My Chat with Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Waldinger, Co-author of ”The Good Life” (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_573)
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Summary
Dr. Robert Waldinger is the Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Human Development, the world's largest longitudinal study of adult human development, and the author of The Secrets to a Good Life: The World's Largest Scientific Study of Happiness. In this episode, Dr. Waldinger talks with Dr. Randy Nesse, who is a pioneer in evolutionary medicine and a psychiatrist, and Dr. Drew Pinsky, an addiction physician and psychiatrist.
Transcript
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Hi, everybody. This is God Sad for The Sad Truth. I recently had Dr. Randy Nesse, who's a pioneer
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in evolutionary medicine and a psychiatrist. And then a couple of days ago, I had Dr. Drew Pinsky,
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who's an addiction physician specialist. And today I've got another psychiatrist and physician,
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Robert Waldinger, or colloquially, Bob. How you doing, Bob?
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It's so nice to be, I have your book right here, your latest book with Mark Schultz. Please go out
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and get this, The Secrets to a Good Life. You want to read it. But before we do that, let me just read
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some of your bio. And I need my glasses for that. As I said, you're a psychiatrist and part-time
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professor at Harvard. You're also, you're a psychoanalyst. You're a Zen priest. Maybe we'll
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get into that. You're the director of the incredible longitudinal study called the Harvard Study of
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Adult Human Development. I think maybe it's been about eight decades now. Your books include,
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as I said, the latest one, The Good Life Lessons from the World's Largest Scientific Study of Happiness
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with Mark Schultz, and a much earlier book, Psychiatry for Medical Students. Did I hit all
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of the key points, Bob, or would you like to add anything?
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Okay. So let's get going. First, I actually first heard of the longitudinal Harvard Adult
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Development Study when I quoted, I think in one of my past books, I mean, we would say,
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because I come from French Canada, Georges Vaillant, I don't know how the Americans would say it would
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be valiant. Is that how, how would you pronounce it?
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Valiant. Okay. So we, okay, there's the difference. And I had quoted him probably about
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something dealing with the importance of relationships. Maybe we could start with that
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longitudinal study, and then we can eventually get into your book.
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Please, because I mean, it really is arguably, is it not the longest standing longitudinal study?
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Yes. Yes. So the study has been going for 85 years. It started in 1938, and it started
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with two studies that didn't actually know about each other. They were both started at Harvard
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University, but one was started at Harvard Student Health Service. It was a group of 268 19-year-old
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young men who were chosen by their deans as fine, upstanding young men for a study of young adult
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development, adolescence into young adulthood. And now, of course, we, you know, we think, well,
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if you want to study normal development, you don't restrict yourself to all white men from Harvard.
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But at that time, that's what they did. The other study was a study of juvenile delinquency
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started at Harvard Law School. And it was specifically a study of how some children from
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really disadvantaged backgrounds and troubled families managed to stay out of trouble and
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take good developmental paths. And so there were 456 boys, average age 12, who were brought
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together for this study. And then eventually we brought in their spouses, we brought in their
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children more than half of whom are women. So we have both class diversity and gender diversity in the
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study now. Amazing. And what are I mean, how many variables are being, you know, coded and quantified
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in the ongoing study? Well, there've been hundreds over the life of the study, many hundreds. And now,
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probably 100 or more that we're studying right now, we're collecting data on the second generation on all the
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children, even as we speak, we're doing a survey. So yeah, they're just a lot of data.
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And it's a, it's a genealogical study in that it's only the descendants of the original participants who are
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allowed to participate. Or can you bring in completely fresh new participants?
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No, we've decided not to. Otherwise, I think we would have brought in more diverse groups, you know,
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African Americans and Latinos and many other people. But our unique value is the genealogical part of it.
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It's having this longitudinal view of entire lives and entire families. If we bring in new people,
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we won't have that backlog of information. So that's why we decided to stay with our original
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724 families. And so for when you were appointed as the director, what does that entail? You're sort of
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the, the supra organizer of all the sub studies that are taking place? Is that, I mean, largely your
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role? Is it, is it to be a fundraiser? Is it what, how many hats do you wear as director of such an
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incredible study? It's all that. I mean, I was, you know, I've primarily been the fundraiser. So I
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spend a lot of time writing applications for grant money, mostly from the national institutes of
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health in the U S and, um, and I direct the study and I decide what questions we're going to ask and
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how we're going to ask, you know, what, what methods we're going to use. I do all of that. And of course I
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have lots of help. Mike, my associate director, Mark Schultz, and lots of research assistants.
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And how many people can tap into the database that's been accumulated? Is it open to all
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researchers that apply to you and say, Hey, I've got a great question that I think might be amenable
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to an analysis from your data set, or is it restricted largely for Harvard affiliated researchers?
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No, it's open to any researcher who has a good question that our data could be useful to answer.
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Um, so we've collaborated, oh gosh, for decades, we've collaborated with people from other research
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groups, other academic institutions, other countries. Is there a, uh, a cluster of disciplines
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that are most likely to, so is it going to be other psychiatrists and clinical psychologists,
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or can you get, for example, I'm, I'm housed in a business school. I, I study evolutionary psychology
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and consumer psychology. Do you get people across the, you know, a wide buffet of possible disciplines,
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or is it typically mental health professionals that are interested in this data set?
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Most typically it's mental health. It's, it's psychologists, psychiatrists, but some sociologists,
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some criminologists have collaborated with us, some biologists. So it varies. Uh, a neuro imager,
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we've collaborated with. Amazing. Okay. Well, I wanted to get to this beauty right here,
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and then we'll talk about stuff that's not necessarily related to the book. Uh, now the
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reason why I was so interested in having you on, well, for several reasons, one of which is I became
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intimately familiar with your work because I have this guy coming out soon, this book right here,
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the sad truth about happiness, eight secrets for leading the good life. Uh, now I don't restrict,
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uh, my, uh, discussion of happiness to largely relationships. Although of course I recognize
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how important relationships are to happiness. And, and that's, that's the context in which I quote your
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work. But in your case, if I'm not mistaken, your book is largely focusing on that singular variable,
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the importance of the quality of relationships, a wide range of relationships on our sense of
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wellbeing. Is that a rough, a good summary? Yes, that's right. Cause, uh, our work has shown,
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you know, a lot of evidence for the power of relationships, both for happiness, but also for
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physical health and longevity. Yeah. I remember actually, I think one of the quotes that I cited you
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is towards the end of my forthcoming book where I think, was it you who was doing the,
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the comparison between cholesterol scores of people at 50 years old versus, versus their relationship
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quality. And then down when you're 80 years old, the relationships are better predicted than the
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cholesterol scores. That was you, correct? Exactly. Yes. I mean, so I asked, uh, uh, uh,
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Dr. Malhotra, a British cardiologist. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. Do you know who that
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is? Asim Malhotra? Uh, well, I was asking him, so, okay, let's suppose we've established that link.
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Well, we have that relationships are not only important for your mental health, but there are
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actually physiological markers that, that manifest themselves. Well, what is the proximate mechanism by
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which that happens? And in his case, he argued that there is now some compelling evidence linking to a
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reduction in inflammation as a result of having good, uh, good relationships. Is that largely the
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pathway by which this works or are there other mechanisms that result in that link?
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Well, there are undoubtedly other mechanisms, but stress and stress reduction seem to be the biggest
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factors that we know of so far, meaning that relationships when they're good can help us reduce
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stress. They can help us calm down. They can help us weather difficulties. And when we're isolated or
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lonely, uh, that's a stressor and raises our levels of chronic inflammation and circulating stress
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hormones. So yeah, it's a, it's a very, um, it's a very prominent mechanism by which this seems to work.
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So of all the various relationships, so I can have a great relationship with my spouse,
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I can have a great relationship with friends, great relationship with my nuclear family,
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great relationship with my pet. Uh, and undoubtedly, I'm sure all of them contribute to my sense of
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wellbeing, but is there a hierarchy across the types of relationships that says, look, if you're
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going to put all your money on one, go with a good marriage or, or, or get a dog. And that's your
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ticket to, is there such a hierarchy? Well, there is, but not, not by role, but by the kind of support
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that's provided. So when our, uh, men, original men were in middle age, we asked them, who could you
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call in the middle of the night if you were sick or stressed? And most of them could list several
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people. Some of them couldn't list anyone, including some of them who were married, couldn't
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list anyone. So it doesn't matter whether you have a marriage license. It doesn't matter what
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the person's official title is in your life. It really matters. Are they someone who you really
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feel will be there for you in times of need? Amazing. Uh, I mean, and in, in my forthcoming book,
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I talk about, uh, the important, I mean, two, two decisions that are crucially important to
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our happiness. One is choosing the right spouse. Now, of course there isn't a, a formulaic recipe
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to, to guarantee that you'll choose the right person. There are statistical vagaries that happen.
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Someone cheats on someone else and the marriage dissolves, but there are certainly scientific findings
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that are very robust, that help us understand the likelihood of your long-term relationship being
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successful. One of which, for example, is that all other things considered birds of a feather do
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flock together when it comes to say values or belief systems. So, uh, you know, uh, the opposites
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attract mantra might work well for a short-term sexual dalliance, but it is not, uh, a protective,
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uh, way to ensure long-term stability. You want to really be with someone who shares your values.
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Uh, have you looked at some of these kinds of issues while navigating through the importance
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of relationships in your own book? Well, in our research, we've certainly looked at things like
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what makes for stability. And what we find is that it's not arguments, like the number of arguments or
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the intensity of arguments doesn't predict whether people will stay together or not. It's really whether
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while people are arguing, there's still a bedrock of affection and respect.
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Yes. Yes. I can't remember the, there's a gentleman whom I cite in my book, uh, a very famous
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marriage council counselor who listed four, is it Eldon? No, I can't remember his name. I, I don't
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know if it's, it's coming to you. There's a very, very famous, he's, he's got a sort of a marriage
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institute where he talks about. Oh yeah, John, John Gottman. Thank you, Gottman. I was, I was saying
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the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Yes. Thank you. And, and, and so basically, and so does your
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research validate those four horsemen? Yeah. To some extent, we haven't specifically tested it in
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the way that John did, but he's been an advisor to some of our work and, um, and yeah, I mean,
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he's right. So for example, contempt is a really bad sign. It's a really bad predictor of whether
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a relationship is going to stay together. And I mean, and some of the old sort of grandmotherly
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wisdoms of, or maxims, you know, don't go to bed angry at one another. I mean, certainly from my
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personal experience, I've been with my wife for 23 years and it is something that we truly try to,
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to, to, to adhere to, which is, yes, of course there are frictions that arise, but once you get
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into the, the, the, the, the sanctity of that bed, you, you don't want to go to bed facing opposite
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directions and having your blood pressure up. And if you can just talk, I'm the type who I'm very
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passionate. So if we have a disagreement, I'm right there, middle Eastern, I'm confronting it.
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But then once we're done, we hug it out. We remind each other that we love each other and,
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and we move on. That, that seems to be the right recipe, correct?
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Well, it sounds good for you. Have you, are you, if I may ask, are you, are you married?
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Well, you've, you've, you've got me beat by 14 years, so you must know what you're talking about.
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Okay. Well, let's, so since we're talking about relationships, uh,
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strangers of course can become the next important relationship. Here's that beautiful girl sitting in
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the corner that I need to muster up my, the courage to go speak to her. Here is that guy who seems to
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be reading a good book that I'm sort of interested in. Maybe I should go up to talk to him and we can
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become great friends. And so I'm currently reading a book called, I don't know if you, you know it,
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Bob, it's called the power of strangers. Are you familiar with it? It's a book basically that's
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arguing that, you know, in the, certainly in the West we've, uh, the operative mechanism is sort of the
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stranger danger mantra, which is strangers are to be avoided at all costs. Certainly when you're
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living in a big city, every potential stranger is a source of calamity. And so we end up, uh,
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forgoing opportunities in making connections so that, in other words, to your point about the
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importance of relationships, it's not just having a great relationship with a group of friends or
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with your pet or your spouse. Also being able to have meaningful, fleeting, but powerful
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interactions with the barista or the person sitting next to you on the bus. Those two are important
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for my mental health. Do you cover that in your book? We do. Yeah. And we, it's mostly other people's
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research, but we know some from our own research as well. Okay. Very nice. All right. So now I think
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I'm going to move on to, uh, some other areas. You're a psychoanalyst. Well, first of all,
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a psychoanalyst, does that mean that you adhere to sort of the original pioneers of psychoanalysis,
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Freudian and Jungian stuff, or are we past that? Are we, or how much of those ideas are they are still
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being practiced in today in psychoanalysis? Well, some of those ideas are still very relevant. And some of
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those we don't use much at all at this point. So can you give us a sense of one or the other?
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A sense of one or the other meaning what? Meaning, meaning here are three ideas that Freud and Jung
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espoused that are still incredibly powerful and relevant today. Here are three ideas that we've let
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go 40 years ago. Sure. Um, well, ideas that, that are very powerful, the idea of the unconscious,
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the idea that there are things not in our awareness that actually drive our behavior.
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Um, that's probably the number one, most powerful idea that they came up with. Correct.
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Huge. The idea of transference that we transfer expectations from earlier relationships on to
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current relationships. And, and in that way, in some cases, misperceive other people, um, uh, defense,
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we protect ourselves using all kinds of maneuvers to kind of twist around reality a bit to, uh, to make
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ourselves less anxious. Um, and some of the ones that we've discarded into the dustbin of history.
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Uh, um, I think a lot of his energetic, his, he had a kind of hydraulic model of psychic energy
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that we don't. He meaning Freud now. Freud. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah, I mean, there are others that
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are much more controversial that some people adhere to other people don't. And I don't think I'll get
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into those. The reason why I ask is because I, I think I sent you some of the themes that we might,
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uh, cover in our conversation. And I included a book that, uh, uh, I read many years ago by a,
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uh, someone that's within my general field. He's, he's a, he studies decision-making certainly,
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but I think he was also a clinical psychologist. It's Robin Dawes from Carnegie Mellon. He had
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written a book in the mid nineties called a house of cards in reference to the idea that many of the,
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uh, principles that are used in, uh, the mental health professor profession are built on a house of
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cards. Now that had a personal, uh, effect on me because as I was trying to decide where I would
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end up, you know, spending my career for a short period of time, I thought whether I wanted to go
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into clinical psychology or, you know, go, uh, you know, after my undergrad, go to medical school and
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become a psychiatrist, there were several reasons why I decided against it. And I don't regret it.
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One of which was, I felt that I may not have the personality to, while I'm, while I'm very
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empathetic and compassionate, if I could speak of myself, I wouldn't be able to create a clear
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delineation between what I hear in my job and then coming home. I don't want to be mired all day in
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negativity. I think I would have been the prime candidate for like jumping off a building because
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I would have taken all that stuff in. But the second reason why I decided I didn't want to go
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into the mental health profession is, uh, precisely to Robin Dawes's point. I, I wasn't sure
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how much of the stuff would adhere to the exacting standards of the scientific method versus some of
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the stuff that was very much driven by cult of personalities, you know, by quackery and so on.
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Uh, is this something that, you know, you've heard other prospective students in psychiatry
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enunciate this idea of, you know, it, for other fields, you know, orthopedic surgery, we, we,
00:20:00.040
right. It's very mechanical. I know exactly how to fix the, the ruptured Achilles tendon. It's clear.
00:20:06.900
We know it. Whereas when you're delving into the depth of the human psyche, a lot of it might make
00:20:12.800
sense. A lot of it might be trial and, you know, trial and error stuff.
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Actually that dichotomy is much less true than it might seem. So for example, oh yeah. The field
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of orthopedics, I mean, spine x-rays and spine spinal scans often give us results that have
00:20:30.820
little correlation with somebody's clinical picture, somebody's symptom picture. Interesting. So
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there's, it's much less of a dichotomy than we think that, that psychology and the mind is
00:20:43.860
less grounded in science and hard, hard things like orthopedics are grounded in science. Not so
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clear. Not, not true. Well, it's funny because it, by the way, not, uh, what I didn't mean to imply
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that all of psychology is, is I thought specific, I was referring specific. I mean, otherwise I
00:21:02.640
wouldn't have spent my career being a behavioral scientist. Right. Uh, I mean, do you know who Nassim
00:21:08.140
Talib is the author, the Lebanese author? Nassim Talib has written several, uh, bestselling books.
00:21:14.240
He's a, uh, applied mathematician. He's kind of a rather caustic gentleman. He's a personal friend
00:21:21.340
of mine. We're, we're both Lebanese. And he long ago, uh, was teasing me saying, uh, I don't know
00:21:28.280
what you guys study in psychology, Gad, because all that, all that there is to know about human nature,
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the ancient Greeks have already told us about. Now he was kind of ribbing me. He wasn't being
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totally serious, but you know, as I started writing my book and I suspect you being someone
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who's an expert on, on happiness and the good life, you're familiar with all of the ancient Greeks.
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It's quite extraordinary to see how much they knew and how much they got right without having access
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to the empirical methods that we have today. What, what are your thoughts on that?
00:21:58.480
Well, because it's the same human life that it always was. And, uh, empirical methods just help
00:22:06.280
us quantify and, uh, test out hypotheses. The best way to generate hypotheses are through
00:22:14.920
single case methods, right? Where you observe something and say, wow, I think this is what's
00:22:21.100
going on. And then we use empirical methods and research to test those hypotheses out.
00:22:26.760
Right. I actually, I want to show you a book that I just finished. Uh, this is an autobiography by
00:22:33.960
Eric Kandel, uh, the, the famous, uh, neuroscientist. And in his case, as you, you might know, Bob,
00:22:41.100
he started off being very interested in becoming a psychoanalyst. And in those, in that time, of course,
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most psychoanalysts were first trained in medical school. They were physicians. Then they went into
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training and psychoanalysis. And then later when his interest in neurobiology was kindled,
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he tried to create some sort of consilience, some sort of between his neurobiology and his
00:23:06.620
psychiatry. Where do you see the next big sort of consilience idea in psychiatry? The joining of
00:23:13.820
what with what, you know, is it, for example, uh, behavioral genetics and psychiatry? Is it,
00:23:22.100
uh, you know, is it trying to identify the, the, the new, you know, the psychiatric disorders at the
00:23:29.300
most microscopic level? Where is the next big epiphany coming from?
00:23:34.960
I don't know. I think it's, I think it's breaking down silos more than anything. We tend to put things
00:23:42.520
in silos and then we realize, no, actually things are much more interconnected than we thought. So for
00:23:48.640
example, our findings on relationships actually predicting whether you're more or less likely to
00:23:55.480
get coronary artery disease. Like how could that be a thing? Well, if we look across silos, we see that
00:24:01.980
there are all these interconnections. So I think that's what's happening more and more.
00:24:06.840
Oh, I, I, I love that answer. Number one, because I've lived by that model for my entire career to the,
00:24:13.760
to my detriment in that, as you undoubtedly know, Bob, academia doesn't reward, uh, the don't stay in
00:24:21.900
your lane mindset on the, to the contrary, you have to be a hyper specialist, you know, keep pumping
00:24:28.420
out papers within this very, very narrow field because you, you can then have economies of scale.
00:24:33.940
And so even though from this side of our, of the mouth of universities, they say they support
00:24:38.600
interdisciplinarity from this side, they certainly don't seem to reward that. I mean, I, I've had
00:24:43.800
universities who were interested in hiring me specifically say that it played against me that I
00:24:50.720
published in medicine and economics and in psychology and in marketing. I seemed as though I was being
00:24:57.380
frazzled, I wasn't focused. So to your point, do you see us being able to develop better reward systems,
00:25:06.420
uh, you know, tangible reward systems in the universities so that more young scholars can
00:25:11.680
actually move beyond the state in your lane mindset? Thankfully, I'm not in university administration,
00:25:19.740
so I have no idea what that's, where that's going to go. But, but I mean, I guess based on your
00:25:26.700
earlier answer, you, you would, you would certainly hope to, to have a greater rapprochement of
00:25:32.260
difference. Yeah. Oh, I would totally hope so. I think it's where the most creative work gets done.
00:25:37.520
Absolutely. Whether the system will start aligning with that or not. I don't know.
00:25:43.340
All right. Uh, next topic, let me put this one away. Now this one, I, I suspect you may not be very
00:25:49.400
familiar with, and I think you might've warned me that it's not within your area of interest,
00:25:52.920
but I still want to address it since you're a psychiatrist. Are you familiar with the field of
00:25:58.700
Darwinian psychiatry? This is Troisi and Maguire. This is basically the idea of applying the evolutionary
00:26:05.440
lens to study the, the genesis of many of our most common mental disorders that are you at all familiar
00:26:13.580
with the field? No, but do you, can I share with you some, if you want to talk about that, it's your
00:26:21.680
show. I don't know anything about it. So it's up to you. Well, basically the idea is that there are many
00:26:29.520
disorders that we gain perspective and understanding the, the Darwinian etiology of this, of these
00:26:38.740
disorders. So for example, I published a paper, uh, many years ago, uh, where I looked at sex
00:26:45.740
differences in the symptomology of OCD. The idea being that there are some O's and some C's that
00:26:53.340
manifest themselves a lot more in men, others that manifest themselves a lot more in women and others
00:26:58.200
that, that exhibit no sex difference. And I argued that you can use the evolutionary lens to exactly
00:27:04.880
predict how these would assort precisely because there are some evolutionarily relevant problem
00:27:09.880
that men are more likely to face or women or, or equally face. And so the reason why I thought I
00:27:16.980
would mention it to you, notwithstanding that you're not an evolutionary minded psychiatrist is that,
00:27:21.580
as I mentioned earlier, Randy Nesse is someone that I recently had a chat with. And what he's been
00:27:27.260
trying to do is incorporate the evolutionary lens, not just in psychiatry, but across the medical school
00:27:34.300
training. The idea being that, how could you become a physician yet never have studied, uh, you know,
00:27:41.140
what are the selection pressures that would have led to the formation of our bodies and minds?
00:27:46.500
Do you have any thoughts on that? Notwithstanding that that's not within your area of special specialty.
00:27:51.300
No, I don't. So, I mean, I'm sorry, but I just, it's just not something I've thought about or have any
00:27:57.880
experience of. So, so in your case, my question is God, why do you want to keep us talking about this
00:28:05.240
when I've told you, I don't know about it. It's not my thing. Oh, sure. I mean, I'm asked often
00:28:11.360
questions that I don't know about, but because I have, uh, you know, an interest and curiosity,
00:28:16.300
I might offer some insight. You're obviously a very accomplished guy. So I thought you might have
00:28:20.440
something to say, Oh yeah, that sounds interesting or it doesn't, but sure. We can move on to something
00:28:24.240
else. No worries. But, but let me say that people often ask me about things that I really don't know
00:28:29.720
about. And as one of my research teachers said, without data, I'm just another guy with a bunch
00:28:36.380
of opinions. Oh, I appreciate that because I I've argued the exact same thing. When I talk about
00:28:41.020
epistemic humility, if you were to ask me, Hey, what are the benefits or costs of having legalized
00:28:47.120
marijuana in Canada? I would probably say exactly what you said, which is, I frankly don't know
00:28:52.420
anything about it to offer an intelligent opinion. So I get that. Maybe we can wrap up
00:28:57.880
with some, uh, something that you do know about. You're a Zen Buddhist priest. Maybe you could
00:29:05.680
tell us that journey, how you got interested in it and so on. And then does any of your
00:29:09.620
knowledge from Zen Buddhism manifest itself in your psychiatric practice?
00:29:17.240
Yeah. Well, I got interested in Zen Buddhism because I was interested in Buddhist philosophy.
00:29:22.420
And, and, and found it to be, um, uh, one of the most helpful things for me personally.
00:29:28.380
And then, um, I stumbled into a Zen meditation group going on right down the street from where
00:29:34.680
I live and started studying with a teacher there and gradually just grew more and more involved
00:29:42.680
in the practice so that now I teach Zen. I'm a, I'm a Zen master, a Roshi. And I teach, uh,
00:29:49.140
you know, I teach retreats and I teach a weekly meditation session. Um, and I think Zen very much
00:29:57.680
dovetails with my research because Zen is about getting to know what it means to be a human being,
00:30:04.080
what it means to be alive, sitting on a cushion. What does my mind and body do? And I'm studying
00:30:11.560
thousands of lives, uh, as another way to look at the experience of being human. So very related.
00:30:20.480
Beautiful. Uh, do you, before I ask, I ask you the next question, then we'll, we'll take a break.
00:30:26.120
And then I'll ask you one last question for our subscribers only. Uh, one of my former professors,
00:30:31.660
uh, during my PhD training is a gentleman by name of Thomas Gilovich. He specialized in, uh,
00:30:37.560
the study of the psychology of regret. And he argued that there are two sources of regret regret due to
00:30:43.600
action. I regret that I cheated on my wife and now my marriage is over. So it's because of something
00:30:48.760
that I did that I regret versus regret due to inaction. I regret that I never pursued my,
00:30:54.660
my interest in art. And I went to medical school. I never really wanted to be a physician.
00:30:58.700
Uh, and it turns out that over the long run, and it's something that I discuss in my forthcoming
00:31:03.560
book over the long run, what looms larger in our minds are the regrets due to inaction. So if I were
00:31:11.140
to ask you, Bob, at this stage in your life to look back and think about your regrets, what would
00:31:17.620
be the greatest one? And would it be, would it adhere to the inaction one, or would it be an action one?
00:31:28.360
Or maybe you don't have any regrets, in which case you're, you're really well adjusted.
00:31:32.100
Well, it's not that I don't have any regrets. I just don't have any,
00:31:36.640
I like, I have regrets every day, but I, but I don't have any great big regrets. I see my life
00:31:42.480
as having unfolded as it has because of so many causes and conditions. And, and so in a certain
00:31:49.580
sense, yes, it could have been different, but I see so many ways in which I understand how it's
00:31:55.720
turned out as it has. It's been a really lucky, privileged life in a lot of ways. So I don't
00:32:06.340
Well, you're a fortunate man. Uh, guys get out and buy this book, The Good Life. Great read.
00:32:12.980
Thank you so much, Bob. Stay on the line for a subscriber only question.