Daniel Z. Lieberman (Buffalo, USA, 1964) was educated by reading the great thinkers of Western culture.
Only after living in Tokyo, and starting to read Carl Gustav Jung, did he decide to study medicine.
He researched and wrote his book
Dopamine
(Planet) in order to explain to his students at George Washington University what was behind a molecule that brought about the best and the worst in human beings.
On the other side of the screen, he wears a suit and shows a sense of humor.
Ask permission to get up for a glass of water.
He has thought about almost everything, but he does not have everything under control.
Only 0.0005% of the brain produces dopamine.
And dominates us.
He is the conductor.
You can slow down or play madly.
Why is he responsible for the best and the worst?
We say that the greatest sinners make the best saints.
Dopamine is not good or bad.
It is energy and motivation, the mental circuit that is activated when there is a threat.
It increases the possibility of surviving, of reproducing and thus of having a future.
It does not always pursue our good.
What is good for our genes is not necessarily good for us.
His circuitry evolved when humans lived most of their lives on the brink of starvation and helped them survive.
Today it continues to make us see caloric food and want it.
Eating too many donuts can lead to a heart attack.
That's why it malfunctions.
Most psychiatrists believe that faithful people are happier than those who are not.
However, from a genetic point of view, it would be better to spread our genes with many partners.
That is why when seeing a possible partner, dopamine makes us feel the desire to reproduce, that is, sexually.
It would be good for the genes, maybe not so good for us.
Workaholism?
It is difficult to accept that what drives us to work obsessively is the same thing that motivates those who seek pleasure in sex, but it is the same quest for survival.
We feel the effect of dopamine when we want something, not when we get it.
That's how it is.
Dopamine lives in the future.
As soon as we achieve something and it reaches the present, it turns off.
He makes us buy by promising happiness.
But once purchased it is disconnected.
And happiness does not come.
If it promises the future, why do we feel it in the present?
It provides the pleasure of anticipation, not the satisfaction.
He never has enough.
It's motor, not goal.
Anything that satisfies us is not dopamine.
It was considered the molecule of pleasure and you show that it is the molecule of desire.
It has more to do with imagining than achieving.
Do we live waiting?
Yes. And always expecting the future to be better than the present is insane.
Have we taken it out of religion?
Possibly.
It is essential that we understand that happiness is exceptional and temporary.
Instead, dissatisfaction is constant.
We always think that the next will be better.
It is a survival weapon and a sentence to dissatisfaction.
We talk and, instead of enjoying it, I think: I can't wait to see it published.
Why can't I focus on the conversation?
"Passionate love may be the most pleasurable experience we have in life," says Daniel Z. Lieberman.Greg Kahn
Is the transience of happiness something current?
It changes with cultures.
The western ones are more based on progress than on tradition.
We wonder how to make things easier or faster: more, more, more.
Others focus on the here and now: we have always done it this way, we are going to continue.
We would wonder why.
That why is dopamine.
What got you interested in dopamine?
Studying Medicine I investigated various diseases.
I analyzed its chemical components and was confused that dopamine was responsible for problems that seemed to have nothing in common: drug addiction, attention deficit or schizophrenia.
I was obsessed that a student would ask me about that connection and I would not be able to answer him.
Medicine was not his first choice.
I received proposals from colleges with photos of their campuses, and St. John's College sent me a list of books.
I thought: I must read them.
In his program The Great Books, the supposedly most important books of Western thought are studied.
From Plato to Joyce or Einstein.
It doesn't prepare you for a specific profession, but it trains your brain to make decisions.
What did he learn?
Most books offer answers, but the great ones ask questions.
They build a dialogue in which philosophers and historians do not agree.
That teaches you how to deal with the tough questions.
He spent three years in Japan.
I needed money and one of my colleagues told me that the Japanese, when doing international business—with Chinese, Koreans or Indians—always speak English.
What made you decide to become a psychiatrist?
In Japan I read Jung and wanted to be a psychoanalyst.
But a professor told me that if I wanted to understand the mind, I had to learn about the brain by studying medicine.
Was he psychoanalyzed?
No. I came back from Tokyo with my wife, who is Japanese.
And I didn't want to ignore her.
If, in addition to studying medicine, I had psychoanalyzed myself, when would I have seen it?
Keep up with her.
Yes.
But dopamine makes love not last.
Passionate love may be the most pleasurable experience we have in life.
It makes men feel like gods.
It does not require effort nor can you work, it happens.
Who perceives it thinks that the world has been transformed.
It is perfect.
But it is dopaminergic: it lasts only 12 months.
In his book he says that 18.
Never forever.
Companion love is not necessarily inferior.
It happens when someone knows you deeply and loves you as you are.
It occurs between people and between animals that bond for life.
Unlike passionate love, you have to work on it, just like friendship.
Passionate love sees no mistakes.
That's why it crashes.
The partner knows that he must work giving himself more or being more careful.
He requires effort, but he pays: a person who feels loved is more protected in the world.
And he gets more stuff.
It must be strange living with you analyzing every reaction...
That is a myth.
In psychiatry there is a basic rule: one cannot treat friends or relatives.
We need to be objective and, as human beings, we don't get it before someone for whom we feel hope, or desire.
What I think I see in my wife may be something that is inside of me and that I am projecting onto her.
Do you know when you stop being objective?
Yes. And I stop.
Can you analyze yourself?
It would be a very slow process.
I am 57 years old and I am just beginning to know myself.
It is difficult and unpleasant.
“Know yourself” is a piece of advice that is as good as it is complicated because we tend to think that we already know ourselves.
It is a painful process because we tend to self-deceive.
But widen your gaze.
And life.
When does one decide to start getting to know each other?
With the suffering that does not destroy us.
Nietzsche said it: “What does not kill me makes me stronger”.
That's only true if you get over what nearly killed you by developing the ability to tolerate frustration and disappointment.
It does not avoid pain, it serves to understand.
Does today's society tolerate frustration worse than others?
Yes. In the United States, people are continually looking for reasons to be offended.
That is not healthy.
Every time you decide that there is something stronger than you, you stop growing as a person.
"You are crazy like the people you treat, that's why you have become psychiatrists."
When someone says that about you and you manage not to get affected, that makes you a little stronger.
If the slightest comment, or discrepancy, affects you, it weakens you.
That is why I believe that the fashion of looking for reasons to feel hurt leads to the weakening of character.
It has nothing to do with denying injustice, but with avoiding excess susceptibility.
Scientific studies show that if you are grateful, nonsense slips away from you.
What strengthens us?
Live in the here and now.
Stop projecting.
Make us aware of what surrounds us.
Also meditate.
It's taking your brain to the gym.
Do you meditate?
Yes. Every time someone lifts a weight it forces an effect on their muscles.
The same thing happens with meditation.
Being able to focus on your breath and push a thought away is like lifting a weight: you are working your mind.
After hundreds of times, you strengthen it.
"Youthful dissatisfaction is positive. Adult dissatisfaction is destructive," says Daniel Z. Lieberman.Greg Kahn
He has listed chemical keys to lasting love.
Does that generate suspicion among your psychiatrist colleagues?
Trying to get closer to readers is not considered in my profession.
It is respected to contribute to academic knowledge among the group, but not to expand it.
It's frustrating to spend years researching a topic and only have a dozen people read it.
Was he a good student?
Very good.
My parents divorced when I was eight years old.
We are going through very hard emotional and economic times.
I wanted to get out of there and became obsessed with studying.
Dopamine?
Undoubtedly.
Being such an ambitious student made my present even more difficult.
I remember it as an unhappy time.
But I think it was worth it.
I wanted to give my children the happy childhood that I didn't have and they do poorly at school.
Does dopamine power consumerism?
Yes. Buying what you don't need—sneakers, lipstick—is fantasizing about how that will improve your life.
There is nothing wrong with those fantasies.
But we must remember that they are fantasies.
Growing up is deactivating the power of dopamine?
Dopamine helps to imagine a good future and to go through difficult times.
Youth dissatisfaction is positive.
The adult, destructive.
One cannot live thinking that his wife is not good enough.
He must seek the path that leads from ambition to satisfaction.
Mick Jagger doesn't seem to have found it.
In his biography he claims that he slept with 4,000 women.
I suspect that on the way to 4,000 he enjoyed sex less and less.
The problem with the pleasures that dopamine produces is that they develop tolerance.
The brain responds less and less.
If one eats two donuts, the second one brings less pleasure.
It sounds very Catholic.
The brain works like this.
Is he religious?
I was educated in Judaism.
But in college I converted to Christianity.
I read in the New Testament “love your enemies” and I was shocked.
If a drug addict gets more pleasure from the first dose, why doesn't he end up quitting?
Because he seeks to recover that pleasure.
And it is impossible.
Dopamine has made us progress and fail precisely because of that.
Mick Jagger should have stopped at 20. The rest is not going to help him.
You would have to ask him.
In the brain competes the promise of dopamine and the dose of reality.
Dopamine lowers practicality.
And the satisfaction oppresses her.
Does something stimulate pragmatism and dopamine at the same time?
The sport.
You work in the present and get satisfaction knowing how good you will feel.
One stops thinking.
And stop thinking is fundamental: you neither expect nor suffer.
How to get into that state without breaking a sweat?
With creativity.
Describe Marilyn Monroe, Lou Reed or Charles Dickens as bipolar.
Are we all somewhat bipolar with our ups and downs?
Almost everyone has ups and downs, but bipolarity is an illness that needs medical treatment.
It threatens the lives of those who suffer from it and those around them.
10% of patients commit suicide.
A higher average than many cancers.
It cannot be taken lightly: the ups and downs are not bipolarity.
Why do so many creative people suffer from it?
The highly creative brain is like a race car: it can do extraordinary things, but it quickly breaks down.
Does dopamine move the world?
Think of a town where there is no work or there is war.
There is something different in those who decide to emigrate.
It's dopamine.
Even in a poor country, it is easier to stay than to leave.
52% of Silicon Valley —Google, PayPal, eBay or Snapchat— has been created by immigrants.
Oxytocin, serotonin or endorphins control dopamine.
How to make the mind produce them?
Deactivating expectations and enjoying the moment, what the senses offer, which is a lot.
Anxieties are aired if one concentrates on the now.
He maintains that video games generate a stronger addiction in children than gambling in adults.
The desire circuitry in the brain is primitive: I want it now.
But the frontal lobe takes into account the long term.
That part doesn't develop until the twenties.
In adolescence nobody thinks in the long term.
Video game manufacturers work with psychologists who design to create addiction.
Isn't that malpractice?
Generate money.
Like Facebook, which is not to make friends, it is to know what they think of me.
It has been published that Facebook was aware of emotionally harming people, but instead of stopping it they empowered it to create addicts.
We live in a society that puts money above any goal.
Social networks are like tobacco a few decades ago: a product that harms users.
You have?
Facebook to promote the book.
Go?
My co-author Michael Long takes care of it.
Can we heal ourselves with mental strength?
If you have mild diabetes, you can cure yourself with diet and exercise.
And that's better than medicating.
If it's severe, diet and exercise will help, but if you don't medicate, you'll probably die.
Everybody accepts that.
It's not the same with mental illness, people don't understand that sometimes medication is needed.
Contact with nature or having friends can heal us if the problem is mild.
But the brain is an organ, like the pancreas, and if there is a mental illness, it must be treated.
Aren't there many overmedicated patients?
If you have to see five every hour, you can do little more than a recipe that relieves them.
It's a mistake.
I need to talk to my patients.
And it's getting harder and harder.
Why?
I have sacrificed a lot studying and paying for those studies.
I think I deserve a good life.
If I spend 30 minutes with a patient, either I pay for it or I set rates that only allow the rich to be cured.
To do?
What does?
I do not accept insurance.
I ask patients to pay me what they think I deserve and they decide what to do with their money, what they spend it on.
Happiness is not given by your partner or money.
you find it
At Harvard they concluded that loneliness, even voluntary, is as high a risk of death as smoking.
Will it be the next pandemic?
From the evolutionary point of view we are wounded animals.
The size of the tribes has been growing along with the size of the brain.
Managing more people requires more brain power.
That's why he grew up with social relationships.
If you take that away from the brain, it gets sick.
Modern culture tends to isolate us.
But notice another prejudice, we don't want to go to the asylum.
And many elderly people, when they move from their home to the residence and come into contact with others, begin to act as if they were 10 years younger.
They regain vitality.
That's what people do to us.
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