How much of what we are and we want to be and do is determined by our body chemistry?

There has been a case in the newspapers about a man suing over medical treatment that turned him from a mild mannered virgin into a sex maniac and brawler. Apparently the treatment he was given upset his body chemistry so much that it changed his character and made him behave in completely uncharacteristic ways. As well as making him hungry for sex, often with two women at once when he could manage it, he was also changed into a thrusting macho idiot. He ran up debts trying to impress women and he went to a top London night-club and tried to take a famous topless model from the clutches of a soccer player, and got into a fight for his troubles. In short you could say that he experienced a similar effect to that which animal experimenters have seen in deer and other aggressive animals, take a lowly male and increase his testosterone level and the male then acts like a high status male, which if he lacks the natural physical superiority is bound to end in tears.

Middle aged weedy accountants cannot act like professional footballers or boxers and get away with it. People will get hurt on all sides. We are not just the results of our genes played out. We represent the playing of the strategy of our genes in the circumstances that we have encountered. Hormones build bodies but hormone levels are also affected by what happens to those bodies. I suspect that if Mike Tyson had been born to a middle class family he would never have started the spiral of fight, win, build body, fight better, win more, pump more hormone, build bigger leaner body, win more etc. He might now instead be an overweight shop manager or car salesman, and a caring husband and father. The cycle of testosterone fuelled struggle and victory would not have started and he would be much mellower, probably eight inches less around the collar and eighteen more round the waist. Not as rich, nowhere near as famous but quite likely a lot happier. Our close relatives the gorillas and orang-utans have two kinds of male, dominant and regular. A regular male can be fully adult for several years waiting for the opportunity to challenge for a leadership role and then under the influence of hormones they can surge ahead into a new phase of growth in bulk, muscle and outward shows of their peak condition, the silver back and shaggy coat respectively. It is quite likely that some hint of that pattern lies in us.

Kissinger said that power was an aphrodisiac, he was half right, power is success to a political figure, and success is the aphrodisiac, at least for the male. When women play sport their hormone levels rise a little, win or lose, with men the effect of winning is a dramatic boost in testosterone, exercise does not boost a man's feeling of self confidence, winning does. Confidence can help a man win any game he plays, whether that is selling washing machines, boxing or war. The key is to raise the confidence up to the level where it meets the potential ability. If the confidence goes beyond that point then you can find yourself retreating from Moscow in disarray or picking yourself out of the gutter outside a nightclub.

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