Reciprocal Reactivity, Ego Protection & the Cycle of Addiction: The Interpersonal Pandemic of the New Century?

I was blathering on about operant conditioning in reciprocal reactivity when the (truly) lovely half-French / half-Vietnamese girl in the passenger seat said, "Oh. Reward or ignore. Never punish."

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No one I know of saw it as often online, on the toob, in the "news" (or propaganda) media when renaming Sullivan's concept of "parataxic integration" occurred to me about 15 years ago. I looked high and low in the professional literature to see if someone else had come up with a term to describe the phenomenon, but I haven't -- yet, anyway -- found a term better than Sperduto et al's, even though their use of it did not refer to what is described here. But in the four years since the summer of 2016, I have seen so much of it in play on interpersonal Karpman Drama Triangles that it seems to me now that reciprocal reactivity has become socialized, habituated, normalized and instructed almost culturewide. 

Following is a somewhat revised version of a piece posted on Reddit's Responsible Recovery sub for referral use about a year ago.    

Although the concept of mutually reactive interpersonal behavior called "parataxic integration" is not the sort of "reciprocal reactivity" discussed by Sperduto et al in 1978, Harry Stack Sullivan's observations of the interactive escalation of the fight-flight-freeze response seem to make better sense to lay people when called "RR" rather than "PI."

Quoting the Wikipedia entry on PI:

"Parataxical integration exists when two people, usually intimate with each other (i.e. parents and children, spouses, romantic partners, business associates), are reciprocally reactive to each other’s seductions, judgmental inaccuracies, hostile comments, [ego-defending narcissistic compensations and manipulations] or other 'triggering' behaviors. One says or does something causing the other to react, setting off a cyclical 'ping-pong,' 'tit-for-tat,' 'you-get-me-and-I-get-you-back' oscillation of verbal, emotional] and/or behavioral reactions.

"The concept first appeared in Sullivan's The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, published in 1953. It was developed further by his protégé, Lorna Smith Benjamin, in her Interpersonal Diagnosis and Treatment of Personality Disorders (1996). Benjamin saw parataxical integration as typical in the interpersonal behavior of couples with unresolved autonomy (i.e. separation, boundary) and identity issues. Erik Erikson had himself described the unconscious, reciprocal reactivation (without using Sullivan’s terms) in his essay, 'The Problem of Ego Identity' in the book, Identity and Anxiety, edited by Stein et al. (1960).

"Though the term itself is not used in much of the professional peer-reviewed literature, the interpersonal manifestation to which it refers appears regularly in the case study literature of the 'family systems' school of psychologists, including Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, Gregory Bateson, Virginia Satir, and Salvador Minuchin. Parataxical integrations are also presented in similar studies reported by Ronald D. Laing, Aaron Esterson, and anthropologist Jules Henry, largely during the 1950s and 1960s. Harold Searles and Charles McCormack describe manifestations of parataxical integration in their works on borderline personality disorders in the 1980s and 2000s. ... Paul Watzlawick et al. describes the concept in his book, Change, noting, '... the circularity of their interaction makes it undecidable ... whether a given action is the cause or effect of an action by the other party ... either party sees its actions as determined and provoked by the other's actions.

"Numerous mass-market psychology authors, many writing about the topic of 'co-dependence,' including Melody Beattie, Pia Mellody, Anne Wilson Schaef, and Barry & Janae Weinhold, describe the interpersonal manifestation without using Sullivan’s term per se. Likewise Pia Mellody, who describes the behavioral manifestations of parataxical integration at length in an audio presentation available online."

Likewise, neither term appears in the conference-approved literature of the Codependents Anonymous 12 Step fellowship, but there are some seeming references to its manifestations in their "Patterns & Characteristics of Codependence," including "attempt to convince others what to think, do, or feel... become resentful when others decline their help or reject their advice... refuse to cooperate, compromise, or negotiate... adopt an attitude of indifference, helplessness, authority, or rage to manipulate outcomes."

Nor does the term appear in any work on countertransference I have yet encountered in professional literature, including either Gabbard & Wilkinson or Searles, but illustrations of the concept are numerous throughout, much as they have been over the years in such work as Arceneaux, Asbury, Asch, Beck, Berger & Luckman, Berreby, Bloom, Brown, Carney, Chopik, Clarkson and Cooley (which is merely through the letter C on this list). And very much so in numerous books on American politics in the post-millennial era including Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement (rather a rant, but one that clearly illustrated RR on both sides of the aisle in the US Congress during the Bush 43 years). 

Major motion pictures have illustrated socioillogical RR at least since D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" back in 1916. But rarely as dramatically as Scorcese's rendition of Asbury's The Gangs of New York and Paul Thomas Anderson's workup of Upton Sinclair's Oil! in "There Will be Blood." Both starring Daniel Day Lewis, they feature characters who seem to live in eternal autonomic reactivity to the exclusion of any other possibility.

But because I spent a lot of time working in the field of addiction research and treatment, and because I'm familiar with the psychology and neurobiology of not only substance abuse but so-called "behavioral" addiction (e.g.: gambling, sex, romance, religion, work, shopping, Internet, being seen as "right," political and social causes, etc.), may I propose for consideration that RR may well fit in that rubric? And then ask the same question here I have asked addicts hundreds of times over the past several years: "Will the addict ever stop using SOMETHING if he or she remains depressed, anxious, shameful or angry?" 

Because it's pretty evident to many who understand the Cycle of Addiction and who've read most of the major experts on the topic that all addictions are intra-personal forms of ... reciprocal reactivity. 

Okay; the ball's in your court now (wink).

See also: Managing Addictive, Codependent, Reciprocal Reactivity with Borderlines and Ventilation vs. Vomiting.

References

Arceneaux, K.: Vander Wielen, R: The Effects of Need for Cognition and Need for Affect on Partisan Evaluations, in the Journal of Political Psychology, Vol. 34, No, 1, February 2013.

Asbury, H.: The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld; orig. pub. 1929, New York: Random House Vintage, 2008. 

Asch, S. E.: Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgments; in H. Guetzkow (ed.): Groups, Leadership and Men; Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1951.

Atir, S.; Rosenzweig, E., Dunning, D.: When Knowledge Knows No Bounds: Self-Perceived Expertise Predicts Claims of Impossible Knowledge; in Psychological Science, 2015.

Beattie, M.: Codependent No More, San Francisco: Harper/Hazelden, 1987.

Beattie, M.: Beyond Codependency, San Francisco: Harper/Hazelden, 1989.

Beattie, M.: Codependents’ Guide to the Twelve Steps, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Beck, A.: Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility and Violence; New York: Harper-Collins, 1999.

Benjamin, L. S.: Interpersonal Diagnosis and Treatment of Personality Disorders, Second Edition, New York: Guilford Press, 1996.

Benjamin, L. S.: Interpersonal Reconstructive Therapy, New York: Guilford Press, 2003.

Berger, P.;  Luckman, T.: The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge; New York: Doubleday, 1966.

Berreby, D.: Us & Them: The Science of Identity; U. of Chicago Press, 2005.

Bloom, A.: The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.

Brown, L. B.: Ideology; New York: Penguin, 1973.

Carney, D.; Jost, J.; et al: The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind, in Journal of Political Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 6, 2008.

Chopik, W.; Motyl, M.: Ideological Fit Enhances Interpersonal Orientations; in Social Psychological and Personality Science, July 2016.

Clarkson, J.; Chambers, J.; et al: The self-control consequences of political ideology, in PNAS, June 22, 2015.

Cooley: Human Nature and the Social Order; orig. pub. 1902, Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1986.

Fruzzetti, A.: The High-Conflict Couple: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Guide to Finding Peace, Intimacy, and Validation, Oakland CA: New Harbinger, 2006.

Gabbard, G.; Wilkinson, S.: Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients, Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1994.

Laing, R. D.; Esterson, A.: Sanity, Madness and the Family, London: Tavistock, 1964.

McCormack, C.: Treating Borderline States in Marriage: Dealing with Oppositionalism, Ruthless Aggression, and Severe Resistance, Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aaronson, 2000.

Mellody, P.; Miller, A. W.: Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Come From, How It Sabotages Our Lives, San Francisco: Harper, 1989.

Mellody, P.; Miller, A. W.: Breaking Free: A Workbook for Facing Codependence, San Francisco: Harper, 1989.

Mellody, P.; Freundlich, L.: The Intimacy Factor…, San Francisco: Harper, 2003.

Searles, H.: My Work with Borderline Patients, New York: Jason Aronson, 1986.

Searles, H.: Countertransference and Related Subjects: Selected Papers, Madison, CT: International University Press, 1979, 1999.

Sinclair, U.: Oil!, orig. pub. 1902, New York: Penguin, 2007.

Sperduto, G.; Calhoun, K.; Ciminero, A.: The effects of reciprocal reactivity on positively and negatively valenced, self-rated behaviors, in Journal of Behaviour Research and Therapy, Vol. 16, No. 6, 1978.

Stein, M.; Vidich, A.; White, D. (editors): Identity and Anxiety: Survival of the Person in Mass Society, Glencoe, IL: The Free Press of Glencoe, Illinois, 1960.

Sullivan, H. S.: The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.

Watzlawick, P.; Beavin, J.; and Jackson, D.: Pragmatics of Human Communication, New York: W. W. Norton, 1967.

Watzlawick, P.; Weakland, J.; Fisch, R.: Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, New York: W. W. Norton, 1974.

Weinhold, B.; Weinhold, J.: Breaking Free of the Co-dependency Trap, Revised Edition, Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008.

Weinhold, J.; Weinhold, B.: The Flight from Intimacy: Counter-dependency--The Other Side of Co-dependency; Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008.