However, I feel that either result is good, as the public is no longer at risk from a dangerous man.  Again, the writer’s compassion for her client here is simply amazing. 

What I have been attempting to do over these last several posts is to explore the complexity of human nature through looking at how any society deals with the mental well-being of its members.  I wish to underline the fact that this is a complex task that involves the whole community in any area in the world.  Obviously, some countries do this more efficiently and successfully than others.  Some places fail almost entirely in that task.  Reviewing such books as this extends my understanding of human nature, challenges my beliefs, questions my prejudices, and paradoxically humbles my mind when I contemplate the sheer mystery of the powers of the human brain. The following two cases illustrate its sheer mystery well.  

A chapter dealing with a pseudonymous Clifford, in his mid- forties, who was constantly being arrested and brought to court for stealing ridiculous and useless items like six folding umbrellas and a tube of hand cream in one instance, and six travel clocks on another occasion, is an intriguing case.  He would secrete all his goodies in his voluminous trousers, which were tied at the bottom.  Through several repeat visits to court, he had argued that because of his memory problems, he simply had forgotten to pay.  Clifford had attended Manchester University and attained a first-class degree in sociology.  However, he presented as completely scattered.  If our memories make up who we are, then Clifford, who was unable to fill in most details about his past life, was presenting as a man with an empty past, with a very diminished sense of self.  Dr Daynes goes to considerable trouble in exploring Clifford’s medical past, much of that past somehow unavailable to his solicitor. However, in 2003, the year of his assessment by Daynes, records possibly were not as strictly monitored and kept as they are today.  What she found out was extraordinary: Some months after receiving his honours degree, his girlfriend had broken off their relationship. Because he could not cope and had become a danger to himself, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he was observed to be “almost catatonic,” occasionally telling nurses his life no longer felt worth living.  Now, for the shocking discovery, pun intended: over a four-week period, Clifford, a young man of 22, was given eight sessions of ECT – electroconvulsive therapy – sometimes known as “electric shock treatment.” (p. 81) Dr Daynes continues by outlining the serious damage done to memory by ECT, and this research is well worth reading.  When she reported her findings to Clifford, he was completely surprised and told her he could not remember ever having the treatment.  He, unfortunately, had become “a misfit of psychiatry’s making” (p. 86), being transformed into an unproductive and clownish shadow of his former self, destined to keep repeating his senseless and petty shoplifting.

Having been a teacher for some forty years or so, a part-time psychotherapist and special educator for ten of those years with responsibility for twenty-four adolescent boys on the ASD spectrum, I am well aware of how complex human nature is.  The biggest mistake made by those on the ultra-right is to jump to conclusions, take refuge in extremes of black and white, dichotomise and polarise every situation, including sanity and insanity, thereby forgetting about the rather broad spectrum of mental health and behaviour in between the extremes or poles.  That’s what I believe I am attempting to illustrate in this sequence of posts/reviews.  With this in mind, I should like to comment on one last case detailed in one of Dr Daynes’s chapters.  It is the story of the total misunderstanding of a young man on the ASD spectrum.  This chapter deals with the case of the pseudonymous 21-year-old Frank Eccleson.  Frank, according to locals in his community, was “a bit strange.” (p. 124) When a crime occurred in which a shady car dealer was attacked and badly beaten, many jumped to the conclusion that Frank was a prime suspect, including the police, who had no inkling that the young man was on the ASD spectrum.  To make things worse for Frank, not only did he present himself weirdly, but he had an obsession with details about mass murderers, about whom he could list off many of their habits, predilections, dates and sundry useless information associated with them.  Dr Daynes reviewed two of the initial police interviews with Frank, which were, she said, “a case study in how not to interview a vulnerable suspect… My analysis was going to make embarrassing reading for the police.” (p.132 – 133) In the battery of psychometric tests Dr Daynes examined Frank with, she found he had an IQ of 86 (average IQ is 100), a high score in mathematics/arithmetic, but, predictably for those on the ASD spectrum, a very low score on comprehension, a measure of his understanding of social rules, conventions and expressions.  Not surprisingly, eventually Frank was ruled out of the police investigation.  Dr Daynes established that his obsession with serial killers came from his belief that such individuals were “strong, scary, clever and in charge.”  He had always felt belittled at home by his parents and had naively believed that with his powerful obsession, he himself would be recognised as a strong person worthy of attention.  However, other deep conflicts emerged about his family, that he, as a young boy of twelve or thirteen, was sexually abused by his mother and that his sister was actually his own son by her.  He had not realised that his abuse could have resulted in offspring.  Frank explained to Dr Daynes why he had incriminated himself by saying he was a “serial killer”: “I just wanted to say I was a killer so that dad would be too scared to fight me and people would stop laughing at me.” (p. 157)

There are many more stories in this book, and they reveal that much hidden motivation and many secrets lie buried under the casual masks that people wear.   Furthermore, the strangest, saddest, and oftentimes most horrific crimes some commit result from dark and hidden depths in that complexity we call a human being.  A lecturer, I once had years ago, often used a humorous quip during his psychology lectures, “Let’s complexify the situation at this juncture!”  There was some strange wisdom in his half-joke.  Finally, if you want to get a taste of the complexity of life and its inhabitants, you could do worse than reading What Lies Buried by Kerry Danes.