Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (14 page)

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Authors: James McBride Dabbs,Mary Godwin Dabbs

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BOOK: Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior
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Page 42
My fantasy life has diminished strongly . . . unfortunately. I would have liked to keep that. I am becoming more clumsy, more blinkered. I didn't ask for this; it just happens.
I would have preferred to remain androgynous. I always considered myself to be a man, but this is not what I had expected.
1
His testosterone doses were large, and the effect was large. He discovered in a dramatic way that testosterone influenced his mind as well as his body. These effects on his mind and nervous system, on what he saw and how he thought and reacted, are the links between testosterone and the outward manifestations of masculinity. He expected the outward changes everyone associates with masculinity, but the inner ones were surprising. He experienced firsthand the differences between women and men that researchers have only observed secondhand. The changes he describedtrouble expressing himself, thinking and imagining less, acting more quickly, focusing more narrowly but more vividly, feeling euphoric, and losing fine motor skillsare all consistent with what researchers know about testosterone's role in the differences between men and women, differences that are the result of evolution and reproductive pressures on our human and prehuman ancestors.
The Dutch patient's increasing inability to express himself was consistent with what psychologists know about verbal ability and physical anthropologists know about human prehistory. Women have better verbal skills than men. Our male ancestors needed skills that made them excel at hunting and fighting, and a simple vocabulary served them nicely. Our female ancestors needed more complicated vocabularies to facilitate social interactions among the members of communal groups that nurtured and protected children. Verbal ability is part of an evolutionary package that emphasizes abstract thought and imagination.
As he began to think and imagine less, the Dutch patient began to focus more intently, feel euphoric, and act more quickly. His mental processes were becoming more masculine, more like those of his fighting and hunting male ancestors. Men who fought and hunted in dangerous primitive environments needed to focus on the task at hand and move quickly with confidence and optimism. They could not afford to worry about the bad things that might happen to them. They did not
 
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need vivid imaginations or complicated thoughts to slow them down when survival depended on speed and action.
Our primitive male ancestors needed to make and use tools and weapons, but they also needed to be strong. There is an evolutionary trade-off between brute strength and fine motor skill. In women the trade-off is toward fine motor skill and manual dexterity; in men it is toward strength. With testosterone therapy, the Dutch patient lost dexterity and began to drop things.
He also lost the ''overall picture." His change in mental focus from broad to narrow mirrors the different challenges that men and women had to meet throughout human evolutionary history. While men benefited from an intensity offocus, women benefited from paying attention to many things at once. Women gathered food, carried water, fed the fire, stirred the pot, and did whatever other chores needed to be done, while at the same time keeping an eye on the children. The children's survival depended on having mothers who could keep track of the "overall picture." Anthropologist Helen Fisher calls the female style of thinking "web thinking" and the male style "step thinking."
2
The biological basis for web thinking is complicated, but the Dutch patient's experience indicates that high levels of testosterone interfere with it. Testosterone probably has some impact on the corpus callosum, the part of the brain that unites the left and right sides. The corpus callosum is larger on average in women than in men, and its size is related to verbal intelligence.
3
While men evolved using their strength and focus, women evolved using their sizable corpora callosa.
Simple Thought and Action
My wife, Mary, says the corpus callosum explains quite a bit. Recently I heard her talking on the telephone to our daughter-in-law, Geri. Mary said, "Just tell James one thing at a time. He can't remember a list of things. He can't help it. He's a man and he has a small corpus callosum." Mary was trying to help Geri deal with our son's evolutionary baggage.
Shakespeare's King Henry V understood the need for focus. He was worried that his men would think too much about the overwhelming number of French soldiers facing them at the battle of Agincourt. He prayed, "O God of Battles! Steal my soldiers' hearts. / Possess them
 
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not with fear. Take from them now / the sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers / pluck their hearts from them." Just before the battle he added, "All things are ready, if our minds be so." The Earl of Westmoreland agreed, saying, "Perish the man whose mind is backward now!"
4
In King Arthur's court, Sir Lancelot objected that Queen Guinevere was teaching the young Galahad to think too much. Galahad had interrupted a fencing lesson to ask Lancelot how he would know when he was fighting on the right side. Lancelot said, ''I'm sorry, Guinevere, but if you teach him such sophistry, he won't be a fit companion for decent men. Imagine some one needing his help in danger, a friend, let's say, or his father or his mother, or even a stranger, and he'll be debating which side of the quarrel is more righteous!"
5
Sometimes our thoughts are simple because there is no extra room in our minds. Each of our minds has a limited capacity. What faces us at the moment may be so demanding that we have to ignore everything else. Tom Hanks described the captain, his character in the movie
Saving Private Ryan
, in those terms. In a 1999 television interview Hanks said that the captain, intent on completing his mission, focused on the moment, refusing to tell anyone about his life outside the army or even allow himself to think about it. The captain accomplished his mission but lost his life. Sometimes, though, the ability to focus can be lifesaving. The French pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry described the mind of a pilot named Sagon, who was trying to escape from a burning airplane. He said,
The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight, put your mind on the strategy of the fight, and you will not feel the other fellow's punches. Once, when I thought I was about to drown in a seaplane accident, the freezing water seemed to me tepid. Or, more exactly, my consciousness was not concerned with the temperature of the water. It was absorbed by other thoughts. The temperature of the water left no trace on my memory. In the same way, Sagon's consciousness was filled to the brim with the problem of getting away from the plane. His universe was limited successively to the fate of his crew, the handle that governed the sliding latch, the rip cord of the parachute.
6
 
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Still, a narrow focus is not always a good thing. There was a sad item in the news about a small child who drowned in the family pool near the deck where he was helping his father with a carpentry project. The father did not notice that the child was missing and had fallen into the pool until it was too late to save him. When Mary heard about the accident, she said, "If that father had known he wasn't good at doing more than one thing at a time, maybe the accident wouldn't have happened."
Some women have one-track minds, but it is more typical of men, and they can be more extreme. A one-track mind leads to persistence, and persistence can lead to stubbornness. In the novel
Lonesome Dove
, Augustus McRae and Woodrow Call crossed the line into stubbornness. They were driving cattle from south Texas to Montana. The drive was long and hard, and on the Platte River in Nebraska they stopped to visit Augustus's old friend Clara. She tried to persuade Augustus to stay. She said, "There's cheap land not three days' ride from here. You could have the whole north part of this state if you wanted it. Why go to Montana?" "Well, that's where we started for," he said. "Me and Call have always liked to get where we started for, even if it don't make a damn bit of sense."
7
Studies show that men and animals who are high in testosterone persist at what they start, and they work longer at a task without being distracted.
8
Although the tasks studied have been simple ones that can be completed relatively quickly, we suspect that high-testosterone people also tend to persevere at tasks requiring months or years to complete. It appears likely that testosterone is a factor in stubbornness as well as persistence. Not all men like Augustus and Woodrow are fictional. There was a story in
Creative Loafing
, an Atlanta weekly newspaper, that stuck in my mind. It was about the relentless twelve-year campaign of a West Point graduate and former Army Ranger to expose corruption in local rezoning practices. At West Point he had sworn "never to lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate anyone who does." His crusade, which he views in the context of keeping that vow, has cost him his marriage, most of his money, and his freedom during two years he spent in jail awaiting trial on forty-three counts of terroristic threats, stalking, and intimidating witnesses. He has not yet given up his fight, although the men he accuses of wrongdoing are either dead, elderly, or already punished for related crimes. Surely his background and training have a

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