Prime Time Replay:
Dr. John Money
on the Evolution of Sex and Gender
MsgId: *breakthrough(8)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:01:53 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
Hello, and welcome to Breakthrough Medicine. Tonight we have as our guest pioneering sex and gender researcher Dr. John Money, Professor emeritus of Pediatrics and of Medical Psychology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. Welcome, Dr. Money!
MsgId: *breakthrough(9)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:03:19 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
Good evening and good reading to everyone.
MsgId: *breakthrough(10)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:04:39 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
Dr. Money, I thought we might begin by discussing a paper you recently presented at the 3rd Asian conference of Sexology.
MsgId: *breakthrough(13)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:07:31 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
Well I've checked my notes and found out it was the 4th conference of the Asian Federation of Sexology in Taipei Taiwan, July 6-10, 1996. When I go to a major meeting like that I like to have something new to talk about. So this time I found something completely new. It's taken from the manuscript of a new book I've written which is still in the process of publiation. The name of the book is Principles of Developmental Sexology, published by Continuum in New York, next spring. The new idea is about evolutionary sexology, which itself is a new development. Briefly stated, the idea is that the songmap is the evolutionary bridge that contacts the lovemap and the speechmap. From that it may be conjectured that the very first human speech was a lovesong.Now let me do some explanation. I've used the word songmpa, lovemap, and speechmap. I could also use the foodmap. The idea behind these maps is that they exist in the brain and the mind simultaneously. They guide and direct all our thoughts and actions.
Let's take a look at the lovemap. In animals we might also call it the sexmap. But I like the word lovemap as it's broader and more encompassing, especially in human beings. Also for most people it's self defining.
In animals the lovemap is working like a robot, or better biorobot, or living robot. Animals when they mate have a very ritualistic type of behavior. Which is repeated every time they mate with very little variation. Animals have what is often called a mating dance or a courtship ritual, birds have the same, so also do many fish. Unless animals go through their courtship ritual they're not able to do the actual sex act and procreate. Humans also have a courtship ritual. You can observe it among couples all over the world. Especially at the time of spring fever.
MsgId: *breakthrough(25)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:22:06 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
Dr. Money, your ideas are thrilling, and certainly push the standard view of language and behavior in people. Could we talk about how you developed these maps, particularly the bridge between song and language?
MsgId: *breakthrough(26)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:24:03 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
I think you're reading my thought. I was just getting ready to say that I've spent a lot of time puzzling over why lovemaps are so similar in animals and not so similar in human beings. In fact, in humans there are some extraordinary variations. Some of them are to use street language, kinky or bizarre, some very bizarre. So bizarre that in the court they are called perversions and in medicine they are called paraphilias.Just to illustrate, one paraphilia requires that a man has to wear diapers to get sexually aroused with his wife. There are also sadistic and masochistic lovemaps and pedophilic lovemaps. I asked myself the question, "Why this extraordinary variety, which in many instances has nothing to do with reproduction?"
Now the connection to speechmaps and songmaps. The idea occurred to me that in the course of eons of evolutionary time when we humans evolved the capacity for speech, the human brain had to give up many of its biorobotic rituals. Human speech requires extraordinary versatility in a brain that is not restricted by fixed patterns. That was a moment of insight. In actual fact it woke me up one night and I had to get up and write it down. Humans before they develop true speech had like their animal cousins been able to communicate with chatterings, hoots, whistles, and so on. Grunts, screams and yells, however, do not lead to true human language with verbal dialogue, pure reasoning and numerical calculation. The origins of human speech must be sought elsewhere. Where else to look? My answer to that question was in singing. In other words, music and sound for which I like the name songmap.
Humans are the only species with true singing, and there is a special place for it in the brain. Singing has all the cadence, melody, and rhythmic changes necessary for speech. Singing has syllabic intonation, phrasing, and even copying of sound. That is exactly what one needs to have human speech. That's why it is possible to say that human speech began with the lovesong and maybe also the lullaby of the mother with her baby.
MsgId: *breakthrough(34)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:39:37 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
So Dr. Money, when you look at the evolutionary trend of humans, do you see the ability to create music coming first, or the ability to create abstract ideas--like mathematics--coming first? When did this section of the brain appear?
MsgId: *breakthrough(35)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:43:12 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
The songmap is the bridge. It bridges prelinguistic speech and the lovemap. The price that the lovemap pays is to become extremely fluid and versatile so as to match the fluidity of the language map from which the numerical or mathematical map develops also. So there you have the hypothesis of a connection between sex and language - evolutionary connection that waits to be confirmed.
MsgId: *breakthrough(36)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:45:13 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
Well, I'm sure musicians will be happy to hear that their ability opened up human evolution for our higher capabilities. Dr. Money, could we talk about the genetic component of your map system, particularly love maps. Is anyone working on gene mapping that would include the lovemap sequences?
MsgId: *breakthrough(38)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:50:22 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
I've been informed by a music researcher in Germany, Dr. Marianne Hassler, that there is a special music research program in Sweden. That program is still in its infancy, and is looking at the issue of music, evolutionary development, and individual development. Dr. Hassler has done work on hormones and musical ability, especially the hormones of puberty. Of course when lovemaps come into full bloom at adolescence they are associated with music, dancing, singing and poetry, music of all kinds. The study of genetics, hormones music and sex is still in its infancy but it has great possibilities.
MsgId: *breakthrough(40)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:54:18 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
Could we talk a little about what throws a kink into evolution's sexual development of humans? You wrote about the Kaspar Hauser syndrome and the devasting effects of isolation and neglect on the individual's development, including mental retardation and social stunting. Could we talk about how people recover from these effects? What is the mechanism that saves some people and leaves other damaged?
MsgId: *breakthrough(42)
Date: Wed Oct 23 21:58:51 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
All the answers are in my book of the same name published five years ago by Prometheus. Kaspar Hauser was a real man who lived 200 years ago in Germany. His brain and statural growth were severely vandalized and made defective by abuseive isolation from infancy to age 17. He was forced to live in near darkness in a dungeon with no social contact except for the guard who brought food. Of course, there are genetic factors that bring about severe defects in mental and physical growth, nonetheless, Kaspar's story shows the same effects came be produced by extreme deprivation and abuse.The chief thing that has to be done to successfuly rescue a child like Kaspar Hauser (I've studied 30 through the years) is to find a new place for them to live without deprivation and abuse and with new parenting. Some recover much better than others but none regain 100% of mental or physical growth. So the earlier the rescue the greater the recovery.
MsgId: *breakthrough(45)
Date: Wed Oct 23 22:06:17 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
Dr. Money, to wrap up our discussion tonight, I'd like to ask you about the response you get from your research. You seem to be rescuing many people who need to talk about development that many in society consider 'taboo.' In your book, reinterpreting the Unspeakable, you discuss people caught in a genetic trap of being sexually different, and falling into a 'taboo' area that can't even be discussed. Has your work lifted some of the lid? What do your patients say?
MsgId: *breakthrough(46)
Date: Wed Oct 23 22:08:19 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
You're completely correct in it being difficult to do research that requires breaking taboos. That means sexological research and to a certain extent research on death. I've found that patients with very serious and sometimes very ugly paraphilic sexual disorders are extremely grateful to find just one person who will listen to them without finger wagging and passing judgement.It's not that I approve of their paraphilic behavior but that I want to find out as much as I possibly can about the roots of it's development all the way from genetics to social learning. I want to do this so as to protect society against the extreme morbidity of some of the more terrible paraphilias. Above all else, however, I would like for sexologists in the next millennium to be able to recognize the very earliest beginnings in childhood of pathological sexual behavior so that it can be like smallpox completely eradicated. It's difficult to keep working because research funding is unbelievably difficult to obtain. Research funding in the developmental sexology of childhood and adolescence is the most difficult of all to obtain. So the price of the sexual taboo is that we remain in ignorance of how to prevent sexological disorders from developing.
MsgId: *breakthrough(50)
Date: Wed Oct 23 22:15:18 EDT 1996
From: moderator At: 206.80.176.52
Dr. Money, I want to thank you for your riveting discussion tonight. I'm sure the audience will be glad to hear that you will be joining the live chat that follows Breakthrough Medicine. So please join Dr. Money for the live chat following now. And thank you for tuning in to Breakthrough Medicine.
MsgId: *breakthrough(53)
Date: Wed Oct 23 22:19:27 EDT 1996
From: Dr.Money At: 128.220.59.78
This has been a very interesting interview for me. It is infact my first cyber interview. I look forward to more of them, and tonight to being able to answer a few questions. Thanks Madeleine for an excellent job moderating.
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