Cérebros femininos vs. cérebros masculinos
Female brains vs. male brains
Serge Ginger
Resumo
Este artigo oferece
aos psicoterapeutas um caminho para lidar com os diferentes gêneros com base
nas muitas diferenças que realmente existem na forma pela qual trabalham os
cérebros de cada um deles. Pesquisadores têm concordado que homens e mulheres
desenvolveram durante a evolução da espécie, características e habilidade que
deram a cada gênero o que era necessário a sobrevivência.
O artigo também propõe que, de acordo com neurocientistas, nossa personalidade
é determinada por fatores hereditários, pela vida intra uterina e pelo que é
adquirido do ambiente após o nascimento.
Junto a esses fatores, temos os hormônios (Testosterona e Estrogênio) estimulando
comportamentos masculinos ou femininos, dependendo da reação que causam nos
respectivos corpos. O artigo também nos alerta que a identidade de gênero é
diferente da identidade sexual.
Para concluir o artigo propõe algumas aplicações do que foi levantado em psicoterapia,
encorajando aos terapeutas a olharem com cuidado para as peculiaridades de cada
gênero. Para terminar lembra a todos os leitores que nossa percepção do mundo
é muito diferente, mas prazerosamente complementar.
Palavras-chave: Cérebro, Homens, Mulheres, Masculino,Feminino, Diferentes, Espécies, Orientação, Neurocientistas, Hereditariedade, , Personalidades, Hormônios, Testosterona, Estrógenos, Psicoterapia, Psicoterapeuta.
Abstract
This brief offer to psychotherapists a way to deal
with the different gender based on the very real differences about how their
brains work. Researches now agree that men and women developed during the specie
evolution characteristics and skills, providing to which gender whatever was
needed to the surveillance.
The brief also proposes that, according to neuroscientists our personality is
determined by heredity, intra-uterine life and what is acquired from the environmental
after birth. Besides there are the hormones (Testosterone and Estrogens) stimulating
masculine and feminine behavior depending on the reactions it causes into the
respective bodies. But it also warns that gender identity is different from
sexual identity.
To conclude it proposes some applications in psychotherapy encouraging the therapists
to look carefully to the peculiarities of which gender. To finished this brief
reminds every reader that our perception of the world is very different, but
pleasantly
complementary.
Keywords: Brains, Men, Women, Masculine,Feminine, Different, Species, Orientation, Neuroscientists, Heredity, Personalities, Hormones, Testosterone, Estrogens, Psychotherapy, Psychotherapist.
Two lectures in the same time
You’re lucky to-day: you’ll have two lectures,
And —
as I have a short time — I’ll give these two lectures… at
the same time!
One for women;
another one for men!
In fact, I
already began: right now, men and women haven’t heard the same mes-sage!
Hearing with both hemispheres
For instance — in average, of course (with many individual variations)
— women hear me twice as loud (2,3 more loud) as men. So, they hear me
“shouting” (and they think I’m angry) while men have the feeling
I’m speaking in a confidential manner, with some kind of complicity…
The women hear
me with both their hemispheres (left brain and right brain), while men listen
to me with mostly their left brain — verbal, logic…and consequently
with criticism! Women have more links between the two hemispheres (through corpus
callosum) and my speech is colored with emotions, perceived subjectively through
their wishes and their fears, through their ethical or social values (like feminism!).
They hear what I’m saying, but mostly how I do it, sensitive to the tune
of my voice, to the rhythm of my breath, to my supposed feelings…
Of course,
this predominance of audition and subjective hearing is only a detail, but its
main interest is that we can observe it here and now.
Two different species
To speak frankly, we belong to two different “species”. In our times,
we just finish the deciphering of the human genome and you perhaps know that
it’s proofed that hu-mans and monkeys have about the same genetic inheritance:
common at a rate of 98,4 % — which means only 1,6 % of differences between
men and monkeys (male monkeys!)… while there is 5 % difference between
men and women! So, a human male is physiologically more near to a monkey than
to a woman!… And, as you al-ready guessed it, woman is near to a female
monkey!
Of course,
such provocative and quantitative calculations neglect the qualitative as-pect:
for instance, the genes which contribute to development of language, art, phi-losophy,
etc. but they underline the big gap between genders — within all animal
species, including human species. This gender identity is different from sexual
identity.
Usually, I
teach to my students the impact of brain functioning on psychotherapy, dur-ing
a four days workshop (with some demonstrations) , but to-day, I’ve only
some minutes to mention it rapidly, and I’ll only give a listing of about
twenty main differ-ences between men and women.
Right brain is masculine
All researchers
of all countries agree now to consider that :
• the
left brain is more developed among women ;
• the
right brain (the so-called “emotional brain”) is more developed
among men — contrary to what is often thought by general public (and sometimes
even by psycho-therapists!). It’s under the influence of sexual hormones
and neurotransmitters (tes-tosterone, etc.).
So, the woman
is more involved in verbal sharing and communication, while the man is more
prepared for action and competition.
Already, in
the kindergarten, during 50 minutes of a class, small girls talk during 15 minutes
and boys, only 4 minutes (four times less). Boys are rowdy 5 minutes; they fight
10 times more often than the girls : 30 seconds, in average. When they are 9
years old, girls are 18 months ahead. When they are adults, women talk in average
20 minutes at each phone call, while men speak only 6 minutes, just to give
an ur-gent information! The woman needs to share her ideas, feelings, emotions,
while the man withdraw and control his emotions and try to find a solution.
He interrupts his wife to propose a solution… and the wife don’t
feel to be listened to! In fact, men are more emotional than women, but they
don’t express their emotions and this point must never be neglected in
conjugal life… and during psychotherapy.
Orientation
• Woman
is concerned by Time (left brain);
Man is concerned
by Space (right brain): the advantage of men in three dimensional spatial rotation
tests is massive, since the childhood (Kimura, 2000).
• The
woman finds her way with concrete markers: the advantage of women in me-morization
or denomination of concrete objects is massive.
The man finds
his way through an abstract direction: he is able to improvise a short cut to
reach his car or his hotel.
Sense organs
Globally speaking, the woman is more sensitive :
• Her
hearing is more developed: hence the importance of sweet words, of voice tune,
of music;
• Her
sense of touch is much more developed: she has 10 times more skin receptors,
sensitive to contact; ocytocin and prolactin (hormones of attachment and cuddle)
increase her need to touch and to be touched;
• Her
olfaction (smell) is much more sharp: 100 time more at certain periods of her
menstrual cycle!
• Her
Vomero Nasal Organ (VNO), the real “6th sense” (chemical and relational
or-gan) seems to be more developed and perceives sharper the pheromones —
which express different kinds of emotions: sexual desire, anger, fear, sadness…
Perhaps it’s what is called “intuition”?
• As
for sight, it’s more developed among men, and eroticized: hence their
interest and excitement for clothes, make-up, jewellery, nakedness, pornographic
maga-zines…However, women have a better visual memory (for recognizing
faces, tidying of objects…).
Why such differences? The Theory of Evolution
The researchers explain these important biological and fundamental differences
be-tween men and women by the natural selection through more than one million
years of evolution of the human species . Such adaptative evolution is supposed
to have shaped our brain and sense organs through the combined action of hormones
and neurotransmitters:
• Men
adapted to hunting on large space and distance (and also to struggle and war
between tribes). Usually they had to silently pursue game (animals), sometimes
dur-ing several days, and then to find back their cavern (sense of orientation).
Very few verbal sharing (it has been estimated that a prehistoric man met not
more than 150 persons during his whole life).
• During
the same period, women’s brain adapted to children’s breeding and
educa-tion — which implies verbal sharing in the limited space of the
cave.
So, on a biological
level, men are programmed for competition, while women are programmed for cooperation.
And so, everybody
can see that biologically, psychotherapy is a women business!
These predispositions
seem to be linked to biology (hormones and neurotransmit-ters). They are constituted
during the very first weeks of intra-uterine life and seem to be very few influenced
by education and culture.
Nature and nurture
To-day, neuroscientists and geneticists seem to consider that our personality
is de-termined:
• for
about 1/3, by heredity: chromosomes from the nucleus of our cells and mito-chondrial
DNA heredity, coming from the mother;
• for
about 1/3, by intra-uterine life: during the first weeks after conception; the
emb-ryo (fetus) is feminine (Durdeen-Smith & Desimone, 1983; Badinter, 1992;
Magre & al.; 2001) and masculinity is a slow and hard hormonal and educational
conquest. So, the girl is not a boy who lost his penis (Freud’s hypothesis),
but the boy is a girl who won (gained) a penis. The psychoanalytical so-called
envy or need for penis is an hypothesis which has never been controlled. Among
transsexual people, one can find five times more men wishing to become a women
than women wishing to become a man…
During the
war, two times more male homosexuals were born, probably because of mother’s
stress, disturbing her hormonal balance (Durdeen-Smith & Desimone, 1983;
Le Vay, 1993).
These two hereditary
and congenital parts seem to be important: for instance, if a male twin is homosexual,
his identical twin is also homosexual in 50 to 65 % of the cases ; if he is
only a fraternal twin, it’s the case in 25 to 30 %, which means two times
less — but still 5 times more than in the general population! Homosexuality
could be predicted since the age of 1 or 2 years, in many cases (Le Vay, 1993).
• for
about 1/3, acquired after birth: cultural bath or steep, education, training,
occa-sional circumstances… or psychotherapy!.
In a more general
approach, the global correlation between personalities is esti-mated at:
• 50
% between identical twins (heredity)
• 25
% between fraternal twins (hormonal impregnation during intra-uterine life)
• 10
% between brothers and sisters (education)
• 0 %
between strangers.
These three
thirds (heredity, acquired in utero, acquired during life) have been found —
in different proportions — in many fields of abilities: intelligence,
music, sports, and even optimism .
Depending on
the amount of pessimistic or optimistic genes you’ve inherited, you could
formulate this researches in different manners:
• “Our
personality is predetermined — since our birth — at about 2/3”.
• “Our
personality is constructed — since our conception — at about 2/3”.
Hormones
When you put a ball on the earth, boys give it a kick; girls take the ball and
clasp it to their heart. It seems to be independent of their education and culture,
and directly related to their hormones.
Testosterone
is the hormone of desire, sexuality and aggression. It could be called the “hormone
of conquest” (military or sexual!). It develops :
• Strength
of muscles (40 % muscles for men; 23 % for women);
• Speed
(reactions) and impatience (92 % of drivers who hoot at a traffic light are
men!);
• Aggression,
competition, domination (the dominant male maintains the quality of the species);
• Endurance,
tenacity;
• Healing
of wounds;
• Beard
and baldness ;
• Vision
(far away, as “teleobjective”);
• Right
side of the body and fingerprints (Kimura, 1999);
• Throwing
with precision;
• Orientation;
• Attraction
by a young female (able to give birth).
Influence of
œstrogens:
• Dexterity,
separate movements of fingers (Kimura, 1999);
• Left
side of the body (and fingerprints);
• In
average, 15 % fat for a man and 25 % fat for a woman (to protect and nourish
her baby);
• Hearing:
women perceive larger range of sounds, they sing in tune 6 times more often,
they have a sharper recognition of sounds and music (to recognize their baby);
• Smell:
their olfaction is 100 times stronger (at certain periods);
• Nomination
of colors: the cones, which recognize colors, are situated on the X chromosome;
• Verbal
and visual memory of the localization of things;
• Attraction
by a dominant male, strong, able to protect her, experienced, socially recognized
— which means generally older.
To conclude:
some applications in Psychotherapy
The research
in neurosciences confirms a lot of traditional knowledge. It helps the everyday
work in psychotherapy and counseling (with individuals or couples):
And now, to
finish this brief lecture, some concrete examples of the daily impact of neurosciences.
They help the Psychotherapist to:
• Listen
a woman with patience, until she is finished, without trying to “solve”
her problem (which would be a male reaction, oriented toward action: instead
of “mother” her, he becomes her “father”);
• Encourage
the man to speak more and to express and share his emotions;
• Underline
the importance of sight for men and of hearing for women, especially in erotic
preliminary (music and sweet voice);
• Stimulate
the ill persons: install patients near a window (open on the outside world)
helps healing; stimulate the aged : passive retirement accelerates aging;
• Exploit,
during psychotherapy, the intimate links between sexuality and aggression (both
of them, controlled by hypothalamus and by testosterone);
• Be
very prudent about “memories” of early sexual abuse: the memory
of a scene, real or only seen in imagination, is treated in the same brain regions,
and creates the same neurochemical reactions (40 % of the “memories”
are false memories, recon-structed from conscious or unconscious fears or desires);
• Mobilize
the frontal lobes, center of responsibility and autonomy (be able to say “no”)
; hence, richness of paradoxical and provocative therapy;
Some general remarks:
• To make love accelerates healing of wounds (testosterone);
• Body
oriented therapies help to mobilize neurological paths: movement > right
brain > limbic brain > emotions > deep engrammation (encoding) of experience…
• A certain
amount of emotion helps memorization; verbalization afterwards helps to recall
in the future;
• Long
term memorization occurs mostly during dreams (REM sleeping); hence, in case
of mental trauma (accident, death of a close person, rape, terrorist attack,
earthquake…),
usefulness of a debriefing before the first dream time (“emergency Gestalt”,
Ginger, 1987).
• Women
commit ten times more suicide attempts (they express their emotions); men succeed
in their suicide (enactment);
• Women
speak without thinking; men act without thinking!
• Women
who are not happy in their relations, have problems in their job;
men who are
not happy in their job, have problems in their relations;
• Women
need intimacy to appreciate sexuality; men need sexuality to appreciate intimacy.
Finally, it’s
fundamental to follow the research in genetics and neurosciences and update
in permanence (weekly) our knowledge.
• It’s
probably not indifferent to work with a male or female therapist: it does matter
, it makes the difference! (Krause-Girth, 2001).
• Our perception of the world is very different… but pleasantly complementary!
Referências
( 1) ARON, C. La Sexualité (Phéromones et désir).
Paris : Odile Jacob. (206 p.) 2000
( 2) BADINTER, E. XY, de l'identité masculine. Paris
: Odile Jacob. (315 p.) 1992
( 3) BRACONNIER, A. Le sexe des émotions. Paris : Odile
Jacob. (210 p.) 1996
( 4) CREPAULT, C. La sexoanalyse. Paris : Payot. 1997
( 5) CYRULNIK, B. Les nourritures affectives. Paris : Odile
Jacob. (244 p.) 1993
( 6) DURDEN-SMITH & DESIMONE. Sex and the Brain. USA. (270
p.) 1983
( 7) GINGER, S. et A. La Gestalt, une thérapie du contact.
Paris : Hommes et Groupes. 7th éd. 2000 (535 p.). Chapters 12 et 13 (p.
297 to 324 & 332 to 346). 1987
( 8) GINGER, S. Gestalt Therapy, The Art of Contact. London. Karnac
books (174 p) 2007
( 9) GRAY, J. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Harper
Collins (USA) 1998
(10) JANOV, A. The Biology of Love. New York: Prometheus Books(380
p.) 2000
(11) KIMURA, D. Sex and Cognition. MIT Press (USA) 2000
(12) KRAUSE-GIRTH, C. The position of Women in Psychotherapy.
(lecture in Frankfurt & Paris) 2001
(13) LE VAY, S.The Sexuel Brain. Cambridge (Mass.) : MIT Press.
(230 p.) 1993
(14) MAGRE S. et VIGIER B. Développement et différenciation sexuelle
de l’appareil génital. In La reproduction chez les mammifères
et l’homme. Paris : Ellipses. 2001
(15) PEASE A. & Barbara. Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t
Read Maps. Orion. (430 p.) 2001
(16) PLOMIN R. et all. Behavioral Genetics. Freeman & Company.
New York. 1997
(17) VINCENT J.D. Biologie des passions. Paris : Odile Jacob.
(352 p.) 1986
(18) WILLER, E. Les hommes, les femmes, etc. Bruxelles : Marabout.
(190 p.) 2001
Endereço
para correspondência
Serge Ginger
E-mail: ginger@noos.fr
Recebido em: 17/06/2011
Aprovado em: 21/06/2011