I especially like a quote from Fonagy (2003): "Psychoanalysis is based on the biological force to find meaning that is more deeply rooted than an intellectual conviction about the genetic basis of psychological illness."
We have hard research evidence demonstrating that 'psychogenic' stress can be genotoxic in various somatic cells (bone marrow, leukocytes, etc.) at the chromosomal and molecular level. This research was done at our NYU medical center in conjunction with Columbia University (Fishman and colleagues reporting in the International Journal of Neuroscience 1996 demonstrated in rats that behavioral, psychogenic stress can result in DNA damage and chromosome aberrations. They noted: “Behavioral stress can induce genotoxic damage on at least two levels, chromosomal and molecular, and in at least two cell types, bone marrow and leukocytes” p. 224).
Below are some findings implicitly demonstrating the importance of the environment (for psychoanalysts that includes the levels of social-cultural, familial and individual-personal experience-which ultimately impacts on gene expression) in the development of psychiatric/psychological disorders.
The theory of Probabilistic Epigenesis states:
There is a bidirectional flow between structure and functional development. Genetic activity (DNA<>RNA<>Protein)<>structural maturation (neurobiological development)<>function, activity or experience. There exist continuous reciprocal influences among genes, structural maturation and function. Signals from the environment (internal & external) turn on or off genetic activities. Unlike the central dogma view of molecular biology of reductionists like Francis Crick (information flows rigidly in one direction from DNA to mRNA to proteins-in effect not allowing for 'feedbackward'-downward influences), the probabilistic epigenetic perspective eschews the viewpoint that the genome is encapsulated, rather, the genome is a part of the organism’s general developmental-physiological adaptation to environmental stresses and signals. As Gilbert Gottlieb, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has noted, “Genes express themselves appropriately only in responding to internally and externally generated stimulation” (p. 90). In this perspective, while genes participate in the coding of proteins, the latter are subject to other influences (in fact, in opposition to Crick’s view, regarding protein to protein interaction, it is now known that in certain neurodegenerative diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disorder, i.e., 'mad cows' disease, prions, abnormally conformed proteins, can transfer their abnormal conformation to other proteins without participation of nucleic acids, i.e., DNA or RNA) and proteins must be further stimulated and elaborated to become part of the nervous system, so genes operate at the lowest level of organismic organization and they do not, in and of themselves, produce finished traits or behavioral features of the organism.
As pointed out cogently by Nijhout (1990), “genes do not...cause or control morphogenesis; they enable it to take place” (p. 443). He also noted, “The genes whose products are necessary during development are activated by stimuli that arise from the cellular and chemical processes of development. Thus the network or pattern of gene activation does not constitute a program, it is both the consequence of, and contributor to, development” (p. 443).
Another interesting observation (relevant to theorists such as myself who adhere to the transgenerational transmission of trauma perspective),is that genes can be altered by internal (e.g., Reverse transcription) and external events during development, and under certain conditions, the activities of these altered genes can persist, and be transferred through epigenetic processes, across generations (Holliday 1990; Jablonka & Lamb 1995 etc) (e.g., children walk along the perimeters of their parents and grandparents nightmares, and point to it, often non-verbally and somatically, with protosymbolic inscriptions in their bodies).
Genes, neural activity, behavior, environment (socio-cultural) are all part of a dynamic system which is bidirectional and coactional. Research has demonstrated that organisms with the same genes can develop very different phenotypes under different ontogenetic conditions (e.g., as shown in identical twins, insects such as wasps, etc). There is a great deal of phenotypic variation in identical twins which correlates well with the enormous phenotypic diversity within the human species, in which, in fact, there is only a small degree of individual genetic variation at the level of DNA (e.g., any two randomly selected individuals from anywhere on earth would exhibit differences in only three or four base pairs out of 1000 base pairs).
It is not possible to predict in advance what the outcome of development will be when the developing organism is faced with novel environmental or behavioral challenges never before faced by the species or individual organism. New anatomical structures have emerged within novel environments. Long-term psychoanalytic therapy can be a form of novel environment in which the person can alter long-standing emotional patterns of relating and ways of experiencing, or not experiencing, oneself and others and thereby also change potentially harmful dialogic interactions between brain, immune system and genome.
Brian Koehler
