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The theory of capture is composed of three basic elements: narrowing of attention, perceived lack of control, and change in affect, or emotional state. Sometimes these elements are accompanied by an urge to act. When something commands our attention in a way that feels uncontrollable and, in turn, influences our behavior, we experience capture.
What started as a pleasure becomes a need; what was once a bad mood becomes continuous self-indictment; what was once an annoyance becomes persecution. This process of neural sensitization occurs, and grows stronger, over the course of a lifetime. It becomes increasingly difficult for us to resist its pull. Eventually, what captures us can become so concentrated and overwhelming that, in its most drastic forms, it feels as if we are being driven by something outside our control. While capture
One of the paradoxes of suicide is that it becomes the last and only way that a person can exert control.”
were not simply irreversible physiological inheritances, but in fact, could be deliberately refused.
“Bipolar patients are captured by this sense of their own specialness, and then recaptured by any kind of evidence whatsoever that supports this self-conception.”
The manic phase of bipolar disorder is characterized by a collection of hypersalient cues that reinforce the individual’s extraordinary sense of self-worth.
“By coming back over and over and over again to the frame—to the awareness that holds thought or affect, or that holds the experience of interconnected patterns that are usually below the level of our awareness—they become more real for us. The salience gets more nuanced and richer, rather than less. And then, of course, you have a more expanded field of possibilities for responding rather than reacting.” Our
