GENETIC OR ENVIRONMENTAL, THAT IS THE QUESTION?

This Post is also copied and pasted from the book called, --- The Human Mind.  It happens just before the start of the third chapter.  It discusses the issues involved in determining whether schizophrenia is caused by genetic or environmental factors. 

PETER R. BREGGIN, M.D.

We are called to be architects

of our future, not victims of it.

Although you will not find any other book on psychology that will put forward the ultimate supremacy of the emotion of fear, in combination with the desire to be successful at the necessary and voluntary achievements that are important to any specific individual, as I have attempted to do in this book, you can easily find thousands of books on both sides of the current dilemma in the field of psychological endeavor.

Namely, --- are mental illness and stress related problems, caused by physical and/or genetic factors, --- or are they caused by psychological factors that can be negotiated and therefore overcome?  Of course a third option could be put forward which would conclude that it is a combination of both.  And in many, if not all cases, that would be exactly correct, because eventually, the thoughts that you embrace have a physical affect on your body as well as your mind. 

The other rather obvious fact that you would discover is that except for a few others, such as John Modrow and myself, all authors on this subject have either a Ph.D. or an M.D. after their names.  Perhaps it takes an outsider, who has taken extensive advantage of our incredible library system, to take an unbiased look at both sides of this quandary.   

Or, of even more importance, a person who is not economically ensconced on one side or the other, but is free to follow the search for the truth wherever it may lead.   With the above thoughts in mind, I emphatically believe that such a search on my part, has allowed me to find a modicum of order in a discipline that, at this time, appears to be a field littered with a plethora of chaos.

Without a doubt, bio-psychiatry with the most money, (read pharmaceutical backing), has the most books which tend to give credence to their understanding and beliefs which favor chemical imbalances and genetic factors as the cause of stress related problems and mental illness.  They have therefore concluded that such problems cannot be overcome by the sufferer without the use of the neuroleptic drugs that they have developed.  

One of the many giants who champion the cause for the use of psychological therapies is Dr. Peter R. Breggin and his wife Ginger.  Dr. Breggin has written the book called, “Toxic Psychiatry.”  If you are a serious student in the field of psychology and in particular, psychiatry, you should definitely consider this book to be mandatory reading.

The following, harrowing story starts on page 105 of the above mentioned book.   It involves the Genain Quadruplets and I am quoting directly from Dr. Breggin’s book.  NIMH psychologist David Rosenthal is the editor of a book entitled --- The Genain Quadruplets: 

A study in Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia (1963).  The book examines in detail, the lives of four young women, identical quadruplets, all of whom apparently became mad.  Various investigators look at the lives of these children from every possible perspective.  

Rosenthal himself assumed that schizophrenia in four genetically identical females was prima facie evidence of a genetic cause, and he tells the reader that he named the family “Genain” by deriving it from the Greek words meaning “dire birth” or “dreadful gene.”   

Nonetheless, he assures the reader that “my position is one which considers both genetic and environmental factors important in such disorders.”   So, could something other than their genes have driven all four girls crazy?  

The father of these four twins is an alcoholic, subject to fits of paranoia.  He impregnates at least two women other than his wife during the time when the twins are young children and is notorious for his affairs.  He beats his children and his wife, restricts them to the home, and allows them no outside contacts and no deviation from robotic regimentation.  When his wife threatens to leave, he tells her that he will follow her anywhere and murder her.

Obsessed with his family’s sexuality, he “plays sexual games ” with at least one of the girls, and “if his wife or daughter ate a piece of darkly toasted bread, he accused them of ‘trying to get sexually stimulated.’ “ When his preteen daughters are found masturbating, he puts acid on one of their genitals.

When that fails to stop them, he sends two of them to a sadistic surgeon who mutilates their genitals, severing nerves and cutting out substantial flesh.  So notorious is the surgeon that he is driven out of private practice and goes to work in a  mental hospital. 

In the mother’s words, the father is “always so angry, hateful and mean.”   During sex, he frequently bites her face so badly that it bleeds and swells up.  On one occasion the mother had to knock down her husband in self-defense in front of her brood of four young girls.   Once he banged two of the girl’s heads together to stop them from crying.

The mother. as  one can easily imagine, has her own problems.  When the children are young and in their formative years, she is despondent and suicidal.  She also has bizarre ideas, participating in the use of acid and mutilating surgery on her children’s genitals and probably communicating her own fear that masturbation breeds madness.

When one of the girls develops the first hint of breasts, she explains that they are bruises and treats them with salve.  She takes one of the children to a psychiatric clinic to stop her from masturbating.  The psychiatrist describes the mother as “very inflexible and a very controlling kind of person.”

The mother doesn’t return when the psychiatrist cannot “magically” stop her daughter from touching herself.  When three of the girls are later sexually assaulted, she tells them to forget it and offers no sympathy.  The mother participates in the creation of a home that “most” outsiders consider “fear ridden, devoid of fun and humor, and very restrictive .”    There is a coldness in the house and the children “needed more warmth,” according to outside observers.

Indeed, their teachers feel sorry for them  because of their restrictive life.  The four girls are not allowed to participate in normal school activities and come to school “marching” like an army squad doing double time.  It is no wonder that people describe the quadruplets as “passive, timid and unusually quiet children who showed little spontaneity or initiative.”    They show no curiosity in school and they do not have a “good childish laugh.”

______________________________________

This is a heart-rending tale of extreme child abuse.  It chronicles the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of four female children who happen to be quadruplets.  Yet this is not how Rosenthal presents the “cases.”   He presents them as a scientific study of genetic and environmental influences on the development of the “disease” of schizophrenia.  With heavy emphasis upon genetics, including elaborate reviews of presumably relevant genetic studies.

The book presents one of the most tragic chronicles of child abuse that has ever been recorded.  Yet at no time is the abuse discussed as such.  At no  place in the book is it summarized.  The data is strewn throughout the six hundred pages in the reports of the various professionals who took part in the examination of these girls and their family make up.  Much of the story is contained in footnotes.  The synopsis of which, as it appears above, has been put together by me, (Dr. Breggin) from these scattered observations.

This story leaves one overcome with pity.  Imagine what it was like for the quadruplets to have lived such lives?   For Rosenthal to suggest that the study supports a genetic theory of schizophrenia itself constitutes intellectual complicity with the child abuser.

To fail to underscore or to summarize the outrages perpetrated against the children constitutes intellectual complicity with the child abuser or abusers.  To leave the reader to dig the abuse out of hundreds of pages is to invite the question, --- why wouldn’t this renowned NIMH geneticist face the facts directly?  

It comes as no surprise that Rosenthal’s most famous and influential accomplishment --- the Danish adoption study of shizophrenia ---- also was grossly oversold to the psychiatric profession and to the public at large.

Those who favor a genetic factor for schizophrenia could say that both of the parents in this story were mentally ill from genetic damage and they passed it on to their children.  But if the genetic factor is so easily traced, why hasn’t it been demonstrated beyond a doubt?

It has been well documented that people who were at one time considered to be schizophrenic are now living normal lives with mature approaches to life’s necessary achievements and responsibilities.  Does that mean that such individuals, in some unknown manner, spontaneously corrected the “so called” genetic damage? 

On the other side of the coin, I believe that if you or I had been born into the family environment that these poor unfortunate girls were born into, there would have been a 90% chance that we too would have been ultimately labeled as being mentally ill in one specific classification or the other.  

I do not say 100% in this situation, because some children find the psychological power and resolve, to reject everything that they learn from their parents instead of being negatively influenced by it.  Where they derive such power and determination from is indeed a mystery to me. 

Those who are so inclined, and wish to cling to a belief that this “disease” is genetic in origin, as is postulated for other forms of mental illness also, owe it to themselves to look deeper into this problem.  If they do so, I believe that it is impossible not to realize that overcoming conglomerated and distorted fears is the real answer to what otherwise appears to be an unsolvable riddle.

There are many other stories as thought provoking as this one in Dr. Breggin’s book, (Toxic Psychiatry), that convincingly portray the dilemma that is occurring in the psychological profession today.  The entire book is a virtual “library” of valuable information on this most important subject.  

       

On page 3 of Dr. Breggin’ book is this stunning quote:  I am still more frightened by the fearless power in the eyes of my fellow psychiatrists than I am by the powerless fear in the eyes of their patients. --- R. D. Lang  (1985) 

The above quote represents one of the most concise messages that I have ever had the privilege of reading, which dramatically emphasizes the awesome power of understanding fear itself.  Not as it is presently constituted, but rather, in its position of primary focus when one is trying to understand human behavior.

On page 15, under the title of psychiatrists in despair, is this quote among a litany of similar attitudes among many psychiatrists.  One of my psychiatric colleagues --- “a talking doctor” like myself --- tells me.   “I wouldn’t do it over again.   No, if I knew  where psychiatry was going, I’d never have become a psychiatrist.”