EXTINCTION BURST
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
APRIL, 2030
No one doubted Jim Ecco’s sincerity when he promised to control his anger. That was Marta’s condition for marriage and Judge McClincy’s condition for probation. No one was surprised when he announced he’d seek professional help rather than take mood blocks. It was his selection of a dog trainer for a therapist that raised eyebrows.
Prosecutor Sean Doyle took exception. But Jim presented Dr. Elizabeth Luminaria. Her doctorate in behavioral psychology met the letter of the law, no matter that her dissertation dealt with animal behavior. That she was a behaviorist at Haven Memorial Animal Shelter was irrelevant. She fit the law’s requirements. The court had to accept the arrangement.
“I’m not a traditional talk therapist,” she told Jim at his first meeting, one that Marta attended on Dr. Luminaria’s instruction. “Exploring your family history can be helpful, but any discussion of the past will bring you right back to your starting place, the present. You can’t change what went before. You can’t change most of what is around you. You can’t even change what’s inside of you. But you can learn to change your responses to what’s inside you and what’s around you.”
“Oh, great,” complained Jim. “I sort of had the feeling that I can’t change the past, and now you’ve confirmed it for me. Brilliant. Are you going to teach me to change the future?”
Dr. Luminaria’s peered at Jim, as she peered at the entire world around her. She had a perpetual squint, as if trying to see inside the objects of her gaze. Her actions were energetic and precise, without wasted motion. She moved with sharp gestures that reached exactly to whatever object she wished to grasp and no further. She spoke each word fully, never dropping a letter, and yet her speech was neither clipped nor autocratic. Her office had little enough room for a desk and chairs let alone the buckets of hard rubber toys, bundles of leashes, collars, halters, and a small sofa coated with a thick layer of dog hair, which discouraged human occupants. Three walls were hidden behind paper books and photographs of Dr. Luminaria with her various pupils, both two- and four- legged.
“I understand that you are good with dogs,” said Luminaria, as if she did not hear Jim’s complaint.
“That’s maybe the only thing I’m good at.”
“You’re going to be a father, aren’t you?” she asked with a sly smile and a squint.
“Yeah.”
“Well, then you must be good at two things, minimum.”
Jim did a double-take. “What?” he said, not quite believing he’d heard her correctly. Marta suppressed a grin.
“Got your attention now, have I?” Luminaria asked in a sweet voice. Jim nodded, uncertainty showing on his face.
“Good. The court and your wife are both concerned about your behavior, not your inventory of talents. We’re going to use the same techniques with you that you use with dogs.”
The fifty-ish Luminaria was a doctrinaire behaviorist, a four-square adherent of the theories of B. F. Skinner. She held that the mind is a black box, its contents unknowable. Instead, she looked at stimuli in the environment as inputs to the black box. Behavior was the output. Her therapeutic goal and her training goals were identical: to develop a ways identify the stimuli to which a subject responds—the inputs—and to change the reaction to those stimuli, the outputs. Her detractors called her Dr. Black Box, a term she took as a compliment.
“Behaviorism is the perfect metaphor for you to understand your actions, Jim. A stranger on the street, a loud noise, some annoying habit of Marta’s, these are all inputs from the environment. You have no control over the inputs, but you can learn to react differently to the oddly-behaving stranger, to the loud noise, and to your wife’s eccentricities.
“So, what, I just ignore the way I was raised?”
“No, your inputs also include your family history. “You can’t change the past but you can change the way you react today,” she repeated. “Eventually, you’ll be a believer. You’ll trust yourself as much as you trusted your dog.”
They started by comparing canine and human behavior. “Nobody knows what a dog is thinking, or even another person. You know how to observe a dog’s behavior, to see how its actions spring from something in the environment. You’re successful when you work to recondition the dog’s response. You can do the same for yourself.”
“Yeah, right,” Jim said. “Everyone says I have this gift for ‘reading’ people, and look where it’s gotten me.”
“You whine more than a wet puppy. Stop it. You have a wonderful gift. You just use it when it suits you. Worse, you react before you finish observing. Would you serve a cake with uncooked batter?”
“I do just fine with dogs. It’s with people that I get into trouble.”
“Of course it’s easier for you with dogs! Your early experiences with dogs shaped your comfort with them. But you said your father could be violent and that your mom provoked him. That’s the model for human behavior that you formed as a young child. Your model for canine behavior is Ringer. You’re not afraid of an aggressive dog because you’ve never been struck by a dog. So you can respond properly to the dog. But if you believe that a person might be aggressive, then you get into trouble because it evokes the memory of your father’s violence.”
Jim’s head snapped up. He flushed and stood and tried to pace in the cramped office and was about to kick a bucket full of dog toys when Dr. Luminaria spoke with quiet authority.
“Please sit down,” she commanded. “You’re angry, and right now, that’s good. I want you to close your eyes for a moment and take in three deep breaths. You too, Marta. Let them out slowly. No, slowly. That’s it, deep breathing, not panting.” As Jim relaxed, Dr. Luminaria told him to pinch gently on the helix of his left ear. “That fleshy outer ridge is connected to acupressure points that help lower blood pressure. Once you practice this, you can breathe and touch your ear to create instant relaxation.”
“Listen to me,” she continued. Her voice was even, almost hypnotic. “You cannot be one kind of person with your dogs and another kind of person with people. You’ve created a rigid internal boundary and it is costing you dearly to maintain that barrier. Your patience is on the dog side and your anger is on the people side. But the boundary is artificial. Where is Marta on that map? You’re going to have a baby. What happens when your child pushes you to your limits? Trust me, that will happen. Repeatedly. And what happens when your anger with people migrates to dogs?
Jim’s eyes pooled and his shoulders sagged. “What am I going to do? Do you think I like feeling the way I do?”
“Shhh. Just sit for a few minutes. Close your eyes again and breathe. In through your nose and exhale out your mouth.”
Jim took several deep breaths, exhaling each one more slowly that the last. He leaned back in his chair. He could feel the tension drain from his face.
Dr. Luminaria’s firm voice began again. “When you work with a dog, you reward the behavior that you want to increase and ignore what you want to diminish. It’s just as easy with people because the principles are universal. In some ways, it’s easier. Most dogs need a bit of food or a toy or petting. People usually only need a smile or a word of approval.”
“But how do I react to anger? Threats?” Jim asked.
“Why not ignore it all, and let it die out?” Dr. Luminaria asked, “Just as you would ignore undesirable behavior from a dog.”
“How can I?” asked Jim.
“Jim, the easiest way to change an unwanted behavior is to starve it. Reacting feeds the behavior. Children often misbehave in order to get the attention that comes with the punishment. So, ignore the behavior you don’t like. But this will demand that you learn self-control.”
“It’s not the same for me.”
“Oh? You’re the universe’s lone exception?”
“I never lose my temper with dogs. But people? Forget it.” He slumped again.
