SYSTEM ADAPTATION APPROACH
TO THE PROBLEM OF HEALTH-ILLNESS

The story of life is not more than a movement

of consciousness veiled by morphology.

Teilhard de Chardin

Nonlinear open systems, which include a person, at all levels are carriers of the universal evolution, which ensures that life will continue its motion into increasingly new dynamic complexity regimes. Microcosm and macrocosm are aspects of a single evolution and human evolution is its important component, and the most complex one. The author of the theory of nonlinear open systems Ilya Prigogine points out that human systems are considered as creative worlds with incomplete information and changing values rather than as “mechanisms” or something from the standpoint of equilibrium. With such an approach, human values and meanings rather than being ignored, perhaps, for the first time reveal their true role – to act as parameters of order, opposing the destabilizing effects generated by the social system itself. In addition, there is such a level of research systems, when the not very popular word “system” can be quite adequately replaced by the more euphonic concept of “integrity”.

Most of the systems that are of interest to us, are open – they exchange energy or matter (it could be added: and information) with the environment. Biological and social systems undoubtedly belong to open systems, which means that any attempt to understand them within the framework of a mechanistic model is deliberately doomed to failure. V. E. Klochko (2014), the author of the theory of psychological systems, underlines that he studies a person with his capabilities in the environment in which he lives. The human psyche, according to his point of view, does not “reflect the objective world” but allows a person to create his own reality while exchanging with the external environment. All open systems live by exchanging information and energy with the outside world. But it is not a random exchange, but rather a self-selection based on the principle of correspondence. The interaction occurs where compliance is found as the reason for the selective interaction of a person with the environment targeted at finding in the world something “his own, which has not yet become his own”. Where there is a correspondence, a meaning is born. Thus the sense reality is born.

“Integrity” is the unity of man and environment. If we use the terminology of I. Prigogine, then we can say that all systems are complex and contain subsystems that constantly fluctuate. Sometimes a separate fluctuation or a combination of fluctuations can become (as a result of a positive feedback) so strong that the organization that had existed before cannot withstand and collapses. At this critical moment in the bifurcation point it is practically impossible to predict in which direction the further development will occur: will the state of the system become chaotic or will it shift to a new, more differentiated and higher level of order (I. Prigogine, 1986). Having reached the bifurcation point (fork), the essence of which is more vividly illustrated by a fairy-tale knight standing at the crossroads, dissociation (from Latin: dissociation – separation) of a single path for 1–2–3… takes place.

V. Vasnetsov, “The Knight at the Crossroads”.

Dissociation is the universal principle of development both in the physical and biological world. Dissociation in the field of psychosociology is specific, since in the bifurcation point the choice can be “random” or be defined by the Logos according to the principle “might be so, might be differently”.

The further presentation of the material is based on the two, from our point of view, fundamental provisions defining life, human health and illness.

7. The leading role belongs to the pervasive evolution as a result of the implementation of the basic function of living systems (including humans) – function of adaptation in a constantly changing world. The mechanism of dissociation (splitting), which is universal since provides adaptation and development of systems of both biological (SBA) and psychological adaptation (SPA) of a person should be recognized as the main mechanism of adaptation.

8. Dissociation is particularly evident in the psyche, the evolution of which seems to occur according to the principle “maybe this way and maybe some other”, creating the impression of dominance of “randomness” in psychology.

This principle is based on the theory of randomness and its role in the evolution. However after discovery of the Einstein’s theory of relativity (three dimensional space + time), “randomness” as groundlessness loses its meaning. The frequency of “randomness” in nature – as “coincidence” depends on the category of time during which we are searching for causal relationships in a three-dimensional space, causing the emergence of something new. The narrower the diameter of the considered temporal causal world, the more “randomnesses” there are. As the considered causal space-time expands, the more open become causations of a particular phenomenon and emergence of something new. Clearly appears “PATTERN OF RANDOMNESS”.

Moreover, it is not only in physics, but especially in psychology. The pattern of randomness in the field of psychology and psychopathology opened to us Freud, who wrote that adult problems are rooted in his early childhood, discovered the role of early childhood psychic trauma on the subsequent formation of personality, behavior and activity.

Dissociation. In psychiatry and psychology dissociation means decay.

In psychology, this mechanism is referred to the protective mechanisms of the psyche, meaning “detachment” from personal unpleasant experiences that is manifested by different memory changes (amnesias). In psychiatry, analogue of dissociation has long been known under the name of splitting – schizis. Hence the name of the mental disease schizophrenia. Schizophrenia (from the ancient Greek. Σχίζω – Split and φρήν – mind, intellect).

Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939) for the first time used the term in 1908 when describing schizophrenia. Splitting was considered a specific sign of this mental disease. One of the founders of the scientific approach to research of dissociative phenomena, an American psychiatrist Morton Prince (1909–1975) characterized dissociation as “a basic regulating element of the normal neuro-mental mechanism”.

Van der Kolk, Van der Hart and Marmar (2000) include the term “dissociation”, in general terms, to the processes of information processing and determine the dissociation as a way of its organization, as break of connections between certain areas of the contents of memory, their relative separation and independence. Rycroft (1995) in the “Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis” defines dissociation as 1) a state at which two or more psychic processes co-exist being not connected or integrated; 2) a protective process leading to a particular state. West (1967) defined dissociation as a “psychophysiological process whereby flows of information incoming, stored and outgoing are actively deviated from integration with its usual or expected associations”. Many forms of dissociative states and their prevalence give the reason to believe that they occupy an important place in the functioning of the psyche and possess great value in terms of adaptation to changing environmental conditions.

To imagine the range of dissociative manifestations, contemporary researchers both theorists and experimenters use the concept of dissociative continuum. According to this concept, the whole spectrum of dissociative phenomena is located along a certain continuum, at one end of which are placed normal symptoms of dissociation, often encountered in everyday life, while at the other end of this continuum are “heavy” forms of dissociative psychopathology, observed in patients with dissociative disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), schizophrenia.

Normal dissociative processes in daily life are manifested as absent-mindedness, scattering or absorption in any occupation. More abnormal states, but not yet symptoms, are trance states, for example, with deep hypnosis.

The problem of dissociation with its manifestation variations becomes a leader in understanding the changes in the psyche, determining the key tendency in shaping the mentality, world-view and behavior in a person’s life. It is one of the leading mechanisms in the development of a variety of clinical manifestations. Studying the dynamics of dissociative relationships, in fact, is the core of psychoanalytic counseling.

Interdisciplinary approach. The desire to examine a modern male’s life in an attempt to understand the cause-effect relationship between the factors determining the current state of males’ health and their relatively early mortality compared with females’, logically led to the choice of an interdisciplinary approach that allowed us to consider the studied issue from the positions of psychology, physiology, neurophysiology, neuroendocrinology.

Humanistic psychology or the “third force” in psychology as a scientific trend emerged in the fifties of the twentieth century opposing itself to the two already existing trends – behaviorism (behavior psychology) and psychoanalysis. It treats a person as an open self-developing system that has phylo- and ontogenetic history. In each of us there lives a great story – the history of the life of mankind, about which C. Jung figuratively has written that behind each of us, as behind a running wave, the pressure of the ocean of world history is felt. Small history is an individual real life story of a specific individual. In key moments of each history there occur quantum leaps determining subsequent development of a person. Thus, in the great history these are development and improvement of the higher nervous activity (HNA), appearance and development of the second signal system, consciousness, mental adaptation; in the small history these are age crises, overcoming mental traumas. These crucial points (critical periods) are like “waking-up experience”, refreshing perception and behavior after which a person “acquires new space, new skin, new start and new life; even at the age over 75” (I. Yalom, publ. Eksmo, Moscow, 2014, p. 511).

Now scientists are engaged in “a riddle of neuroevolution” with its basic question: “How in the ways of biological evolution have emerged mind and human brain?” The problem of neuroevolution connects biology to psychology. And today, scientists realized that the main efforts of the evolution of the animal world have been spent just to create the human brain. They found the genes responsible for the key functions of the brain – learning and memory formation. It is in the course of natural selection, which affects functions and structures increasing survival or reproduction, that population changes in the gene frequencies associated with these functional systems occur.To understand the psyche as a function of certain dynamic organization of the brain structures, it is necessary to understand how these structures and their organization emerged in the course of biological evolution. It is part of the problem of morphological evolution. By the molecular cloning techniques it became possible to calculate that out of approximately 80–100 thousand genes composing the genome of the rat about 50–60 thousand are expressed in the brain, the expression of more than half of them being brain-specific. In the usual state of the brain these genes are “silent” but as soon as there is something that requires memorizing, they are activated and then, having done their work become “silent” again. But unlike other somatic organs, many of these genes are activated in the brain again in the situations of novelty and learning.

The two phases of the evolutionary cycle – maturation and adaptive modifications of functional systems providing survival, are closely related at the level of gene expression regulation mechanisms. In fact, the processes of morphogenesis (biology) and development never cease in the brain, but only pass under the control of cognitive and volitional processes (psychology). This similarity makes you think about the intense evolutionary interactions and transitions between these two domains. There is the reason to believe that it is the study of these interactions that can answer one of the most complex and challenging issues of modern science – how in the course of phylogenesis the brain became the organ that determines not only behavior, activity, health, illness, but also the evolution of genome.

Just a few decades ago, scientists believed that the brain is unchanged and “programmed” and that most forms of its damage are incurable. The book by Norman Doidge “Brain Plasticity. Startling facts about how thoughts can change the structure and function of the brain” (translation, publ. Eksmo, Moscow; monograph, 2011, p. 539) – is a remarkable and hopeful description of infinite capacity of the human brain to adapt. Dr. Doidge, a prominent psychiatrist and researcher, was struck by the transformations occurred with his patients.

Discovery of the fact that thoughts are able – even in elderly age – to change the brain structure and functions, is the greatest achievement in neurology for the past four centuries.