Spontaneous recovery (EN)

I was on the phone the other day with a friend who told me a very interesting story (interesting psychologically speaking, I mean).

Ten years ago he had a gorgeous girlfriend. They were always together. For four years I lost contact with my friend since she was taking up all his time. One day he decided to break up and fled away. The girl was very possessive and controlling. Every time things were not done her way, she would freak out and would try to manipulate everybody to get it back her way. My friend had to put up with that for four long years.

Whenever he would not comply to her demands or would not agree with her point of view, she would consider him her enemy and did everything in her power to ostracize him and put everyone against him. I never took part of her doing, but I saw my friend suffering a great deal because of her sadistic behavior.

We were very young then and when my friend finally broke up with her and moved abroad. We lost contact for several years.

It was not until recently that I came accross him and we got in touch again. He moved back in town a few months ago, and he told me that around a month ago he met his ex-girlfriend by chance and they decided to go for dinner sometime. They met and had a nice time remembering the past, or so he told me on the phone. The fact is that they agreed to meet again last week. What a big mistake my friend made!

Let me explain a bit about classical or operant conditioning before I continue my story.

Skinner box

Through operant conditioning a lab rat can learn to press a lever to get food as reward. For example, every time the rat presses the leaver 5 times, it gets one cheese ball. If we later want to extinct that behavior. In this case if we want the rat to stop pressing the lever, we need to apply an experimental procedure called extinction.

In other words, we have to stop giving the cheese ball to the rat every time it presses the lever. However, how will the rat behave the first time it is not given the reward? It will press the lever even more, (faster and more frenquently.) The rat goes frenzy at first, but slowly it will learn that the reward is not coming and it will stop pressing the lever. So you might think that behavior (the pressing of the lever) is extinct. Well, you're wrong!!!

My friend continued telling me his story over the phone. He and his ex-girlfriend met again and had dinner at her place. She was especially excited that night. Out of the sudden old habits came back to life. It seemed to him that they were twenty two again, and that the ten years that went by without being in touch had never passed. There she was all over him, inviting him to accompany her to a party the day after. When my friend said he was not interested, she got really mad at him. She once again tried to control his life, his way of thinking and the people around him. He left her place promising himself they would never meet again.

But the story does not end there. Not happy with that, she called him the day after to propose him to open a restaurant business together! Can you believe it? My friend politely rejected the offer and tried to get off the phone with a subtle excuse. Do you think she will give up this time?

Back to operant conditioning, once the rat has learned to stop pressing the lever, if you wait some time (days, weeks, even months...) without further training and you put the rat back into the Skinner box, the rat will show the previously learned behavior. So, it will start pressing the lever again expecting to get food. Which leads us to the inevitable question: do we ever unlearn anything or is the knowledge simply dormant waiting for the right circumstances to get activated again?

Classical and operant conditioning explain part of our human behavior. In many cases we behave no different than rats.

Have you ever had a similar experience to my friend's?

For example, have you ever come back home to visit your parents for a few days to find yourself treated the same way as when you were fifteen or eighteen and you still lived with them? Do you believe people change with time or do you think their personalities remain basically the same?