The American Psychiatric Association before 1973, thought that homosexuality was a pathology. Some thought that anything that is not close to normal behavior and sexual preference was a pathology. Some Freudians thought that it was an immature behavior that never matured. Freudian ideas are not very scientific, they are not tested by experiments and as a result have little predictive or generalizing power. And the idea that pathology is defined by how close one is to a norm is baseless, or rather it comes from primate group behavior, but has no place in science. So homosexuality is no longer considered a pathology, and perhaps due to this episode it has become politically incorrect to classify any behavior or way of being as pathological. Could we have gone too far though? Maybe it can be useful to classify some behaviors as pathological. It seems to me that the following 2 criteria are a good way to view pathology:
1. When a person is repeatedly hurting themselves with said behavior or internal process.
2. When a person is repeatedly hurting another person, not in self defense (though this might be tricky to define for avoidants, who see any intimacy as an attack).
and perhaps a third which we will discuss later.
Our goal in studying pathology should not be to shame, ostracize, judge or ridicule the pathological person, but rather to understand and help them heal. Understanding involves making distinctions (and also integration of distinct things sometimes). Not all pathologies are the same either in their etiologies or their manifestations. If we can understand, we can sometimes also find ways to heal. Scientific theories like attachment theory offer a finer tool for understanding than pure psychological theories. Attachment theory has been evolving through the interplay of theory and experiment for many decades and offers us a two axis model of infant and adult attachment. Evolutionary theory posits that mother-child, and lover-lover attachment use the same neuro-hormonal-behavioral systems, maybe with a slight modification. In a species where newborns take years to be able to survive on their own, it makes sense that a strong attachment system has evolved between mother and child. It also makes sense that this attachment system would be tweaked (instead of invented de novo) to recruit (potential) fathers to help mothers, hence romantic love. I'm not saying that romantic love can be reduced to hormones and neural states, only that these are part of a system that keeps lovers attached, when all goes well during childhood (there are other aspects like being inspired by one's partner that are absent in childhood--the Muse). If the system malfunctions, people can develop a so-called avoidant attachment along one axis, and a so-called anxious attachment along another perpendicular axis*. And of coarse most people will be a combination of both attachment styles, off both of these axes. People can heal from these malfunctions (not pathologies yet) by learning how to have a more secure attachment, but what or whom do we form a connection to?
But wait, before we get to healing, why is having a high avoidance or anxiousness coordinate (as measured by surveys, but also by brain scans, not just for activity, but for avoidants, for mu opioid receptors) a pathology? Because both of these kinds of people (sometimes combined into one, aka chaotic or disorganized attachment) hurt both themselves and their romantic partners or close friends. They hurt themselves by not being able to have intimate romantic relationships or close friendships, and are unhappier in a romantic relationship than secure people. They also have a lower resilience to post-childhood stressors**. Same goes for their hurting their partner, even if the latter have secure attachment (when both coordinates are low valued). Not being able to have romantic relationships may not in itself be hurtful to oneself if one can compensate for this innate human need to connect. Perhaps they can connect to a higher power or children or pets, or an online tribe. Still it is suspicious that most of these people try (and sometimes succeed with the right therapy) to have romantic relationships, even as they ostensibly disavow their need to do so.
There is no contradiction between having a pathology, and having that pathology originate in adaptive behavior during childhood or infancy. Of course the behavior was adaptive and protective when it arose. But now it can be harmful sometimes.
But instead of using attachment theory to propose different treatments for people suffering from PTSD or other trauma-related ailments, the trauma community*** has adopted a one-size-fits-all treatment. What works for avoidance-meditation, somatic therapies and attachment to guru, or source, is different than what works for anxious or chaotic-attachment to partner with some agreements, though both can benefit from compassionate inquiry and attachment to a therapist. Also, secure attachment folks can be traumatized from being in a relationship with an avoidant person, not just because of childhood trauma. And what works for them is an understanding that they are dealing with a wounded individual (who now feels legitimized by the trauma community).
I've noticed in the trauma community, that it is common to implicitly normalize avoidance (we should not need a partner, a me first, a bit of a narcissistic perspective), while pathologizing anxious attachment (which is co-dependence in the extreme anxious form). They don't do this explicitly because they don't use attachment theory. They just do it implicitly, watch these videos for example and read my comments (Iuval Clejan):
the cause of conflict for avoidants in relationship
Thes videos are coming from the non-dual community, which has much overlap with the trauma community. I've heard similar quips from the trauma gurus, "stay in your lane", "outsourcing taking care of your inner child is immature", or implying that it is crucial to have attachment when an infant or child, but somehow it is only necessary to love yourself and find a connection to source as an adult, not to have any attachments to other adults, that's considered immature. Millions of years of needing that attachment to others in the tribe in order to survive, have left a biological imprint, don't you think? But no, now it is considered cool to be "whole" before entering a relationship, to focus on "loving oneself", and to not need a romantic relationship. It's like breatharians who think eating is gross (or maybe pooping, the result of eating is gross, just like getting hurt by having incoming and outgoing boundary violations from childhood triggered in a romantic relationship is painful), and not needing food is cool. The cool factor is further enhanced by half-baked misunderstood views of eastern philosophies. Non-attachment to them meant something different, as they were collectivist cultures, where it was obvious that people needed each other. In our hyper-individualized western culture, it's not so obvious.
So the trauma community legitimizes these avoidants who are hurting their partners if they have the misfortune of partnering up with them, and now feel entitled to do it, while shaming anxious people (for being immature). Both anxiousness and avoidance are pathologies, coming from different kinds of childhood traumas (incoming vs outgoing boundary violations). Perhaps the double standard is there because most of the people in the trauma community are avoidants whose worse nightmare is having anxious, co-dependent partners who trigger their childhood traumas of needing the adults but the adults hurt them with incoming boundary violations (being immobilized, force-fed, molested, abused or gaslighted). Or perhaps the double standard is because there are also a fair number of anxious folks in this community who are paired up with avoidants (a common occurrence that these two attract each other) and think they should be less needy in order for the relationship to work, they don't want to think badly of their partner. Is having an anxious attachment or being paired up with an anxious attachment person, make one go to the other extreme, of thinking that we "don't need a partner", or should not need anything from a partner? The optimal solution is somewhere in the middle between being totally self-sufficient, and totally dependent on our partner.
The other thing you hear commonly in the trauma community is to focus on loving yourself. Loving yourself first is not a solution for avoidant or anxious attachment (more for anxious though) but a bandaid, as far as I can tell. We are social beings whose very individuality emerges from a family or tribe. Native people knew this. The existence or non existence of a God or Source or Presence is irrelevant to this, though it helps avoidants to connect with this Source (irrelevant whether it has an existence independent of their imagination) and it helps them to feel love from this source. Secure folks feel self love by default. They still need their partner to love them in a relationship, because this is a different need than self love, or love of or from a higher power, or love to and from a tribe. Or does it not matter where connection comes from as long as there is connection? Perhaps this IS a case where one "size" fits all?
Why are some people able to deal with adult traumas better than others? It seems like the answer is secure attachment during childhood to at least one adult human. This is also part of the field of resilience. But resilience is not talked about much in the trauma community. This is rather self serving because it creates a bigger market for trauma healing through revisiting childhood traumas, since now even secure attachment folks must do it, even though they may not need to. And instead of insecure attachment folks actually healing and being able to have good romantic relationships, they become dependent on the meditation and trauma and entheogen workshops (which also offer a sort of tribal connection). The anxious people never quite heal because they think that what they want (a secure attachment to a partner) is a pathology, whereas the avoidants never heal because they think they are already healthy, or that they need to have stronger boundaries (which were helpful in childhood, but will prevent them from having romantic relationships, which need also vulnerability, not just clear communication about what one needs, which is what "boundaries" usually means when the term is used by adults). I'm not saying any of this is intentional and comes from devious motives. All the people I've met in the trauma community really want to help people. But they are legitimizing psychopaths (I'm using that word to mean someone with a psychological pathology, in a loving way. I've had quite a few romantic partners who had avoidant attachment due to childhood trauma), and preventing them from healing.
Lastly, for avoidants, meditation and somatic therapies can also be a way to avoid re-evaluating (integrating the shadow in Jung's terms) the original traumas so it's not always helpful, as the trauma gurus suggest. My therapist calls it transcendental dis-identification, where those negative feelings are suppressed instead of experienced in a different, more helpful way. Some people have called this technique, spiritual bypass. "Breathe into the negativity, and dissolve it..." (works during the meditation, but not when dealing with a someone who triggers you)
Getting back to the idea that insecure attachment is a pathology: what if the whole world became avoidant (I'm thinking this is not just hypothetical, as capitalism promotes the kind of trauma that leads to avoidant attachment) and dealt with it the way the trauma gurus say, through self love, compassionate inquiry, meditation, entheogens and other somatic therapies (like tapping and EMDR)? Would it then still be a pathology if these folks just didn't have romantic relationships, or had shallow, not-so-intimate ones with parallel play (a stage of childhood development that avoidants can get stuck in)? I think yes, because the third criterion I propose for a pathology is that it is a conflict between deep programs that have evolved over eons and are hard to change, and new environments that temporarily call for new adaptations. For example, global capitalism calls for hyper-individuals, and that conflicts with our tribal and pair-bonding evolutionary heritage. And only in that kind of culture can people pretend that they don't need each other (they still do, but often the material needs are abstract. Instead of depending on your family member or neighbor, you depend on someone in a factory far away). Erich Fromm noticed this kind of pathology in modern day western societies first. And the solution is not personal healing of individuals, but a new way to live (which can begin with a new "story", but must not end there). Personal "healing" of individuals might actually do more harm than good, if this "healing" is but an adjustment of individuals to a sick society.
There is also the possibility that a pathology could become an advantage (like beneficial mutations in biology). For example, it might lead to great art, science or music. This was exemplified in the movie Clockwork Orange, where a psychopath is also able to appreciate Beethoven, but once his pathology is "cured" so is his appreciation of Beethoven. In the case of avoidant or chaotic, attachment it may be that these people have an enhanced ability to experience mystical realms of consciousness. Aldous Huxley and Stanislaw Grof postulted that the brain is not just for information processing, but for information blocking; information coming from the mystical realm, that doesn't offer immediate survival benefits in certain environments. Perhaps mu-opioid receptors (which are scarce in avoidant brains) are part of this blocking mechanism. So a deeper question would be, what if the whole world became mystics, due to becoming avoidant, and the efforts of therapists to focus on individual healing alone, without social healing? This seems unrealistic to me. A more likely scenario is that those who have not healed their trauma will outcompete the mystics... And this is why we must also focus on creating social alternatives.
* This is a refinement to Ainsorth's original 3 category model. She saw secure, avoidant and "chaotic" (aka disorganized, a combination of anxious and avoidant) attachment, the latter at a much higher frequency (this makes sense statistically) than pure anxious, which she missed.
** See data in Love Sense by Sue Johnson
*** The disciples of Gabor Mate, Thomas Hubl, Dan Siegel, Stephen Porges, Peter Levine, the SAND organization and others. There is significant overlap with the non-dual community (disciples of Tolle, Adyashanti, Mooji, Spira, Almaas). Not sure yet about Van der Kolk, seems like his somatic therapies are especialy helpful for avoidants, but ultimately they still need to feel connected to other adult humans. To call this group a community does not mean they act in a coordinated fashion. What I mean is that most of the consumers of the services offered by the trauma and non-dual gurus have certain traits in common, like fear of intimacy with adults (and all kinds of defense mechanisms that prevent intimacy), being easily overwhelmed by the material world, hyper-defensiveness (feeling attacked when nobody means to attack them), constantly having to assert their boundaries, being controlling of partners, being attracted to people with anxious attachment in romantic relationships, ease in connecting with nature or a higher power (an advantage), and other traits shared by people with avoidant attachment. Sometimes also traits shared by people with anxious attachment, like codependence, and abandonment trauma. And then there are exceptions, like Esther Perel, Bruce Perry and Brene Brown who talk about vulnerability and the insanity of rugged individualism. And therapists like Sue Johnson and Stan Tatkin who recognize the primacy of intimate bonds in romantic partership.
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