Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior (48 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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This book has circled testosterone, sex differences, and social forces. It has dealt with aggression, love, work, heroism, violence, and altruism. It has dealt with men, women, and the relationship between them. Many of the findings are clearly established. There is agreement that testosterone increases muscle strength and sexual activity. There is little doubt that it is related to such things as delinquency and marital instability. Other findings are more tentative, such as those dealing with thought, occupations, sex differences, and the nature of heroism and altruism. We do not know for sure that people who throw themselves onto hand grenades are high in testosterone. Such people are hard to study.
The book has moved between science and anecdote, example and principle, theory and fact. It has circled testosterone, itself a molecule made up of circles of atoms. Scientific studies, case histories, chance meetings, public events, salivary assays, and characters from literature and history have been landmarks in the circle. The circle we've been following around testosterone is itself a landmark in the circle surrounding human nature.
The Star-Splitter
I would like to end with thoughts from two poets, T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost. Both saw life as a long, circling journey. Eliot looked back nostalgically toward old England and the town of Little Gidding, where he thought all the important things had been learned long ago. He said that at the end of the road we would find ourselves back where we had started, and then we would see things as they really are.
2
He overstated it, though there is truth in what he said. The general effects of testosterone were discovered a century and a half ago by Professor Berthold of Goettingen, who performed experiments on roosters. In 1849, Berthold began a paper with the words, "On August 2 last year I caponized six young cockerals," meaning he castrated six young roosters. He reported that the cockerals failed to develop normally, but that if he transplanted new testes into them they "exhibited the normal behavior of uncastrated fowls; they crowed lustily, often engaged in battle with each other and the other cockerals, and showed the usual reactions to hens."
3
T.S. Eliot might say this is close to what we now know
 
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about high-testosterone men, with their crowing, battles, and "usual reactions," and Berthold knew about it in 1849.
Robert Frost was friendlier toward new knowledge, but even he was skeptical about how much we can learn. He described a New Hampshire farmer named Brad McLaughlin, a man slow to get things done, who worked outdoors after dark by the light of a "smokey lantern chimney," while the stars and the gods watched him and laughed at him. Disgusted with where his life was going, McLaughlin burned his house down for the fire insurance and used the money to buy a telescope, the better to understand his place in the universe. On winter nights he and a friend would set up the telescope, and as his friend said, "We spread our two legs as we spread its three, / Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it, / And standing at our leisure till the day broke, / Said some of the best things we ever said." They called the telescope the "star-splitter,'' because it was so unsteady that it shook and split the image of a star into many tiny pieces. They learned little about the stars, despite the pleasure they gained, and in the end the poet asked, "We've looked and looked, but after all where are we? / Do we know any better where we are, / And how it stands between the night tonight / And a man with a smokey lantern chimney? / How different from the way it ever stood?"
4
The Star-Splitter is a caution against too much certainty. Our tools are imperfect, our telescopes shake, and our words do not capture exactly what we mean. Beyond the words we use to describe it, testosterone is part of the animal within us, and it has its own reality, following its own ancient rules worked out before words existed. It is a part of the natural world, acting on and being acted upon by the other parts in complicated ways we only partly understand. With every scientific advance we know a little better where and how to look for answers.
 
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NOTES
Part One
Human Nature
Chapter 1
The Animal Within
1. This story is from Irwin S. Bernstein, "Taboo or Toy," in
PlayIts Role in Development and Evolution
, eds. Jerome S. Bruner, Alison Jolly, and Kathy Sylvia (New York: Basic Books, 1976), pp. 194197.
2. "Confucian Principles," host Bob Edwards,
Morning Edition
(Washington, D.C.: National Public Radio, 1 April 1999). Reid's book is
Confucius Lives Next Door
(New York: Viking, 2000).
3. I am indebted to Joe McGrath for describing this process of understanding, which he refers to as "knowledge accrual." See Joseph E. McGrath, Joanne Martin, and Richard A. Kulka, "Some Quasi-Rules for Making Judgment Calls in Research," in
Judgment Calls in Research
, eds. Joseph E. McGrath, Joanne Martin, and Richard A. Kulka (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982), pp. 103118.
4. Alan Alda, "What Every Woman Should Know About Men,"
MS Magazine
, October 1977, pp. 1516.
5.
Newsweek
, 19 July 1999.
6. Daniel Malamud and Lawrence Tabak,
Saliva as a Diagnostic Fluid
(New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1993).
7. Constance R. Martin,
Endocrine Physiology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p.4.
8. Rupert P. Amann, "Physiology and Endocrinology," in
Equine Reproduction
, eds. Angus O. McKinnon and James L. Voss (Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1993), pp. 658684. Amelie Bartolino, "Salivary Hormone Levels, Anxiety and Self Confidence Indices in Collegiate Football and Basketball Players over a Season of Play" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1996). Information on rattlesnake hormones comes from Dr. Gordon Shuett at Arizona State University.
9. An excellent overview of the nature and effects of hormones is provided

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