The Imp of the Perverse

In 1845, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a tale about a man overcome by the compulsion to confess to the heinous crime he sought to keep secret. The conundrum pops up in other Poe tales as well, but the so called “Imp of the Perverse” also invades the human mind with alarming regularity. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe attempt to understand just why, considering Freud, neuroscience, Ironic Process Theory and more. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Induction. A posteriory would have brought phrenology to admit an
innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something
which we may call perverseness for want of a more
characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is in
fact a mobile without a motive, a motive not motivert

(00:24):
through its promptings we act without comprehensible object or, if
this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we
may so far modify the proposition as to say that,
through its promptings we act for the reason that we
should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable.

(00:44):
But in fact there is none more strong. With certain minds,
under certain conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not
more certain that I breathe than that the assurance of
the wrong or error of any action is often the
one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us

(01:05):
to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do
wrong for the wrong sake admit of analysis or resolution
into ulterior elements. It is a radical, a primitive impulse,
elementary welcome to stuff to blow your mind, a production

(01:25):
of I Heart Radios, how stuff works. Hey, you welcome
to Stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And if you recognize that
opening reading, you must be into the deep cuts of
Edgar Allan Poe. The story didn't even have him burying
anybody alive. Yeah, this is This is not like you said.

(01:48):
This is this is not going to be a hit
single from Poe by any means. This is this is
more of a deep cut. Uh. You're probably far more
familiar with the Tell Tale Heart or the Black Cat,
two stories that contains similar elements, and then we'll touch
on later in this episode. Yeah. So this is from
Edgar Allan poet short story The Imp of the Perverse,

(02:11):
And we start with this today because in this short story,
Poe brings up this concept of the imp of the
perverse or this, uh, this motive toward perversity, the idea
of doing something exclusively for the reason that you know
it should not be done and not for any other reason.
And in this story the Imp of the Perverse, there

(02:33):
is actually a murder. You don't get to the murder
for a while. Poe makes you wait before before any
plot there's just this long musing complete with lots of
references to the pseudoscience of phrenology. But it's amusing on
this particular impulse of perverseness, the powerful urge to do
what we should not and to do it simply for
the reason that it should not be done. And so

(02:56):
Pope goes on to analyze this concept throughout the sort
of s say section of the story. He calls it
a radical primitive impulse uh, and he contrasts it with
other types of drives that we have, which he frames
in terms of the pseudoscience of phrenology. Again, he says
it's different from mere combativeness because combativeness stems from an

(03:17):
instinct for self defense. Right, It's rooted in the desire
to be well and to protect yourself from injury. So
Poe writes, quote, but in the case of that something
which I term perverseness, the desire to be well is
not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.
So I take that to mean he's trying to make

(03:39):
clear he's not talking about any kind of self defensive
combativeness or antagonism, but rather a kind of suicidal antagonism,
a thwarting of one's own best interests simply because you
have a desire to do something that you shouldn't do. Now,
the example that Poe uses here, of course, is one

(03:59):
that I think most of us can't directly relate to,
the idea of of of this impulse to confess a
secret murder that you committed, but the the idea of
being tempted to do something that you absolutely know you
shouldn't do, like for for no logical reason interest, right, Like,

(04:19):
I think we can all relate to that on some level.
Like I often think about this kind of thing when
I'm in meetings. If I'm saying, like a one on
one meeting with my boss, I say it's a you know,
a performance review or you know, what have you, I'll
suddenly I'll be sitting there nodding, listening, absorbing the information,
and then like this random thought will occur, like what

(04:41):
if I licked the desk right now? But if what
if I started eating an ink pen, just chewing on it,
but just like really uh, you know, showing down on it.
And I'm not logically tempted to do these things. But
then once the ideas in my mind, uh, I just
keep thinking about it. I mean it's different from like,
they are two very different ways to have a desire

(05:03):
to say something inappropriate during a meeting with one's boss
or something. One reason would be, well, maybe you've you know,
you've got all these kinds of pent up feelings about
your boss, and you're very angry and you think you've
been wronged or something like that, and then that would
be a sort of natural desire to express your feelings
and rebel against some kind of injustice or get revenge

(05:24):
by saying what you really think. That would be one thing.
You're talking about something different and post talking about something
different when when all those feelings aren't even necessarily they're
just wanting, having this impulse to say something or do
something completely inappropriate for no good reason at all. I
know exactly what you're talking about. I often have this

(05:45):
thought when I'm in like a meeting or you have
something's going on. Sometimes something just flashes into my head,
like I could utter the following sentence and it would
destroy my career, yeah, or or just do you think, like, well,
what if I, like crab walked out of this meeting
right now? You know, it wouldn't be that difficult to do,
and yet it would totally uh, it would it would

(06:08):
totally change everyone's perceptions of how I, uh, you know,
how I experience reality and you know, the seriousness with
which I take my job, that sort of thing. Um
And and I guess, as as we'll come back to
in this episode, a lot of it comes down to
just that that weird dividing line between thought and action. Yeah. Yeah,
it's almost as if whenever you do this, you're exploring

(06:29):
what it means to contemplate an action without doing it.
It's kind of the same way. It's almost like you're
feeling the texture of something in those moments where you
wonder what it would be like to swerve into oncoming
traffic or to jump off of a tall ledge. I mean,
you remember a while back you did an episode with
Christian about the idea of the call of the void,

(06:51):
and I think this touches on some similar stuff. Right.
It's not necessarily that people, I mean, people do have
suicidal ideation that is more deeply rooted in in in
ongoing problems they have, but there's also just the sort
of like momentary fleeting impulses that don't even seem to
be connected to anything larger. Yeah, yeah, that was I

(07:12):
definitely recommend listeners go back to that episode because we
touched on not only know how that we get these
ideas in our head, this weird temptation when we're saying, um,
you know, a top of tall building or on the
cliff side. But in that episode, I shared how in
the past I've also felt like this weird feeling like
I need to press my wallet to the bottom of
my pocket for fear that I'll take my wallet out

(07:34):
and say throw it, throw it over the railing of
the Empire State Building, And you know, which is something
I definitely don't want to do. But then once the
idea has entered my head, it does sort of feel
like I should take steps to keep it from happening. Yeah,
And you almost feel like you wonder, for a second,
am I going to be able to stop myself. In

(07:55):
this long section where Poe talks about the idea of
peering into an abyss in in the story, he says, quote,
there is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient as
that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice,
thus meditates a plunge to indulge for a moment in
any attempt at thought is not to be inevitably lost

(08:17):
for reflection, but urges us to forbear. And therefore it
is I say that we cannot if there be no
friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in
a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backwards from the abyss,
we plunge and are destroyed. So it's this weird thing
where he's almost like saying, you've got to depend on
some kind of part of you to suddenly be the guard.

(08:40):
What if that part of you the guard, isn't paying
attention in some moment. I believe I mentioned this in
the call the Void episode, but stuff like this always
makes me think of uh. The author Robert Graves his
partial autobiography Goodbye to All that he talks about his
experiences in the war, but also of a mountain climbing,

(09:00):
and if memory serves, there's this one part where he
talks about climbing scaling these uh you know, these cliff
sides with some friends and how like the scariest moment
was when birds were sailing close by and and having
to sort of wrestle with this this weird illogical feeling
of love. What have I let go? What if? What

(09:21):
if like the birds were sort of tempting them with
this siren song of like, you know, let go and
fly with us. I don't know if this is inspired
by that, but I seem to recall a kind of
stock scene and a lot of cartoons, like Wiley coyote
type cartoons where a character, often the kind of bumbling,

(09:42):
you know, prone to injury kind of character, would be
out over allege on a precipice or on a tight
rope or something and would be harassed by a bird
fluttering fluttering around nearby. There's something that does seem to
go deep about you being vulnerable at the edge and
then a creature that has powers that you can't just
floating around as light as a breeze. Oh yeah, I've

(10:03):
definitely experienced it. Say, standing at the edge of the
Grand Canyon, We're not the edge, several feetback, but still
watching a bird traverse these to this drastic change in
elevation with without any issue at all. Now, personally, Robert,
do you find yourself to be I think the term
would be criminophobic and having a fear of sharp drop

(10:24):
offs and precipices. Yeah, at times, Yeah, like we we
have another episode that we are currently researching and recording
soon on mountains, and just looking at certain pictures of mountains,
looking at um specifically walkways carved into the sides of mountains,
at times, they made me cringe a little bit because

(10:46):
and I could just imagine myself crawling upward down those
stairs as opposed to you know, walking up and down
them like a normal pilgrim or something. This is funny
because I have tons of fears. I'm full of anxieties
about all kinds of things in the world, but not
this I I do. I'm almost kind of drawn to
sharp drop offs. I always want to go right up
to them and look over. Yeah, well, not not me,

(11:09):
but of course it's always it's always a challenge taking
a small child to these places because because my son
he definitely wants to go up and check out the edge,
and it just that that annurbs me even more. Well,
I can imagine that would change everything I I my
whole life. I've had the experience of being told to
stay away from the edge even now. Yeah, well I
I had this issue before a kid was in my life,

(11:30):
for sure, though, it's just the the edge is too close.
Well anyway, sorry, So to come back to the ed
Garland post story. Uh, the story goes on to tell
of how the narrator he goes he gives this long essay,
this kind of speech about phrenology and about the mp
of the perverse, and then he tells a very brief
version of his story, which is that he came up

(11:50):
with an ingenious plan to get away with murder, and
the way he did it was he murdered someone with
a poisoned candlestick because he knew they would light a
candle to read in bed at night, and so he
gets away with the murder undetected. But then years later,
having totally gotten away with it, he is seized with
this uncontrollable urge to confess in public, which he does

(12:12):
kind of raving in the middle of a public you know,
marketplace type area, which of course lands him in chains
and sentenced to hang for his crime. And that's where
he is as he tells the story. But the story
itself might not be all that remarkable as far as
post stories go, but it does bring up this interesting
idea personifies this imp of the perverse, the idea of

(12:35):
wanting to do something simply because it is something that
should not be done, either like morally, you know, maybe
it's a violation of norms, or because it's against one's
own interest. That there's just some compelling force telling you
not to do it, and that's the very reason you
can't stop thinking about doing it. Yeah. I mentioned the

(12:55):
tell Tale Heart earlier, and I think that's that's I
think most would agree that's probably a better story that
deals with with with with a very similar premise. The idea,
of course, and that if you haven't read it, is
that this guy killed an old man and buried him
under the boards, and is what is living room. I
believe the police come to ask questions and he just

(13:17):
hears the thumping of the heart until it drives him bonkers,
and he just starts pulling up the boards right or
or or telling the the investigators like, look, he's under there,
pull up the boards. I killed him, and his you know,
his heart is beating um uh. And in that he's
dealing with the imp of the perverse as well, manifested
as this this nagging beating heart. Now, it's been a

(13:40):
while since I've read The tell Tale Heart. Maybe you
can answer this better than I, um, do you think
that does guilt play a role in that story? Is
he guilty for about what he has done and is
a feeling of guilt driving him towards his confession, or
is it more like the imp of the perverse where
he doesn't even seem to feel bad about it, He's
just got this urged to tell Well, you know, it's

(14:02):
been a once since I've read it, or I remember
seeing like a stage adaptation of it as as a kid. Uh,
it's been a while since i've I've I've interacted with either,
but I remember I used to think it was more
the guilt issue, because that seems like the the obvious trope, right,
the idea that you're you're just you've done this horrible thing,
and the weight of the thing you've done eventually pulls
out the confession. But having become acquainted with the imp

(14:25):
of the perverse now, which which I've before reached researching
this episode I was not familiar with, I think it
really makes me realize that Poe was probably thinking about
other ideas here, and he was dealing with something a
little more complicated in the human mind as opposed to
this more cliched Uh. Imbalancing in the human heart. So

(14:47):
maybe his his urge to confess was not a moral
urge but more just kind of uh, the imp of
the perverse, it was a neuroticism. Yeah, So one thing
I think about, especially given all the references to phrenology
in this post. Sorry, I guess you know, before you
had psychology, you had pseudoscience like phrenology, And it makes
me think about me, you know, what's the kind of
bridge between these two worlds, you know, getting getting to

(15:10):
modern psychology, and that makes me go to Freudian is Um.
I don't know if your brain kind of goes to
the same place there, but I mean you see echoes
of things like the imp of the perverse in the
writings in the psychoanalysis style of Freud, right, where he
talked about things like a death drive or or a
death instinct. Right, And would that be sort of related? Yeah,

(15:30):
I believe so, and I've and I found you know,
a few authors that have chimed in on this. So
Sigmund Freud, just to refresh it, lived eighteen fifty six
through nine nine, and he's best remembered for his work
on the unconscious mind, but he also theorized about the
role of powerful instincts that energize the mind. And these

(15:51):
instincts are numerous and varied, but he grouped them into
two main categories. There's aros uh the the life instinct,
and then there's Thanatos, the death instinct. And these names,
of course refer to the Greek mythological gods of life
and death. So the sexual influence of the libido only
concerns only connects directly to the instincts of aros of

(16:14):
One of the instincts of Thanatos focus on aggression, self destruction,
and cruelty. So I think it would be reasonable to
situate the imp of the reverse within the Freudian instinct
family of Thanatos. Now, I was looking around for papers
on this and I found a really good one from
Laura Lai Carraman, and she explored this in a two
thousand fourteen paper titled the Urge to tell Versus the

(16:37):
need to conceal confession as narrative desire, impose the black Cat,
the tail, tale Heart, and the imp of the Perverse,
And this was published in American and British Studies Annual,
and as the title indicates, um the author Karaman points
out that that Poe considered the drive to confess in
not only The Imp but also in the more well

(16:58):
known Black Cat and the tell Tale Heart quote. What
is noteworthy is the nature of these confessions, their inexplicable,
irrational quality, as if driven by a certain kind of
urgency by a foreseemingly independent of their will. If the
crimes committed appear more or less calculated, their confessions, by contrast,
are almost unaccountably impulsive. That's yeah, that's totally accurate to

(17:23):
the actual writing of the story, the imp of the perverse.
I mean, the author is cold and calculating and psychopathic
about the crime. You know, he thinks it through, he
plans it out, he doesn't appear to feel bad about it.
But then the can the desire to confess comes on
as just this kind of like obsession from out of
nowhere that he can't keep his mouth closed. He's running

(17:44):
around thinking I'm about to blurt it out, and then does. Yeah.
In this paper, the author points out that the past critics,
such as Author Brown and Henry Sussman, have taken you know,
all of this apart, with the latter Sussmen pointing out
that the actor can of confession in these tales is
a quote transgression of the boundaries between the private and

(18:05):
the public kind of way. Again, that that that gray
line between thought and action of essence. Um. So you know,
in these stories we see something that exists in the
mind leaking out. Uh, you know, the desire to tell
overpowers the desire for concealment. Um. Well, you know, one
thing I wonder about with the references to phrenology in

(18:25):
the story is that in the nineteenth century there could
easily have been anxieties about the idea of an emerging
science of the mind. Do you ever think about this
like that? You're so a person always has their private thoughts,
their thoughts or their own or maybe there between them
and the god they believe in or whatever, but their

(18:47):
private in some way other people can't know about them.
But I wonder if you live in a world where
there are all these burgeoning sciences, and the sciences are
increasingly uh, intruding into domains like light and you know,
in the social sciences and the mind itself, and you know,
the emerging fields like psychology, you have to start to wonder,

(19:09):
will people be able to read my mind with these sciences?
Is there is there going to be a diminution of
the private privilege with one's own thoughts? How Yeah, when
we see this kind of anxiety reflected in so many
works of science fiction over the years, you know, the
idea of of thought police, um, you know, determining what

(19:31):
what's going on inside your head, of of passing through
that boundary between action and thought. I was, in fact
just reading a Peter Watts short story about this very topic. Um.
But but but in these stories, something that Carmen point
points out and drives home and referencing the work of
these other um scholars, is that, you know, it's ultimately

(19:51):
it's not as simple as oh, this character is mad
well and that's why they did their crime and or
blurted it out, but that there's something going on in
the unconscious that is by definition unreadable. And that's the
ultimate spooky, scary, mysterious part. That there's something, uh, there's

(20:12):
something going on in there, that there are these contradictory
drives in the subconscious and uh, and we don't really
know what to expect from them. Well, yeah, I can
see this story situated again in kind of a bridge
land between an old model that might often like an
old model of the mind that might have often said,
if you have drives or desires that don't feel like yours,

(20:33):
that's a demon, you know, like that you could actually
have the devil whispering in your ear, that it's an
imp you know. And there then you've got devil possession
and all that. And then you've got this, uh, this
new way of thinking about things where where well, maybe
you don't consciously understand all of your own drives and
desires and motivations. Yeah, absolutely, um, you know, and all

(20:54):
of this I can't help but think back to Um.
I can't remember the exact biblical whole passage, but the
basic idea that you see reflected in a lot of
Christian theology that um, if you do something in your heart,
it is is it is as if you did it
in real life, as if you actually committed the act.
And um again like even that without getting into kind

(21:18):
of like the you know, the theological discourse on it,
that's kind of dealing in this this this thin line
or this time seemingly thin line between thought and action,
between contemplation of theological and and the you know, and
committing the illogical. Yeah, and in in that whole thing.
I mean, I can see arguments on on both sides

(21:39):
of the whole like if you are whoever has felt
wrath against his brother has committed murder in his heart.
On one hand, I mean, that seems like that's kind
of almost kind of a very bad lesson to teach people,
right like that, you know, it's it's just as bad
to think about doing something bad as it is to
actually do it. It kind of blurs the line of
like resistance to evil, right, and especially as we proceed

(22:02):
through the there's this episode, we're going to get into
some areas where it really shows how problematic that is.
Because I don't think that, you know, try to think
something else. But I mean it does highlights even if
we can say that's maybe bad advice, it does highlight something.
And what it highlights is that, um, you know, if
you allow yourself to contemplate something that you know you

(22:24):
should not do a lot, you may very well wear
down your resistance to doing it right. All right, Well,
on that note, let's let's take a quick break and
when we come back, we will chase the imp a
little bit more through this subconscious than Thank alright, we're back,
So We've been discussing this idea of the imp of
the perverse that comes from this Ed Garland post short

(22:46):
story from the eighteen forties, where there is this strong
impulse to do something just because you shouldn't do it
and not for other reasons. So I was reading an
article about this in Psychology today by Meal Bruno, who
is a professor at u PEN, and it brought up
a few interesting things. So this article tells an interesting

(23:07):
story about the imp and inhibition and neuroscience. And the
story starts when Bruno was in graduate school and he
talks about how he witnessed a neuropathology examination of a
deceased patient. And so a neuropathology examination involves cutting open
the brain and examining it and figuring out, you know it,
was there any damaged tissues or a neural degeneration. And

(23:28):
also present at this examination was a social worker who
had known the patient before he died. And so the
autopsy revealed degeneration in the prefrontal cortex, especially of the
dorso lateral prefrontal cortex. And this is the outer part
of the brain, starting above the temples and sort of
reaching up onto the outside of the forehead, and Bruno

(23:50):
mentions that this area is important for cognitive control. I
was reading about its role in cognition and behavior, and
it's generally believed to have a lot to do with
many different kinds of executive function. This includes things like
selective attention, choosing what to pay attention to and what
to think about, things like working memory and meta memory.

(24:11):
So meta memory is the cognitive management of memories, like
judging whether a particular memory is relevant or correct. But
this area also appears to have things to do with planning,
with regulating and overriding emotions, and crucially with inhibition. And
the management of inhibition also appears to be a major

(24:32):
function of the prefrontal cortex in general, which remember, showed
damage all over in this patient. So because of this
physical neuropathology, the doctor performing the autopsy asked the man's
social worker if he had had any issues with impulsiveness
and control, and the social workers said yes. In fact,
later in life, this man had repeatedly had a problem

(24:54):
with jumping out of moving cars. Jumping out of moving cars,
and I thought that's really interesting because that's not just
something like, you know, taking food out of somebody's hand.
Or or sexually inappropriate behavior, things that are certainly wrong,
but that you can see how disinhibition would allow just

(25:17):
sort of natural urges that people have otherwise to to
come out without being mediated by the thought I shouldn't
do that. With jumping out of moving cars, you have
to wonder more like, where does that urge come from
to begin with? And in fact, this kind of thing
is more common than we might normally imagine. Berno himself
rights that quote. Fifty seven percent of people with fronto

(25:39):
temporal dementia, which is neural degeneration that targets the frontal
and temporal lobes violate social norms, engaging in sexual transgressions
and public nudity, shoplifting in front of store managers, eating
out of the trash. It is common knowledge in the
field of neuroscience now that these behaviors are due to
a problem of disinhibition because of a deterioration of the

(26:03):
cognitive control network of the lateral prefrontal cortex. And so
I was looking into this more uh and I found
even more support for the role of the prefrontal cortex
and inhibiting imp like behaviors, and more evidence that when
the prefrontal cortex is impaired, inhibition suffers, and we be
we begin to act out transgressive and inappropriate behaviors. So

(26:25):
one study I looked at was called Diagnosis and Management
of Behavioral Issues in front of temporal Dementia by Menu,
Carry and Huey. In current neurology and neuroscience reports from
and they write that behavioral disinhibition is a classic hallmark
of the behavioral variant of fronto temporal dementia quote. Within

(26:46):
the first several years of symptoms, patients can behave contrary
to social norms. They may inappropriately touch or aggressively approach strangers,
or even engage in theft or other criminal behaviors. Patients
may also disregard al or social norms to make offensive
jokes or sexual remarks, encroach on the personal space of others,

(27:06):
and exhibit childish behavior and a general lack of etiquette.
Disinhibition may also be exhibited in the form of rash
or impulsive actions like gambling or repeatedly falling for financial scams.
The largest autopsy confirmed study of b v F t D,
or behavioral variant front of temporal dementia, found seventy six

(27:26):
percent of patients exhibited behavioral dis disinhibition or impulsivity. So
it seems like when something happens to this part of
the brain, when you've got impairment of the front of
temporal area. You see this almost all the time, that
there is there is a problem with regulating one's behavior,
and you see people acting out things that they might

(27:48):
think about but wouldn't normally do. And this is all
quite an impt to consider because again we're getting back
to the the idea that the choice is kind of
being taken out of our hands, right, Um, in this case,
it's we're getting down to uh, essentially in a brain injury. Yeah,
I mean, this kind of thing really always makes me

(28:09):
consider stuff like criminal justice, you know, the the idea
that um that okay, so we we say we want
to live in a society where people are held accountable
for their actions, and that that seems to make sense
to me intuitively. You don't want people to just go
around wantonly harming other people and getting away with it
and not facing any consequences. But then at the same time,

(28:32):
it's hard to look at stuff like this and and
think that it really makes sense to punish people for
their behaviors when our behavior, you know, we can we
can go out and hurt people because we have a
tumor in a certain part of our brain, or because
we're experiencing we're experiencing dementia due to old age or
some kind of brain disease, or because we have a

(28:54):
head injury, all kinds of physical facts that we would
agree people are not at all to blame for control
tribute to them doing things that violate social norms and
harm other people. And so if that's the case, also
people didn't I mean pick the brain they were born with.
Either you didn't, you didn't ask to be born with
a brain that makes you more likely to be aggressive

(29:16):
or invade people's personal space. And yet then again we
can't like encourage those behaviors. I don't know it. This
kind of thing leaves you in a real pickle in
thinking about how to deal with with human misbehavior. Yeah,
I do feel like a lot of it does, kind
of uh, you know, spring forth from older ideas about
you know, in which you know, committing a you know,

(29:38):
an improper act is a is a statement on a
you know, a pure moral failing. Yeah, um, you know,
some problem in the soul as opposed to something that
is you know more that is a medical issue. But
I was also further wondering about the the idea of
like impulses and impulse control, because Okay, so we know
that certain parts of the brain are very corton for

(30:00):
keeping the imp of the perverse from taking control of
the wheel, right from the prefrontal cortex, the frontal temporal regions.
These play some kind of major role in inhibition, and
if there's injury to them or something is wrong in there,
you can suddenly start doing things that you normally would
stop yourself before acting out. But I wonder about the

(30:22):
first half of the equation, like the urges themselves, Where
do the urges to do the wrong thing come from
in the first place? In this article I was talking
about a minute ago, Bruno identifies the orbitofrontal cortex is
a likely seat of impulses like this, and he he
links this to the way that like tumors in the
orbitofrontal cortex can sometimes cause people to suddenly start engaging

(30:44):
in criminal behaviors that they never would have before. And
like the the awful history of of frontal lobotomy, you
know that went into the orbitofrontal cortex and severed connections
in there through the eye socket, and the idea that
this would reduce aggression and inappropriate behaviors, which it often did,
but also just did general damage to people's brains and

(31:05):
personalities in many cases. And that's a that's a kind
of horrible story in the history of medical neuroscience. Absolutely,
I mean, that's one of the real life horror stories
kind of circling around all of this. Yeah. But but anyway,
so I looked this up, and based on all the
literature I was reading, it also seems like the orbit
of frontal cortex placed some major role in decision making

(31:27):
and emotions and behavioral inhibition, such that injuries or tumors
or degenerative disease in the o f C can lead
to disinhibited behavior. Though I'm no neuroscientists, obviously, but reading around,
I can't see quite exactly the reason that the imp
would necessarily be there, except to say that, like the
lateral prefrontal cortex, the orbit orbit of frontal cortex is

(31:51):
generally important for value based decision making and behavioral control.
For example, I was looking at a paper in Social
Cognitive of an affective neuroscience by Corpina at all, they
just found a strange thing that it increases in the
volume of the prefrontal cortex and intra prefrontal functional connectivity

(32:13):
were related to impulsive and antisocial psychopathic traits. But anyways,
multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex do appear to play
a significant role in the generation of impulses to act
out and in the control and inhibition of those impulses
when we judge them inappropriate. You want to do something bad,

(32:33):
but you stop yourself from doing that bad thing. A
lot of what's going on there seems to depend on
and happen in the prefrontal cortex. But I guess in
any of these cases you do have to ask the question,
is this the imp of the perverse or is this
just a desire for something that you would normally be
able to inhibit with your with you know, with your
behavioral control, with your executive function, or is it really

(32:56):
the perversity that motivates the action in the first place,
Like they're all kinds of things we could do in
order to get something that is an otherwise normal intrinsic desire.
People with disinhibition patterns. Violet norms and act inappropriately to
get food, to get sexual gratification, to get revenge, or

(33:16):
to get items, they want to express power over people,
and they're they're good reasons for not doing all these
things based on our morals, But the underlying motivations to
do them exist independently. So I wonder what provides the
impulse to act perversely in the true spirit of the
post story. Are there cases where we can only understand

(33:36):
why the brain would act contrary to its awareness of
norms for the reason that that action is contrary to
norms with no identifiable other motivation. Cases where the perversity
is clearly what causes the action in the first place. Fortunately,
we have a very interesting theory to discuss about where
a lot of this is coming from. Yeah, so we're

(33:58):
gonna take one more break. When we them back, we're
going to discuss the ironic process of mental control. Thank alright,
we're back. So, Robert, we're asking the question, have we
ever been able to identify any cases where there is
something like the imp of the perverse where the perversity
of a thought or impulse or action actually does tend

(34:19):
to cause the brain to favor it. And one place
we can take this line of thought is to the
Harvard psychology professor Daniel M. Wagner, who passed away in
but who wrote about this idea of the ironic process
of mental control. That's right, and he actually begins the
paper with a passage from Po from them of the perverse.

(34:42):
But the first paragraph of this paper is just pretty
spot on, I think, and in terms of like sort
of you know, striking a chord with with something that
we can all relate to quote, it sometimes seems that
our desires to control our minds are met by an
inordinate measure of failure. Whether we want to stop a worry,
concentrate on the task, go to sleep, escape a bad mood,

(35:04):
distract ourselves from pain, be humble, relax, avoid prejudice, or
serve yet other mental goals, we find ourselves faltering again
and again. Indeed, our attempts at mental control falls short
so often then we may stop to wonder, along with Po,
whether there is some part of our minds, an imp
of the perverse, that ironically strives to compel our errors.

(35:25):
The theory of ironic processes of mental control make precisely
this claim, and so in his Ironic process theory which
he presents in this paper. He argues that quote, the
ironies of mental life or not just happenstance examples of
the frailty of human endeavors, but rather are logically entailed
by the nature of mental control. So he's arguing that

(35:46):
the very nature of the way cognition happens tends to
favor us thinking about things that we're trying not to
think about. Exactly. Yeah, he's saying that, you know, when
we attempt to exert mental control via what he refers
to as the operating process, to fill the mind with
the desired array of emotions or thoughts, you know, like

(36:06):
I'm gonna cheer up, where I'm gonna, I'm gonna get
into a calm state of mind, whatever the desires worrying, Yeah,
I'm gonna stop wearing UM. When we do that, the
monitoring process kicks in to ask is this the case?
Is this the is this working? Is this how I'm
actually feeling? Um? So it not only searches for failure,
but quote tends to create the failure. Yes, yeah, so

(36:28):
that's what he's saying. It's not just that we're not
very good at controlling the contents of our brains. Often
the attempt to control the contents of our not just
our brains, our minds. The attempt to control the contents
of our minds backfires spectacularly. Yeah. It's like we're saying,
I would rather not be sad right now. Um, I'm
gonna go ahead and load happiness, and then the monitoring

(36:51):
process says, let me check. Nope, you're sad. We're gonna
schedule down for another hour of set. Uh. So this
is this is a wonderful paper. The title is Ironic
Processes of Mental Control by Daniel M. Vegner W E
G N E R. Published in the Psychological Review in
and if you if you search around, you can you

(37:12):
can find this one online pretty easily. Um. But he
presents some other individuals work just to support this idea.
One of them is UH is the work of French
chemist Michel Chevroule, and he is UH known for Chevroule's pendulum.
So he debunked a spiritualist illusion in eighteen thirty three

(37:34):
in which awaited body suspended by a string from the
fingers was found to oscillate back and forth when concentrated upon.
Similar to this is pretty well, it's the same the
best way to explain it, because I think most of
us have probably not manipulated this pendulum. But if you've
ever played with Auiji board, well then you have experienced

(37:55):
the same thing. It is a kinesthetic illusion. The you know,
the the idea the causation of movement is is occurring
without the perception of our own conscious muscle movement, also
known as the ideometer phenomenon, and it's connected to automatic writing,
to dowsing, and other alleged supernatural acts. Anything that involves

(38:17):
you not moving something, feeling like you're not moving something,
but actually moving something. Yeah. Though it also reminds me
of the psychomotor problem known as target fixation, which I'd
read about years ago but just recently came to my mind.
So this is something that occurs in driving and piloting.
I've read about it primarily with respect to operating a

(38:37):
motorcycle for some reason. I don't know why a motorcycle specifically,
and not other vehicles. But here's the basic idea. Robert,
and you're steering a vehicle and you suddenly notice an
obstacle or threat that you need to avoid, and then
you steer directly into the obstacle and An example I've
read about is that say you're on a motorcycle in

(38:58):
a motorcycle race on a closed track, and then one
cycle veers off the track and crashes. UH. It's apparently,
in this case not unusual for cycles going along behind
it to steer off and follow the crashed motorcycle. And
this is usually described as a panic reflex, Like you
see an obstacle or crash or something threatening or dangerous,

(39:21):
and you immediately, because it's threatening and dangerous, focus all
your attention on that thing so as not to run
into it. But because you focus all your attention on
that thing, you unconsciously steer your vehicle directly toward it.
I am curious why this UH is mainly talked about
with motorcycles and not so much with other motor vehicles.

(39:42):
It could just be that the motorcycles and motorcyclists who
talk about this are often operating at a faster speed.
I don't know. It does seem to line up with
a number of the principles we're talking about here right
in Vegnar's theory, And now Vegnar also brings up Freud's
counter will to bring it back to segment freud Um
Freud's read on what's happening here is that we can't

(40:03):
do the thing we want to do sometimes, uh, as
if there's another will within us countering the will to
do the thing. Uh. And he employed this in his
consideration of hysteria. He also brought up the law of
reversed effort by Charles Bodwin from and this is kind
of an early hit on the same ideas of involved

(40:25):
in the ironic process theory, but but in the ironic
process theory paper, Vegner lays out a model of how
this goes down, for first with the effortful operating process
and then the effortless monitoring process. And that's part of
the maddening thing about it, right, It is like you can,
you can, you can exert so much will to try
and change your mind state, but then the resistance is

(40:48):
just it's it's it's like it's an alien force that
has its own reserves of energy to draw on limitless
even and then he goes on to consider the evidence
from experiments into movement, prejudice, self presentation, belief, disbelief, sleep, wakefulness, pain. Uh.
It's it's really a robust paper in this regard, and
he did a bunch of empirical research in this area,

(41:10):
I mean doing experiments to show directly uh. And in fact,
in some ways it is not hard to demonstrate. For example,
by asking people to verbalize a stream of consciousness, you
can find quite easily the people are who are told
to try hard not to think about something end up
thinking about it a lot. And in this section on
chronic production of ironic effects, he discusses how all of

(41:32):
this can potentially lead to a positive feedback loop of
ironic effects, wearing you down with increased mental load as
everything quote is magnified toward uh, psychopathological extremes um which
you know, even though you know he's talking about something,
he's talking about this in the sense that you know
this is how our minds seem to work. But on

(41:55):
the other hand, this sounds just completely awful. This sounds
like like a terrible system right where you just keep
running up against, you know, a potential positive feedback loop
of of you know, increasingly worrisome effects like this. It
reminds me a lot of you know, of what is
referred to in psychology as catastrophic thinking, you know, where

(42:15):
you end up obsessing over extreme and or irrational worst
case scenarios. Yeah, catastrophizing. Yeah, this is a tendency to
always look out for and your loved ones or when
you catch yourself doing it, because I mean, it can
be a sign that something's really wrong with your thought
patterns when you you're always trying to imagine what's the
worst way things could possibly go. Yeah, I mean it

(42:39):
brings me back again to something we've discussed in the
show before. You know, we talked about chronosthesia mental time travel,
all right, as well as theory of mind and uh,
and how both of these playing in our ability to
uh sort of run uh simulations of how the future
might go. Uh. And so when we're going into that
meeting with our boss, you know, we have various simulated

(43:02):
ideas of how things will go. Uh. You know, probably
some that are very reasonable, but then you're gonna have
some that are extreme. Maybe you're you're overly optimistic, and
there's one that's just a fantasy where you get like,
you know, the the billion dollar raise or something. And
then there are the ones that are more catastrophic in nature, uh,
ones that are maybe getting into the territory of the

(43:24):
the imp of the perverse. What if I look at
the table or eat a pin, that sort of thing.
But then aren't we not like wasting our efforts on
these models when we should be using our mental energy
towards the models that are more possible. I mean, on
one hand, yeah, it does seem like it. There is
adaptive value in being able to simulate future events, but

(43:44):
it does seem like we waste a lot of this
uh potential, we have this ability, we have to simulate
future events in our minds on yeah, just just ruining
ourselves and ruining our emotional state by obsessing with things
that are not helpful. And yeah, it can be hard
to understand exactly why that happens. Anyway, back to Wagner here,

(44:07):
he yeah. He ultimately argues that the ironic process theory
could explain a lot of about our mental control, but
he also brings it back to the imp saying quote.
The theory also accounts for one further class of effects,
the class that cries out for explanation and from which
we often cry out for relief. The theory suggests that
the ironic monitor is responsible for the instances in which

(44:29):
we find that we do, say, think, or feel precisely
what we least intend. Yeah. I mean I think when
you consider, like the model we were talking about earlier,
that clearly within the brain there are probably there are
subsystems for generating impulses to action, and then there are
other systems that provide inhibitory control. You know, executive function

(44:51):
of the brain says, to some impulses, no, let's not
do that. But when there is a when there is
say a thought that you were repeatedly returning to, especially
because you're trying to avoid thinking it due to the
ironic process of mental control, you keep thinking, am I
not thinking about it? And every time you think that
you think it that that's bringing it constantly to mind.

(45:14):
And then if there's ever a failure of inhibition for
whatever reason, you know, either just a kind of like
momentary glitch or because you've got a neurodegenerative disease or
a tumor or whatever, that impulse generated by the ironic
process by checking on your own mind to make sure
you're not thinking about the thing you're not supposed to
think about, turns into an action. Now all of this

(45:35):
sounds overwhelming really, Uh, Like, OK, I guess the MP
wins like you know that what what can one do
against this? Uh, this kind of situation? How can we possibly?
It's depressing to think that we would we have such
a difficulty in in changing our mind state, even though
we we obviously put a lot of energy into trying
to do so. Um. So it might lead some of

(45:57):
you to wonder, well, Okay, well what did Wagner have
to say about this? Did he have any advice for
dealing with these forces? Yeah? And so Wagner actually gave
a presentation about the imp of the perverse and about
thought suppression to the American Psychological Association in two thousand
eleven where he reviewed his research over his career on
this subject. And there was an article discussing this presentation

(46:20):
in the A p A Journal by Leah Weinerman uh,
and it discusses how Wagner said in his presentation that
is clear from the research that attempting not to think
about something not only doesn't work, it makes you more
likely to think about that thing. But what people always
want to know is what you're just asking about, Robert. Okay,
if the imp is there, and simply attempting not to

(46:42):
think about something will make you think about it more
and maybe even make you more likely to do it. Possibly,
is there anything you can do to defeat the imp
There does not, unfortunately, appear to be a fool proof method,
But Wagner laid out several methods that he and his
colleagues had discovered which had some degrees of success and
empirical support. UH Number one is, instead of trying not

(47:05):
to think about the thing you don't want to think about,
think about something else. Busy your mind with other contents.
Wagner and colleagues found in at least one other study
that when they asked people to think about a red
Volkswagen instead of a white bear, the people were somewhat
more successful than when they were just told not to
think of a white bear. Trying not to think about

(47:28):
something is a losing game. But if you positively think
about something else instead, then you then you have a
better chance. And I'd say this is one case where
the empirical research he does seem to line up with UH.
With I don't know, at least the what seems to
be reasonable conventional wisdom. Right, you can't just obsess about
not wanting to feel what you're feeling. You should find

(47:49):
something to do. Right when you find something to do
when you find another project, then your mind become sort
of full of other things rather than just like avoid
or a vacuum that you're trying to keep the bad
stuff out of. Next thing he recommends is mentally postpone
unwanted thoughts. I thought this was kind of interesting. Apparently,
some research has found that if you just give people

(48:12):
a designated period of thirty minutes to worry about something,
they worry less about it at other times. So if
the imp of the perverse is continually turning your mind
to an unwanted subject, Wagner suggests telling yourself, I'm going
to think about that, uh sometime next Wednesday, and I
won't think about it until then, And somehow this is
actually or at least apparently this is somewhat effective. Another

(48:37):
strategy he recommends is lighten your mental load or avoid multitasking. Quote.
One study found that people under increased mental load show
an increase in the availability of thoughts of death, one
of the great unwanted thoughts for most people. Uh, though,
I mean I kind of wonder about this one. I mean,
this could be seems like it could be resulted distress

(48:57):
and a lot of different things. Next one apparently is
exposure therapy. You think about the unwanted thought deliberately in
controlled ways, in controlled settings, and it may become less
intrusive at other times. And this strikes me as perhaps
one of the benefits that benefits of something like traditional

(49:17):
talk therapy. It provides a positive and controlled setting to
pay attention to unpleasant and unwanted thoughts so that they
become less persistent and intrusive at other times. And then finally,
the last one is he recommends mindfulness meditation, learning how
to manage your attention and consciousness through mindfulness meditation practice.

(49:38):
That this does appear somewhat helpful, and this makes sense
to me. If you've never tried mindfulness meditation, it's worth
I think everybody should try to give it at least
one shot and see what you think about it. There
are many different kinds of meditation practice. Mindfulness specifically is
about attention and experience. It's usually done by having an
object of focus. Your own breath is a common one,

(50:01):
and you just try to pay intense, unbroken attention to
a thing. Now, of course you will, you know, your
mind will wander, and then you just sort of continually
notice your own mental experiences and return your attention to
the object of focus. It tends to make you calmer
and better at understanding the way your own attention works. Yeah,

(50:24):
and of course what we've we've discussed meditation on the
show before. Uh So, if if anyone wants, you know,
a deeper dive into that, certainly look back in the
archives for this show. But this gives us a little
bit of hope. It it does provide hopefully we can
we can close out this episode with some hope for
all of us dealing with our own personal imps totally

(50:45):
and especially feel for for me, and I think for
a lot of people these days, their internet imps, the
internet imps come in at us all the time. I
feel like our brains are especially vulnerable these days because
of social media and online headlines and all that. Our
electronic connectedness has made us all the more vulnerable to

(51:05):
uh to, to impish behavior from the information world. Now,
in this episode we talked about intrusive thoughts a good bit.
We talked about, you know, the call of the void, etcetera.
So I think it is good to to to a
close out by just reminding everybody that if you know,
if you're dealing with intrusive thoughts of of say suicide. Um,

(51:26):
you know, a sympathetic ear is only a phone call away.
In the United States, consider calling the National Suicide Prevention
Hotline at one eight hundred to seven three, eight to
five five, and visit UH Suicide Prevention Lifeline dot org
for additional resources tailored towards general and specific needs, such
as those of youth, disaster survivors, Native Americans, veterans, lost survivors,

(51:50):
l g B, t Q, and attempt survivors. You'll find
a list of international suicide hotlines at suicide dot org.
But to close things out on a lighter note, Joe,
the imp of the perverse? Did you imagine it looking
like a googley, a gremlin, a hobgoblin, or some other
cinematic diminutive monster. Oh, the imp of the perverse is

(52:12):
job of the huts. Little buddy. What's it called? Oh? Yes,
Oh goodness, I'm blanking on his name. Something like a
little beak dog, Yes, yes, uh, something like scarlets fudge,
but not scarlets fudge. Why what did you picture? Robert?
I pictured a hobgoblin from the movie hob Goblins. For sure,
that's very, very good choice, but a Gremlin or Google

(52:34):
would also be acceptable. I know you're partial to Googley's. Yeah,
I mean Googies are pretty terrifying. Uh that yeah, that's
probably what came to my mind when I first imagined
the MP of the perverse. Alright, so we're gonna close
it out. If you want to check out more episodes
of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over to
Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mother ship.
That's where we'll find all the episodes. H and also

(52:55):
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If you like this show, we think you'll love that one.
So anyway, huge thanks to our excellent audio producers Alex

(53:17):
Williams and Tor Harrison. If you would like to get
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(53:42):
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