Where we like being touched, where we don't and why by Ben Tinker

Where we like being touched, where we don't and why

By Ben Tinker, CNN

Updated 11:28 AM ET, Fri October 30, 2015

The blue-outlined black areas highlight taboo zones, where a person with that relationship is not allowed to touch. Blue and red labels signify male and female subjects, respectively.

Story highlights

• Researchers determined where, and by whom, people are most comfortable being touched
• Still, an expert said, "One's response to touching is totally context-dependent"

(CNN)After a series of experiments to determine where, and by whom, people are most comfortable being touched, researchers made some surprising, and some intuitively obvious, findings, recently published in the medical journal PNAS.

Perhaps not so surprising, women are more at ease with being touched than men. And men are more comfortable being touched by a woman than by another man.

But then, men feel more comfortable being touched by strangers than by women. And women were allowed to touch more areas of the body than men.

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom showed 1,368 participants front and back silhouettes of human bodies, with words designating members of their social network, such as family, friends, acquaintances and strangers. They were asked to color in the bodily regions where each individual in their social network would be allowed to touch them.

Hot spots

"The partner was allowed to touch basically anywhere over the body, closest acquaintances and relatives over the head and upper torso, whereas strangers were restricted to touch only the hands," the authors wrote.

"Taboo zones, where touching was not allowed, included the genitals for extended family and males in family, acquaintances and strangers, as well as the buttocks for males in extended family, acquaintances and strangers."

Interestingly, frequency of social contact with an individual did not predict the areas designated for preferred or acceptable touching. The greater the emotional bond, however, the larger the bodily area open for touching.

But it's more complicated than that, some experts say.

"One's response to touching is totally context-dependent," said David J. Linden, a neurobiologist and author of "Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind." "If you do it in a laboratory or you ask people to imagine, it's really hard to get a useful answer."

"Imagine a caress on your arm from your sweetheart when you're feeling connected and loving. Now imagine the exact same caress, yet it feels completely different if ... it's in the middle of an argument that's unresolved. It will feel different from the very first moments of perception, because areas of the brain responsible for touching also compute things like context: 'Am I under threat?' 'What's my emotional state?' 'How much attention am I paying to this?' "

That is to say, if researchers were to ask the same participants in the study to take the test again -- while in a different frame of mind -- the results would be totally different.

Another important caveat to note is the limit on the data set. Participants were selected from five European countries: Finland, France, Italy, Russia and the United Kingdom.

"They confined their analysis to countries and cultures where a certain degree of social touching is allowed," said Linden. "If you did the study with Orthodox Jews or devout Muslims or other groups out in the world, it wouldn't work at all."

Pursuit of pleasure

"Acceptability of social touch was most limited (i.e., most relationship-specific) in regions with the strongest hedonic sensitivity," the authors wrote. In other words, our most sensitive spots are, well, our most sensitive spots.

"Different parts of the skin convey different kinds of touch," said Linden. "In the brain, there is a different biological basis for these maps. In general, we're averse to being touched sexually by strangers -- and women are more averse than men. Your (sexual organs) feel vulnerable and you want to protect them."

Linden said there are different kinds of nerve endings that convey different kinds of information -- but we don't yet know the whole story.

"We know that a touch on the genitals feels different than a touch just about anywhere else on the body," said Linden. "If we took the skin of the genitals and looked at it under a microscope, we would see something different that accounts for that: mucocutaneous end organs, that look like coiled, naked nerve endings."

This may be one reason we're more comfortable being touched on our backs as opposed to, say, on our lips.

If you were to be poked with two pencil points on the small of your back, you likely wouldn't be able to tell if it was in fact one point or two. If you were poked with two pencil points on your lip, though, you'd know for sure and feel it much more distinctly.

Stranger danger

Men and women also have different relationships with sexual violence.

"From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that women are wary of being touched by strangers," said Wendy Walsh, a relationship expert, author and radio host. "Women have evolved mechanisms to be choosy about whom they mate with and to fear rape by a stranger. However, touch by friends is both relational -- women tend to befriend as a buffer against stress -- and pleasurable. Touch gives a nice boost of dopamine, the 'feel-good' hormone."

"Men, on the other hand, tend to be less choosy with whom they mate," Walsh said. "So it stands to reason that touch by a stranger increases the chances for a sexual opportunity."

Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason by TIM LAWRENCE

Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason

OCTOBER 20, 2015

I emerge from this conversation dumbfounded. I've seen this a million times before, but it still gets me every time. 

I’m listening to a man tell a story. A woman he knows was in a devastating car accident; her life shattered in an instant. She now lives in a state of near-permanent pain; a paraplegic; many of her hopes stolen.

He tells of how she had been a mess before the accident, but that the tragedy had engendered positive changes in her life. That she was, as a result of this devastation, living a wonderful life.

And then he utters the words. The words that are responsible for nothing less than emotional, spiritual and psychological violence:

Everything happens for a reason. That this was something that had to happen in order for her to grow.

That's the kind of bullshit that destroys lives. And it is categorically untrue. 

It is amazing to me—after all these years working with people in pain—that so many of these myths persist. The myths that are nothing more than platitudes cloaked as sophistication. The myths that preclude us from doing the one and only thing we must do when our lives are turned upside down: grieve.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. You've heard these countless times. You've probably even uttered them a few times yourself. And every single one of them needs to be annihilated.

Let me be crystal clear: if you've faced a tragedy and someone tells you in any way, shape or form that your tragedy was was meant to be, that it happened for a reason, that it will make you a better person, or that taking responsibility for it will fix it, you have every right to remove them from your life.

Grief is brutally painful. Grief does not only occur when someone dies. When relationships fall apart, you grieve. When opportunities are shattered, you grieve. When dreams die, you grieve. When illnesses wreck you, you grieve.

So I’m going to repeat a few words I’ve uttered countless times; words so powerful and honest they tear at the hubris of every jackass who participates in the debasing of the grieving:

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried. 

These words come from my dear friend Megan Devine, one of the only writers in the field of loss and trauma I endorse. These words are so poignant because they aim right at the pathetic platitudes our culture has come to embody on a increasingly hopeless level. Losing a child cannot be fixed. Being diagnosed with a debilitating illness cannot be fixed. Facing the betrayal of your closest confidante cannot be fixed. 

They can only be carried.

I hate to break it to you, but although devastation can lead to growth, it often doesn't. The reality is that it often destroys lives. And the real calamity is that this happens precisely because we've replaced grieving with advice. With platitudes. With our absence.  

I now live an extraordinary life. I've been deeply blessed by the opportunities I've had and the radically unconventional life I've built for myself. Yet even with that said, I'm hardly being facetious when I say that loss has not in and of itself made me a better person. In fact, in many ways it's hardened me.

While so much loss has made me acutely aware and empathetic of the pains of others, it has made me more insular and predisposed to hide. I have a more cynical view of human nature, and a greater impatience with those who are unfamiliar with what loss does to people.

Above all, I've been left with a pervasive survivor’s guilt that has haunted me all my life. This guilt is really the genesis of my hiding, self-sabotage and brokenness.

In short, my pain has never been eradicated, I've just learned to channel it into my work with others. I consider it a great privilege to work with others in pain, but to say that my losses somehow had to happen in order for my gifts to grow would be to trample on the memories of all those I lost too young; all those who suffered needlessly, and all those who faced the same trials I did early in life, but who did not make it. 

I'm simply not going to do that. I'm not going to construct some delusional narrative fallacy for myself so that I can feel better about being alive. I'm not going to assume that God ordained me for life instead of all the others so that I could do what I do now. And I'm certainly not going to pretend that I've made it through simply because I was strong enough; that I became "successful" because I "took responsibility."

There’s a lot of “take responsibility” platitudes in the personal development space, and they are largely nonsense. People tell others to take responsibility when they don’t want to understand.

Because understanding is harder than posturing. Telling someone to “take responsibility” for their loss is a form of benevolent masturbation. It’s the inverse of inspirational porn: it’s sanctimonious porn.

Personal responsibility implies that there’s something to take responsibility for. You don’t take responsibility for being raped or losing your child. You take responsibility for how you choose to live in the wake of the horrors that confront you, but you don't choose whether you grieve. We're not that smart or powerful. When hell visits us, we don't get to escape grieving.

This is why all the platitudes and fixes and posturing are so dangerous: in unleashing them upon those we claim to love, we deny them the right to grieve.

In so doing, we deny them the right to be human. We steal a bit of their freedom precisely when they're standing at the intersection of their greatest fragility and despair.

No one—and I mean no one—has that authority. Though we claim it all the time.

The irony is that the only thing that even can be "responsible" amidst loss is grieving. 

So if anyone tells you some form of get over it, move on, or rise above, you can let them go.

If anyone avoids you amidst loss, or pretends like it didn’t happen, or disappears from your life, you can let them go.

If anyone tells you that all is not lost, that it happened for a reason, that you’ll become better as a result of your grief, you can let them go.

Let me reiterate: all of those platitudes are bullshit. 

You are not responsible to those who try to shove them down your throat. You can let them go. 

I’m not saying you should. That is up to you, and only up to you. It isn't an easy decision to make and should be made carefully. But I want you to understand that you can.

I've grieved many times in my life. I've been overwhelmed with shame and self-hatred so strong it’s nearly killed me.

The ones who helped—the only ones who helped—were those who were there. And said nothing. 

In that nothingness, they did everything.

I am here—I have lived—because they chose to love me. They loved me in their silence, in their willingness to suffer with me, alongside me, and through me. They loved me in their desire to be as uncomfortable, as destroyed, as I was, if only for a week, an hour, even just a few minutes.

Most people have no idea how utterly powerful this is.

Are there ways to find "healing" amidst devastation? Yes. Can one be "transformed" by the hell life thrusts upon them? Absolutely. But it does not happen if one is not permitted to grieve. Because grief itself is not an obstacle.

The obstacles come later. The choices as to how to live; how to carry what we have lost; how to weave a new mosaic for ourselves? Those come in the wake of grief. It cannot be any other way. 

Grief is woven into the fabric of the human experience. If it is not permitted to occur, its absence pillages everything that remains: the fragile, vulnerable shell you might become in the face of catastrophe.

Yet our culture has treated grief as a problem to be solved, an illness to be healed, or both. In the process, we've done everything we can to avoid, ignore, or transform grief. As a result, when you're faced with tragedy you usually find that you're no longer surrounded by people, you're surrounded by platitudes. 

What to Offer Instead

When a person is devastated by grief, the last thing they need is advice. Their world has been shattered. This means that the act of inviting someone—anyone—into their world is an act of great risk. To try and fix or rationalize or wash away their pain only deepens their terror.

Instead, the most powerful thing you can do is acknowledge. Literally say the words: 

I acknowledge your pain. I am here with you.

Note that I said with you, not for you. For implies that you're going to do something. That is not for you to enact. But to stand with your loved one, to suffer with them, to listen to them, to do everything butsomething is incredibly powerful.

There is no greater act than acknowledgment. And acknowledgment requires no training, no special skills, no expertise. It only requires the willingness to be present with a wounded soul, and to stay present, as long as is necessary.

Be there. Only be there. Do not leave when you feel uncomfortable or when you feel like you're not doing anything. In fact, it is when you feel uncomfortable and like you're not doing anything that you must stay.

Because it is in those places—in the shadows of horror we rarely allow ourselves to enter—where the beginnings of healing are found. This healing is found when we have others who are willing to enter that space alongside us. Every grieving person on earth needs these people.

Thus I beg you, I plead with you, to be one of these people.

You are more needed than you will ever know. 

And when you find yourself in need of those people, find them. I guarantee they are there. 

Everyone else can go. 

A Psychologist Puts Trump and the GOP on the Couch by Michael Bader in AlterNet

A Psychologist Puts Trump and the GOP on the Couch

What's going on in the Republican mind?

By Michael Bader, DMH / AlterNet

September 28, 2015

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23 COMMENTS

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD - MARCH 6, 2014: Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Photo Credit: Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com

Rather than simply reacting with self-righteous contempt for the current crop of GOP presidential candidates, liberals like myself should try to also understand their appeal, however much we might believe it’s not strong enough to put any of them in the White House. The pre-scripted kabuki dances on display in their debates have made them easy targets for disdain, so easy that it’s a bit like playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey with your eyes open. Trump is an obviously racist bloviator, the creepiest and most blatantly disturbed of the bunch, for sure, but the lot of them come across as empty suits projecting poll-driven personas that their handlers believe will resonate with their base of angry and/or older white men. Moments of “authenticity” (e.g., they love their parents, spouses and children—imagine that!) are, themselves, always wooden, overly-crafted and ginned up with phony emotion and reported breathlessly by a media itself unable to stand on its own two feet and tell truth from fiction when it comes from these conservative wind-up dolls.

The Democrats will stage manage their personalities and manipulate their messages, too. Sanders is by far the most authentic, but he had to pivot in order to re-emphasize his record on race and women’s rights. Hillary will try to “present” herself as a human being (she’s a grandmother, after all), and the other guys—whoever they are—will do something similar when they can.

All of this is politics as usual, dutifully but cynically covered by a press corps that has surrendered even the pretense of critical thinking, instead sucking up to what they see as the basest cravings of their readers and viewers for the political version of reality television.

But while all politicians pander and throw authenticity under the bus of political expediency, the current plague of high-visibility GOP candidates project two especially pathological themes that they’ve decided will resonate with the feelings of millions of voters: paranoia and grandiosity.

As a liberal and a psychologist, I think it’s important to understand the nature and meaning of this resonance. The fears and insecurities that paranoia and grandiosity seek to diminish are feelings that a liberal agenda should be better able to address. Undecided voters can be drawn to the left or the right, and the more we understand the appeal of the American Right, the better able we might be to counter it with a more progressive and healthy message and platform. But we will never know if that’s possible or how to do it if we don’t understand the psychological dynamics behind the appeal of right-wing paranoia and grandiosity.

Let’s start with grandiosity, a term familiar to psychologists in our work with patients who need to inflate their self-esteem and self-assessments in order to ward off feelings of inferiority or helplessness. But just as individuals identify with, say, a sports team, so too do individuals identify with their nation—e.g., Team America. In our case, the political or collective version of personal grandiosity is what is known as “American Exceptionalism,” namely the tapestry of stories about the specialness of the United States when it comes to personal freedom, economic opportunity and growth, and military superiority. These stories have gained mythic proportions. They’re all captured by one unquestioned assumption: We are the greatest country in the history of the world. Period. This is a core part of the relentless drumbeat we hear from the conservative echo chamber.

But this braggadocio—what former Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright called “The Arrogance of Power”—requires that the ideal of American “greatness” be cleansed of any blemishes, just as a grandiose or narcissistic patient has to deny his or her human frailty and fallibility. This is where paranoia comes in handy. It’s easier to believe you are exceptional if you are comparing yourself with others and if you are proving your remarkable strength against naysayers or challengers. It helps, in other words, to have an enemy who is threatening your greatness.

Thus, the rhetoric of the current crop of Republican politicians, including, especially, the GOP clowns running for president, combines grandiosity and paranoia. Our nation’s greatness isn’t threatened by simple human fallibility but by Obama, Muslims, immigrants, Democrats, Planned Parenthood and Big Government. The second Republican presidential debate was laced with echoes of these beliefs, sometimes baldly stated, other times expressed as Obama-bashing. According to Carly Fiorina, “The United States of America is back in the leadership business.” Trump coughed up this hairball:  “We’ll make our country rich again, and we’ll have a great life all together.”

In other words, we’re in danger of losing our place in the front of the line, and only a Republican president has enough sinew and muscular confidence in American greatness to make sure that doesn’t happen. Grandiosity and paranoia—we’re the greatest, but we have to vigilantly remind ourselves and everyone else of that fact because we’re also threatened. A great “us” has to be continually reinforced by invoking threats from a demeaned “them.”

The current frontrunners for a “them” that threatens our perfect national collective are immigrants and radical Islamic extremists. Like the Red scares of the 1950s, our current xenophobia is based on the same paranoid view of ourselves and the world. The first thing Ted Cruz would apparently do as president is to “shred Obama’s catastrophic Iran deal.” Trump is the poster child for paranoia with his dumb “we’ll build a wall but put in a beautiful gate” through which we’ll ostensibly let in only beautiful people, and keep out the “bad dudes.” And, of course, his racist demagoguery reached a peak recently when he appeared to welcome a statement from a man in the audience who asserted: “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims. You know, our President is one. You know he’s not even an American.”  

What does psychology tell us about the origins of paranoia and grandiosity? It tells us that pathological attitudes and states of mind are best understood as attempts, however irrational they may seem, to feel safe and secure.  

All of us seek safety and security.  

Paranoia, for example, simply reflects an attempt to locate a frightening or painful thought outside the self, to get rid of threatening feelings, project them onto others, and then turn an internal struggle with bad feelings into an external struggle with bad people. For example, if I’m suffering from feelings of weakness or worthlessness, the belief, however false, that someone else is causing me to feel this way can temporarily help restore my sense of innocence and self-respect. There’s nothing wrong with me that getting rid of you won’t cure. In fact, in this paranoid version of reality, I’m a good or even great guy defending himself against an external danger. What emerges in the therapist’s consulting room is that paranoia solves an internal problem by making it an external one, even at the price of denying reality.   

For example, Donald Trump is actually a balding misogynist, but he doesn’t have to feel like one if he wears a toupee (allegedly made from the hair of the critically-endangered Brown Spider Monkey) and tells himself and others that Megyn Kelly was menstruating and had it out for him.  

In this sense, Trump shows us what happens when the personal becomes political. Like the United States itself, he is great and good, not declining and mean. Paranoia works pretty well when you’re feeling off your game.

Grandiosity works similarly as a defense against painful internal states. Thus, the grandiosity inherent in the axiomatic assertion that “we are the greatest nation in the history of the world” uses stories and images of American perfection, greatness and omnipotence to counteract narratives that we might be a nation in decline, or reeking on the inside from toxic inequality and a callous indifference to the welfare of the unfortunate. Combine grandiosity and paranoia and you have the current Republican talking points.  

When individual psychopathology becomes a collective filter for understanding the political world, we see—as we do in the rhetoric and vision of today’s GOP—a pathological set of values guaranteed to lead to pathological policies. If I were to try to list the essential psychological dynamics underlying grandiosity and paranoia in the patients I see, and you were to simply replace the personal pronoun “I” with “America” or “the American people” and “you” and “them” with one of the scapegoats demonized by the GOP (e.g., people with darker skins, the wrong religion or different sexual orientation), the symmetry between crazy individuals and crazy politics becomes clearer. Again, to oversimplify:

“I’m not small; I’m big.” (American is not small; it’s/we’re big, etc.)

“I’m not bad; I’m the essence of goodness.”

“I’m not hurting others; I’m always helping them.”  

“I’m not failing or losing; I’m a successful winner.”

“The problem isn’t in me; it’s in you.”  

“If I could get rid of you; I’d be great and perfect and happy again.” 

You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that the adolescent tough-guy primping we see on the GOP presidential debate stages is the political manifestation of commonplace psychological mechanisms regularly seen in individuals, namely, desperate attempts to defend against dangerous and painful feelings and fears. And just as in therapy, the important challenge is to understand those feelings and fears, because when a Donald Trump wants to build a wall to protect America, he is subliminally playing to a wish in his supporters to protect themselves. But, again, the question is: protect themselves from what? What is being denied or defended against?

The answer is that the threats that grandiose and paranoid attitudes defend against involve feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness and self-hatred—all of which are arguably greater now than ever in our culture. American exceptionalism and xenophobia offer symbolic antidotes in the political world to the more personal distress of millions of Americans today. Trump and the other airheads on the GOP stage today offer a distorted vision of the world that, like the Donald’s orange wig, helps to cover up genuine feelings of vulnerability and impotence.  

For many people, the Great Recession of 2008 dashed the American Dream to which they had come to aspire or which they believed they were actually living. Millions of people lost their homes, their IRAs and other savings that were allocated for retirement and for their children’s education. These losses—the result of financial shenanigans far, far away—were accompanied by great feelings of helplessness that caused stress levels to go through the ceiling. Mortgages went underwater and people took on second or third jobs, reinforcing a sense of insecurity along with feelings of helplessness and depression. And while being overwhelmed and powerless to stop the feeling of losing ground, people saw hedge fund managers and bankers getting bailed out. Because we think we live in a meritocracy in which rewards are distributed according to ability, people blamed themselves for not being able to make ends meet, or hold on to their jobs, or for losing money in the stock market, or for having tapped into their home equity too much. I heard these self-criticisms and doubts in my consulting room every day—feelings of helplessness, pessimism, isolation and self-blame.

In 1990, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 50% of Americans thought their children would be better off in 20 years. In 2015, a full 76% of Americans expressed skepticism that their children’s lives would be better off than their own. Even though millions of Americans were in the same boat, feelings of isolation and self-blame became more prevalent and debilitating. The ethic of individualism in our culture invariably leads people to blame themselves for their “lot” in life, even if that lot was caused by forces beyond their control. So, as the quality of life has deteriorated, the amount of depression and self-blaming has increased.  

Further, as researchers such as John Cacioppo and Robert Putnam have documented, the breakdown of community organizations and bonds has resulted in increased social isolation, especially among the elderly (an important part of the Republican base, of course). In 2009, a study by Kodak revealed that most Americans felt that “we have fewer meaningful relationships than we had five years ago.” This trend has only worsened.

So we have a social landscape in which people feel increasingly pessimistic, helpless, isolated and self-blaming—feelings perfectly addressed by GOP platitudes intended to reassure us that we’re really great, all-powerful, and that it’s someone else’s fault if we’re not. 

Ultimately, the appeal to an imaginary but reassuring sense of community undergirds all of these platitudes about American greatness, strength and antipathy toward the “other.” The latent message is: there is an “us” here, a great “us” full of power and noble intentions, an “us” to which everyone can belong as long as we keep “them” away or subjugated in ways that render them non-threatening (bombing them, building walls, deportation, etc.). Who doesn’t want to belong? To be part of an “us?”  

The myths of American greatness serve this purpose perfectly. What is a better tonic to the pain of isolation and helplessness brought on by our market-driven and pathological ethos of individualism than to belong to Dream Team America, the greatest and most powerful nation that ever existed in the history of the world?  

That the GOP has been instrumental in creating the conditions that it then seeks to heal with its so-called “muscular” foreign and military policy and jingoistic attacks on immigrants is an inconvenient truth that isn’t mentioned, but has been thoroughly described and discussed by progressive political analysts and sociologists. The Right helped create the problems that their racist warmongering and so-called patriotism aim to remedy. Psychology can’t fix these problems, but it can hopefully help us understand the mindset behind a system in which victims support their victimizers.

 

Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco who has written extensively on issues found at the intersection of psychology, culture, and progressive politics. His recent book, More Than Bread and Butter: A Psychologist Speaks to Progressives About What People Really Need in Order to Win an Change the World is available on Amazon.com and on his website:www.michaelbader.com

The Genetics of Blond Hair (by Elizabeth Pennisi)

Liz is a staff writer for Science.

Sunday, June 1, 2014 - 1:15pm

For all those brunettes wishing they were naturally blond, a small genetic change could have made all the difference. Scientists have found that replacing one of DNA’s four letters at a key spot in the genome shifts a particular gene’s activity and leads to fairer hair. Not only does the work provide a molecular basis for flaxen locks, but it also demonstrates how changes in segments of DNA that control genes, not just changes in genes themselves, are important to what an organism looks like.

“It really is a nice story that pulls together and helps make sense of a lot of the biology that we have partially understood up to this point,” says Richard Sturm, a molecular geneticist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, who was not involved with the work.

Because our appearance is so strongly influenced by the color of our skin and hair, geneticists have long sought to understand the genetic bases of these traits and when they evolved. Over the past 6 years, studies of genetic variation in thousands of people have linked at least eight DNA regions to blondness based on the fact that a certain DNA letter, or base, was found in people with that hair color but not in people with other hair colors. Some of those base changes, or single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), were in genes involved in the production of pigments, such as melanin. Mutations in these genes typically change skin and hair color. Other SNPs lay outside genes but could be part of the regulatory DNA that helps control the function of genes nearby. Changes in that regulatory DNA could result in hair color but not skin color change, or vice versa, because regulatory DNA can change gene activity in just certain parts of the body.

In northern Europeans, the closest gene to an SNP that was strongly linked to blondness wasKITLG, which codes for a protein that is key to making sure cells go to their proper places in the body and specialize accordingly. That SNP caught the eye of David Kingsley, an evolutionary geneticist at Stanford University in California. He and his colleagues had found that this gene was key to altering the coloration of fish called sticklebacks that had become isolated in freshwater rivers and lakes when glaciers receded. In each freshwater location, these fish were evolving independently, yet time and time again, changes in the regulation of this gene led to fairer or darker skin, depending on the murkiness of the water. “We had a choice,” Kingsley recalls. “We could study skin color in fish or in humans—it was the very same problem in the very same gene.”

To learn whether that SNP was part of the regulatory DNA for human KITGL, Kingsley’s team turned to mice. The researchers knew they were on the right track because mice with DNA that’s backward in that region were lighter or even white, instead of the usual brown. They made two variations of the human version of that DNA to put into mice. In one variant, they left the blond-generating SNP intact; and in the other variant, they changed that SNP to another base, so that the DNA looked like it does in brunettes. They inserted just one copy of one DNA variant into each mouse.

Mice with the blond-generating SNP were lighter than mice with the other variant, Kingsley and his colleagues report online today in Nature Genetics. When he and his colleagues studied this regulatory DNA in human cells grown in a laboratory dish, they discovered that the blond-generating SNP reduced KITLG activity by only about 20%. Yet that was enough to change the hair color. “This isn’t a ‘turn the switch off,’ ” Kingsley says. “It’s a ‘turn the switch down.’ ”

“This study provides solid evidence” that this switch regulates the expression of KITLG in developing hair follicles, says Fan Liu, a genetic epidemiologist at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who was not involved with the work. He and his colleagues have found they can predict red and black color pretty accurately based on looking at 22 hair-color-related SNPs that a person has, but distinguishing blonds and brunettes is “much more difficult,” he says.

“Regulatory DNA is very likely to play an important role in pigmentation in general,” adds Eiríkur Steingrímsson, a molecular biologist at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik, who was not involved with the work.

Blond hair may not be important to survival, but the story of one of its genetic causes helps clarify how evolution can occur. KITLG is active in many places in the body, and any mutation in the gene itself would result in widespread problems in the body and even death. Yet it is bracketed by sections of regulatory DNA, any one of which may take control in a different tissue. “This finding explains why the effect of KITLG is specific to hair but not eye and skin, which is quite unique compared to most other pigmentation genes known today,” Liu says. Thus, the change that led to blond hair did not affect the gene elsewhere in the body. “It’s literally only skin deep,” Kingsley says.

An Old Poem Written Twelve Years Ago...

A Wish:
Some sunlight to keep one's spirits bright.
Some drizzle to be grateful for the light.
Some contentment to keep the soul alive.
Some anguish so joy is not contrived.
Some gain to satisfy real need.
Some loss to keep away the greed.
Some hellos to transform the last goodbye,
One love that can never die.

The Conservative March Toward a Society of Sociopaths by Allen Clifton

Last night I spent some time with a close friend (let’s call him Jake) and as we often do when we get together, we discussed politics.  You see, he’s a fantastic source for political insight because he doesn’t really follow politics or have any kind of political affiliation.  Hell, I don’t know if he’s ever even voted.

But Jake is a great source because he has another close friend, let’s call him Stan, who’s a far right-wing conservative.  Therefore he hears my side and Stan’s side, watches the news, reads the paper and based on only what he sees as logical and rational he molds his opinion.  Which to this point he often tells me most of the stuff Stan says to him just doesn’t make any sense.

Last night when discussing Stan and some of what I refer to as his asinine political beliefs, it occurred to me—Stan is exactly how Republicans want Americans to behave.

And Stan is a sociopath.

He’s a white male, strongly opposed to most other races and immigrants.  Believes every single far right-wing economic theory imaginable and actually cited Argentina as a “beacon for true capitalism.”  He has no remorse for others, seems to live in a world where he’s the focal point but he presents himself as extremely charming and personable when you first meet him.  He has no problem ignoring social ethics or morals if it benefits his self interest.  He’s told my friend that people should only worry about themselves, and not care about the struggles of others.  That in life, self interests should trump everything else
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Then, and I kid you not, he apparently followed his “only worry about your own self interest” speech by pressing my friend on why he’s not more involved in church.

See, Stan is exactly the kind of person Republicans want to create.

A society of people who only worry about themselves.  People who ostracize everyone that’s not like them.  Humans that value possessions over people, and while they might give money to their church, it’s only because their church is filled with people just like them.  And while these people go to church and call themselves “Christians,” they’ve somehow convinced themselves that Jesus Christ was some selfish, hateful, judgmental person who valued his own self interest over the betterment of others less fortunate than himself.

And Stan is a perfect example of this.  Somehow in one discussion he preached to my friend Jake on why he should only worry about himself, while also questioning why he isn’t more involved in church—a place that’s supposed to emphasize generosity and helping others.

Stan will talk about Jesus and how he himself is a Christian—then follow that by calling African Americans derogatory names, claim as humans we only need to worry about ourselves, thinks Muslims should leave the country (and would prefer they didn’t exist at all) and shows no sign of any kind of moral obligation to those in society who are less fortunate than he is.

Because see, in a society of sociopaths, greed is good.  Greed is the driving force behind their existence.  It’s acceptable in a society of sociopaths for people like the Koch brothers to oppose minimum wage and health care, while being worth tens of billions of dollars, because a sociopath doesn’t feel they owe anything to anyone.

If their workers are underpaid, overworked, lack benefits or safe working conditions, in the mind of a sociopath—who cares?  Quit and get another job or stop complaining because they don’t owe workers anything.  They only have an obligation to themselves and their own self interests.  If workers want better pay, safer working conditions or benefits—find another job.  If you can’t find a job which offers any of that—too bad.

That’s not for the sociopath to worry about.  The sociopath is only concerned about themselves and what makes them feel good.

Which is where church comes in.  These right-wing sociopaths go to church, and largely excuse their hypocrisy and lack of morality by citing church attendance as why they’re not horrible people.

After all, they go to church 2-3 times a week, that makes them a Christian, right?  They’re not morally bankrupt individuals suffering from a psychological disorder—they’re “good American Christians.”

Because that’s exactly what their leaders tell them that they are.  Which of course is another sign of a sociopath.  The ability to charm and manipulate people into getting what they want.

Kind of like a political party that’s convinced millions of low-income and middle class Americans that their economic salvation is found by giving people worth billions tax breaks, while eliminating the minimum wage and cutting programs which the poor and middle class benefit from.

And that’s exactly what Republicans advocate—policies which benefit 2% of the richest people at the expense of the other 98%.  Because they’ve somehow convinced these people that if they just “work hard enough” they can become part of that elite 2%.

Which of course, 98% of us will never be a part of.

But Republicans enforce this belief that we must only concern ourselves with what we need, and any regulations or laws which seek to help others are the enemy.  It’s these programs that help others which cause 98% of Americans to flounder outside of that illustrious 2%
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It’s not the greed of the 2%, it’s the laziness of the poor.

Which leads us to the rapidly de-evolving Republican party.  A party that doesn’t care about the environment, health care access for Americans, children, education, the well-being of our military or the poor.

They only care about themselves and how much they can possess.  People who place value on inanimate objects like guns or money before human beings.  Then nothing you can tell these people will convince them of anything, because your opinion doesn’t matter.

Because the sociopath isn’t concerned about what you, I or anyone else thinks of them—only what they think of themselves.  Which is why any type of disgusting behavior they exhibit is perfectly acceptable.  That behavior got them something that they wanted—and to a sociopath their own self interests are all that really matter.

And that’s exactly the type of society conservatives are trying to march us toward.

Are Shrinks Nuts? by Cecil Adams

Are shrinks nuts?

September 28, 2012

Dear Cecil:

Is it true that, as a class, psychotherapists and other mental health professionals are crazier than average? And that despite their training and experience, they can recognize their own issues less readily than the average nutcase?

— Paul

Cecil replies:

I defer judgment on whether shrinks don’t recognize their problems. On the contrary, there are indications some mental health professionals enter the field because they do recognize their problems and think their work will help them get a grip.

I can hear you saying: that’s like becoming a cop so you can work on your anger management. Please, a little sympathy. The best way to understand shrinks is to put yourself in their shoes.

Let’s suppose you dedicate yourself to healing the psychic wounds of others. Are you probably nuttier than average? Depends how we define nutty. I haven’t seen good evidence you’re statistically likely to hear voices, think you’re the angel Gabriel, or otherwise show signs of clinical insanity. On the other hand, are the odds decent that you'll show signs of what we might call maladjustment? No question, they are.

It’s easy to see why. Psychiatry and psychology, like police work, have long been recognized as high-stress fields of practice due to constant exposure to humanity’s dark side. In interviews with medical students about their perceptions of psychiatry, researchers found a common concern was that (as one subject put it) “working with crazies will make you crazy.”

For all that, the prevalence of mental disorders among mental health workers didn’t receive much attention until the 1980s. A widely noted study from 1980 found 73 percent of psychiatrists had experienced moderate to incapacitating anxiety early in their careers, and 58 percent had suffered from moderate to incapacitating depression.

To some extent this is simply a result of working in medicine — physicians in general suffer from higher stress levels and depression than the general population and have a higher suicide rate. But research suggests mental health specialists are particularly at risk. One British study found psychiatrists had nearly five times the suicide rate of general practitioners, and U.S. research indicates psychiatrists commit suicide at two to three times the rate of the general population.

Similarly, depression, stress, and burnout are high among physicians but higher among psychiatrists; the same is true of alcohol and drug abuse. Psychiatrists have a divorce rate 2.7 times that of other physicians and as much as five times that of the general public. From a quarter to a half of psychiatrists say they’re suffering from burnout at any given time.

A study of more than 8,000 Finnish hospital employees found the psychiatric staff was 81 percent more likely to suffer from a current or past mental illness and 61 percent more likely to miss work due to depression. Psychiatric staff were twice as likely to smoke as other hospital staff and had much higher rates of alcohol use. A 30-year study of 20,000 UK medical workers found psychiatrists were 46 percent more likely than their peers to die from injuries and poisoning, and at 12 percent greater risk of dying overall.

If you were a woman in the mental health field, Paul, you’d have an especially tough time of it. Compared to other female physicians, female psychiatrists have a 67 percent greater likelihood of suffering from psychological problems, primarily depression, and have a 26 percent greater likelihood of having a family history of psychological problems. They’re twice as likely to smoke, drink 50 percent more alcohol, and rate their personal health much lower than their peers do.

As a male, you may find other ways to alleviate your stress. The California Medical Board found male psychiatrists were almost twice as likely to be disciplined for unethical sexual relationships with patients as their peers.

Many of the problems you’ll encounter as a mental health professional have a lot to do with the nature of the work — hey, skimming through my inbox any given week is enough to make me reach for the Thorazine. Jung called the transference of psychological problems from patient to doctor an “unconscious infection.”

Patients can get violent, either with you or themselves. Dealing with certain types of patients can be emotionally draining, such as those with borderline personality disorder or victims of sexual abuse. You’ve also got stressors such as overwork, job instability, liability fears, paperwork overload, and disciplinary actions and monitoring.

But let’s get back to the point I made at the outset. Does the mental health field attract people with mental problems? Research is thin, but some studies have found mental health workers are more likely than average to have experienced early abuse and trauma. A much-cited 1963 study reported that 24 out of 25 psychiatrists had entered the field because of a wish to explore some personal conflict.

That gives one pause. Sure, there’s value in consulting a health professional who’s been down the same road as us. But who wants their therapist thinking, “Maybe after I get this head case straightened out, I’ll figure out what’s wrong with me”?

— Cecil Adams