February 9, 2017 • 43 mins
Ever wrestle with the illogical quasi-compulsion to throw yourself off a cliff or building? Don’t worry! You’re probably not suicidal, but merely touched by the 'call of the void' or 'high place phenomenon.' In this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, Robert and Christian explore some of the more enlightening theories about this experience.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From housetop work
got Carlo. One day, the men and dogs were sitting
on the crest of a cliff which fell away straight
down to naked bed rock three feet below. John Thornton
was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A
(00:25):
thoughtless swim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of
Hands and Pete to the experiment he had in mind.
Jump Buck, He commanded, sweeping his arm out over the chasm.
The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the
extreme edge, while Hands and Pete were dragging them back
into safety. It's uncanny, Pete said, after it was over
and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. No,
(00:46):
it is splendid, and it is terrible too. Do you
know it sometimes makes me afraid? Hey, welcome to stuff
to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamp and
my name is Christian Sager. Hate rob Have you ever
been standing at the edge of like a cliff or
a building, or maybe you're waiting for a train, like
(01:07):
a subway train. You just think I should jump, Well,
it never quite manifests itself as I should jump I
find that for me, it manifests itself as what if
I did jump? Like and I it's this intense contemplation
of the choice I have in the matter, and the
(01:28):
fact that I could if I wanted to fling myself
off of this cliff, you know, fall into the Grand Canyon,
go in front of a train, or a variant of
this thing I that I encountered atop of the Empire
State Building. Have you ever been up to the top
of the Empire State Building? You know that they have
these It's it's like being in a cage match. There's
no you would have There's basically no way you could
(01:49):
throw yourself off the Empire State Building, at least not
on a whim. It would take it would take some
some some planning, and some effort. But what I did
find myself struggling with was what if I threw my
wallet over the side to the street below. That would
be horrible, And so I ended ended up wrestling with
that possibility, which is kind of like throwing a piece
(02:09):
of your life over the side. Yeah, isn't there that adage?
And I think how stuff works is even done an
article on this about like what happens when you throw
a penny over the side of the Empire State Building,
and I think there's the urban legend is that it
can kill a person. Yeah, I don't know what the
science is that I seem to recall. It doesn't quite
pan out. It's it's been a while since I've looked
(02:32):
at that one, but I still I'm not gonna go
throwing pennies over I feel like my wallet would maybe
just balk somebody in the head probably with my wallet
would probably not go through somebody. Yeah. Well. The other
one of these is uh captured in Woody Ellen's Any
Hall movie when Christopher Walkin is talking about how he
wants to swerve into traffic and at night and he's
(02:54):
looking at the other headlights coming the other way. They're
all related. Uh, And this is you out there are
probably going like this is real morbid guys, where are
you going with this? Uh? This is an actual phenomenon,
so so common that it has multiple names, and there
has been a major study done on it. Um, so
(03:16):
we're going to cover that today. It is the sudden
feeling that we want to put ourselves in a harm's way.
Examples of this often include the urge to jump off
a top building or to veer into oncoming traffic. The
French term for it is pel dou vede, which means
call of the Void, which I really like. And that's
(03:37):
how I how I came to this was there's this
pretty brutal hardcore band that I like called Call of
the Void, and I was typing it into Google the
other day and an article on this phenomenon popped up,
and I was like, I've never heard of this before.
And then I said to you, let's let's talk about this. Yeah,
I mean, I knew about it. I've had the experience,
but I feel like most people have had the experience.
(03:58):
I would I would definitely like the here from anyone
who has not had some variant of this. Now, you
mentioned that it's called often referred to as Call of
the Void, and some of our listeners might have recommended.
The reading at the top of the episode is being
from Jack London's nineteen three novel The Call of the Wild.
I like how this particular bit from that novel, certainly
(04:20):
that this is the main part of the novel that
always sticks out in my mind because it gets into
similar territory as the Call of the Void. The idea
that with a split decision, you could bring being into
un being. In this case, it's the dog and really
the but the dog also um represents much about the
central character in the Call in the Wild as well.
(04:42):
What's strange about it is it's like the ultimate form
of control when you feel like you don't have control,
right It's like this ultimate expression where you're like, oh,
like you think I don't have control over anything. The
one thing I can totally control is I could just
kill myself right now if I wanted to, which is
horrible to think about, but we're gonna get into it.
(05:03):
There's like a lot of theories as to where this
thing comes from. I don't know about you, but like
when I've experienced it, I feel it in the pit
of my stomach, like it's like a full body sensation.
It's not just like a little like thought like I
wonder if I if I jumped, you know, there's this weird, yeah,
this visceral kind of vibe from it. It's it's not
(05:25):
so much like you're having to hold yourself down, but
sometimes you do kind of I have been in places
where I feel like I kind of want to squat
down and maybe touch the ground a little bit, even
though I'm not near the edge now. One thing I
will say is that I have not felt this recently
because I find that when I am in places with
ledges or anything of that nature, I tend to be
(05:47):
there with my wife and son, and so I'm more
concerned about them falling out off, especially my son being
like just four going on five. He falls off the
stuff all the time, oh like he and he ends
up generating all of my anxiety about people falling or jumping,
And then I don't I guess I have less room
(06:08):
for myself. Sure, well, that makes sense based on the
cognitive dissonance theory that we're going to talk about today,
that that your parental authority would like override, override the
biological like brain stuff that's going on theoretically here that
causes it. There's a whole theory as to what causes
(06:29):
this seems close, But let's go through all this stuff
and kind of figure it out. Before we do that,
I wanted to add a John paulse Sartra observed this
decades ago, and he said that this emotion is unsettling
because it creates an unnerving, shaky sensation of not being
able to trust one's own instincts, which is which is
(06:50):
really interesting. Like I hadn't even thought about it as
that that like you feel like, so I just expressed
it as a thing where it's like you feel like
you're in total control. But then his aversion of it
is you're totally out of control. Well, it's kind of
the you know it's It's another reason I like the
call the wild quote here because he talks about this
thing being splendid and terrible at the same time, and
(07:10):
to to stand it's it's like standing at the edge
of the Grand Canyon, Like the Grand Canyon is an
awesome experience to see that much emptiness, but it's also
you feel vulnerable and if you're gonna go and you
want to go in style, that seems like that would
be kind of like a beautiful way to do it. Well,
a lot of people have Yeah, I mean, I'm not suicidal.
(07:33):
Don't think that audience, And we're going to talk about
suicidal thoughts and relation to this as well, because it's
a pretty serious topic. But I could there there's something,
there is a beauty to it, and um, this is
where Mr Sigmund Freud comes in and we'll we'll we'll
talk about that as well, But first let's look at
the more recent study. This is really the hinge of
(07:53):
this episode. So inven a team of scientists from Florida
State University decided to investigate it. And this was in
the Journal of Effective Disorders. And the authors of the
paper were led by a woman named Jennifer Hayes. She's
was a graduate student and she's currently faculty at Notre Dame.
UH and this was at f s us Joiner Lab.
(08:15):
And you might be going, why would anybody want to
study this? Like, where would this come from? Well, the
idea here is that it could shine light on the
whole idea of a death drive, that some suicides are
impulsive and have nothing to do with depression. UH. And
that was interesting. I hadn't really thought of that before myself,
(08:37):
but I could reading up more on Freud's death drive theory,
I guess I could see where that came from. Yeah,
I do have to say for my own part, I'm
I'm I'll entertain the possibility that that exists, but I'm
rather I'm rather doubtful that suicide is can occur or
does occur in any significant to any significant degree, completely
(09:00):
isolated from depression or willful intent. Yeah, like the idea
that someone's just like, oh I could jump off the
into the canyon and die, let's do it, bam, done,
the end the deal. Like, I can see the impulse
being a factor if there is already some underlying depression,
or if one already had some sort of a plan
(09:21):
in mind, and this is just like this is the
day that I act on it. Yeah, So you know,
I think that it's worth saying, like, uh, from my
subjective experience, like I said, I myself am not suicidal,
and I haven't. I've had what we will refer to
later as suicidal thinking, but I've never had suicidal planning.
(09:43):
And there's a major difference, right and and and this
is sort of the call of the void, the high
the high place phenomenon. Those are those are versions of
suicidal thinking. That's about as far as it's gone for me, right, Yeah, Well,
suicidal thinking. I feel like it's often tied into with
the romance suicide because we have so many stories and
you know these generally are very lopsided in their presentation
(10:05):
of suicide. Uh, the display it is this this noble
poetic thing that doomed dreamers and doomed lovers Romeo and Julia, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But I we've all been teenagers, so we've all had
moments where we're like, oh, my life is so tragic,
and you might envision this scenario. But there's to your point,
there's a difference between envisioning it, daydreaming about it, and
(10:28):
UH and thinking about what everyone will say when you're gone,
versus actually putting some sort of plan in place. But
for our listeners, I do want to establish up front,
you know, I have experience with people who were suicidal
or have committed suicide, so I am sympathetic to that,
and I don't want this episode to feel like it's callous.
(10:50):
This is connected to that, but it's a The suicidal
thinking that goes along with call of the void syndrome
seems to be a are cry from the actual act
of it UM and but we're gonna get into that
at the end of the episode. So back to this research.
They found that more than thirty percent of the people
(11:12):
they talked to said they had experienced this UH phenomenon
at least once, and the researchers refer to it in
their study as high place phenomenon, they weren't taking into
account like throwing yourself in front of a train or
driving an oncoming traffic uh. They were also curious whether
it was related to a person's history of suicidal thinking,
(11:32):
and from their findings they found that it is common
even among people who have no depression or suicidal thinking history.
So this was their methodology. They asked four and thirty
one college students whether and how often they had experienced
the urge to jump off of tall things. Then they
examined their depressive symptoms in their history of suicidal thoughts.
(11:57):
They also took a look at how sensitive these people
were to anxiety, as well as how fearful they were
of anxiety symptoms such as an elevated heartbeat and shortness
of breath. Among those who had never had suicidal thoughts,
still seventeen percent of them had experienced the urge to jump.
(12:17):
Among those who had experienced with sidal thoughts, fifties six
percent experienced it. So that's significant if it lines up.
Now we'll talk there's a little bit of methodology stuff
with this, this that I've calling the question. The researchers
were also interested specifically in the sensitivity to reactive safety
(12:38):
signals and if that corresponded to a higher likelihood of
experiencing the urge to jump. So to mark this reactivity,
they looked at levels of anxiety sensitivity, such as a
faster heartbeat. Uh. This was because previous research suggested that
high anxiety sensitivity is actually tied to a tendency for
(12:58):
us as human beings to misinterpret random, innocuous bodily sensations
as being dangerous. Yeah, we we tend to. We tend
to make that air and cognition, you know, because there
is a survival advantage in jumping to conclusions rather than
not making any conclusions. One gets you eaten by a tiger.
One just means you go about your daily life constantly
(13:20):
looking for the tiger that might eave Yeah, I mean
I've actually experienced this, I'd say in like the last
two weeks, where like I'll get up and I'll read
about current events in the news, and my heart will
start beating rapidly and I'll go, oh, this is is
there something wrong? Do I need to go see my doctor?
And I realized it's anxiety. It's it's not normal, but
I'm having a normal anxious reaction to the things that
(13:43):
I'm reading about, right, But then my thought is like, oh,
what if I have a heart attack? You know, So
this is kind of along those lines where the idea
is that we misinterpret these random bodily sensations is being dangerous. Okay.
So their studies finding was that yes, more sensitivity to
anxiety was related to the frequency of the urge to jump,
(14:07):
especially in people who had never experienced suicidal thoughts. They
also interpreted this as people without a history of suicidal
thoughts as being more sensitive to bodily cues that they
could misinterpret. So that's interesting. So if you've never experienced
suicidal thoughts, they're saying, you're more likely to interpret say
(14:27):
like your heart beating faster as as something of danger.
It's interesting. Yeah, I mean it's kind of like if
you if you've ever had an anxiety attack, if you
if you have, if you have one and they're rare
than the first time you have one, it can be
extremely alarmente. If you think, oh, oh goodness, I'm about
to die now. So the study ultimately translates as follows.
(14:50):
People with high anxiety sensitivity were more likely to have
higher chances of suicidal thoughts. Okay, that makes sense. So
if you're sensitive to the bodily reactions and you're worried
about being anxious, then you're more likely to have suicidal thoughts.
But subsequently, you were also more likely to report experiencing
(15:11):
this call of the void phenomenon. So that's interesting. Why
do we experience this though Like? Where is this coming from? Well,
let's take a quick break and we come back. We'll
dive into that very question. All right, we're back. So
one theory about this call of the void phenomenon or
(15:33):
the idea of high place phenomenon, is that there's something
going on with a temporary uncoupling of our different perceptual
systems in our brains. It's kind of like cognitive dissonance. Yeah. Yeah.
The idea, and this come up comes up all the
time on the podcast, the idea that you have two
different ideas, two different inclinations in your mind, and they
(15:54):
conflict with each other. So the classic, the easy one
to go through here, of course, is oh, I I
think homosexuality is wrong, but I have homosexual thoughts in
my head. These two do not go with one another,
um and this generates it's kind of a friction in
the mind exactly. So their theory was that when you're
standing on the edge of a skyscraper, your brain has
(16:17):
fast fear circuitry, that's what they called it. Obviously it's
not circuitry that and this may alert you of danger,
just the danger of hey, you could fall, But then
our perceptual system in our brain is slower than our
fear system, and that kicks in afterwards and it makes
you realize there's actually no danger. So to make sense
(16:39):
of the safety signal, our brain mixes this up as
cognitive dissonance and we assume we want to jump, which
is why people get confused by this. So this is interesting.
So individuals who are experiencing this are not necessarily suicidal. Instead,
it seems to reflect their sensitivity to internal cues affirming
(17:00):
their actual will to live. So that lines up with
what we're saying earlier that they're sensitive to like oh,
I'm feeling anxious or oh I'm feeling depressed or whatever.
So it makes sense that they would be more sensitive
to their uh, both their fear system and their perception system. Yeah,
I do like how the main idea here is that
you're safe, but you're still taking in the censury data
(17:22):
that says you're not safe. And I think that we
we actually get a little bit of this when we
watch a particularly terrifying video like we've all, especially within
the age of go pro. I'm sure everyone has seen
like base jumping, crazy skiing videos, stuff with great heights,
or people climbing up antennas. And you watch it and
you couldn't be more safe watching it in your you know,
(17:45):
living room, in your office, on your phone or your
personal computer. But you feel a visceral, you know, and
if it's probably empathic, but also you're taking in certain
sense data about a dangerous environment and you can't help
it feel part of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, and
I think I'm leaning towards agreeing with this theory. But
(18:08):
let's remember that this study, there's only one study on
this as far as I can tell, and it isn't conclusive. Um,
their explanation is simply theoretical and it doesn't have neurological evidence. Uh.
The methodology also has some weaknesses, so let's acknowledge those.
First of all, they only used university students, and let's
be honest, university students are not representative of humanity, right right, Yeah,
(18:31):
it tends to be a profile of a very specific
socio economic, racial division of society. Yeah. And the volunteers
themselves were confessing, well, they may have misremembered their experience
or even falsely reported it. So that doesn't mean the
studies flawed. It just means we need more research. Um.
So a proposal for this is to actually conduct an
(18:54):
experiment where scientists would have to take subjects and position
them at different high It's to test at what elevation
they begin having the thought to jump. Um. And there's
another explanation that goes along I think with what you
were saying about the watching those videos, which is that
it could simply be connected to our thrill of not
(19:16):
buckling under fear, which is a kind of cognitive dissonance. Um.
This is the same reason why we go to haunted houses, right,
both real and uh, you know, fun haunted houses. But
like think about like when you're a little kid, uh
and somebody says, let's go that house over there is haunted,
I dare you to go into it, Right, It's kind
(19:36):
of the same vibe. Uh. And then subsequently you go
to something like I don't know. Our version is another
world here in Atlanta. You go to that, you know
somebody's gonna jump out with a fake chainsaw and try
to scare you. But the thrill of overcoming that fear
is part of why you go and pay money to
do it. Yeah, I mean it feels you with endorphins.
You're you're very much living in the moment. People who
(19:57):
aren't into meditation or yoga still might go to a
haunted house or watch a scary movie, and that's that's
kind of meditative in a sense. It puts you in
the now. It's It's probably another reason why jump scares
are so successful in horror films, right, there's an addiction
to it. Yeah, And it's simple and it works, and
it ties into our basic evolutionary state to be on
(20:21):
the lookout for the tiger that jumps out of the grass. Now,
there's a no take on all of this, and it
ties in I think nicely to what you said about
the varying heights. At what height does it kick in?
For my own part, I feel like there is definitely
a difference between any call of the void that occurs
at at lower heights as opposed to like truly awesome
(20:43):
heights like Grand Canyon, cliff Edge type he total obliteration. Yeah,
total obliteration, I think is the thing because it's such,
it's such a it would be such a drastic choice. Okay,
it would be such a choice between life and and
and I don't know. I almost to say death like
puts too much of an atmospheric twist on it, but
(21:03):
more like between being an un being and I think
this is I keep thinking this is the two roads
diverge in a Yellow Woods approach. Um. So in the
Choose your Own Adventure book that is life, we encounter
plenty of forking paths, right, but many of these are
hardly choices at all. I mean, on some level, we
all choose whether they're going to go to work this
morning or find a liquor store and drink our purchase
(21:25):
in the woods behind the Yeah, I think, yeah, I
mean for most of us, a lot of people struggle
with that every morning. Well, some people realistically do. No
I'm not, I'm not being sarchotetica, but but for many
of us, it's not really a choice. Like the things
we do are the things we do. We have this
pattern and there's really this is where we get into
that idea that we're not really making choices and more
(21:47):
if at all, however, there are choices that are more
real than others, where two paths of equal weight and
possibility are presented and uh, and what is weightier than
the old to be or not to be? The choice
between being and unding that stands before us when we
stand at the edge of a great expanse. So it's
not so much that we're tempted, but that our path
(22:09):
choosing brain can't help but engage in one of its
many cognitive superpowers, cognitive superpower that we all possess and
uh and used to thrive. And this is a chronosthesia,
which is also known as mental time travel. So this
entails our ability to be aware of our past and
future and to envision multiple possible futures before us. So
(22:31):
it's the key to our survival. But it's also the
reason you might listen to NPR in the morning and
mentally time travel to the dawn of the Third World War.
So it's that anxiety, Yeah, the anxiety. Anxiety comes out
and you feel it in your body. So in that
moment in the car listening to NPR, we're forced to
wonder what what we're capable of, what we're willing to
(22:52):
lose to gain, And on some level, it's kind of
like the you know, the scene in the Old Testament
with Abraham raising that dagger up in the sky and
then above his son Isaac, and it's just a will
the hand of the angel come in time to spare him? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
looking to something beyond, which gets into that Freudian aspect. Yeah,
(23:15):
So that's another possible explanation for it. I tend to
feel like we've got some of this, definitely a part
of it. But I also think the cognitive dissonance argument
is also very valid, and it does like we've talked
before on the show about how situations of cognitive dissonance
often lend themselves well to supernatural experience. Let's not just
(23:35):
say actual supernatural occurrence, but the experience of something supernatural
to us, especially in our demon possession exorcism Matters, aism
episode that is hugely tied to cognitive dissonance. Yeah, and
when you get down to it, like the the idea
of of encountering the choice between being and unbing this
this kind of panicky pondering over to what extent you
(23:58):
have free will, old to what extent you have control
over your fate. I mean that is that's pretty supernatural
sounding to me. Yeah. Yeah, Well this is a good
opportunity for us to get into a guy who, let's
be honest, in some situations, was quasi supernatural. Uh. And
his name was Sigmund Freud. Uh. So Freud after a
(24:19):
lot of his better known principles UH connected this to well,
the phenomenon to an idea that sometimes is referred to
as a death wish, although that just calls to mind
Charles Bronson for me. But it is referred to as
the death drive, articulated in his nineteen essay Beyond the
(24:42):
Pleasure Principle, and this describes a drive in all of
us towards self destruction and a return to the inorganic. Now,
I used a paper by Joanne Faulkner on the subject
to sort of see unpas package this. Now. She argues
(25:03):
that the death drive is when Freud departs from scientific
methodology entirely, and it articulates what he thought of as
higher functions in the psyche that weren't necessarily empirical. Okay,
So this is why I say, like we're getting into
supernatural territory here. Freud thought this was beyond science. Um,
(25:25):
it's highly speculative and it's not grounded in scientific perspective.
But Freud's idea was that the death drive circumvented our
pleasure in an effort to undo a person as an
organic whole, and so as such it gave us both
pleasure and discomfort. I can sort of see where he's
coming from here based on what we were previously talking
(25:47):
about with like, I don't know, scares right, Like it's
both pleasurable and uncomfortable. But his idea, of course, being Freud,
there has to be this model framework to that everything
fits within, and it was that the death drive was
the opposite of what he called the life drive or
the libido. And while the libido attaches itself to others
(26:10):
and creates ties of affection, the death drive destroys relationships
and strives for disintegration. So if the libido manifests insects,
the death drive manifests in aggression, and if this is
directed inward, it could result in suicide. But here's the thing.
Does the death drive lead to what we today understand
(26:32):
as depression? Right? Like Freud didn't really have a grasp
on that the way we do now. It's possible if
it's directed inward, I guess. But in fact, some Eastern
philosophy indicates that self centered acts maybe a form of
this kind of self destruction, That selfishness itself isolates us
(26:53):
from others, leads us to not having support. So maybe
there's a little bit of a connection between depression and
death drive. I've I don't know. I'm not on board
with this. I see how it could sort of make
sense at the time, and it's connected to thoughts that
we're having. But huh, what is interesting you mentioned the
Eastern philosophies. It is interesting to think of self destruction
(27:16):
perhaps is it's not merely well, let's say, to to
take self destruction and think of it in terms of
of of the of of the wheel of sam Sara
and the different states and the idea that you know,
you're reincarnated into two upper and lower forms. Yeah, one
of the realms is that of the hungry ghosts, where
one is just you know, constantly grasping for something and
(27:37):
and and unable to to fill yourself with it. And
and there's another realm, which is more of the hell room.
And this is where I feel like things really line
up with this idea of death drive just this, you know, rageful, uh,
you know, assault on the things that anger you. I
can give you like a personal version of this that
I experience. And this might be a little bit t
(27:57):
m I, but um I often I'm compelled by the
urge to just go be somewhere in complete isolation. Like
I think when I when I have this urge, it's like, oh,
I like a like a rundown motel in the middle
of nowhere, off of a highway somewhere, right, and I'll
(28:18):
just sitting there for a week. Like there's something about
that that's just very compelling to me. And I don't
want to destroy myself. I don't want to commit suicide,
but there's something about it that that draws me there. Right.
And I think based on what you're talking about here,
so there's a similar idea here, right, Like if you
(28:39):
believe in reincarnation and you think yourself, well, if I die,
I'm gonna be reincarnated, possibly as a lower life form. Right,
there's something kind of zen about that, Right, There's something
kind of relaxing about the idea of like I'll come
back as a toad. Let's just live life as a toad,
and I won't have as many concerns to bear. It's true, yeah, now,
(29:01):
but I like this idea that you brought up here too,
because it also brings to mind like what each of
us are. So we're certainly we're we're an organism that's
that's alive. We're also an organism that's is generally moving
in various uh, social spheres. And you have all of
these kind of like invisible spider webs of social obligation
all around us. And so to just to walk away
(29:23):
from all of that for say a week and go
to this cabin in the woods, you are not necessarily
destroying yourself, but you might be doing damage to these
various social spider webs that are that have bound you
up totally. And I can see where it would be
at once liberating to walk away from all of those,
uh and then but then at the same time many
(29:45):
would argue, well, that is self destructive. You were doing
damage to these social structures that had helped maintain you. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
and that's compelling to write. The pop culture example of
this that drew me in the most and my wife
immediately recognized it when we saw this, and she's like,
you love this, don't you was And spoilers for this
(30:07):
TV show if you don't want to, you might learn
something you don't want to know about Breaking Bad here.
But in Breaking Bad, there's a point where the main
character it goes in hiding to New Hampshire for a
year and he just lives in a small cottage with
nothing but like, you know, canned food and newspapers for
(30:30):
a year and he just sits there and thinks on
what he's done and sleeps and eats and he just
is and he's entrapped by snow when we find him.
And I saw it and I was just like, oh god,
that that seems like the best vacation ever to me,
but at the cost of all of his social relationships,
(30:50):
which is sort of the point in the show. Uh.
You know, this reminds me a lot of a Warren
Zevon song. That's when I when I have this feeling,
I'll play this song and listen to his up splendid isolation.
It's great because the lyrics are basically rolling through these
three different through or four different scenarios that he is
craving like I want to live on the Upper east
(31:11):
Side and never go down in the street, you know,
put tinfoil up on the window. I want to live
in the desert like Georgia O'Keefe. You know these kind
of scenarios where um, we're we're Laren is talking about
just walking away from everything and just uh encapsulating himself
in uh in in in total isolation and and ultimately
(31:31):
kind of self destructive self centeredness, because he ends up
like making comparisons to UH to Neverland Ranch interesting, you know,
locking yourself up in your own private disney sort of thing.
While I never put tinfoil on my window, but in
my twenties I have to admit, Uh, I took cardboard
(31:52):
and nailed it up over all the windows in my
bedroom just because like I wanted complete and utter darkness
in there. Did you have a black light poster? No? No,
I didn't missed opportunity mushroom wizards. Well, back to this
freud thing, I think it reeks of the subjective. It's
(32:14):
a little bit of magical thinking, which is fun, but
most people in this realm, in this discipline, think of
it as being eccentric. Regardless it does apply to depression.
If you understand that there's an innate voice that wishes
for death and destruction, well that's that's helpful, right at
least in therapy you can help separate that and distance
(32:37):
yourself from those thoughts, and that takes away their power
and allows you to challenge them and minimize them and
disregard them. So there's something to that. People who have
just like outright dismiss Freud. I'm sort of in the middle, like,
I don't buy it a hundred percent of the time,
but I do think that there's some value and that
he helped the profession sort of edge along slow. Yeah.
(33:00):
I mean I always come back to my my lens analogy,
where what I would I want to walk around with
with the Freud lens in place all the time, with
my Freud goggles on all the time. No, I would not,
But I do find it is helpful in varying scenarios
to pull the the Freud lens down over my own
vision of my own worldview and think, oh, well, how
(33:22):
might this apply to the current scenario, What does what
how does Freud illuminate what's going on here? Well, why
don't we take a quick break and when we come back,
we're going to delve into some actual statistics about suicidal
thinking that may help us unravel this call of the
void phenomenon a little more. All Right, we're back. So
(33:48):
when mental health professionals refer to these call of the
void moments, they usually call it suicidal ideation. But that
term seems broad for our p is here today, So
let's let's try to separate out what the difference might be. Okay,
In twleven, the CDC conducted a really big study examining
(34:09):
statistics about suicide, suicidal thinking, uh and um, suicidal preparation,
and they found that three point seven percent of adults
in the United States had had suicidal thoughts in just
the last year. Now, let's put that into perspective. That's
eight point three million people. That's a lot of people.
(34:32):
Other studies have placed this even higher, saying that it's
actually around eight to ten percent of the population. Now
let's look at the previous study on the high place phenomenon.
That's not even close to the thirty to fifty percent
of people who reported that they had experienced that phenomenon. Right,
So it seems like what we think of as suicidal
(34:55):
ideation and and high place phenomenon or call of the void,
those are different. It's is like suggests that there's there's
some kind of different thought process going on there. Yeah.
And of course with all this, it depends on exactly
how you're phrasing the question and how the individual on
the other end views suicidal thoughts, uh, et cetera. I mean,
(35:16):
because the big thing is like, what does that individual's
culture say about suicide? Now, even there there's this is
the kind of thing that we would have to bust
out in a longer episode, but even within the United
States that you're going to have varying subsets of people
that are going to have different ideas about suicide. Yeah,
and that actually plays in these statistics as well. Uh.
(35:37):
In the c d C report, they actually summarize the
data on ninety two thousand, two hundred and sixty four respondents.
But this establishes a difference between having suicidal thoughts and
actually making plans for a suicide or attempting it. Plans
and attempts are very different from just thinking about it. Okay,
(35:59):
the estimate it's very based on a couple of things,
sociodemographic factors as well, as the region of the country
that you live in. So what you're just saying here
we go. Suicidal thoughts were higher among young adults between
the ages of eighteen to twenty nine than they were
for people over thirty. It was also significantly higher for
women in general. Non Hispanic Whites were the group with
(36:23):
the highest prevalence of suicidal thoughts, while non Hispanic Asians
were the group with the lowest suicidal thoughts. And regional factors,
this is really complicated, but they think it could be
related to indicators such as divorce rates or resources to
access like healthcare. Uh, and so the cause and effect
(36:46):
relationship here is unknown, but there's a there's a couple
of things like, for instance, adults with less than a
high school education and those who were unemployed at the
time were more likely to have these thoughts. Finally, those
in the mid West and the West were more likely
to have suicidal thoughts than those in the Northeast in
the South. Now, I don't know how to unpack that,
(37:09):
but what you presented sounds sounds close, which is that like,
various cultures have different beliefs about suicide, right and and
or like they said that there's like real world factors
like how much access they have to healthcare or or
or do they have a job, things like that. So
there's limitations to this accounting though that we should note
(37:30):
as well. For instance, previous studies indicate that adults, when
they're talking about suicidal thoughts, they under report, especially when
they're talking about when they were adolescents. So if they're
adults now and they're saying, well, when I was an adolescent,
this is you know, this is how often I experience
that they're they they're known to under report. That makes
(37:50):
sense to me. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you're a
different person when you're adult when you're an adolescent, so
you're really kind of teasing apart the thoughts and motivations
of of a different you entire. So I can see
where there might be a tendency to say, oh, well
that that that twenty year old me, that eighteen year
old me. You didn't know what you're talking about, not
even serious about that. And this study also didn't account
(38:12):
for a couple of populations. Uh. First of all, institutionalized populations,
which would probably have, I mean, we would assume would
have a higher rate of thinking about suicide, and it
totally cut out any kind of Native American populations. So
and that wasn't like on purpose, it was just because
they didn't have access to enough evidence. Yeah, I think
(38:33):
there is a large factor here that comes down to
is suicide an open pathway to this individual? Is it
at all socially acceptable? To what degree is it socially acceptable?
And that is going to be governed by your culture,
your history. Indeed, what what books and movies, what beats
of bits of fiction you know, you you value? These
(38:57):
are all going to help to skew this idea of
of whether or not suicide is a practical option for
an individual. Yeah, but very different from the idea of
standing on a ledge and looking and just kind of
getting that urge to just right. So that's why I
put these statistics in here to sort of just give
(39:18):
you like, these are very different things, and we can
see the statistical differences just between these two studies. It's
also worth remembering all of this stuff for both studies
is self reported, and that is not a reliable. Now
to to sort of pull out of the gloomier aspects
of this this topic, um, I will ask everyone to
(39:41):
to think about the call of the void you know, uh,
the situation in which the gravity of disastrous choices. You know,
it's not merely anxiety inducing or or threatening to one
sense of self control, but it is exhilarating. It's it's
it's sort of endorphin pumping high that want to chievee
from skydiving or even less dangerous smaller acts. And and
(40:03):
plus what is the true call of the void but
but a contemplation, however, unformed of oblivion, a complete emptying
of self, not merely hearing the call of the void,
but but kind of touching the void, having almost a
spiritual moment. To go back to that quote from Call
the Wild again, you know something that is at once
splendid and terrible. Yeah, And so, as we've been doing
(40:25):
in some of our episodes recently, we want to make
sure if you heard this and this like touched upon
something for you, and and you were hearing these statistics
or whatever and you thought, well, this this resonates within me,
and I'm a little concerned. There's actually a nonprofit that
we would like to throw a line out too, so
that you, in case you're feeling that way, have some support.
(40:47):
And it's the National Suicide Prevention lifeline. Uh, it's a
support line. It's seven, it's free, it's totally confidential. It's
for people who are in distress. Uh. And it helps
prevent I sees and provides resources for you and your
loved ones. So maybe it's not you, Maybe it's somebody
you know. Uh So the number for that is one
(41:09):
eight hundred two seven three eight to five five. Again,
it's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
All right, And hey, if you want to hear more
episodes of Stuff to Plow your Mind, if you want
to check out videos, blog post, you name it links
out to our social media accounts, head on over to
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's right, and
(41:32):
I want to hear from you, the audience. Have you
experienced the call of a void? Have you thought about
jumping off a tall building or the Grand Canyon or
maybe even onto a train track before, but of course
you didn't want to. You just got mixed up with
these feelings inside. That's that's basically how we all feel nowadays.
I'm just so mixed up with these feelings inside. Uh,
(41:53):
let us know. You can let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
or Instagram, or you can write us at blow the
mind at how stuff Works dot com, and it close
out here today. I'm just gonna read another quote. This
one comes from a book by Robert Graves. Number of
you may be familiar with him from his more popular
work such as I Claudius, But he also wrote a
book called Goodbye to All That, and he talks about
(42:14):
the Great Woar. He talks about mountain climbing, And this
is just a quick quote where he talks about climbing.
My worst climb was on a little wit, the most
formidable of the precipices, when at a point that needed
most concentration, a raven circled round the party in great sweeps.
I found this curiously unsettling, because one climbs only up
(42:36):
and down or sideways, and the ravens seem to be
suggesting diverse other possible dimensions of movement, tempting us to
let go our hold and join him. Well more on
(42:57):
this and pathans of other topic How Stuff Works up home.
I think many about f
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From housetop work
got Carlo. One day, the men and dogs were sitting
on the crest of a cliff which fell away straight
down to naked bed rock three feet below. John Thornton
was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A
(00:25):
thoughtless swim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of
Hands and Pete to the experiment he had in mind.
Jump Buck, He commanded, sweeping his arm out over the chasm.
The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the
extreme edge, while Hands and Pete were dragging them back
into safety. It's uncanny, Pete said, after it was over
and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. No,
(00:46):
it is splendid, and it is terrible too. Do you
know it sometimes makes me afraid? Hey, welcome to stuff
to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamp and
my name is Christian Sager. Hate rob Have you ever
been standing at the edge of like a cliff or
a building, or maybe you're waiting for a train, like
(01:07):
a subway train. You just think I should jump, Well,
it never quite manifests itself as I should jump I
find that for me, it manifests itself as what if
I did jump? Like and I it's this intense contemplation
of the choice I have in the matter, and the
(01:28):
fact that I could if I wanted to fling myself
off of this cliff, you know, fall into the Grand Canyon,
go in front of a train, or a variant of
this thing I that I encountered atop of the Empire
State Building. Have you ever been up to the top
of the Empire State Building? You know that they have
these It's it's like being in a cage match. There's
no you would have There's basically no way you could
(01:49):
throw yourself off the Empire State Building, at least not
on a whim. It would take it would take some
some some planning, and some effort. But what I did
find myself struggling with was what if I threw my
wallet over the side to the street below. That would
be horrible, And so I ended ended up wrestling with
that possibility, which is kind of like throwing a piece
(02:09):
of your life over the side. Yeah, isn't there that adage?
And I think how stuff works is even done an
article on this about like what happens when you throw
a penny over the side of the Empire State Building,
and I think there's the urban legend is that it
can kill a person. Yeah, I don't know what the
science is that I seem to recall. It doesn't quite
pan out. It's it's been a while since I've looked
(02:32):
at that one, but I still I'm not gonna go
throwing pennies over I feel like my wallet would maybe
just balk somebody in the head probably with my wallet
would probably not go through somebody. Yeah. Well. The other
one of these is uh captured in Woody Ellen's Any
Hall movie when Christopher Walkin is talking about how he
wants to swerve into traffic and at night and he's
(02:54):
looking at the other headlights coming the other way. They're
all related. Uh, And this is you out there are
probably going like this is real morbid guys, where are
you going with this? Uh? This is an actual phenomenon,
so so common that it has multiple names, and there
has been a major study done on it. Um, so
(03:16):
we're going to cover that today. It is the sudden
feeling that we want to put ourselves in a harm's way.
Examples of this often include the urge to jump off
a top building or to veer into oncoming traffic. The
French term for it is pel dou vede, which means
call of the Void, which I really like. And that's
(03:37):
how I how I came to this was there's this
pretty brutal hardcore band that I like called Call of
the Void, and I was typing it into Google the
other day and an article on this phenomenon popped up,
and I was like, I've never heard of this before.
And then I said to you, let's let's talk about this. Yeah,
I mean, I knew about it. I've had the experience,
but I feel like most people have had the experience.
(03:58):
I would I would definitely like the here from anyone
who has not had some variant of this. Now, you
mentioned that it's called often referred to as Call of
the Void, and some of our listeners might have recommended.
The reading at the top of the episode is being
from Jack London's nineteen three novel The Call of the Wild.
I like how this particular bit from that novel, certainly
(04:20):
that this is the main part of the novel that
always sticks out in my mind because it gets into
similar territory as the Call of the Void. The idea
that with a split decision, you could bring being into
un being. In this case, it's the dog and really
the but the dog also um represents much about the
central character in the Call in the Wild as well.
(04:42):
What's strange about it is it's like the ultimate form
of control when you feel like you don't have control,
right It's like this ultimate expression where you're like, oh,
like you think I don't have control over anything. The
one thing I can totally control is I could just
kill myself right now if I wanted to, which is
horrible to think about, but we're gonna get into it.
(05:03):
There's like a lot of theories as to where this
thing comes from. I don't know about you, but like
when I've experienced it, I feel it in the pit
of my stomach, like it's like a full body sensation.
It's not just like a little like thought like I
wonder if I if I jumped, you know, there's this weird, yeah,
this visceral kind of vibe from it. It's it's not
(05:25):
so much like you're having to hold yourself down, but
sometimes you do kind of I have been in places
where I feel like I kind of want to squat
down and maybe touch the ground a little bit, even
though I'm not near the edge now. One thing I
will say is that I have not felt this recently
because I find that when I am in places with
ledges or anything of that nature, I tend to be
(05:47):
there with my wife and son, and so I'm more
concerned about them falling out off, especially my son being
like just four going on five. He falls off the
stuff all the time, oh like he and he ends
up generating all of my anxiety about people falling or jumping,
And then I don't I guess I have less room
(06:08):
for myself. Sure, well, that makes sense based on the
cognitive dissonance theory that we're going to talk about today,
that that your parental authority would like override, override the
biological like brain stuff that's going on theoretically here that
causes it. There's a whole theory as to what causes
(06:29):
this seems close, But let's go through all this stuff
and kind of figure it out. Before we do that,
I wanted to add a John paulse Sartra observed this
decades ago, and he said that this emotion is unsettling
because it creates an unnerving, shaky sensation of not being
able to trust one's own instincts, which is which is
(06:50):
really interesting. Like I hadn't even thought about it as
that that like you feel like, so I just expressed
it as a thing where it's like you feel like
you're in total control. But then his aversion of it
is you're totally out of control. Well, it's kind of
the you know it's It's another reason I like the
call the wild quote here because he talks about this
thing being splendid and terrible at the same time, and
(07:10):
to to stand it's it's like standing at the edge
of the Grand Canyon, Like the Grand Canyon is an
awesome experience to see that much emptiness, but it's also
you feel vulnerable and if you're gonna go and you
want to go in style, that seems like that would
be kind of like a beautiful way to do it. Well,
a lot of people have Yeah, I mean, I'm not suicidal.
(07:33):
Don't think that audience, And we're going to talk about
suicidal thoughts and relation to this as well, because it's
a pretty serious topic. But I could there there's something,
there is a beauty to it, and um, this is
where Mr Sigmund Freud comes in and we'll we'll we'll
talk about that as well, But first let's look at
the more recent study. This is really the hinge of
(07:53):
this episode. So inven a team of scientists from Florida
State University decided to investigate it. And this was in
the Journal of Effective Disorders. And the authors of the
paper were led by a woman named Jennifer Hayes. She's
was a graduate student and she's currently faculty at Notre Dame.
UH and this was at f s us Joiner Lab.
(08:15):
And you might be going, why would anybody want to
study this? Like, where would this come from? Well, the
idea here is that it could shine light on the
whole idea of a death drive, that some suicides are
impulsive and have nothing to do with depression. UH. And
that was interesting. I hadn't really thought of that before myself,
(08:37):
but I could reading up more on Freud's death drive theory,
I guess I could see where that came from. Yeah,
I do have to say for my own part, I'm
I'm I'll entertain the possibility that that exists, but I'm
rather I'm rather doubtful that suicide is can occur or
does occur in any significant to any significant degree, completely
(09:00):
isolated from depression or willful intent. Yeah, like the idea
that someone's just like, oh I could jump off the
into the canyon and die, let's do it, bam, done,
the end the deal. Like, I can see the impulse
being a factor if there is already some underlying depression,
or if one already had some sort of a plan
(09:21):
in mind, and this is just like this is the
day that I act on it. Yeah, So you know,
I think that it's worth saying, like, uh, from my
subjective experience, like I said, I myself am not suicidal,
and I haven't. I've had what we will refer to
later as suicidal thinking, but I've never had suicidal planning.
(09:43):
And there's a major difference, right and and and this
is sort of the call of the void, the high
the high place phenomenon. Those are those are versions of
suicidal thinking. That's about as far as it's gone for me, right, Yeah, Well,
suicidal thinking. I feel like it's often tied into with
the romance suicide because we have so many stories and
you know these generally are very lopsided in their presentation
(10:05):
of suicide. Uh, the display it is this this noble
poetic thing that doomed dreamers and doomed lovers Romeo and Julia, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
But I we've all been teenagers, so we've all had
moments where we're like, oh, my life is so tragic,
and you might envision this scenario. But there's to your point,
there's a difference between envisioning it, daydreaming about it, and
(10:28):
UH and thinking about what everyone will say when you're gone,
versus actually putting some sort of plan in place. But
for our listeners, I do want to establish up front,
you know, I have experience with people who were suicidal
or have committed suicide, so I am sympathetic to that,
and I don't want this episode to feel like it's callous.
(10:50):
This is connected to that, but it's a The suicidal
thinking that goes along with call of the void syndrome
seems to be a are cry from the actual act
of it UM and but we're gonna get into that
at the end of the episode. So back to this research.
They found that more than thirty percent of the people
(11:12):
they talked to said they had experienced this UH phenomenon
at least once, and the researchers refer to it in
their study as high place phenomenon, they weren't taking into
account like throwing yourself in front of a train or
driving an oncoming traffic uh. They were also curious whether
it was related to a person's history of suicidal thinking,
(11:32):
and from their findings they found that it is common
even among people who have no depression or suicidal thinking history.
So this was their methodology. They asked four and thirty
one college students whether and how often they had experienced
the urge to jump off of tall things. Then they
examined their depressive symptoms in their history of suicidal thoughts.
(11:57):
They also took a look at how sensitive these people
were to anxiety, as well as how fearful they were
of anxiety symptoms such as an elevated heartbeat and shortness
of breath. Among those who had never had suicidal thoughts,
still seventeen percent of them had experienced the urge to jump.
(12:17):
Among those who had experienced with sidal thoughts, fifties six
percent experienced it. So that's significant if it lines up.
Now we'll talk there's a little bit of methodology stuff
with this, this that I've calling the question. The researchers
were also interested specifically in the sensitivity to reactive safety
(12:38):
signals and if that corresponded to a higher likelihood of
experiencing the urge to jump. So to mark this reactivity,
they looked at levels of anxiety sensitivity, such as a
faster heartbeat. Uh. This was because previous research suggested that
high anxiety sensitivity is actually tied to a tendency for
(12:58):
us as human beings to misinterpret random, innocuous bodily sensations
as being dangerous. Yeah, we we tend to. We tend
to make that air and cognition, you know, because there
is a survival advantage in jumping to conclusions rather than
not making any conclusions. One gets you eaten by a tiger.
One just means you go about your daily life constantly
(13:20):
looking for the tiger that might eave Yeah, I mean
I've actually experienced this, I'd say in like the last
two weeks, where like I'll get up and I'll read
about current events in the news, and my heart will
start beating rapidly and I'll go, oh, this is is
there something wrong? Do I need to go see my doctor?
And I realized it's anxiety. It's it's not normal, but
I'm having a normal anxious reaction to the things that
(13:43):
I'm reading about, right, But then my thought is like, oh,
what if I have a heart attack? You know, So
this is kind of along those lines where the idea
is that we misinterpret these random bodily sensations is being dangerous. Okay.
So their studies finding was that yes, more sensitivity to
anxiety was related to the frequency of the urge to jump,
(14:07):
especially in people who had never experienced suicidal thoughts. They
also interpreted this as people without a history of suicidal
thoughts as being more sensitive to bodily cues that they
could misinterpret. So that's interesting. So if you've never experienced
suicidal thoughts, they're saying, you're more likely to interpret say
(14:27):
like your heart beating faster as as something of danger.
It's interesting. Yeah, I mean it's kind of like if
you if you've ever had an anxiety attack, if you
if you have, if you have one and they're rare
than the first time you have one, it can be
extremely alarmente. If you think, oh, oh goodness, I'm about
to die now. So the study ultimately translates as follows.
(14:50):
People with high anxiety sensitivity were more likely to have
higher chances of suicidal thoughts. Okay, that makes sense. So
if you're sensitive to the bodily reactions and you're worried
about being anxious, then you're more likely to have suicidal thoughts.
But subsequently, you were also more likely to report experiencing
(15:11):
this call of the void phenomenon. So that's interesting. Why
do we experience this though Like? Where is this coming from? Well,
let's take a quick break and we come back. We'll
dive into that very question. All right, we're back. So
one theory about this call of the void phenomenon or
(15:33):
the idea of high place phenomenon, is that there's something
going on with a temporary uncoupling of our different perceptual
systems in our brains. It's kind of like cognitive dissonance. Yeah. Yeah.
The idea, and this come up comes up all the
time on the podcast, the idea that you have two
different ideas, two different inclinations in your mind, and they
(15:54):
conflict with each other. So the classic, the easy one
to go through here, of course, is oh, I I
think homosexuality is wrong, but I have homosexual thoughts in
my head. These two do not go with one another,
um and this generates it's kind of a friction in
the mind exactly. So their theory was that when you're
standing on the edge of a skyscraper, your brain has
(16:17):
fast fear circuitry, that's what they called it. Obviously it's
not circuitry that and this may alert you of danger,
just the danger of hey, you could fall, But then
our perceptual system in our brain is slower than our
fear system, and that kicks in afterwards and it makes
you realize there's actually no danger. So to make sense
(16:39):
of the safety signal, our brain mixes this up as
cognitive dissonance and we assume we want to jump, which
is why people get confused by this. So this is interesting.
So individuals who are experiencing this are not necessarily suicidal. Instead,
it seems to reflect their sensitivity to internal cues affirming
(17:00):
their actual will to live. So that lines up with
what we're saying earlier that they're sensitive to like oh,
I'm feeling anxious or oh I'm feeling depressed or whatever.
So it makes sense that they would be more sensitive
to their uh, both their fear system and their perception system. Yeah,
I do like how the main idea here is that
you're safe, but you're still taking in the censury data
(17:22):
that says you're not safe. And I think that we
we actually get a little bit of this when we
watch a particularly terrifying video like we've all, especially within
the age of go pro. I'm sure everyone has seen
like base jumping, crazy skiing videos, stuff with great heights,
or people climbing up antennas. And you watch it and
you couldn't be more safe watching it in your you know,
(17:45):
living room, in your office, on your phone or your
personal computer. But you feel a visceral, you know, and
if it's probably empathic, but also you're taking in certain
sense data about a dangerous environment and you can't help
it feel part of that. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting, and
I think I'm leaning towards agreeing with this theory. But
(18:08):
let's remember that this study, there's only one study on
this as far as I can tell, and it isn't conclusive. Um,
their explanation is simply theoretical and it doesn't have neurological evidence. Uh.
The methodology also has some weaknesses, so let's acknowledge those.
First of all, they only used university students, and let's
be honest, university students are not representative of humanity, right right, Yeah,
(18:31):
it tends to be a profile of a very specific
socio economic, racial division of society. Yeah. And the volunteers
themselves were confessing, well, they may have misremembered their experience
or even falsely reported it. So that doesn't mean the
studies flawed. It just means we need more research. Um.
So a proposal for this is to actually conduct an
(18:54):
experiment where scientists would have to take subjects and position
them at different high It's to test at what elevation
they begin having the thought to jump. Um. And there's
another explanation that goes along I think with what you
were saying about the watching those videos, which is that
it could simply be connected to our thrill of not
(19:16):
buckling under fear, which is a kind of cognitive dissonance. Um.
This is the same reason why we go to haunted houses, right,
both real and uh, you know, fun haunted houses. But
like think about like when you're a little kid, uh
and somebody says, let's go that house over there is haunted,
I dare you to go into it, Right, It's kind
(19:36):
of the same vibe. Uh. And then subsequently you go
to something like I don't know. Our version is another
world here in Atlanta. You go to that, you know
somebody's gonna jump out with a fake chainsaw and try
to scare you. But the thrill of overcoming that fear
is part of why you go and pay money to
do it. Yeah, I mean it feels you with endorphins.
You're you're very much living in the moment. People who
(19:57):
aren't into meditation or yoga still might go to a
haunted house or watch a scary movie, and that's that's
kind of meditative in a sense. It puts you in
the now. It's It's probably another reason why jump scares
are so successful in horror films, right, there's an addiction
to it. Yeah, And it's simple and it works, and
it ties into our basic evolutionary state to be on
(20:21):
the lookout for the tiger that jumps out of the grass. Now,
there's a no take on all of this, and it
ties in I think nicely to what you said about
the varying heights. At what height does it kick in?
For my own part, I feel like there is definitely
a difference between any call of the void that occurs
at at lower heights as opposed to like truly awesome
(20:43):
heights like Grand Canyon, cliff Edge type he total obliteration. Yeah,
total obliteration, I think is the thing because it's such,
it's such a it would be such a drastic choice. Okay,
it would be such a choice between life and and
and I don't know. I almost to say death like
puts too much of an atmospheric twist on it, but
(21:03):
more like between being an un being and I think
this is I keep thinking this is the two roads
diverge in a Yellow Woods approach. Um. So in the
Choose your Own Adventure book that is life, we encounter
plenty of forking paths, right, but many of these are
hardly choices at all. I mean, on some level, we
all choose whether they're going to go to work this
morning or find a liquor store and drink our purchase
(21:25):
in the woods behind the Yeah, I think, yeah, I
mean for most of us, a lot of people struggle
with that every morning. Well, some people realistically do. No
I'm not, I'm not being sarchotetica, but but for many
of us, it's not really a choice. Like the things
we do are the things we do. We have this
pattern and there's really this is where we get into
that idea that we're not really making choices and more
(21:47):
if at all, however, there are choices that are more
real than others, where two paths of equal weight and
possibility are presented and uh, and what is weightier than
the old to be or not to be? The choice
between being and unding that stands before us when we
stand at the edge of a great expanse. So it's
not so much that we're tempted, but that our path
(22:09):
choosing brain can't help but engage in one of its
many cognitive superpowers, cognitive superpower that we all possess and
uh and used to thrive. And this is a chronosthesia,
which is also known as mental time travel. So this
entails our ability to be aware of our past and
future and to envision multiple possible futures before us. So
(22:31):
it's the key to our survival. But it's also the
reason you might listen to NPR in the morning and
mentally time travel to the dawn of the Third World War.
So it's that anxiety, Yeah, the anxiety. Anxiety comes out
and you feel it in your body. So in that
moment in the car listening to NPR, we're forced to
wonder what what we're capable of, what we're willing to
(22:52):
lose to gain, And on some level, it's kind of
like the you know, the scene in the Old Testament
with Abraham raising that dagger up in the sky and
then above his son Isaac, and it's just a will
the hand of the angel come in time to spare him? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
looking to something beyond, which gets into that Freudian aspect. Yeah,
(23:15):
So that's another possible explanation for it. I tend to
feel like we've got some of this, definitely a part
of it. But I also think the cognitive dissonance argument
is also very valid, and it does like we've talked
before on the show about how situations of cognitive dissonance
often lend themselves well to supernatural experience. Let's not just
(23:35):
say actual supernatural occurrence, but the experience of something supernatural
to us, especially in our demon possession exorcism Matters, aism
episode that is hugely tied to cognitive dissonance. Yeah, and
when you get down to it, like the the idea
of of encountering the choice between being and unbing this
this kind of panicky pondering over to what extent you
(23:58):
have free will, old to what extent you have control
over your fate. I mean that is that's pretty supernatural
sounding to me. Yeah. Yeah, Well this is a good
opportunity for us to get into a guy who, let's
be honest, in some situations, was quasi supernatural. Uh. And
his name was Sigmund Freud. Uh. So Freud after a
(24:19):
lot of his better known principles UH connected this to well,
the phenomenon to an idea that sometimes is referred to
as a death wish, although that just calls to mind
Charles Bronson for me. But it is referred to as
the death drive, articulated in his nineteen essay Beyond the
(24:42):
Pleasure Principle, and this describes a drive in all of
us towards self destruction and a return to the inorganic. Now,
I used a paper by Joanne Faulkner on the subject
to sort of see unpas package this. Now. She argues
(25:03):
that the death drive is when Freud departs from scientific
methodology entirely, and it articulates what he thought of as
higher functions in the psyche that weren't necessarily empirical. Okay,
So this is why I say, like we're getting into
supernatural territory here. Freud thought this was beyond science. Um,
(25:25):
it's highly speculative and it's not grounded in scientific perspective.
But Freud's idea was that the death drive circumvented our
pleasure in an effort to undo a person as an
organic whole, and so as such it gave us both
pleasure and discomfort. I can sort of see where he's
coming from here based on what we were previously talking
(25:47):
about with like, I don't know, scares right, Like it's
both pleasurable and uncomfortable. But his idea, of course, being Freud,
there has to be this model framework to that everything
fits within, and it was that the death drive was
the opposite of what he called the life drive or
the libido. And while the libido attaches itself to others
(26:10):
and creates ties of affection, the death drive destroys relationships
and strives for disintegration. So if the libido manifests insects,
the death drive manifests in aggression, and if this is
directed inward, it could result in suicide. But here's the thing.
Does the death drive lead to what we today understand
(26:32):
as depression? Right? Like Freud didn't really have a grasp
on that the way we do now. It's possible if
it's directed inward, I guess. But in fact, some Eastern
philosophy indicates that self centered acts maybe a form of
this kind of self destruction, That selfishness itself isolates us
(26:53):
from others, leads us to not having support. So maybe
there's a little bit of a connection between depression and
death drive. I've I don't know. I'm not on board
with this. I see how it could sort of make
sense at the time, and it's connected to thoughts that
we're having. But huh, what is interesting you mentioned the
Eastern philosophies. It is interesting to think of self destruction
(27:16):
perhaps is it's not merely well, let's say, to to
take self destruction and think of it in terms of
of of the of of the wheel of sam Sara
and the different states and the idea that you know,
you're reincarnated into two upper and lower forms. Yeah, one
of the realms is that of the hungry ghosts, where
one is just you know, constantly grasping for something and
(27:37):
and and unable to to fill yourself with it. And
and there's another realm, which is more of the hell room.
And this is where I feel like things really line
up with this idea of death drive just this, you know, rageful, uh,
you know, assault on the things that anger you. I
can give you like a personal version of this that
I experience. And this might be a little bit t
(27:57):
m I, but um I often I'm compelled by the
urge to just go be somewhere in complete isolation. Like
I think when I when I have this urge, it's like, oh,
I like a like a rundown motel in the middle
of nowhere, off of a highway somewhere, right, and I'll
(28:18):
just sitting there for a week. Like there's something about
that that's just very compelling to me. And I don't
want to destroy myself. I don't want to commit suicide,
but there's something about it that that draws me there. Right.
And I think based on what you're talking about here,
so there's a similar idea here, right, Like if you
(28:39):
believe in reincarnation and you think yourself, well, if I die,
I'm gonna be reincarnated, possibly as a lower life form. Right,
there's something kind of zen about that, Right, There's something
kind of relaxing about the idea of like I'll come
back as a toad. Let's just live life as a toad,
and I won't have as many concerns to bear. It's true, yeah, now,
(29:01):
but I like this idea that you brought up here too,
because it also brings to mind like what each of
us are. So we're certainly we're we're an organism that's
that's alive. We're also an organism that's is generally moving
in various uh, social spheres. And you have all of
these kind of like invisible spider webs of social obligation
all around us. And so to just to walk away
(29:23):
from all of that for say a week and go
to this cabin in the woods, you are not necessarily
destroying yourself, but you might be doing damage to these
various social spider webs that are that have bound you
up totally. And I can see where it would be
at once liberating to walk away from all of those,
uh and then but then at the same time many
(29:45):
would argue, well, that is self destructive. You were doing
damage to these social structures that had helped maintain you. Yeah, exactly, Yeah,
and that's compelling to write. The pop culture example of
this that drew me in the most and my wife
immediately recognized it when we saw this, and she's like,
you love this, don't you was And spoilers for this
(30:07):
TV show if you don't want to, you might learn
something you don't want to know about Breaking Bad here.
But in Breaking Bad, there's a point where the main
character it goes in hiding to New Hampshire for a
year and he just lives in a small cottage with
nothing but like, you know, canned food and newspapers for
(30:30):
a year and he just sits there and thinks on
what he's done and sleeps and eats and he just
is and he's entrapped by snow when we find him.
And I saw it and I was just like, oh god,
that that seems like the best vacation ever to me,
but at the cost of all of his social relationships,
(30:50):
which is sort of the point in the show. Uh.
You know, this reminds me a lot of a Warren
Zevon song. That's when I when I have this feeling,
I'll play this song and listen to his up splendid isolation.
It's great because the lyrics are basically rolling through these
three different through or four different scenarios that he is
craving like I want to live on the Upper east
(31:11):
Side and never go down in the street, you know,
put tinfoil up on the window. I want to live
in the desert like Georgia O'Keefe. You know these kind
of scenarios where um, we're we're Laren is talking about
just walking away from everything and just uh encapsulating himself
in uh in in in total isolation and and ultimately
(31:31):
kind of self destructive self centeredness, because he ends up
like making comparisons to UH to Neverland Ranch interesting, you know,
locking yourself up in your own private disney sort of thing.
While I never put tinfoil on my window, but in
my twenties I have to admit, Uh, I took cardboard
(31:52):
and nailed it up over all the windows in my
bedroom just because like I wanted complete and utter darkness
in there. Did you have a black light poster? No? No,
I didn't missed opportunity mushroom wizards. Well, back to this
freud thing, I think it reeks of the subjective. It's
(32:14):
a little bit of magical thinking, which is fun, but
most people in this realm, in this discipline, think of
it as being eccentric. Regardless it does apply to depression.
If you understand that there's an innate voice that wishes
for death and destruction, well that's that's helpful, right at
least in therapy you can help separate that and distance
(32:37):
yourself from those thoughts, and that takes away their power
and allows you to challenge them and minimize them and
disregard them. So there's something to that. People who have
just like outright dismiss Freud. I'm sort of in the middle, like,
I don't buy it a hundred percent of the time,
but I do think that there's some value and that
he helped the profession sort of edge along slow. Yeah.
(33:00):
I mean I always come back to my my lens analogy,
where what I would I want to walk around with
with the Freud lens in place all the time, with
my Freud goggles on all the time. No, I would not,
But I do find it is helpful in varying scenarios
to pull the the Freud lens down over my own
vision of my own worldview and think, oh, well, how
(33:22):
might this apply to the current scenario, What does what
how does Freud illuminate what's going on here? Well, why
don't we take a quick break and when we come back,
we're going to delve into some actual statistics about suicidal
thinking that may help us unravel this call of the
void phenomenon a little more. All Right, we're back. So
(33:48):
when mental health professionals refer to these call of the
void moments, they usually call it suicidal ideation. But that
term seems broad for our p is here today, So
let's let's try to separate out what the difference might be. Okay,
In twleven, the CDC conducted a really big study examining
(34:09):
statistics about suicide, suicidal thinking, uh and um, suicidal preparation,
and they found that three point seven percent of adults
in the United States had had suicidal thoughts in just
the last year. Now, let's put that into perspective. That's
eight point three million people. That's a lot of people.
(34:32):
Other studies have placed this even higher, saying that it's
actually around eight to ten percent of the population. Now
let's look at the previous study on the high place phenomenon.
That's not even close to the thirty to fifty percent
of people who reported that they had experienced that phenomenon. Right,
So it seems like what we think of as suicidal
(34:55):
ideation and and high place phenomenon or call of the void,
those are different. It's is like suggests that there's there's
some kind of different thought process going on there. Yeah.
And of course with all this, it depends on exactly
how you're phrasing the question and how the individual on
the other end views suicidal thoughts, uh, et cetera. I mean,
(35:16):
because the big thing is like, what does that individual's
culture say about suicide? Now, even there there's this is
the kind of thing that we would have to bust
out in a longer episode, but even within the United
States that you're going to have varying subsets of people
that are going to have different ideas about suicide. Yeah,
and that actually plays in these statistics as well. Uh.
(35:37):
In the c d C report, they actually summarize the
data on ninety two thousand, two hundred and sixty four respondents.
But this establishes a difference between having suicidal thoughts and
actually making plans for a suicide or attempting it. Plans
and attempts are very different from just thinking about it. Okay,
(35:59):
the estimate it's very based on a couple of things,
sociodemographic factors as well, as the region of the country
that you live in. So what you're just saying here
we go. Suicidal thoughts were higher among young adults between
the ages of eighteen to twenty nine than they were
for people over thirty. It was also significantly higher for
women in general. Non Hispanic Whites were the group with
(36:23):
the highest prevalence of suicidal thoughts, while non Hispanic Asians
were the group with the lowest suicidal thoughts. And regional factors,
this is really complicated, but they think it could be
related to indicators such as divorce rates or resources to
access like healthcare. Uh, and so the cause and effect
(36:46):
relationship here is unknown, but there's a there's a couple
of things like, for instance, adults with less than a
high school education and those who were unemployed at the
time were more likely to have these thoughts. Finally, those
in the mid West and the West were more likely
to have suicidal thoughts than those in the Northeast in
the South. Now, I don't know how to unpack that,
(37:09):
but what you presented sounds sounds close, which is that like,
various cultures have different beliefs about suicide, right and and
or like they said that there's like real world factors
like how much access they have to healthcare or or
or do they have a job, things like that. So
there's limitations to this accounting though that we should note
(37:30):
as well. For instance, previous studies indicate that adults, when
they're talking about suicidal thoughts, they under report, especially when
they're talking about when they were adolescents. So if they're
adults now and they're saying, well, when I was an adolescent,
this is you know, this is how often I experience
that they're they they're known to under report. That makes
(37:50):
sense to me. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you're a
different person when you're adult when you're an adolescent, so
you're really kind of teasing apart the thoughts and motivations
of of a different you entire. So I can see
where there might be a tendency to say, oh, well
that that that twenty year old me, that eighteen year
old me. You didn't know what you're talking about, not
even serious about that. And this study also didn't account
(38:12):
for a couple of populations. Uh. First of all, institutionalized populations,
which would probably have, I mean, we would assume would
have a higher rate of thinking about suicide, and it
totally cut out any kind of Native American populations. So
and that wasn't like on purpose, it was just because
they didn't have access to enough evidence. Yeah, I think
(38:33):
there is a large factor here that comes down to
is suicide an open pathway to this individual? Is it
at all socially acceptable? To what degree is it socially acceptable?
And that is going to be governed by your culture,
your history. Indeed, what what books and movies, what beats
of bits of fiction you know, you you value? These
(38:57):
are all going to help to skew this idea of
of whether or not suicide is a practical option for
an individual. Yeah, but very different from the idea of
standing on a ledge and looking and just kind of
getting that urge to just right. So that's why I
put these statistics in here to sort of just give
(39:18):
you like, these are very different things, and we can
see the statistical differences just between these two studies. It's
also worth remembering all of this stuff for both studies
is self reported, and that is not a reliable. Now
to to sort of pull out of the gloomier aspects
of this this topic, um, I will ask everyone to
(39:41):
to think about the call of the void you know, uh,
the situation in which the gravity of disastrous choices. You know,
it's not merely anxiety inducing or or threatening to one
sense of self control, but it is exhilarating. It's it's
it's sort of endorphin pumping high that want to chievee
from skydiving or even less dangerous smaller acts. And and
(40:03):
plus what is the true call of the void but
but a contemplation, however, unformed of oblivion, a complete emptying
of self, not merely hearing the call of the void,
but but kind of touching the void, having almost a
spiritual moment. To go back to that quote from Call
the Wild again, you know something that is at once
splendid and terrible. Yeah, And so, as we've been doing
(40:25):
in some of our episodes recently, we want to make
sure if you heard this and this like touched upon
something for you, and and you were hearing these statistics
or whatever and you thought, well, this this resonates within me,
and I'm a little concerned. There's actually a nonprofit that
we would like to throw a line out too, so
that you, in case you're feeling that way, have some support.
(40:47):
And it's the National Suicide Prevention lifeline. Uh, it's a
support line. It's seven, it's free, it's totally confidential. It's
for people who are in distress. Uh. And it helps
prevent I sees and provides resources for you and your
loved ones. So maybe it's not you, Maybe it's somebody
you know. Uh So the number for that is one
(41:09):
eight hundred two seven three eight to five five. Again,
it's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
All right, And hey, if you want to hear more
episodes of Stuff to Plow your Mind, if you want
to check out videos, blog post, you name it links
out to our social media accounts, head on over to
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's right, and
(41:32):
I want to hear from you, the audience. Have you
experienced the call of a void? Have you thought about
jumping off a tall building or the Grand Canyon or
maybe even onto a train track before, but of course
you didn't want to. You just got mixed up with
these feelings inside. That's that's basically how we all feel nowadays.
I'm just so mixed up with these feelings inside. Uh,
(41:53):
let us know. You can let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
or Instagram, or you can write us at blow the
mind at how stuff Works dot com, and it close
out here today. I'm just gonna read another quote. This
one comes from a book by Robert Graves. Number of
you may be familiar with him from his more popular
work such as I Claudius, But he also wrote a
book called Goodbye to All That, and he talks about
(42:14):
the Great Woar. He talks about mountain climbing, And this
is just a quick quote where he talks about climbing.
My worst climb was on a little wit, the most
formidable of the precipices, when at a point that needed
most concentration, a raven circled round the party in great sweeps.
I found this curiously unsettling, because one climbs only up
(42:36):
and down or sideways, and the ravens seem to be
suggesting diverse other possible dimensions of movement, tempting us to
let go our hold and join him. Well more on
(42:57):
this and pathans of other topic How Stuff Works up home.
I think many about f
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