When  mice are exposed to pain their face reflects it.  How many centuries has it taken to discover that?  Researchers in Canada report that “This is the first study that has examined facial expression of pain in non-human animals.”  They have made a “mouse grimacing scale.”  This reminds me of the use of aversive stimuli in shaping human behavior.  The scientists (as though it was news to them)  decided that  altering the mood of the subject  contaminated the results.  It sounded like the scientists were surprised that their subjects didn’t like being shocked.

(Mice: The Week May 28, 2010) (aversive conditioning : Azrin and Holz, 1966).

They’ve been playing that gorilla video as often as they did the 9-11 attack.  I must have been about one–my long term memory wasn’t too good–but I’ve been told that my parents held me up to see the gorilla at the Washington, D.C.  zoo , whereupon he grabbed my hand and pulled. Fortunately it was my glove that came off and not my hand.  Folks seem ready to guilt-trip the boy’s parents. I hope they don’t turn around and guilt-trip their son.  Can you imagine being three years old, scared out of your wits, and shamed for the loss of the park’s gorilla because you didn’t mind your parents??  One or two words could do the trick of carrying that load for the rest of his life. When I was seven our pet canary died and I was guilt-tripped about that. I don’t remember ever having been given the responsibility for feeding him..

Janof-Bulman and Frieze (1983) have studied the effects of victimization on those considered traumatized.  When I compare it with my small trauma in 1971, I can really relate. It helps me make sense out of my psychological  reaction.

They observe that much of the psychological toll derives from the shattering of  very basic assumptions that victims have held about themselves and their world. The authors cite three types of assumptions, shared by most people, that are especially affected.  “The three assumptions are: 1)the belief in personal invulnerablity 2)the perception of the world as meaningful and comprehensible; 3) the view of ourselves in a positive  light.”

Most folks believe that we are protected from misfortune by being good, worthy people–that we get what we deserve and deserve what we get.  The victim will have to reestablish a world that is meaningful.  The victim will also have to regain a sense of self-worth, strength and autonomy.

My small “trauma” consisted of giving birth to a Down’s Syndrome daughter. I had already had 3 other “perfect” babies and in no way anticipated that this delivery would be different.  I can remember being in a therapy group in which I spoke of the world suddenly being unpredictable; that maybe bad things were begining to happen to me. Seven days after giving birth to my baby I took her with me to attend a psychological marathon with other graduate psychology students. I recall saying that it felt like the only real things in the world were death and mongolism. A fellow student said that the milk and comforting I gave her were also real.

One of the things I did in trying to make sense of it included going to a psychic who told me good-feeling make-believe things like that my baby and I had known each  other in a former life and she decided to be born to me in order to teach me, as a gift. –All of which of course I gobbled up, because  I was so  needy for meaningfulness.  That temporarily made sense of “why me?” but did not really address why did this happen to my baby?  Well, I thought and thought and finally figured out a rationale that I could live with. Since Down’s Syndrome occurs at the point of initial splitting of the first seed, my daughter never, ever had a chance of being a different person. It was all or nothing. She would either exist as herself or not be. At that point I decided that if her life was overall a happy one, that it would be okay she had been born a Downs. This helped me tremendously with my guilt feelings, which were not mentioned by the authors except maybe viewing ourselves in a positive light..

As an aside, when my father–who molested me as a child–died a couple of years later, I returned to the psychic, who was also a minister, and asked him to do a religious burial service which included some explanation from my father’s past life experience which prompted his molestation.  The pastor was shocked and refused me. Apparently the psychic business didn’t mix with his brand of religion.

The article referred to was in Journal of Social Issues, 1983, 39, 2, 1-18.

After I had to put my blind deaf cat down, I decided I’d better get a rug cleaner in, especially since my sensitive-nosed family were coming to attend the Nelsonville Music Festival next week.  So I had to go through stuff and get other things off the carpet. In doing so, I came across a letter written for me from a co-member of a writing group at the French Art Colony in Gallipolis on August 8, 1982.  Wherever Jena Harper is, I hope she won’t mind my sharing it with you. (I’m stating copyright claims for her).

“It is fitting that my 49th year should begin at a hotel bar in a dingy river town on a hot August midnight. Outside, barges push through Ohio waves, their Cyclops eyes staring straight through up-river mist. The full moon is a pearl wrapped in gauze. A car with its rear end hiked up on oversized tires struts slowly down the street, full of pride and baby faces. Parking meters stand with closed red eyes, not seeing who parks at midnight, not keeping time.

“It is cool at the bar and a sad song slides toward me through the water rings. A revolving Michelob sign glows green on the faces of the musicians, giving them a mystique never seen in sunshine. The drum rims exchange silver glances with the ice in my glass. Steel guitar strings wave in and out of my mood and fringes on a silk shirt, rising and falling with the lyrics, mesmerize me. I am drinking Coke, but I am drunk on memories, staggering over whys and wherefores. Past years lean over my shoulder and whisper obscenities in my ear. Beyond the neon signs in the window, years-to-come beckon and when I leave here, they will be lurking around the corner, staring at me with alley-cat eyes as I disguise myself as a  shadow, slipping from lamppost to lamppost, hoping to pass undetected. But they will overtake me. There is no turning back. The dead-end is out there. Somewhere, just ahead.”

NOTE FROM NAN: I heard that she subsequently got married.

For Dverse Open Link

THE WORLD IS FLAT AFTER ALL

Dubbed Democracy, it used to be
top of the line, the lead ship, at sea,
and on the land it served us well,
until the strains of its death knell
fell,

baring an underbelly swole
with all the pilfered things they stole
in broad daylight, and on t.v.!
Gone is the half-belief in he
who’ll take us safely to the shore
while staying steadfast to the core.

The compass nestles in the deep
while those on board remain asleep.
They used to say the earth was round,
that right makes might, but I found
that all I knew I now know not,
nor how to tell the truth from rot,
and not so sure that we’ll endure.

Goodbye before we’ve met.

How fair is that?   I’ll miss not

knowing you, and yet

suspect that further down the bar

a surprise awaits us both.