The Tulip Theory
Early in our marriage, my husband and I foolishly
By Dr. Faye Snyder
diagnoses without description of early causal experiences. Insurance panels and MDs generally seek diagnoses that are based on symptoms, not childhood experiences. Files from mental hospitals rarely have a useful review of early childhood.
ordered 100 Tulip bulbs from Holland to plant in our new garden in Southern California. The bulbs arrived with a note atop, which read, “Do not worry about your bulbs. They have their own fertilizer. You don’t have to water them. You don’t even need to put them into the ground. You can leave them on the shelf in a closed-door cabinet. Whatever you do, they will still bloom into beautiful blossoms for your enjoyment.” Of course, they didn’t mention warm weather. I put the note down and proclaimed aloud to my husband, “Oh my God! I was raised on the Tulip Theory.”
News investigators, journalists and reality television programmers don’t know or understand the significance of gathering information about the first years of childhood before airing or printing stories about violent criminals and mass shooters, and we hear commentators state that no one knows why someone acts so violently. Even filmmaker Michael Moore asks plaintively why so many shootings in America. The information is here if we want to know.
We assume genetic instructions, like fish assume water. The old Nature v Nurture debate was solved with the end of the Human Genome Project, which found no evidence for genes instructing behavior or personality. Even the most invested scientists conceded. The evidence is in. The fat lady has sung. Behavior is not inborn. Genes design the body, not the personality. Genes make the body. Experience and practice fashion personality. A piano cannot make music without a pianist, and a pianist cannot play a melody on the coffee table.
Insurance referrals, pediatricians and parents seek psychologists often, not for therapy, but for a diagnosis of ADHD or Autism, so they can get extra funding, without having to learn how to help their child become less symptomatic. It doesn’t appear that those empowered to make the diagnoses know how to reduce the symptoms therapeutically or to notify parents to remain active. A parent in the Tulip Theory assumes that there is no point in teaching discipline or self-regulation to a child diagnosed with autism, and there is no diagnosing expert to ensure that
I see television commercials claiming, without self-consciousness, that the treatment for depression, bipolar, or anxiety is this or that drug. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual offers
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