Well Mike, I'm so glad that you're willing to do this today. >> It's a pleasure. >> So I thought it would be really interesting to know from your perspective how is it you got involved in research on resilience? >> Well it goes back quite a long way and it's not something, I labeled resilience at that time. So that when I was doing my book on maternal deprivation, the thing that stood out was the immensely varied outcomes for the different children. A general emphasis in the field at the time was looking for commonalities, what happened to all children. And that just didn't fit with what I observed. And I was amused to see, when I was looking back at the book for I've forgotten what reason, that I talked about the possibility of genetic effects. But genetic effects not in terms of causing the disorder but affecting the susceptibility to the environment. Now I didn't call that the gene environment interaction, I don't know that I was even aware the term was used. But that certainly got me interested. But, at more or less the same time, I knew several of the people in the common cold unit. And they were doing experimental studies looking at what happened if you inoculated individuals with the cold virus, or on another occasion with streptococcal virus. And what they found was that the functional effects were hugely varied. The virus is there because they put it there, or the in the case of the streptococcus. But the illness was not, and so that intrigued me. And then I was also taken with Glen Elder's findings in relation to the children’s responses to the, I shouldn't say the Great Depression, the first Great Depression [LAUGH]. Not the one we have been in just recently. And one of the things he commented on was that the children on the whole did badly. The parents were out of work, there were a lot of difficulties. The adolescents by contrast actually came out strengthened. And his speculation, and he was quite clear it was a speculation, it wasn't tested, was that they had the capacities to deal with the challenges that they had to take on, whereas the children were too young to do that. So, it was three very different source, and they're not the only ones but- >> But it was a building interest. >> It was building interest, yeah. >> So when were you actually writing Maternal Deprivation? >> That book? Well, the book was published in 72 I think. And so I was writing it in the two years before that. And the person who influenced me most in that was Robert Hind. Whom I had met, knew slightly, but he's much senior to me. And I was aware that I was less familiar particularly, with the animal research. And so, I said, would he be willing to comment on my draft manuscript. And so he said yes he would, and so I sent it to him. And what I remember getting back now, the actual details may be wrong, was a 17 page count. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Which started by saying some very positive, nice things. But then went on to point out either the things that I misunderstood, or alternately issues that I should have addressed and hadn't. It was typical Robert Hind. Firstly, he was enormously flattering once I got over the shock, that he'd been willing to give that amount of time to somebody he scarcely knew. And of course in the course of learning about that, individual differences came up yet again. >> So, it's interesting because, I often have described the onset, I mean obviously they're deep roots. Things percolate for awhile before they emerge, but I often date the emergence of resilience science even if it wasn't called that around 1970. I feel like that's approximately then, there was more talking, more thinking in different places. >> I agree with that. >> So it's nice to hear some corroboration of that, that time frame. So you were there at the beginning, and now you continue to see what's evolving. What have you found the most exciting, over these decades since then? The changes and the nature of the science, what do you find most exciting as time goes forward? >> Well I think there are a lot of things, because my medical background based apart in my thinking and I'm also as a psychologist, so that the two combine. But, I was very struck by the fact that experiences which you might label noxious, were protective. And that chimed in with what my wife and I, Marjory, were writing in our book on challenging continuity. That, challenges a part of normal growing up and so the question is, could that also be a powerful protective factor. And it became clear that such evidence as there was, and there wasn't much around at that time. Indicated that, provided you could cope with the challenge or presented with, you tended to come out more strongly at the end. Now that introduced a shift, for me at least, of getting away from protective influences and risk influences in that, what would you call it? It's a risk influence that was protective, and of course, I drew parallels at that time with the acquisition of natural immunity to infections, worse way to protect children from infections is to wrap them up and never expose them. >> Right, some of our protective systems need to experience. They need to practice they need to develop an immunity to the environment in which they are living. >> That's right. It was around that time that the volcano in Tristan da Cunha went off. And a lot of the people who evacuated the island came to the UK. And they went down like ninepins because they'd not been exposed to flu, they'd not been exposed to measles, and so that also sort of influenced thinking. So it seemed to me that we needed to focus not just on whether people could survive bad experiences, although that was an interest of course. But what experiences that were unpleasant or stressful might actually make them stronger. And the other influence, round and about that same time, I mean you're quite right, that's a key period. Was the time when who I first got know when he spent a sabbatical period at. And subsequently I got to know him better. Stanford did the experiment, which was giving electric shocks to rats. Because he wanted to test the Freudian hypothesis of stresses leading to emotional disorder. But what he found was the opposite. That's to say the rats that were shocked, not only had a stronger functioning neuroendocrine system, but they were more resistant to later stress. It took him a little while to accept his own findings and recognize- >> Because he wasn't expecting it either. >> No, but he was a good scientist, and built on that. So that again fitted in. And so, as you know, although I've done studies of resilience in a number of different ways. Like all things, there's not one strategy that is better than all others. But one of the strategies I wanted to employ was taking children at risk, and making direct comparisons in terms of outcome. And I think that it has been helpful because if you focus only on good influences and bad influences, you'd never pick up the fact that bad influences, I'm using bad inverted comments quotes here, could actually be a good thing. Now, there are delicate issues of decision making like all mothers and all fathers have. >> How much is enough? [LAUGH] >> Yeah, is your child ready to cross the road alone? And certainly in London, that's a key issue. >> Right. >> If they never crossed the road, they're never going to be safe. On the other, if you let them go too soon, they may be killed. >> It's dangerous, that's right. >> And so, that has been an issue in discussing about resilience and all of that moved me away from thinking about, well there's one negative influence, I should say. And that was James Anthony's writing about invulnerable children. Which for a very short time, your mentor and mine, and friend, Norm Garmezy, went along with. >> [LAUGH] >> But only for a very short time, because he was as offended as I was, with the notion that this was a fixed attribute that could never change. And his observations and mine and yours, would indicate it's not. >> In fact over time, people have recognized just how dynamic these processes are. >> Yeah, it's a process, and is that a disadvantage? Well no, to the contrary, I think it opens up a way of thinking that you're not setting up a manualized program to teach resilience. What you are doing is trying to provide the experiences that give them the strength to cope well. And in so doing you will indirectly bring about resilience. >> Looking forward, what do you see on the horizon in this area of science? Or what do you anticipate, or what do you hope will happen going forward, over the next decade or so? >> I hope that we move forward in several different directions. So, I do not want to lose sight of psychological coping. And I resonate to Eisenberg's paper in which he talked about how terrible it was that psychiatry was brainless. And then he went on to say, as things developed, that it had become mindless. >> [LAUGH] >> Because as biology took over, everything had to be reduced to chemicals. And He thought that was not a helpful thing, and neither do I. So on the psychological coping side, I think we need to learn more about coping. What are the elements that go into that? What are the contextual features that go into that? On the biological side, obviously gene environment interaction has to be one thing. For reasons that I totally fail to comprehend, there are a few dinosaurs who see this as a controversial concept. To my mind, it's not the least bit controversial. That does not mean that there aren't all sorts of details that needed to be sorted out. But the long-standing dispute back in the 30s between Ronald Fisher who saw gene environment interactions are purely statistical. Problem to be removed by making appropriate statistical adjustments. And his contemporary, who was a mathematician, but also a biologist, who saw it as a signal, as something really interesting to develop. They were one in dealing with the need to remove scaling artifacts and the like. So statistics they were around the same, but Hogman I think, won the argument in making clear the biology has to be what we need to understand. He was neutral, as to whether that would lead to an understanding that would be practically helpful, he hope it would. And so I see gene environment interaction as something that is here to stay. And I think that it's good that it's being looked at in a variety of ways, in a variety of species, all of which come up as supportive, whilst at the same time often raising new questions. So cog meta-analysis showed that there was very little in the way of an interaction with life events. And the serotonin transporter promoter gene, have to find a shorter title for that. >> [LAUGH] >> But there was a strong interaction with maltreatment. So that had been modified. The work did was important also in showing that the main effect was not on single episodes of depression, it was not primarily something, if you like, a chemical reaction that provoked something. It dealt with the recurrent or chronic depression, so lots of things. >> There's lots to work on. >> Lots to work on, yeah. >> Lots of details, yeah. >> And then the new come around the block is epigenetics. And where I am enthusiastic about what it indicates in terms of biological embedding of experiences. And I'm worried about the oversell of this being the solution to all of life's problems, it isn't. On the other hand, it has been hugely important in indicating not just that bad experiences lead to dreadful biological effects. But that all experiences that have any kind of psychological impact probably do affect epistasis. And what we need to do is to learn much more about whether epistatic effects can differentiate between compensatory factors and damaging factors, between steeling effects making you stronger, again sensitizing effects. And there are a few mild cues from animal research indicating that it may prove to be possible, but it isn't yet possible. And if it can't differentiate at an individual level, then my enthusiasm will drain away. >> Well, we shall see [LAUGH]. >> [LAUGH] >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you, for talking. >> Okay.
