Nested Psych Adaptations: It's Only My Vocal Cords

• Psychological Adaptations: A Model and It's Relevance by James Brody, 4/24/97
  
  

Tom Wolk called to discuss a patient and remarked, "Hey, you sound like you're after one of those FM announcer jobs. Get well." Tom has a good ear, he's also a gifted pediatrician.

Anyhow, I've spent part of this week assuring people that only my vocal cords have shut down; further, that the pharphallitis (Homer, 1997 and forever before that) announced itself on Monday and I scheduled it's departure on Wednesday. Things ran on time.

My Psych Adaptations are nested so stopping my vocal cords did not shut down the rest of me. Thoughts still erupted at dawn, PostIts accumulated like November leaves. The Executive Functions were still there. (1)

This business of nested Psych Adaptations also applies to my eating and flirting. I enjoy restaurants where the table help is female and around 25 years old (consistent with Symons/Buss); I usually stick with one oasis for 6 months when boredom prevails.

The social game is subtle and fun because there is sometimes a fractional activation of PAs for courtship. I'm lively, generally good humored, courteous, and arrive in the later hours when the crowd is gone and I can work with less distraction. Thus, I play my own Symons/Buss assets for good humor, thoughtfulness, and display of assets. I also have wrinkles around my eyes and forehead, the hair is thin, and my muscle mass looks like AIDS so that routines for avoidance are also elicited. (I usually drop the word "marathoner" early and people relax! Again, competing PA for avoidance and approach elicited by the same stimuli.) The behavior sequences get a little confusing; there may be even funtional equivalents to displacement reactions.

I have an unfair advantage that protects me from my own fractional PAs, especially those that activate routines consistent with being younger and forgetting my current liabilities. I'm studying Darwin and know pretty well what's occurring as well as it's probable duration and limited intensity. I can enjoy small talk without future-oriented, reproductive agendas. My partners are often fascinated by what I do but might get a little upset if aware of my comparing them to meadow birds.

The approach/avoidance routines could be worthy of cinematographic/kinesics analysis. Cameras and graduate students would easily perch next to TV monitors or behind the bar mirrors. Lautrec did fine work in taprooms; so might a cadre of evolutionary psychologists, especially given the unending supply of college sophomores already on site and the traditional lek rituals of bars. (If I ever tire of writing about these events, I will probably get out my sketch pad.)

REFERENCE/NOTE:

Homer, Irv. (1997) Currently talk host on WWDB, FM 96.5 in Philadelphia. Former bar owner, bomber gunner (WW2), Libertarian, leader of tax resistance movements, and generalized instigator who makes up words.

1) A lot of my ADL skills --- eating, posting on the forum, setting up the woodstove, doing laundry, installing insulation, and patching a roof leak in the sunroom --- shut down but as a result of integrating a new computer and Windows 95 into my practice and my writing. The process was only a bit less complicated than performing a bypass. My client data base is still on the old 486-40. There are two monitors and two keyboards presently on my desk until I resolve some program dilemmas. The computer change disrupted more of my Psych Adaptations than flu did!

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