Gay A. Bradshaw

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Gay A. Bradshaw is an American psychologist and ecologist, and director of The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence. [1] Her work focuses on animal trauma recovery and wildlife self-determination. [2] [3] She is the author of Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity, a book on PTSD in elephants.

Contents

Bradshaw's studies were the first to identify Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in non-human animals beginning with free living elephants. [4] [5] [6] She is the author of a seminal series of articles on great ape psychology, trauma, civil rights, and consciousness. [3] [7] [8] This work was expanded to parrots, bears, and domestic animals and led to her founding the field of trans-species psychology, the articulation of a vertebrate common model of brain, mind, and behavior that is supported by existing science. [6]

Discovery of PTSD in elephants and chimpanzees

In 2005, while investigating what was referred to as an outbreak of “abnormal behaviors,” Bradshaw established that in fact African elephants were experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). [9] Psychological symptoms included inter- and intra-species aggression, abnormal startle response, depression, mood disorders, and socio-emotional dysfunction, including infant neglect. All were related to a series of human-caused trauma: mass killings, translocations, social disruption, and habitat loss and degradation. [10] [11] Her findings were further supported by neuroscience research stating that the brain structures affected by trauma (cortical and subcortical areas of the right brain) are highly conserved across species. [12] [13] The epidemic proportions of elephant PTSD signifies a critical point and portends imminent collapse of elephant societies in Asia and Africa. [1] [9]

Trans-species psychology

Trans-species psychology labels the entirety of standing science that describes a unitary model of brain, mind, and behavior for all animals. [14] Bradshaw maintains that establishing trans-species psychology as a new field was only necessary to point out the selective use of science. A vast amount of theory and data accumulated since Charles Darwin shows that nonhuman animals are mentally and emotionally comparable to humans, and surpass human abilities in diverse ways. [15] [16] [17] However, scientific theory does not explicitly acknowledge this understanding, nor does scientific practice implicitly reflect it. By ignoring human and other animal psychological comparability, the science community encourages cultural and legal subjugation of animals. [2]

Trans-species psychology rectifies this inconsistency by eliminating the artificial separation between species and openly bringing knowledge of human psychology to bear on other species. [2] [18] The affix trans on psychology embeds the human species, without privilege, in the matrix of the animal kingdom. By recognizing human-animal comparability, trans-species psychology situates all species under a single conceptual umbrella - a unitary model of brain, mind, behavior and consciousness. [19] In so doing, trans-species psychology revolutionizes a new scientific and ethical paradigm that has profound implications for human-animal relationships, culture, ethics, scientific research, and psychological practice. [9]

According to Bradshaw, trans-species psychology provides a scientific basis for animal rights and there is evidence to support ethical arguments to provide nonhuman animals with rights comparable to humans. [20] Bradshaw refers to this cultural movement as trans-species living, "learning to live like animals again.” Trans-species living embraces an ethic of being in service to animals in ways that promote animal self-determination and restores animal well-being by supporting their habitats, cultures, individual value, and agency. It disavows the exploitation of animals for profit, entertainment, research, or other gain. [6]

The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence

In 2008, Bradshaw founded The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence, in Jacksonville, Oregon, USA, a non-profit organization dedicated to ethical living with non-human nature. [6] The Center consists of an international community of faculty members and professional advisors from diverse disciplines working to improve the lives of animals through scientific understanding and service. [6] [16]

Publications

Bradshaw authored the book, Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity, (Yale University Press, 2009), which discusses the emotional and social lives of elephants. [1] Elephants on the Edge has been distinguished as a 2009 Book of the Year (BOTYA) Gold Medal Award, Winner in Psychology, a Scientific American Favorite Science Books of 2009, a nomination for Pulitzer Prize 2009, an Honorable Mention Award 2009 PROSE, a Psychology (Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers), and an Honorable Mention, 2010 Green Book Festival. [1]

Archbishop Desmond M.Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate: "African peoples and wildlife have been bound together in a delicate network of interdependence since ancient times. The arrival of colonialism tore apart these bonds: human brother now fights against elephant brother, and mothers of both species mourn. Elephants on the Edge is an urgent call to end this strife and for humanity to embrace once more the traditions that kept the peace with our animal kin." [1]

Bradshaw is also editor of Minding the Animal Psyche, an anthology covering diverse species from the perspective of trans-species psychology. [21]

Related Research Articles

Neurosis is a term mainly used today by followers of Freudian thinking to describe mental disorders caused by past anxiety, often that has been repressed. In recent history, the term has been used to refer to anxiety-related conditions more generally.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a person's life. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event. Young children are less likely to show distress, but instead may express their memories through play. A person with PTSD is at a higher risk of suicide and intentional self-harm.

Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events such as accidents, violence, sexual assault, terror, or sensory overload.

A flashback, or involuntary recurrent memory, is a psychological phenomenon in which an individual has a sudden, usually powerful, re-experiencing of a past experience or elements of a past experience. These experiences can be frightful, happy, sad, exciting, or any number of other emotions. The term is used particularly when the memory is recalled involuntarily, especially when it is so intense that the person "relives" the experience, and is unable to fully recognize it as memory of a past experience and not something that is happening in "real time".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Complex post-traumatic stress disorder</span> Psychological disorder

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is a stress-related mental disorder generally occurring in response to complex traumas, i.e. commonly prolonged or repetitive exposures to a series of traumatic events, within which individuals perceive little or no chance to escape.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Involuntary memory</span> Memory of the past that is unconsciously triggered by an environmental cue

Involuntary memory, also known as involuntary explicit memory, involuntary conscious memory, involuntary aware memory, madeleine moment, mind pops and most commonly, involuntary autobiographical memory, is a sub-component of memory that occurs when cues encountered in everyday life evoke recollections of the past without conscious effort. Voluntary memory, its opposite, is characterized by a deliberate effort to recall the past.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion in animals</span> Research into similarities between animal and human emotions

Emotion is defined as any mental experience with high intensity and high hedonic content. The existence and nature of emotions in non-human animals are believed to be correlated with those of humans and to have evolved from the same mechanisms. Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to write about the subject, and his observational approach has since developed into a more robust, hypothesis-driven, scientific approach. Cognitive bias tests and learned helplessness models have shown feelings of optimism and pessimism in a wide range of species, including rats, dogs, cats, rhesus macaques, sheep, chicks, starlings, pigs, and honeybees. Jaak Panksepp played a large role in the study of animal emotion, basing his research on the neurological aspect. Mentioning seven core emotional feelings reflected through a variety of neuro-dynamic limbic emotional action systems, including seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, panic and play. Through brain stimulation and pharmacological challenges, such emotional responses can be effectively monitored.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allan Schore</span>

Allan N. Schore is an American psychologist and researcher in the field of neuropsychology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broken heart</span> Intense stress or pain one feels at experiencing longing

A broken heart is a metaphor for the intense emotional stress or pain one feels at experiencing great loss or deep longing. The concept is cross-cultural, often cited with reference to unreciprocated or lost love.

Memory and trauma is the deleterious effects that physical or psychological trauma has on memory.

Daniel S. Schechter is an American and Swiss psychiatrist known for his clinical work and research on intergenerational transmission or "communication" of violent trauma and related psychopathology involving parents and very young children. His published work in this area following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York of September 11, 2001 led to a co-edited book entitled "September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds" (2003) and additional original articles with clinical psychologist Susan Coates that were translated into multiple languages and remain among the first accounts of 9/11 related loss and trauma described by mental health professionals who also experienced the attacks and their aftermath Schechter observed that separation anxiety among infants and young children who had either lost or feared loss of their caregivers triggered posttraumatic stress symptoms in the surviving caregivers. These observations validated his prior work on the adverse impact of family violence on the early parent-child relationship, formative social-emotional development and related attachment disturbances involving mutual dysregulation of emotion and arousal. This body of work on trauma and attachment has been cited by prominent authors in the attachment theory, psychological trauma, developmental psychobiology and neuroscience literatures

Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a manualized therapy used by clinicians to help people recover from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related conditions. It includes elements of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatments, one of the most widely used evidence-based therapies. A typical 12-session run of CPT has proven effective in treating PTSD across a variety of populations, including combat veterans, sexual assault victims, and refugees. CPT can be provided in individual and group treatment formats and is considered one of the most effective treatments for PTSD.

Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist, author, researcher and educator based in Boston, United States. Since the 1970s his research has been in the area of post-traumatic stress. He is the author of The New York Times best seller, The Body Keeps the Score. Van der Kolk formerly served as president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and is a former co-director of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. He is a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and president of the Trauma Research Foundation in Brookline, Massachusetts.

PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder, is a psychiatric disorder characterised by intrusive thoughts and memories, dreams or flashbacks of the event; avoidance of people, places and activities that remind the individual of the event; ongoing negative beliefs about oneself or the world, mood changes and persistent feelings of anger, guilt or fear; alterations in arousal such as increased irritability, angry outbursts, being hypervigilant, or having difficulty with concentration and sleep.

Trans-species psychology is the field of psychology that states that humans and nonhuman animals share commonalities in cognition (thinking) and emotions (feelings). It was established by Gay A. Bradshaw, American ecologist and psychologist.

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The theories of Carl Jung are grounded in his evolutionary conception of human brain evolution. This had led to a resurgence of research into his work, beginning in the early 2000s, from the perspective of contemporary neuroscience. Much of this work looks at Jung's theories of a genetically inherited 'collective unconscious' common to all of humankind. This hypothesis was postulated by Jung in his efforts to account for similar patterns of behaviour and symbolic expression in myth, dream imagery and religion in various cultures around the world. Jung believed that the 'collective unconscious' was structured by archetypes - that is species typical patterns of behaviour and cognition common to all humans. Contemporary researchers have postulated such recurrent archetypes reside in 'environmentally closed' subcortical brain systems that evolved in the human lineage prior to the emergence of self-consciousness and the uniquely human self-reflective ego.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Bradshaw, G.A. (2009). Elephants on the edge: What animals teach us about humanity. New Haven: Yale University Press. http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300167832
  2. 1 2 3 Marino, L. (2010). A trans-species perspective on nature. http://onthehuman.org/2010/11/trans-species-perspective/ Archived 2012-04-24 at the Wayback Machine
  3. 1 2 Bradshaw, G.A. et al. (2009). Developmental context effects on bicultural Post-Trauma self repair in Chimpanzees. Developmental Psychology, 45, 1376-1388.
  4. ↑ Siebert, Charles (2006-10-08). "An Elephant Crackup?". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  5. ↑ "'They're Like Us,' Elephant Researchers Say". ABC News. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 "The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence – One touch of nature makes the whole world kin" . Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  7. ↑ Bradshaw, G.A. et al. (2008). Building an inner sanctuary: trauma-induced symptoms in nonhuman great apes. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. 9(1); p. 9-34.
  8. ↑ Bradshaw. G.A. (2010). We, Matata: Bicultural living amongst apes, Spring, 83, 161-183.
  9. 1 2 3 Bradshaw, G.A. (2005). Elephant trauma and recovery: from human violence to trans-species psychology. dissertation: Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California.
  10. ↑ Slotow, R. et al. (2000). Nature, 408, 425–426.
  11. ↑ Slotow, R., Balfour, D. & Howison, O. (2001) Killing of black and white rhinoceroses by African elephants in Hluhluhe-Umfolozi, South Africa. Pachyderm, 31, 14-20.
  12. ↑ Schore, A. N. (2002). Dysregulation of the right brain: a fundamental mechanism of traumatic attachment and the psychopathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, 9-30.
  13. ↑ Schore, A.N. (2003). Affect dysregulation and disorders of the self. Mahwah, N.J.: Erhbaum.
  14. ↑ Northoff, G. and J. Panksepp, (2008).The trans-species concept of self and the subcortical-cortical midline system. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12 (7), 259-264.
  15. ↑ Cantor, C. (2009). Post-traumatic stress disorder: evolutionary perspectives. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 43(11), 1038-1048. doi:10.3109/00048670903270407
  16. 1 2 Bradshaw, G.A. (2009). Transformation through service: trans-species psychology and its implications for ecotherapy. Ecotherapy. (eds.) L. Buzzell and C. Chalquist. Sierra Club, 157-165.
  17. ↑ Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
  18. ↑ Bradshaw, G.A. & M. Watkins. (2006). Trans-species psychology; theory and praxis. Spring. V. 75, p. 69-94.
  19. ↑ Bradshaw, G.A. 2015. Elephant trauma and recovery: from human violence to trans-species psychology). Doctoral dissertation Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.
  20. ↑ "Advocating for the souls of animals: An interview with Gay Bradshaw". moonmagazine.org. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
  21. ↑ Bradshaw, G.A. (2010). Minding the Animal Psyche (Editor). Spring Journal, 83
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