My wife and I have been reading Laurel Braitman’s Animal Madness, a book inspired by her dog Oliver, who used to lick his paws obsessively as our Lhasa Apsu, Chauncey has been doing lately. One of the theories mentioned in the book is that such behavior may come from PTSD, a possibly relevant issue in that Chauncey was brought to us after being found in the middle of the road with a broken jaw and other signs of abuse. With NLP’s assumption that unconscious behavior is usually purposive, I wonder if learning is being held onto by obsessive, even self destructive behavior that keeps representing injury. Obviously, it puts the animal in control of the abuse, which is irrational, but psychologically reassuring. What apparently brings depression is a feeling of absolute helplessness.
Pervading Braitman’s book are such passages as the following: “In the days surrounding the Al-Qaeda attacks of 9/ 11 there was a 200 percent increase in the number of life-threatening heart rhythms in American patients with implanted tracking devices. And in 1998, when England lost the World Cup to Argentina in a suspenseful last-minute penalty kick, heart attacks across the United Kingdom spiked by 25 percent in a single day (1450-52 Kindle location).” One implication is just that the mind influences the body: stress from excitement disturbs the heart. The kicker here is that her second example is of a deliberate exposure to excitement. To deal with an unpredictable world where such perils as terrorism exist, people have nightmares, watch adventure dramas, and sports, etc.
Sense of helplessness is closely associated with captivity, in that animals in the wild apparently do not engage in stereotypies (kindle 2065-66). And our whole civilization is a kind of captivity, not merely for our pets but for us, especially for some of us: “Grandin and Johnson point to a study of Romanian orphans adopted in Canada showing that 84 percent of them engaged in stereotypical behaviors when they were in their cribs, repetitively rocking back and forth on their hands and knees; shifting their weight from one foot to another, a bit like circus elephants; and hitting their head against a wall or the bars of their crib like head-banging monkeys and dolphins.” (2066-70)
One of Braitman’s examples is stranger and more suggestive. The taxoplasma parasite worm that commonly spends part of its cycle in cats and part in rats has chemicals that attract the rats to cats and makes the cats courageous so that they are more likely to be eaten–thus benefiting the worms. The worms also invade humans, with the same effect: inducing increased risk taking and an attraction to canine urine–even though this conveys no benefit to the worms. Their caution-reducing effect also appears to contribute to increase loss of worm-infected seals to sharks. Whereas much of the self-destructive behavior that comes from beyond consciousness seems accessible to depth psychology, the situation is, alas, not always even that easy.
In the case of Chaunsey, we found that an anti-anxiety drug that our vet was about to diagnose for Chaunsey caused a seizure, suggesting that the broken jaw he had when he was brought to us long ago came with a head and brain injury so that his anxiety could have been an almost having a seizure, though, of course, psychological factors may also have been involved.
Holistic Unconscious: 