Amy Banks, our speaker, gave both the Focus and the Lecture. In the focus talk she told us about a very personal experience which is addressed in her book, Fighting Time, coauthored with Isaac Knapper. Additionally she has authored Wired to Connect, Four Ways to Click, and Mental Health for Women (Coauthor). Several of her lectures are available on YouTube. Raised in Orono, ME, Dr. Banks is a psychiatrist in Lexington, MA, a Founding Scholar at the International Center for Growth in Connection (ICGC), and a Senior Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women.
As Amy told us in the opening of her focus, her father was killed in front of the Hyatt Regency in 1979, while at a conference in New Orleans. Isaac Knapper is a black man falsely convicted of Mr. Banks’ murder after being brutally abused during his interrogation. After a friend falsely testified against him, Isaac served thirteen years in Angola, the Louisiana State Prison. He was declared wrongly convicted, and released in 1992. He received no monetary compensation when Laurie White (now a judge) sued New Orleans on his behalf. Having no way to support himself or his four children, Isaac became a drug dealer, was unjustly labeled as a "king pin," and imprisoned in a federal prison until 2015. He confessed his guilt to this crime and admitted it was a bad decision on his part. The Banks family did not find out that Isaac had been exonerated of their father's murder and released until 2004 when Amy's sister Nancy's husband googled Isaac. Nancy had been 8 years old when her father was murdered.
Amy blames Harry Connick Sr, the New Orleans DA from 1973 to 2003. He does not accept that he ever did anything that was wrong. In fact the Supreme Court had previously found that defendants had a right to be given any exculpatory evidence obtained by the police or prosecutors. In Isaac's case three other young men had been picked up nearby at a similar time. One of these was carrying the gun that had killed Ronald Banks.
The horrors of Hurricane Katrina in 2015 stirred up a lot of emotions in Amy and her sister Nancy. Amy reached out to Laurie White and remarkably got a response with 24 hours. Amy then came up with the idea of meeting Isaac in person. Amy and Isaac have become friends and colleagues, writing the book and giving talks about the justice system and building friendships across differences. They will soon give a joint seminar / training session to the New Orleans police department.
There are 50 Innocence Projects in America. They recommend videotaping interrogations of suspects. The conservative estimate of wrongly convicted inmates in America is 6-10%. Amy will forward a handout on the Innocence Project and blog post. There is an Innocence Project of New England where you can check for more information and for ways to help.
The Neuroscience of Connection
Healthy relationships are central to everything
The Stone Center at Wellesley was formed in the late 70s to discuss cases. Relational Cultural Theory was developed there. It has evolved into the International Center for Growth in Connection (ICGC).
It is a human tendency to look at people and stratify them into what makes them different from us. We need to balance our cognitive and emotional responses, reign in judgments, and learn how to bridge differences. With Amy and Isaac, she had to hear his pain and share her pain, to stretch and shape herself, and be heart-centered.
The individuation and separation model was replaced with growing toward relationship. The centrality of relationship is harder to hear; without relationship we become sicker and die earlier. The separate self concept is toxic as Amy wrote in Wired to Connect.
Stephen W. Porges wrote "The Polyvagal Theory” which is the newest branch of research on the autonomic nervous system (ANS). He identifies the "smart vagus" as a third branch of the ANS, the other two being the sympathetic and parasympathetic.
Neuroception:
Safe: Smart Vagus Nerve
Dangerous: Sympathetic Nervous System
Life Threatening: (PNS) Parasympathetic Nervous System.
Causes us to freeze when threatened so we don't feel pain.
Dr. Banks created a user friendly way to assess relationships named “The CARE Program.”
C is for Calm relating to the capacity of the smart Vagus.
A is for Acceptedness (Social Pain Overlap Theory)
When socially excluded, we feel pain in the dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus, the same part of our brain that reacts to physical pain. We feel sick.
In a “power-over culture,” people are pitted against each other in competition for social capital. A judging brain causes pain.
R is for Resonance - Mirror neurons mimic others' emotions and actions in our own minds. Interactions with similar people (as we each define similar) allow the mirror neurons to operate. With dissimilar people we need to fall back on abstract thinking in our dorsal medial pre-frontal cortex instead. We use a disconnected way of knowing. We need more skills in bridging differences.
E is for Energy derived from the dopamine system. Healthy relationships give rise to dopamine, which provides us with energy and motivation.
Some alternative ways we stimulate the Dopamine Reward System when our relationships are not nurturing us include:
Drug Abuse (The US leads the world in drug abuse.)
Sex Addiction
Overeating
Extreme Novelty
Materialism
Risk Taking
That these exist implies an over emphasis in our society on power systems. Power redefined would be the capacity to produce change – to facilitate movement, to move and be moved by another.
Handouts:
The diagram of Pam's talk.
