What To Do With Emotions - Part III
How the core assumptions of clinical psychology confuse our emotional reality.
Recently, after a long hiatus, a client returned to therapy to discuss a new relationship. Or at least, that’s what I (Josh) perceived as his reason for coming back. The client was adamant, however, that he was returning not because of the relationship itself, but “because of the feelings the relationship brings up.” When I asked if these feelings had ever been present in another relationship, he said no. But he kept repeating: “I know this is all about me” and “I wish I knew what was really going on here.”
This client was steeped in a clinical psychology way of thinking about emotions, and, as such, he was missing many factors an evolutionary psychologist would find obvious. For example, his partner seemed to have the power in the relationship in two respects. First, she was more attractive than he was (he mentioned this). Second, she “had her shit together” more than he did: finances, job, social network, routine, and so on. She had also been reluctant to introduce him to her friends and coworkers. Following the standard therapeutic assumption, he took this to mean that his expectations were exaggerated, probably on account of insecurity on his part. (“I’m probably just moving too fast.”) But I thought it likely that his intuition was at least partially correct…that there was indeed some hesitation on her end.
Another client, a few years ago, began suspecting that her husband was cheating. She even had intuitions about who he was cheating with. Each time the subject came up in therapy, though, she would finish with: “I know I’m projecting.1 It probably says something about me.”
“What does it say about you?” I would ask. After mulling in silence, she would usually admit that she didn’t quite know.
In our previous article, Rob and I explored an important mismatch in the modern quest for dealing with our ancient emotions: fitness-good vs utility-good. In this article, we examine a second kind of mismatch: between the core assumptions of clinical psychology on the one hand and evolutionary psychology on the other. While clinical psychology tends to locate emotions as originating within the client—whether as part of their personal history or personality—evolutionary psychology locates emotions between the client and their situation.
Recognizing the differences between these two approaches will help readers understand how emotions are conceptualized and treated in the modern age—and how we can do better.
The Green-Eyed Monster
Let’s stick with jealousy.
To an evolutionary psychologist, the function of jealousy is pretty clear: to protect a valued relationship. As Yong & Li (2018) say: “People who were more careful at guarding their prized, valuable relationships were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who were less careful, and thus the genes that coded for such a psychology get passed down the generations and are present in people today.”2 Jealousy can be summoned to protect anything of value, of course, but we’ll stick to relationships for now.
Evolutionary psychologists have found that in romantic relationships, men and women guard against different threats because of the different reproductive challenges they faced over evolutionary time. For men, the worst outcome in the evolutionary game is being cuckolded—investing in another man’s child—and therefore jealousy is more squarely centered on sexual infidelity.3 A male wants to make sure that he is the biological father (although Jerry Springer might disagree). For women—who never doubt that they are the mother—the risk is abandonment or diversion of resources needed to raise the child. Therefore, female jealousy focuses on “emotional cheating,” the diversion of a partner’s time, attention, money, and effort.4
While the evolutionary approach to romantic jealously has been oddly contentious given the straightforward logic and mountain of supporting data, the general advantage of jealousy, as an emotion designed to protect something of value, should be obvious. And it probably would be if not for the automatic stance of clinical psychology, which tends to assume that jealousy is a (usually maladaptive) quirk of the individual experiencing it. That is, clinical psychology understands jealousy as:
a feature of one’s personality (e.g., Paranoid Personality Disorder);
a holdover from one’s past (e.g., reaction to trauma); or,
a defense against, or substitute for, other feelings (e.g., insecurity)
As Yong & Li (2018) say:
A second set of theories [about jealousy] invokes psychological defects or poor mental health as the cause of jealousy. These range from mild or subclinical factors such as low self-esteem, immaturity, or deviance to severe psychopathology. According to this train of thought, normal, psychologically healthy, and well-adjusted people should experience little to no jealousy.5
The evolutionary view, on the other hand, is that jealousy is a normal (and functional) response to a specific situation. The people who experience little to no jealousy therefore aren’t “mature” or “healthy” so much as their valued relationships aren’t being threatened. While both clinical and evolutionary psychology treat the emotion seriously—as containing valuable information—clinical psychology assumes that the occurrence of jealousy says something important about the client, whereas an evolutionary view assumes it says something important about the client in their situation.
As we’ll see, this difference in conceptualizing the source of the problem leads to significant differences in proposing a solution.
Allergic to Simplicity?
Every therapeutic orientation, of course, as well as every theory of human behavior, acknowledges the importance of both the person and their environment. The key difference is where clinical and evolutionary approaches apply pressure, by default, in their search for the cause—and solution—to emotional problems. An evolutionary psychologist would be tempted to take a client’s emotion at face value. For example, in the case of romantic jealousy, the starting point would be that a valued relationship is, indeed, in jeopardy. A standard clinical psychologist, in contrast, would be tempted to dismiss this straightforward possibility for causes rooted deep in the client’s personal history or personality. “Perhaps the death of your mother, in showing you how painful it is to lose someone you love, is unconsciously motivating you to drive your partner away.”
A recent NYT advice column put this attitude on display. A reader wrote in about what to do about a partner who had cheated on them twice. The advice was: go to couples’ therapy. The advice-giver further wrote: “In my experience, people who cheat are often acting out their own issues, not their feelings about their partner.” This pithily captures the default interpretation of clinical psychology, namely that an action such as cheating has less to do with the relationship and more to do with some—personality-based, trauma-induced, other?—reason. What? It’s possible, sure, but in the absence of further information, why would it be the default assumption? Why forego the much more straightforward explanation that when a person cheats, their feelings about the person they are cheating on (or with) are key causal factors?
Perhaps the simplest explanation—something that clinical psychology is generally allergic to—for this “internal” or “personal” approach is that it converts client problems into something that therapy can solve. If romantic jealousy is “actually” a front for some form of insecurity or uncertainty—say, of commitment—then voilà: a therapist can work with that. Similarly, if the “real” issue can be located somewhere in the client’s past—perhaps a history of relationship trauma—then the therapist can help the client “process” it. If, on the other hand, the problem is that the client’s partner is acting shady, or that the client is punching above their weight,6 what can the therapist do? Put them in touch with a private eye? Set them up with a personal trainer?
With the best of intentions, then, and often without any awareness whatsoever, therapists end up transforming client problems into something therapy can address.
But What About the Social Justice Warriors?
Wait just a second, you might say. What about this recent wave of therapists-as-activists? Isn’t the pendulum swinging from the default assumption of client-as-problem to society-as-problem? While much of this hasn’t trickled down to everyday practice, at least in Josh’s experience, it is true that in the public discourse, “fault” is currently moving from somewhere in the client (and therefore under the client’s control) to somewhere in society (and therefore outside the client’s control). The client is becoming helpless in the face of systemic racism, capitalism, problematic groups (e.g., straight white men7), and so on.
It should be clear that this new take is just as dumb as the old one, although perhaps even dumber since it leaves the therapist and client with nothing to do except shake their fists at the sky and attend protests on the weekends.
In addition to this shift in public discourse, it’s also true that some psychological conditions never received this “the problem resides within” treatment in the first place. For example, clinical psychology is quick to implicate the environment in the case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD has long been understood as a “normal” response to adverse circumstances. A therapist would never suggest there was something about the client that made them susceptible to the condition, as it would amount to calling them a coward.
So why are some conditions, in clinical psychology’s view, understood to be environmental (read: normal) and others personal (read: abnormal)? Truth be told, we’re not entirely sure. Maybe the best way to think about it is that clinical psychology, just like any other organization, institution, or business in society, is part driver and part passenger of the cultural bus. On the one hand it wants to make as many problems personal as it can, because that is what therapy is designed to solve. On the other hand, it must remain sensitive to the tides of public opinion. In the present environment, with the moral shadow cast on anything that sounds like victim blaming, more of what has traditionally been conceptualized as the client’s problem is being relocated outside their control.
The result of this somewhat arbitrary assignment of cause is that the search for solutions to mental health problems is confusing—and often misleading.
A Better Way Forward
An evolutionary lens, in addition to routinely locating the source of emotions between a client and their situation, also provides a framework for how these two components interact. Therapists are always asking themselves: How much of my client’s suffering is under their control?8 They ask not to blame, of course, but to find a solution. Yet therapists typically answer this all-important question by using a mash-up of what their chosen technique, life experience, and common sense suggest. How about a more scientific approach?
As Yong & Li suggest (our emphasis):
[O]ur psychology for jealousy is a typical feature of a healthy mind…Yet, our minds are also vulnerable to various contexts that may excessively trigger jealousy. Armed with a better awareness of the specific cues that our evolved mechanisms for jealousy are sensitive toward, further research…can also help us understand how best to manage this often painful and destructive emotion.9
Doesn’t that sound like a much more promising way forward? By understanding the basic design of an emotion—what data does the emotion respond to? what range of behaviors does it tend to elicit? how can experience raise or lower its threshold activation?—therapists would be better equipped to locate the source of client problems. Not only would this approach lead to more viable solutions, but it could also open the door for collaboration between researchers and practitioners. It is as a result of this sort of collaboration that clinical psychology could stand a little taller as a science.
Before we end, let’s return to Josh’s clients from the beginning of the article. Just think of how confused they were, how readily they dismissed important information, including what their partner was actually doing and what their instincts were telling them.10 The first client, who remained adamant that his concerns about the relationship were a concoction of his own making, was broken up with a few weeks later. Apparently, his partner had been having doubts about the relationship for some time. The second client, the one who was “projecting” her feelings onto her husband, discovered a few weeks later that he was indeed cheating on her, with the person she suspected.
A therapist who automatically locates the problem in the client—or, for that matter, in this crazy modern world—will miss a big piece of their client’s puzzle. And that’s not good enough.
In the next article we’ll discuss how the reader can improve their mental health with the insights from this and the previous two articles. Stay tuned.
Coda
It’s not only the nature of jealousy that clinical psychology distorts. Some other examples include:
“Your problems will follow you wherever you go.” Because the problem resides within a person, you see, it doesn’t matter where they are, or what their situation is. But let’s think about this for a minute. Will this person always have a shitty boss, no matter what company they work for? Probably not. Therefore, moving on is sometimes a viable solution.
“You have to love yourself before anyone will love you.” This makes no sense. Plenty of people are loved despite not loving themselves. Hell, one could make the argument that this is how life ideally begins: with our parents loving us before we know what’s going on.
“Therapists can only help those who are willing to help themselves.” Huh? Don’t therapists have the ability to motivate clients beyond the baseline they show up with? If not, what are they there for?
REFERENCES
Buss, D. M., & Haselton, M. (2005). The evolution of jealousy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(11), 506-506.
Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (1997). “From vigilance to violence: Mate retention tactics in married couples.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(2), 346-361.
Buss, D. M. (1994). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. New York: Basic Books.
Buss, D. M., Larsen, R. J., & Westen, D. (1992). Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science, 3(4), 251-255.
Symons, D. (1979). The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Yong, J. C., & Li, N. P. (2018). The adaptive functions of jealousy. The function of emotions: When and why emotions help us, 121-140.
Projection is the clinical term for when you take one of your own problems and “project” it onto someone else, believing that it is their problem instead.
pp 127.
Evolutionarily speaking, raising another’s child is even worse than doing nothing, since in doing nothing, at least you are available to do something. Or someone, rather.
For some classic work on sexual jealousy, a great place to start is Don Symons book, The Evolution of Human Sexuality. David Buss wrote a similar book in 1994, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. For a book specifically on jealousy, see Buss’ The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. See also citations at the end of this post.
pp 125. Citations omitted from quotation.
The question of attractiveness is complicated. Research has shown that men with very attractive partners engage in more guarding/jealous behaviors. The same is true of women with high-status or high-earning men. So, technically, it’s both the difference in their perceived respective values and the value of that partner on the dating market.
Guilty as charged.
As the serenity prayer says: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
pp 136.
The final nice thing about an evolutionary approach is that it would leave intuition intact. Intuition is also evolved and remains an incredible asset that most of my clients seem to have been taught to distrust. Most of the time, I find myself intervening with: “Why are we dismissing what your gut is telling you so quickly? Might there be some truth to it?” Of course, emotions and intuitions must be rinsed through the modern context and the specific situation before deciding what to do about them.
"Permanent personal baggage" -- a nice, succint way of putting it. Anyway, thank you for reading and for commenting. At 63, you have plenty of data behind your opinion :)
Very insightful post. I interpret it as pointing to the risks of a theory-free psychological approach combined with clinical psychologists' potential incentives to self-aggrandise the effectiveness of their discursive interventions.