Healing Psychology, Part E - Viruses

In previous episodes of this series, we interpreted destructive behaviors like alcoholism and anorexia nervosa as habits that have escaped our normal means of control. Weirdly, these habits have somehow taken on a life of their own, reproducing themselves at our expense. And now they’re relating to us as parasites, using us as their hosts. 

The idea of parasitic habits doesn’t fit anywhere in today’s psychology. But in biology, psychology’s mother science, parasitism is the rule—not the exception. In fact, parasitic organisms vastly outnumber non-parasites. And each animal invests a lot of energy protecting itself from them. If we look with open eyes at the details of our own malignant behaviors, we can see that parasitic forms are common there too. Our willingness to recognize them for what they are is a first step toward crafting a better psychology.  

Transcript

Part E – Viruses

This Episode of Healing Psychology is a reading of Chapter Four of my upcoming book, Reimaging Psychology.

Copyright © Thomas O. Whitehead, 2022.   All rights reserved

[Introduction]

Welcome to Part E of the multi-part series “Healing Psychology.” This episode concerns parasites—specifically, the parasites we know as viruses. Now, the Healing Psychology series is about remaking psychology into a more useful science. So … why concern ourselves with parasites? Because to be truly useful, psychology has to start using the essential concepts of its mother science, biology. And one of the most basic of those concepts is parasitic disease. 

In biology, parasitism is the rule—not the exception. In fact, parasitic organisms far outnumber non-parasites. As science writer Carl Zimmer put it, “The study of life is, for the most part, parasitology.” Every host animal—and that includes humans—must protect itself from its parasites. 

In previous episodes of this series, we’ve interpreted addiction and anorexia as habits that have escaped the individual’s control. These peculiar habits have turned parasitic, and are now sustaining themselves at the individual’s expense. If we can’t recognize this kind of disease in our behavior, we’ll never understand why we sometimes do such mind-bogglingly destructive things. The idea of parasitic habits is certainly not mainstream psychology. But you’re invited to listen … anyway.

[Reading]

• Viruses, lacking the ability to eat or respire, are officially dead,  which is in itself intriguing, showing as it does that the habit of predation can be taken up by clusters of molecules that are in no way alive. [1]

- Barbara Ehrenreich

Everywhere we look in the living world, we find viruses and other virus-like parasites. These lifeforms are a marvel of nature. Although quite simple in themselves, viruses manage to have complex life cycles. They gain the needed complexity by exploiting the capabilities of their hosts. Like all parasites, viruses zombify their hosts, commandeering both their bodies and their behavior. 

Since psychology is a part of biology, it really shouldn’t surprise us that virus-like patterns are common within the domain of psychology—in our behavior and our cognition. And if we are bold enough to open our eyes, we can easily spot them there. They manifest as malignant, out-of-control habits. Addictions are a clear example. 

Without understanding parasitism, we literally have no chance of understanding our own pathological behavior. Yet our current psychology doesn’t support that insight. This makes it hard for theorists to see that parasitism is important in understanding pathological behavior. In this chapter we’ll correct that deficit with a closer look at parasites in general, and at viral parasites in particular. 

A popular lifestyle

A parasite is a lifeform that makes its living by exploiting the resources of a host organism. [2] Every living thing, whether plant or animal, is susceptible to parasites. And there are lots and lots of parasites in the world. The logic behind their omnipresence is easy to understand, if somewhat disturbing from a moral point of view. It’s easier for a lifeform to steal resources from another lifeform than to create the resources for itself. Parasites are pirates.

We apply the “parasite” label when the pirate in question is relatively large. If it is small, we call it “a disease” instead. That’s an artificial distinction, though. To illustrate, when a tiny diarrhea-causing bacterium takes up residence in our intestines, we say we have a disease. But when a larger organism such as a tapeworm invades the same intestines, we say we have a parasite. No matter which label we choose, both the illness-causing bacterium and the tapeworm are in the same class. Both are parasites.

How viruses work

Viruses are a tiny kind of parasite, a special variety called “obligate intracellular parasites.” That fancy descriptor means that they can do their thing only when they are inside—and in control of—a host cell. [3] That host might be one of the cells making up our human body. At its core a cellular virus is a relatively short string of nucleotides—either RNA or DNA. Due to their small size, viruses are simple. They are so simple, in fact, that many biologists don’t think we should consider them alive. [4] So, it may seem odd that, despite being not-alive, viruses evolve just as living things do—developing sophisticated strategies that support their reproduction. And the most critical part of every virus’s reproductive strategy is exploiting their host’s normal activities.

Here’s the grand scheme of viruses: too simple to accomplish a lot on their own, they use the much larger resources of their host to reproduce themselves. That’s the essence of the virus/host relationship. Not quite alive itself, a biological virus is a strand of biomolecules that merges with a living cell. The merger creates a hybrid, a form that vastly expands the virus’s capabilities. Where the virus particle doesn’t qualify as fully alive, the virus/cell hybrid most certainly does. 

It’s natural to wonder how a little string of chemicals could control a complex living organism. How could such a modest nucleotide sequence, a thing without life, awareness, intelligence, or intentions come up with a sophisticated strategy for completing its life cycle in this strange way? 

The answer is that although biological viruses have no way to think up strategies, they can and do mindlessly evolve schemes for self-perpetuation.  And those evolved schemes can become quite complex. In fact, that’s exactly what biological and behavioral viruses have in common. What we’re calling behavioral viruses also mindlessly evolve their strategies—in the same way, and for the same reasons, that cellular viruses do. The difference is that, lacking a physical form of their own, they do it completely within the realm of behavior.

Like biological viruses, behavioral viruses develop self-replication strategies through natural selection, even though they have no life, awareness, intelligence, or intentions. When we scrutinize alcoholism and anorexia, we discover that they have characteristics quite like those of biological viruses. The deeper we dig, the more similarities we find, and the harder it is to explain them away. The shared features suggest they are working in the same way. Though biological viruses and their behavioral counterparts operate at markedly different levels of life, the comparison is apt simply because there are so many parallels.

To be clear, our comparing the two doesn’t imply that biological viruses cause addictions. They don’t. The virus metaphor is just that—a metaphor. Yet addictions really are parasitic patterns. The virus metaphor can shine light on these parasitic patterns by underscoring that they develop for the same reasons biological viruses develop. Comparing the two makes addictions more comprehensible. 

Zombified cells

As life patterns go, viruses are pretty strange. They are so strange that, were we not daily steeped in references to them, were we not daily forced to cope with the effects of viral infection, we might refuse to believe such things could exist. That’s because what they do amounts to taking over their host cells and turning them into zombies that do the bidding of the virus. [5]

In some environments, say the experts, up to 40% of what appear to be normal bacteria are actually these viral zombies. [6]There are so many of these altered cells around that virus expert Patrick Forterre coined a special name—“virocells”—to differentiate them from uninfected bacteria. [7] It’s important to understand that once the virus has taken over, the virocell is literally not the same animal anymore. The cell no longer acts in its own interest. Profoundly zombified, the cell has become a different critter, a lifeform with a different agenda. 

Now here’s something interesting. Odd as it may seem, the virocell is technically the mature form of the virus. The virocell is its grown-up form—the completed form biologists call the “phenotype.” After infection, the virocell redirects the host’s activities toward reproduction of the virus. Normal cells reproduce themselves. Virocells reproduce viruses. That’s an important thing to remember for later discussion, because behavioral viruses do pretty much the same thing. They transform the host’s behavior so that it does what’s good for the viral pattern, rather than what’s good for the host. 

Conceptualizing viruses

What’s the best way to think about cellular viruses? We are used to visualizing them as tiny little particles. We see them depicted that way in both the popular and scientific literature. In one phase of their life-cycle, most viruses do indeed take the form of particles. Scientists call these little particles “virions.” Maybe people identify the virus with its virion because that’s the only form we can actually see (with the aid of an electron microscope). Being able to image it convinces us it’s real. Unfortunately, that image is terribly misleading. Because the virion is just the tip of the viral iceberg. 

The focus of this book is behavior. But the virion doesn’t behave. All the interesting stuff happens after the virus has moved beyond the virion stage, and has become an active part of its host cell. Like all lifeforms, cellular viruses have different life stages. The virion is just the first of those stages. And in virion form it is much like a seed. It is a tiny bundle made up of a protective shell, a bit of genetic material (RNA or DNA) sometimes enclosed in a membrane, and some simple mechanisms for getting inside its intended cellular host. The behavioral component emerges within the submicroscopic world of chemical interactions. The cell’s chemical processes are a world of activity, a realm that even electron microscopes can’t image.

It is a mistake to confuse the virion seed with what the seed will become. We don’t call an acorn “an oak tree.” The acorn is just a seed. It has no resemblance to the tree it will grow up to be. Likewise, the virion particle is nothing like the mature form it will become when it merges with its host. Its mature form is something quite different—the fully active virus/cell hybrid. 

Merging with the host cell, it becomes the virocell, the zombie cell. That’s its mature phenotype. The virion particle doesn’t qualify as a living thing, but the virocell most certainly does qualify. Forterre says, “The virocell… being a cellular organism, corresponds to the ‘living form’ of the virus, whereas virions are in fact the equivalent of seeds or spores for multicellular organisms.” [8]  

In its seed form the virus is passive, inactive. It can’t do much of anything. But in its mature form the virus is dynamic, the essence of activity. In the virocell it becomes an active process, not a passive particle. At the virocell stage, thinking of it as a physical object no longer makes sense. It has become behavior. 

The virus’s genetic material emerges from its protective shell either just before or after the virus penetrates the host cell. If the host cell is eukaryotic, [9] the unpacked genetic material migrates to the nucleus of the cell. It is there that the gears of the viral process really start to turn.

Not much to see

The virion seed grows up to be a virocell, a cellular zombie. The virus/cell combination can look and act like a normal cell—up to a point. The virocell engages in activities that might appear routine. But the end result isn’t routine at all. 

A microscope image of the passive virion particle can’t show the virus as part of the virocell, where it has become activity. The problem is that the zombified activity doesn’t look like anything out of the ordinary—at least not at first. In the earliest stages of viral infection, there’s really nothing much to see. 

An uninfected cell normally produces proteins using its DNA as a template. An infected cell, a virocell, looks almost exactly like a normal cell. In the early stages of infection, the virocell zombie appears to be doing what cells always do—making proteins and other chemical products. The difference lies in what the cell is producing, and why.

As a rule, the virocell stops making products that fill host needs, and instead begins making new viruses. [10] The cell’s energy is redirected into making copies of the viral invader. Some viruses even prompt the creation of a dedicated “virus factory” within the host, a substructure that manufactures and assembles the virus parts. [11] But until these things happen it may be hard to see that the cell is doing anything out of the ordinary. We can be sure there’s a problem only when hundreds of those pesky little virions pop up, as the active behavioral process once again puts its genetic pattern into the passive physical form.

The importance of this point will become obvious as we shift our attention to human behavior. Virus-like habits zombify their human hosts, causing them to act in a way that reproduces the habit, but harms the host. A virally transformed human may not look much different from anyone else, but he or she has been transformed. Under the influence of the behavioral virus he has, like the virocell, begun working not for himself but for the perpetuation of the viral pattern.

Low quality, high success

Evolution happens through variation and selection. The way this plays out with biological viruses has implications for the success of behavioral viruses. So we’ll look closer at biological viruses.

Some viruses use RNA to store their genes, and others use DNA. [12] When the virocell creates new viruses, they often have genetic mutations, defects. The mutations constantly create new variants of the virus. Most of these new variants are junk—they aren’t even infectious. And most of those that are infectious don’t work as well as the original, un-mutated version.

You’d think this crappy manufacturing process would be a big problem for viruses. But it’s actually an enormous advantage. The high mutation rate creates a lot of variability, which is partly responsible for the success of viruses as a group. Because there are all these variants, any given virus doesn’t have just one single genetic code. Virus populations exist as “swarms of mutant genotypes.” [13] [14] 

Natural selection takes a heavy toll among these variants. Very few of the mutants work as well as the original. Author Mark Ridley points out that RNA viruses are especially unstable. As he says,

• The RNA viruses appear to be operating close to the upper limit of complexity… A remarkably high fraction of RNA viruses are duds, as if they contained mutations that inactivated the virus … The RNA viruses may only be able to survive by running off huge numbers of offspring copies from each parental virus. [15]

In fact, the instability of an RNA virus is so great that if it got even a tiny bit more unstable, it wouldn’t be able to hold itself together at all, and so would lose its ability to infect. [16] 

Any defective viral units won’t be around for long, because they are unceasingly “chipped away” by natural selection. They’re too messed up to reproduce themselves. So they don’t pass into the next generation. But there are so many virion particles produced that it makes no difference! The viral army may lose a few billion soldiers here, and a few billion soldiers there. But there are plenty more where those came from! 

Of the variants that do prove infectious, each works a little differently. When a host cell comes into contact with a viral swarm, it’s like getting attacked by a pack of wolves—each one can come at the host from a slightly different angle. And this is exactly where all those mutants come in handy. Because a critical part of the viral strategy is neutralizing host immunity. 

Near-life in the fast lane

These conditions—intense variation and brutal selection—throw viral evolution into high gear. Though experts may not believe viruses are truly alive, they don’t doubt that they evolve. Further, they run in the “fast lane” of evolution. 

In the time it takes a host animal to go through one cycle of reproduction, the virus may go through hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of reproductive cycles. This gives the virus a keen adaptive edge. It can change much faster than its host. All else being equal, the host can’t keep pace with the virus’s breakneck evolution.

Rapid evolution is an enormous advantage for the viruses, because they can naturally outpace the evolution of their host cells. There’s yet another reason they can evolve faster—they are much simpler than their hosts. 

Writing the genetic code of a virus might take up one page of a book, where the code of a human cell would cover five hundred thousand pages. [17]And as host organisms evolve, they have to adjust many of their genes to work efficiently with each other. It is much easier to keep the genes of a virus—just a single page in size—working together than it is to keep the genes on half a million pages in step.

Pushing buttons

How can the genome of viruses be so tiny compared to that of their host cells? How could they possibly accomplish anything when their resources are so limited? 

The answer is straightforward: they steal most of what they need from their host cells. If I’m preparing to go on a long trip, I might fill up several suitcases with the items I need. But a thief, preparing for the same trip, might pack almost nothing. He doesn’t have to bring much, because he’s going to steal everything he needs from me! 

The relationship between a virus and its host cell is similar. The virus can perform complicated actions by exploiting the talents of the host. It doesn’t have to duplicate the host’s capabilities, because it’s going to commandeer those capabilities, and use them for its own sneaky virus purposes. 

Here’s a useful metaphor: you could visualize the virus sitting at a huge control panel filled with thousands of buttons. Here, each button corresponds to some particular host capability. Having no brain, the virus can’t know what any of those buttons do. Its strategy is to keep pressing buttons at random until something useful happens—until it stumbles across a combination that helps it survive and reproduce. 

I have noted that viruses come in vast swarms of mutated variants. The variant individuals in those swarms may press different buttons. Because the choice of buttons is random, most variants press buttons that don’t help them at all. Those loser variants—the vast majority—won’t survive. Chipped away by natural selection, they pass no information on to the next generation of viruses. 

Once in a blue moon, though, a mutant pushes a useful button. This virus wins the lottery! It will still be capable of infection, but will also have a new trick that enhances its ability to exploit its host. This mutant does pass its genes into the next generation. Over time, that mutant form will become predominant in the viral strain.

Over many generations, through a combination of dumb luck and natural selection, a viral scheme for exploitation of the host gradually takes shape. The emerging strategy can seem amazingly sophisticated. It may even seem brilliant, though there was absolutely no intelligence involved in its creation.

The virus metaphor

A rogue habit is a habit that has escaped its natural controls. The evolution of a rogue is no longer constrained by the interests of the behaving animal. Rather, the rogue develops in its own interest. With time and further evolution, the rogue habit can come to relate to the animal as a parasite relates to its host. More specifically, it can come to behave like a virus. Selection pressures push all parasites to zombify their hosts, changing host behavior in ways favoring the parasite’s reproduction. This rule applies to behavioral viruses just as certainly as it does to biological viruses. 

Addictions and other rogue habits aren’t biological viruses, of course. They can’t be, because they don’t have a physical, biological body of their own. Nor are they caused by biological viruses. Yet there are similarities between addictions and viruses, both in the grand scheme of their operation and in their finer details. 

A theorist steeped in today’s psychology wouldn’t see any reason to compare addictions to biological viruses. But there are excellent reasons. First, though they operate at different levels of life, addictions and biological viruses arise through a closely analogous sequence of events. Second, addictions persist for the same reasons viruses persist. These similarities will become apparent as we look deeper. 

Why do I say that addictions are “virus-like?” Because they are simple patterns that gain all their complexity, and all their power, by controlling the much larger resources of their hosts. Like cellular viruses, they commandeer the resources of their hosts, zombifying them. Because the way addictions operate is reminiscent of the way biological viruses operate, the virus metaphor is a useful shorthand way of understanding how addictions work. 

Really stupid

Through repeated variation and selection, each viral process evolves a scheme that has the appearance of a well-crafted strategy. That appearance is totally misleading. Viruses are about as stupid as they could be. They steal every bit of their apparent sophistication from the capabilities of their hosts. They garner their effectiveness over many generations, by pushing buttons at random until the zombified host does something complicated that helps the virus. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this point. Its significance becomes clear as we examine the sophisticated activity provoked by behavioral viruses. 

The behavior of an alcoholic, for example, seems strategic. His drinking habit may reflect impressive intelligence, creativity, guile, and a variety of specific learned skills. From all appearances, the alcoholic is maintaining his drinking in a deliberate and clever way. But the alcoholic pattern itself is far too simple to deserve the honor of an explanation in terms of human motives, human intelligence, or human skills. 

The alcoholic pattern itself is both inhuman and astoundingly dumb. It only looks sophisticated because the viral pattern is ripping off the sophisticated capabilities of its intelligent human host. It looks smart because its human host is smart, and the virus is brandishing those human assets. A similar viral process in a rat wouldn’t look anywhere near as intelligent, because rats don’t possess the same smarts as people.

The take-home lesson here is that viral patterns are stupid. They don’t have any brains, or any wits, or any sophistication. So, they can’t possibly have strategies in the sense that people do. But brainlessness doesn’t stop them from evolving clever schemes, methods of operation that appear to be intelligent strategies. How does this come about?

High-level programming

The strategy of viruses, like all parasites, is to exploit the capabilities of their hosts. Every host organism has a wealth of competencies a virus can trigger by signaling in just the right way. The parasite comes up with the right signals by hacking the host’s code with the dumbest hacking technique imaginable—trial and error. Then by using the cracked code it can accomplish something complex, something its host can do.

It may help to compare the parasite’s strategy-building to computer programming. In computer programming parlance, each host organism can be used the way a programmer uses a high-level language. The host possesses a rich store of capabilities—in this metaphor I’ll call them functions and procedures—that the host “calls” as needed. The functions and procedures are the individual elements of the host’s wisdom, accumulated during its species’ evolution.

Unfortunately, the parasite can hack the host’s functions and procedures. “The more complex the creature, the more provisions there are for other creatures to exploit,” says immunologist Irun Cohen. [18] 

Real-life computer programmers, professionals working with sophisticated programming languages, know that their code can be absurdly simple, yet effect complex behavior. The programmer just has to call the right procedures in the right way. If written from scratch, a computer program might require, for example, ten thousand lines of code. But a program that takes full advantage of the capabilities of a modern programming language might accomplish the same thing in only three or four lines.

This principle applies to the relationship between parasites and their hosts. By analogy, the host organism is the high-level language, and the virus is the three-line program. 

Here’s a real-world example of a parasite’s zombification of its host’s behavior. Daphnia magna is a little animal commonly called a “water flea.” It lives in ponds. Like most other animals, the little water flea has parasites. These will die if a predator such as a duck eats daphnia. With its life on the line, it’s in the parasite’s interest to help its host avoid being eaten. But how can the mindless parasite protect daphnia? Natural selection has solved this problem. The parasite variants that couldn’t zombify their host were “chipped away” during the parasite’s long evolutionary history.

Here's what happened. Predators are less likely to catch and eatdaphniaif it stays deeper in the pond. Swimming deeper gives both the host and its parasite passenger some protection from predators lurking near the surface. By exploiting a biochemical routine that is already a part of daphnia’s nervous system, the parasite evolved the ability to make the flea stay deeper in the water. [19] 

To be perfectly clear, the parasite knows nothing about swimming. Even if it did, it could not possibly coordinate Daphnia’s complex swimming behavior. Despite its profound ignorance, the parasite is able to “steer” the water flea into deeper water. How? Simply by “calling” a behavioral routine that already exists within its host. 

Because daphnia’s behavior is complex, the parasite’s scheme ends up looking complex too. But the mindless parasite doesn’t know anything about daphnia’s nervous system. It doesn’t even know its host lives in the water. It knows nothing about the water flea’s predators. And it has absolutely no clue why it ends up surviving. It doesn’t have to know any of that stuff. All that matters is that one of its ancestors happened to push the right button. 

Scientists have discovered that in this case the “buttons pressed” are biochemical signals that trigger the water flea to move either toward light or away from light. Daphnia had already evolved this means of regulating its behavior through internally generated biochemical agents. Through a process of variation and selection, the parasite randomly tried this and that until it came up with a winning combination—a combination that led to its survival. 

Dumb parasite, smart scheme

The point, again, is that when it seems a virus is doing something complex, all that apparent complexity is an illusion. Without exception, any viral process is itself simple. It has to be simple, because its genetic code is tiny. There isn’t enough room in that compact form for any complexity. Despite this limitation, viruses can evoke alarmingly convoluted behaviors. That happens only because the viral process has gained control of the sophisticated capabilities of its host. 

I am driven to emphasize this truth here, because things get confusing fast when we turn our attention to the complex behavior of human hosts who have been zombified, co-opted by a simple behavioral virus. 

In our zeal to make sense of our peers’ behavior, we automatically apply our extensive knowledge of human motives, their wants and needs. Under normal circumstances, we gain useful insights this way. But this natural way of understanding each other trips us up when we try to explain virally induced behavior in human terms. Why? Because behavioral viruses are not human. Now what, exactly, does “not human” mean?

Before they got out of control, these patterns were just regular habits. They were part of a larger human system that worked to satisfy typical human needs. But habits become rogues when they sever their connection to the needs of their human host. They resign, so to speak, from the mutually cooperating team of habits that serve us as individuals. 

From that point forward, it isn’t accurate to describe the behavior they provoke as human behavior. Why? Because, under the principle of natural selection, the habit now grows to meet its own needs rather than the needs of its human host. The result is zombification.

When infected with a cold virus, we start sneezing. This spreads the virus. Imagine that you’re sneezing. A friend asks you, “Why do you keep sneezing? Surely you know you’re spraying virus particles all around! You’re being selfish! Don’t you care that you’re making other people sick?” Those questions imply that sneezing out viruses is something you’re doing by choice. But it isn’t. With tremendous self-control you might suppress your sneezes. But we know very well that it is the virus causing your nose to run and itch. The choice, if we can call it that, was made by the virus, not you. 

Bear in mind that the viral parasite is far too simple to coordinate all the bodily systems involved in a sneeze—the mucus production, the explosive exhalation of breath, directed strategically through the nasal passages. The virus is exploiting a human capability that was already there—the evolved capacity to clear nasal passages in this way. 

Applying our knowledge of human motives to explain virally induced sneezing will only confuse us. When we sneeze, it’s evidence that the cold virus has zombified us. It is making us do something we would not ourselves choose to do. It has taken control, subverting our natural behavior to reproduce itself. 

How is it that the virus has the technical know-how to make us sneeze? It doesn’t have any know-how! It’s too stupid to know anything. It presses buttons that make our noses itchy and runny simply because its viral ancestors survived when they happened to press those buttons. All the varieties that didn’t press that button were “chipped away,” leaving only those that did. The button pressing scheme is a product of the virus’s evolution by natural selection.

The cold virus is not human, and it doesn’t have human motives. Rather, it exploits natural human tendencies and capabilities to reproduce itself. If it could want anything (which it can’t), it would want to send its virion seeds out to its next host. Any viral pattern has a stake in perpetuating itself. That is its entire reason for being, whether the virus is biological or behavioral. 

Knowing that addictions are virus-like forms, we can understand why trying to explain addicts’ behavior in terms of human motives is utterly pointless. Our well-meaning speculations only distract us from a truth that’s both incredibly simple and incredibly powerful: an addiction is a parasitic behavioral pattern perpetuating itself at our expense. The root cause of the addict’s complex behavior is viral zombification.

Whatever works

A behavioral virus is a rogue agent. Its development isn’t bound by any vested interest in the wellbeing of its host. Only one thing fetters it—the principle of natural selection itself. Anything that helps the pattern get itself repeated is fair game, anything at all. 

The process of incubation ensures that, like a biological virus, a parasitic habit will eventually push every button that it can push within its human host. That includes the individual’s neurochemistry, her inherited vulnerabilities, her instinctual drives, her motivational system, her hopes and dreams, and the quirks of our human system of habit development. Anything goes. 

With a virus-like behavior—for example a process addiction such as an addiction to pornography—human needs, human motives, human feelings, are the most compelling of the resources a viral pattern can tap. These human characteristics are the buttons the parasitic habit can press most readily. When the disease is purely behavioral, our instinctive needs, our feelings, and our instinctive drives are the most easily exploitable of the human capabilities available to the viral pattern. 

And here's where things can get super confusing. Behavioral viruses can exploit more than “psychological” factors. They can incorporate anything that works. When an addictive pattern exploits our normal reaction to chemical substances, we label it “a drug addiction.” When the pattern takes advantage of our quirks around the consumption of food, we identify it as “an eating disorder.” When the pattern revolves around excessive use of certain social media, we might call it “a Facebook addiction.” These descriptive labels are not technically wrong. But they are entirely misleading, simply because they fail to address the heart of the problem. 

Trying to explain a compulsive, repetitive behavior by pointing a finger at its most prominent feature—at a chemical substance, or an atypical way of dealing with food—amounts to focusing on a single tree and missing the forest. Each of these different addictive patterns is a tree in a larger forest. Their differing appearance and modes of action can deceive us into thinking they are different things. Despite the mismatch in their specific elements, though, each operates according to the same general principle. Grasping that general principle is what will bring the gift of clarity.

Explaining drug addiction in terms of physiological habituation to a chemical seems to make sense—as long as we restrict our attention only to chemical addictions. That’s because changes in the brain and chemical habituation are indeed prominent elements in the repeating pattern of a substance addiction. 

But talking about “habituation to a substance” or “brain changes” doesn’t work when we expand our attentional focus to purely behavioral addictions, say, or to persistent patterns of corporate malfeasance. The same general process is in operation behind each of these addictive patterns, despite differences in the specific mechanisms behind the individual patterns. Focusing on superficial specifics is a mistake. The reason we make this mistake is important: our current psychology does not provide the concepts that would support a broader understanding. 

The proximate chicken

There’s a familiar joke most people hear as children. It poses a question: 

Question: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” 
 The answer: “To get to the other side.”

 The answer is clearly true. Yet it likely struck us as funny—at least it did the first time we heard it. Why? Because the question leads us to expect some deep motive. The obvious but uninformative answer violates that expectation. 

Of course the chicken wanted to get to the other side. The superficial answer is correct. But it doesn’t touch the mystery created by the question. We could easily restate the question using those very words. All right, then. “Why did the chicken want to get to the other side?” 

Philosophers distinguish between “proximate” and “ultimate” causes. The dictionary definition of the word proximate is “nearest in order, time, or place.” The word ultimate means “existing as an underlying reality, when all other things are disregarded.” So proximate causes are the things immediately making something happen. 

Proximate causes are at one level a legitimate explanation. But if we restrict our attention to the proximate, we will never identify the higher-level, ultimate cause—the “real” or underlying reason something happens. [20] If we truly want to understand why the chicken crossed the road, we won’t feel satisfied until we get the ultimate explanation, the deeper answer.

I will pose a couple more chicken-and-road type questions. But these are no joke. Here’s the first one: “Why does the alcoholic drink?” Posing this question, we expect to hear an ultimate cause. But the answers we get never go beyond proximate causes. They’re all the equivalent of “to get to the other side.” They never touch the genuine mystery of alcoholism. 

Why does the alcoholic drink? One obvious answer is “To get drunk.” Another is “personal irresponsibility.” These things are no doubt true. So, they are perfectly good proximate explanations. But they are not deeply satisfying. They are answers that leave us in the dark. 

We could reword the question and ask it again. Ok. So why does the alcoholic want to get drunk? What could possibly be the source of personal irresponsibility so profound that it destroys the drinker and everyone he loves? That’s what we really want to know. Suppose we say that he continues to drink because he’s “in denial?” Ok, then. Why is he mired in denial? We want an ultimate explanation.

One popular contemporary accounting is that he drinks because “alcohol changed his brain.” No doubt there’s truth in this. Using modern brain scanning techniques, we can create images of actual changes accompanying an alcohol addiction. Further, some of those changes are in precisely the brain areas associated with our internal reward mechanisms. So the answer seems to make sense. The icing on the cake is that the brain changes explanation exudes a “sciencey” cachet—involving, as it does, cutting-edge imaging technology and all. 

But when we look closer, we find that the “changes-your-brain” idea, like the others, is no more than a proximate explanation. Yes, we see brain changes with alcoholism. But we see almost identical brain changes with behavioral addictions, the so-called process addictions. These patterns—things like internet and gambling addiction—don’t involve any chemical exposure. And why do all these patterns involve the same denial and distortion, whether or not there are substances? The brain changes explanation raises more questions than it answers.

Here’s another chicken-and-road question: “Why does the anorectic starve herself?” A proximate answer is “she thinks she’s fat.” Well, Ok. That is what she told us. But this explanation is useless. It doesn’t touch the central issue. Why does she concern herself with “being fat” when it’s clear she isn’t fat at all, and when any further starvation will kill her? Again, the ultimate explanation must account for her denial and distortion, the most critical elements of the disorder. A genuine answer simply must address these things, or it won’t be satisfying.

The quest for a deeper explanation of alcoholism long ago led us to describe it as a “disease.” Attaching the disease label to alcoholism is a step in the right direction, because it acknowledges the involuntary nature of the drinking. But to call it a disease isn’t a full answer either. The label does not tell us what kind of disease it is. Again, a real accounting must explain the accompanying denial, the weird distortion of perception at the center of the disorder. 

With the bad news out of the way, it’s time to mention the good. An answer using the idea of behavioral parasitism does explain why the alcoholic drinks, and why the anorectic starves herself. Further, it accounts for the prominence of denial in both these disorders. 

We can express this answer in same terms scientists have worked out to explain biological disease. Parasitic zombification invariably causes hosts to behave in ways that are good for the parasite, but bad for the host. Always, part of parasite strategy is to stymie the host’s immune defenses. In order for our psychology to explain alcoholism and anorexia, we must borrow the concept of immunity from biology. We will deal with that concept in a later chapter.

Orders of explanation

Parasitic habits, simple virus-like patterns in our behavior, replicate themselves by co-opting our human wants and needs. Our interpretation of “bad behavior” changes when we accept that we are subject to the influence of such virus-like patterns. Adopting this viewpoint, we can see that our familiar human motivations—the things we would ordinarily use as ultimate explanations—are in reality just proximate causes, pressable buttons. Taking advantage of these buttons, the viral pattern plops itself down into the driver’s seat. The button-pressing virus becomes the ultimate cause of the problem behavior. Once we fully understand that we are dealing with a virus-like disease, we realize all that “sick” behavior is involuntary. 

Much of the confusion about addictive behavior comes from a built-in contradiction. Once an addiction is in full flower, the addict’s behavior is largely involuntary. Voluntary-versus-involuntary is the criterion we would normally use to decide whether something is evidence of a disease. But … how can addiction be a disease when the addict seems to be choosing what he or she does? It’s bewildering. 

We can use the virus metaphor to resolve this confusion. How? An ultimate explanation in terms of viral process does not replace proximate human causes; instead, it imposes a higher order of explanation upon those proximate human causes. 

Enjoying a buzz, lightening up on life, relieving tension, feeling better in the moment—these are the ordinary human motives for drinking. For those of us who are not alcoholics, these human drives are quite enough to explain why and how we drink. So as long as we’re talking only about non-alcoholic drinkers, we can consider the human need to seek these forms of fulfillment the ultimate explanation for their drinking.

But things become more complicated when drinking turns into alcoholism. To account for all the sordid details of the alcoholic pattern—the destruction, the creation of misery, the denial and illogical thinking—then we must superimpose another layer of explanation upon the human one. Yes, the alcoholic drinks, just as the rest of us do. Yes, she drinks because it temporarily makes her feel better, just like the rest of us. That human motivation—the drive to feel better—remains the proximate cause. But we can no longer consider it the ultimate cause of her behavior. 

As the drinker moves into addiction, we demote yearnings for diversion or relief to the status of “pressable buttons.” Now these human drives are merely things exploited by the viral pattern, elements of the viral strategy for self-perpetuation. The virus exploits those very human motives as part of its mindlessly evolved scheme for keeping itself going. In keeping with the terminology used with biological viruses, we could say that the alcoholic virus transforms the drinker from a “normal person” into a “viro-person.” 

We can and should continue to recognize the power of normal human motivators and functions. But we can in addition recognize that human drives and capabilities can be demoted to specific mechanisms—the pressable buttons—that a parasitic process exploits as a means of self-perpetuation. With alcoholism, it is useful to construe the drives, feelings, behaviors, and cognitions of those caught up in the addictive pattern as elements of a larger viral process, the ultimate explanation.

Body and behavior

Conceiving of virus-like parasitic habits strains the imagination, because these parasitic forms have no tangible body of their own. There’s nothing physical there to see or touch. It’s hard to lend credibility to a malignancy in our behavior, a parasite literally without a body of its own. But we can work around this difficulty by thinking more precisely about the roles of body and behavior in natural selection.

When people picture living things, they usually picture physical forms—tangible things such as trees, animals, or virion particles. These forms are endlessly fascinating, and they are often beautiful. But if we want to understand evolution, we can’t afford to focus exclusively on bodies. The physical form of each living thing is best viewed as a medium, a platform that supports its vital activity. 

Parasitic lifeforms commandeer the vital activity of their host’s body. Natural selection pushes parasites of any kind to “zombify” their hosts, both bodily and behaviorally, to the degree possible. Parasites end up with the power to strong-arm their hosts into supporting them, a power that lies in controlling their host’s behavior. 

Activity is the wellspring of life. After all, we can’t say a body is alive unless it shows activity. The distinction between “the quick and the dead” [21] is the measure of life. When a body loses its activity, we judge it to be dead. It follows that, where life is concerned, what really matters is not the body per se, but the body’s activity. It is the animal’s function, its behavior, that confers its fitness, and so guides its development. To truly understand a lifeform’s evolution, then, we should focus on its behavior. 

Each living thing has a genotype (its inherited genes) and a phenotype (its mature form). The phenotype includes both the body and the behavior. So, a parasite’s behavior is one part of the parasite phenotype. Now here’s where things get tricky. A parasite’s behavior comes only partly from the parasite itself. The rest of the parasite’s behavior comes from the host. With some species of parasite, the behavior through which it perpetuates itself might be about 50% its own, and 50% the host’s. That’s how parasites work. They zombify the host, manipulating it into acting on their behalf. So, the parasite’s phenotype includes the behavior it provokes in its host, in addition to its own. Mind-boggling.

The ratio of parasite activity to host activity depends on the type of parasite. A truly extreme example is the tiny virus. That little form can do almost nothing on its own. It is characteristic of viruses that almost all the viral activity comes from the host. The virus evokes behavior that gets it through its life cycle, but virtually none of that behavior is its own. To understand what a virus is and does, we must focus our attention on the behavior of the host/parasite combo, regardless of which body is actually doing the behaving! That’s confusing.

Almost all the virus’s activity—we’ll say 99.9%—is host behavior. That extremely unbalanced ratio invites an important question. Why not 100%? Can we imagine a kind of parasite where not just 99.9%, but every single bit of the activity comes from the host? Such a parasite wouldn’t need its own physical form at all! It would use the host’s behavior exclusively. This kind of parasite would be just a self-sustaining pattern in the host’s behavior—a fully behavioral parasite. 

Medium and message

Most of us can easily accept that natural selection crafts animal bodies. But it is the animal’s activity that guides its evolution, not its body. Why, then, does evolution change the shape of animal bodies? Well, the physical form is the only medium that natural selection’s got to work with. The body is the medium; the activity is the message. But that message can’t pass from generation to generation without a body that behaves. In this way of understanding, the bodily form is just a proxy for the activity that is selected by evolution. Life passes that proxy along through the medium of DNA.

Variation and selection shapes the evolution of individual habits just as surely as it shapes species. But with habits the shaping happens a little differently. In the cyclical learning process, passing a pattern of activity doesn’t require the medium of a physical body. Where the evolution of habits is concerned, the activity itself is the medium.

In the biological realm, transmission of activity patterns is accomplished through a physical form. A parasite consisting 100% of host behavior would be impossible within the biological realm. But within the realm of behavior, the domain of psychology, “no-body” behavioral patterns routinely propagate without need of a medium other than that of the behaving animal itself. 

Any higher animal [22] can re-program its behavior “on the fly” through the formation of habits. That gives it amazing flexibility, which can have great adaptive value. But that very flexibility opens it to risk. Should an individual habit escape its natural controls, it can develop into a parasitic form. Then it can reproduce itself over and over within the activity of its unfortunate host, with destructive effect. And we don’t have to look far to discover such parasitic patterns within the behavior of individual animals.

Our current psychology doesn’t support the concept of “rogue habits.” But it should. The evidence says this kind of rogue isn’t just idle speculation. It’s not just a theoretical possibility in higher animals; it’s a reality. And it’s common. Rogues manifest themselves as stereotypic, repetitive, nonsensical behaviors that prove highly resistant to control. Some of those behaviors evolve to become fully parasitic. 

Schemes for continuation

Here are some illustrations of the convoluted and self-destructive behaviors that frequently develop during the incubation of a viral process, behaviors we can’t ultimately explain in terms of ordinary human motives. 

During the long process of incubation, the separate behavioral elements of anorexia are co-adapted into a unified whole. Incubation progressively changes the elements of the habit so the elements work with each other. As in biological evolution, repeated variation and selection produces a system with integrated components. 

During incubation the individual will express many variants of anorectic behavior, one after the other. As discussed, evolution chips away variants of a pathological process that threaten the pattern, eliminating them simply because they do not promote its repetition. Without repetition, those elements fade from the incubating habit. The variants that do persist are those that in some way promote repetition. 

Clearly, for the anorectic to admit to others the extent and details of her anorectic behavior would not be in the pattern’s interest. That kind of honesty would hinder its repetition. It should not surprise us, then, that over time honesty fades out of the repeating viral pattern. Despite high morality, the behavior of the anorectic progressively takes on a deceitful, covert quality—simply because deceit supports the continuation of the pattern. 

Further, “concerned” and “helpful” people are not helpful to the anorectic pattern, because they are a significant threat to its continuation. So, the pattern develops behaviors that discourage those constructive relationships. The anorectic gradually adopts ways that alienate those well-meaning people. In time the variants of the anorectic pattern shift toward irritating, dishonest, sneakily counterproductive behaviors, the very qualities clinicians complain about most bitterly. The dishonesty and subterfuge dishearten helpers. That’s a win for the anorectic pattern, and a loss for the pattern’s host.

The anorectic is herself confused about what she’s doing. If she were clear-headed, and fully appreciated the effect of her actions, the viral pattern could not maintain its grip on her behavior. This means that clear thinking is a threat as well. So clear-headed, logical reasoning also drops out of the mix. Denial, distortion, and confusion remain, being lubricants that keep the machine rolling. In sum, separate elements of the pattern evolve into a complex, a coordinated pattern whose elements support each other in ensuring the pattern’s continuation.

The same sort of zombification happens with alcoholism. During incubation of the disorder, the budding alcoholic explores hundreds of variants of alcoholic behavior. Variants favoring it persist, while those that undermine the pattern gradually drop out. Again, variation and selection in action.

To illustrate, selection understandably favors the emergence of narcissism in the alcoholic. Heavy drinking is injurious, not only to the alcoholic himself, but to all members of his social system. It makes sense that awareness of the pain he is creating in people he cares about would throw a wet blanket on his drinking. In other words, sensitivity to the needs of others threatens the pattern. 

So, incubation progressively eliminates sensitivity to others’ needs. Predictably, the habit variants that persist are those that keep the alcoholic focused on his own suffering, variants with reduced awareness of the pain he is causing others. The result is a blisteringly obnoxious self-focus. The result is, in a word, narcissism.

Schemes for contagion

Most people who fall sway to a substance-based addiction will tell you they picked up the habit from someone else. The story is pretty common. Somebody they knew was using some substance, and talked about it in a positive way. So, they tried it themselves. 

There are enough shared threads in personal-use stories to suggest this: not only do viral patterns evolve means of promoting their continuation within a single individual, but they also evolve means of promoting their transmission across individuals—from one host to another. 

Typically, the first few episodes of an individual’s use are just an experiment, performed under the control of the novice user—as with our fictional alcoholic-in-training Barbara. But as use continues, the incubation process kicks in. Things change. The habit itself suggests a path toward its intensification. A novice follows that path, and ultimately ends up trapped within a compulsive addictive pattern. And in traveling that path, he or she may transmit the pattern to several others. The contagious character of the addiction is not an accident.

I have compared two kinds of viral patterns—the biological and the behavioral. In order to hop from cellular host to cellular host, biological viruses exploit chemical receptors embedded in the surface of cells. The virions latch onto specific receptors as soon as they make contact. Once attached to its entry point, the virus enters the cell, and commandeers it. Then it changes the operations of the cell to suit its own purpose, which is always the same—reproduction of the virus. This sophisticated scheme for contagion is a product of the virus’ evolution. 

How does a virus and its scheme come into being? Many virus experts believe cellular viruses originate as normal cellular components that go rogue, coming to replicate and evolve independently within the host. A normal component first becomes an independently evolving bit of genetic material called a “plasmid.” Its evolution is guided by self-interest. At first it discovers ways to reproduce itself within the cell. Then it finds ways to stay with the cell when it splits. Ultimately the plasmid may evolve the means to hop from one host cell to another. [23] The next chapter will describe this evolutionary process in more detail. 

Addicts’ personal-use stories suggest some addictions hop from human host to human host in a way that parallels the transmission of biological viruses. The voyaging viral pattern makes the jump by exploiting archetypal human drives in order to gain an initial foothold within its new host. Its ticket in, its point of entry, is always some perfectly ordinary, perfectly human drive—curiosity, adventurousness, a desire for social status, etc. 

It’s one of these human drives that provides the motivation to try something new. That normal drive is the entry point. At the time of the initial use, we can consider that typical human motive to be the ultimate cause. But as the virus incubates toward its final form, the virus itself becomes the ultimate cause. 

This fascinating topic—contagion schemes—is way too complex to cover adequately here. It could fill an entire book. Maybe it will. [24]

Summary

• No one can understand maladaptive human behavior without understanding parasites, because parasitic forms are at the root of much of it. 
• A parasite is by definition an organism that takes advantage of the capabilities of its host—all parasites, viruses included, are “button pushers.” Manipulating existing host capabilities, simple viruses can manifest complexity through the complex behavior of their hosts.
• A cellular virus is a parasite that transforms a bacterial cell into something that is no longer a bacterium at all. Theorists have assigned the virus-bacterium complex a special name—“virocell”—to remind us that its actions no longer reflect a bacterial identity. 
• A virally involved host is not the same as it was before infection. The compromised viral host acts not in its own interest, but in the virus’s interest.
• Humans too can fall under the influence of viral patterns—including behavioral viruses. When they do, humans exhibit strange, repetitive, unhealthy behaviors. 
• It may tempt us to explain these repetitive behaviors in terms of normal human motivation. But the unhealthy behavior induced by viral processes is not a product of healthy human concerns.
• Interpreted as parts of a viral process, characteristics that seem incomprehensible in human terms are easier to understand. 
• Understanding behavioral viruses requires that we focus not on who or what is doing the behaving, but on the behavior’s function in maintaining the parasite.  
• Because their interests lie entirely in their own propagation, behavioral viruses incubate schemes to persist within the individual, and schemes to foster their transmission from host to host.

[Post Episode]

Thank you for your interest in this episode, Healing Psychology Part E – Viruses. Additional information is available on the website, Whiteheadbooks dot com, where you can also find credits for the music tracks you heard.

The Healing Psychology series will continue with readings of additional chapters of the book. The title of Part F is “Viral Origins.” In Part F we’ll see if the experts can tell us where viruses come from. Their origin is important, because it helps us understand how our own habits can turn into something that’s virus-like.

Please join us!

[Music Credits]

"Angel in Flight" - Written by Tom Whitehead. Performed by: Guitar, Tom Whitehead; Drums, Angel.

------------------

[1] Ehrenreich B. Living with a Wild God: A nonbeliever's search for the truth about everything. 2014, Grand Central Publishing, 2014. Page 153.
[2] The coverage of parasites in this chapter is necessarily rather skimpy. Parasites are described in greater detail in the second book of this series, [Whitehead T. Parasite Power: How an arms race with diseases shaped our humanity, 2016(c). A Kindle Book, available from Amazon.com].
[3] Not all viruses infect cells. Strange as it may seem, some viruses infect other viruses. As a matter of convenience I will be using the terms “biological virus” and “cellular virus” interchangeably. But the example of the virally-hosted virus may help make it clear that viral patterns aren't restricted to cellular hosts.
[4] Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and an affiliated scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore says "I don't think viruses qualify as being alive… There are some characteristics of viruses that put them on the borderline [of being alive] — they have genetic material: DNA or RNA… but it's clearly not the same thing as even bacteria, in terms of that self-sustaining and self-generated action." [Geggel L. Are Viruses Alive? Online article. LiveScience Health, February 25, 2017. Available online at https://www.livescience.com/58018-are-viruses-alive.html. Accessed 10-16-19]
[5] The term “parasitic zombification” was coined by biologists who study parasites. See for example [Weinersmith K, Faulkes Z. Parasitic manipulation of hosts’ phenotype, or how to make a zombie. Integrative and Comparative Biology, 2014, 54, 2, 93–100.] The term is perhaps more colorful than it needs to be. It means only that in accordance with natural selection parasites predictably evolve ways to alter the behavior of their hosts in a way that favors their own survival and reproduction.
[6] Forterre P. The virocell concept and environmental microbiology. ISME Journal, 2013, 7, 233–236. Page 234.
[7] Forterre P, 2013. Page 233.
[8] Forterre P, 2013. Pages 233-234.
[9] Eukaryotic cells are more complex than simpler prokaryotic cells like bacteria. Multicelled animals like us are made of eukaryotic cells, which have a nucleus containing their DNA. Viruses infect both eukaryotic cells and the simpler prokaryotic cells.
[10] I’m oversimplifying here in the interest of clarity. Some viruses completely shut down the cell's normal processes. Others just start the cell producing viral copies in addition to normal cellular products. Still others insert themselves into the cell's genome and wait until later to wreak their havoc.
[11] Durzynska J, Gozedzicka-Jozefiak A. Viruses and cells intertwined since the dawn of evolution. Virology Journal, 2015, 12, 169. Page 6.
[12] Lodish H, Berk A, Zipursky SL, et al. Viruses: Structure, Function, and Uses. Section 6.3 in Molecular Cell Biology, 4th edition. New York, W. H. Freeman, 2000.
[13] Elena SF, Sanjuán R. Adaptive value of high mutation rates of RNA viruses: Separating causes from consequences. Journal of Virology, 2005, 79, 11555–11558. Page 11555.
[14] Random mutations do impose limitations on viral success. However, many viruses seem able to restrict mutations to regions that favor their success. HIV is a good example. It seems to favor mutations in areas that are used by the host immune system to recognize the virus. By frequently shifting its “disguise,” it flies below the radar of host immunity.
[15] Ridley M. Mendel’s Demon: Gene justice and the complexity of life. London, Phoenix Books, 2000. Page 88.
[16] Ridley M, 2000. Page 89.
[17] Levine AJ, 1992. Page 14.
[18] Cohen IR, 2004. Page 248.
[19] Fels D, Lee VA, Ebert D. The impact of microparasites on the vertical distribution of Daphnia magna. Archives of Hydrobiology, 2004, 161, 65-80. 
[20] Psychological theorist George A. Kelly emphasized that psychological constructs, the only means we humans have of understanding anything, can only be effectively applied to a limited range of events. He expressed this idea in his Range Corollary: "A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range of events only." [Kelly GA, 1955]
[21] This phrase, meaning “the people that are alive and the people that are not alive,” is from the Bible's New Testament.
[22] A higher animal is, in this context, one capable of complex learning.
[23] Lopez et al say “Recent experiments have shown that plasmids can spread even when they are a burden to the cell, suggesting that natural plasmids may exist as parasites.” [Lopez JG, Donia MS, Wingreen NS. Modeling the ecology of parasitic plasmids. ISME Journal, 2021, 15, 10, 2843-2852.]
[24] The planned seventh book of the series, tentatively entitled Behavioral Contagion, concerns transmission of behavioral viruses.