In article<0qf$faDej9w7EwgD@xemu.demon.co.uk>, Dave Bird writes:

>Keith Henson wrote:
>>Dave Bird writes:
>>> Carry this on and you get the same effect as with Pavolv's dogs
>>> when you first condition steady rewards and punishments then
>>> change to random or all-pain responses. They first rage at
>>> being tormented and frustrated, until finally the run out of
>>> rage and collapse where all their old habits are erased ready
>>> to install new ones. The cascade of responses looks like
>>> losing a status fight though to being killed: fight, flee,
>>> play dead, appease, go completely limp to minimise damage.
>>> The limpness under exhaustion involves a big flood of endorphins
>>> and probably a great lack of serotonin but it's more than that,
>>> neural paths get destabilised for comprehensive rewriting.
>>Can you point me to a reference to this? Fascinating.
> It is, isn't it. Try a short story The Bisquit Position
> by Thomas M Disch, possible in the "Getting into Death"
> anthology and around 1980; on the cascade of defeat reactions.
> On Pavlov's dogs and such, I suppose you've met William Sarjant's
> "Battle for the Mind", commonly quoted in connection
> with though reform and cults.
Let me give some more info on this. The impression I get from the things Disch shows us in the short story is that it's protagonist is a cold manipulative man who designs napalm type weapons for a job and has a similar attitude to his family. When they, in his view, make too much fuss of a small pet dog, he "accidentally" lets her stray onto the firing range and be caught by the liquid fire.

First she snaps and barks furiously at this enemy inflicting pain on her. Then she runs round frantically looking for a way out, but there is none. Then she falls stiffly on her side with legs stuck out as if dead. Next she rolls belly up and begs cutely, as if to placate her attacker. Last of all she goes limp and let's the enemy does his worst hoping he may yet give up with her still alive. And in that position she lay dead.

It's moving simply because we no there was no thinking enemy who would respond to these stratagems. What is interesting is that this sequence of responses to threat plays out quicker or slower with various sorts of pressures.
The most frequent thing you hear from someone in rage or fear against imminent fatal violence such as a pilot the instant before his plane hits a hillside is "oh, s h i t." This is revealing because a person orientated around violence and domination has a number of behaviour patterns obsessed by shit and its surrogates, which may well go back through most species to the use of shit for marking territory. They go round with a ramrod up their ass, they kick the shit out of people, and so forth. The thought of disobedience produces in authoritarian people a scowl, which you can clearly see in pictures of Hitler and Thatcher and Galtieri, as if they have just smelled a ripe fart.

The second most common remark is "Oh Christ" (or the equivalent for their local religion), which gives you some clue to the mechanisms of fanatical religion.

On the other hand someone slowly dying of an existing fatal wound on the battlefield classically calls out for their mother.

What we know from survivors of such states, or from attack by tigers etc, is that they feel a profound calm and freedom from pain i.e. endorphins. This is not so much a benevolent providence as it was adaptive in survivors of attack that they were able to shut down action and sensation to the maximum, while those who wasted strength responding did not survive.

In ordinary commonsense, how on earth does this relate to mothers? well, extreme limpness and dependency and endorphin seeking is essentially the state of mind of a young baby, and that is what they associate with such a state.

An observation on being slowly pushed down by stress close to this infantile state is that there suddenly appeared to be a very wide appeal of heroin among all the stressed-out GIs in Vietnam. But what is very interesting is that when they came home and the stress was relieved, suddenly they were no longer tempted by this "very addictive" chemical. They no longer had an opiate craving; the stuff lost its appeal and they gave it up without problems.
Anyway, that's my bit on the cascade of defensive reactions.

Normal, pleasure-oriented behaviour is associated with dopamine.

All kinds of violent action are associated with noradrenaline / adrenaline and testosterone, which both males & females have.

Contentment and exhaustion are associated with endorphins.

Prolonged stress raises prolactin which blocks fertility during (female lactation and) various times of stress, and eventually continual defeats raise cortisol which robs energy from the immune system. When you see an a-typical female with very male agression, you often find physical testosterone characteristics such as increased muscle and low voice and find that they have lowered fertility.

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