{"id":18633,"date":"2019-01-15T12:57:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T08:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=18633"},"modified":"2019-01-15T13:30:18","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T09:30:18","slug":"whats-behind-our-appetite-for-self-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/whats-behind-our-appetite-for-self-destruction\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s behind our appetite for self-destruction?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud and cognitive scientists have all wrestled with the human tendency to behave in ways that are irrational and self-defeating<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Each new year, people vow to put an end to self-destructive habits like smoking, overeating or overspending.<\/span><\/p>\n

And how many times have we learned of someone \u2013 a celebrity, a friend or a loved one \u2013 who committed some self-destructive act that seemed to defy explanation? Think of the criminal who leaves a trail of evidence, perhaps with the hope of getting caught, or the politician who wins an election, only to start sexting someone likely to expose him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why do they do it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Edgar Allan Poe, one of America\u2019s greatest \u2013 and most self-destructive \u2013 writers, had some thoughts on the subject. He even had a name for the phenomenon: \u201cperverseness.\u201d Psychologists would later take the baton from Poe and attempt to decipher this enigma of the human psyche.<\/span><\/p>\n

Irresistible depravity<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In one of his lesser-known works, \u201cThe Imp of the Perverse,\u201d Poe argues that knowing something is wrong can be \u201cthe one unconquerable force\u201d that makes us do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems that the source of this psychological insight was Poe\u2019s own life experience. Orphaned before he was three years old, he had few advantages. But despite his considerable literary talents, he consistently managed to make his lot even worse.<\/span><\/p>\n

He frequently alienated editors and other writers, even accusing poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism in what has come to be known as the \u201cLongfellow war.\u201d During important moments, he seemed to implode: On a trip to Washington, D.C. to secure support for a proposed magazine and perhaps a government job, he apparently drank too much and made a fool of himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

After nearly two decades of scraping out a living as an editor and earning little income from his poetry and fiction, Poe finally achieved a breakthrough with \u201cThe Raven,\u201d which became an international sensation after its publication in 1845.<\/span>
\nBut when given the opportunity to give a reading in Boston and capitalize on this newfound fame, Poe didn\u2019t read a new poem, as requested.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, he reprised a poem from his youth: the long-winded, esoteric and dreadfully boring \u201cAl Aaraaf,\u201d renamed \u201cThe Messenger Star.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As one newspaper reported, \u201cit was not appreciated by the audience,\u201d evidenced by \u201ctheir uneasiness and continual exits in numbers at a time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Poe\u2019s literary career stalled for the remaining four years of his short life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Freud\u2019s \u2018death drive\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

While \u201cperverseness\u201d wrecked Poe\u2019s life and career, it nonetheless inspired his literature.<\/span><\/p>\n

It figures prominently in \u201cThe Black Cat,\u201d in which the narrator executes his beloved cat, explaining, \u201cI\u2026hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart\u2026hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin \u2013 a deadly sin that would so jeopardise my immortal soul as to place it \u2013 if such a thing were possible \u2013 even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Why would a character knowingly commit \u201ca deadly sin\u201d? Why would someone destroy something that he loved?<\/span><\/p>\n

Was Poe onto something? Did he possess a penetrating insight into the counterintuitive nature of human psychology?<\/span><\/p>\n

A half-century after Poe\u2019s death, Sigmund Freud wrote of a universal and innate \u201cdeath drive\u201d in humans, which he called \u201cThanatos\u201d and first introduced in his landmark 1919 essay \u201cBeyond the Pleasure Principle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Many believe Thanatos refers to unconscious psychological urges toward self-destruction, manifested in the kinds of inexplicable behavior shown by Poe and \u2013 in extreme cases \u2013 in suicidal thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the early 1930s, physicist Albert Einstein wrote to Freud to ask his thoughts on how further war might be prevented. In his response, Freud wrote that Thanatos \u201cis at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter\u201d and referred to it as a \u201cdeath instinct.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To Freud, Thanatos was an innate biological process with significant mental and emotional consequences \u2013 a response to, and a way to relieve, unconscious psychological pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Toward a modern understanding<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the 1950s, the psychology field underwent the \u201ccognitive revolution,\u201d in which researchers started exploring, in experimental settings, how the mind operates, from decision-making to conceptualization to deductive reasoning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Self-defeating behavior came to be considered less a cathartic response to unconscious drives and more the unintended result of deliberate calculus.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1988, psychologists Roy Baumeister and Steven Scher identified three main types of self-defeating behavior: primary self-destruction, or behavior designed to harm the self; counterproductive behavior, which has good intentions but ends up being accidentally ineffective and self-destructive; and trade-off behavior, which is known to carry risk to the self but is judged to carry potential benefits that outweigh those risks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Think of drunk driving. If you knowingly consume too much alcohol and get behind the wheel with the intent to get arrested, that\u2019s primary self-destruction. If you drive drunk because you believe you\u2019re less intoxicated than your friend, and \u2013 to your surprise \u2013 get arrested, that\u2019s counterproductive. And if you know you\u2019re too drunk to drive, but you drive anyway because the alternatives seem too burdensome, that\u2019s a trade-off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Baumeister and Scher\u2019s review concluded that primary self-destruction has actually rarely been demonstrated in scientific studies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather, the self-defeating behavior observed in such research is better categorized, in most cases, as trade-off behavior or counterproductive behavior. Freud\u2019s \u201cdeath drive\u201d would actually correspond most closely to counterproductive behavior: The \u201curge\u201d toward destruction isn\u2019t consciously experienced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, as psychologist Todd Heatherton has shown, the modern neuroscientific literature on self-destructive behavior most frequently focuses on the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with planning, problem solving, self-regulation and judgment.<\/span><\/p>\n

When this part of the brain is underdeveloped or damaged, it can result in behavior that appears irrational and self-defeating. There are more subtle differences in the development of this part of the brain: Some people simply find it easier than others to engage consistently in positive goal-directed behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poe certainly didn\u2019t understand self-destructive behavior the way we do today.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he seems to have recognized something perverse in his own nature. Before his untimely death in 1849, he reportedly chose an enemy, the editor Rufus Griswold, as his literary executor.<\/span><\/p>\n

True to form, Griswold wrote a damning obituary and \u201cMemoir,\u201d in which he alludes to madness, blackmail and more, helping to formulate an image of Poe that has tainted his reputation to this day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then again, maybe that\u2019s exactly what Poe \u2013 driven by his own personal imp \u2013 wanted.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mark Canada<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/span>Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, <\/span>
\nIndiana University<\/span><\/p>\n

Christina <\/span><\/strong>Downey<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/span>Professor of Psychology, <\/span>
\nIndiana University<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

* Published in print edition on 11 January 2019<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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