The following concepts are written much in the spirit of Gregory Bateson's exploration of fundamental concepts which he called "what every schoolboy knows" (Bateson, 1979). The purpose of these ideas is to untangle some of the confusions which have bedeviled scientific thinking, in general and psychotherapy in particular. Let the reader be warned that these ideas are not easy and that it takes some work to understand them and then to integrate them into the actual work of doing therapy. Early in my graduate studied I had a marvelous statistics professor Helen Walker. She said that you can not read a statistics text the way you read a novel. She said that if you do not understand continue to read to the end of the chapter even though what you are reading is not clear to you. Then go back and read the chapter all over again. If it is still not clear find another text and read the same topic in the other text. This is by no means an exhaustive list. So comments and contributions are very much in order to extend and amend it. What would be particularly useful would be specific examples of how the concepts apply to the clinical as well as to the theoretical ideas about the therapy situation.
Meta concepts are concepts about concepts. They are ideas which help us order the way we think. The notion of meta concepts is different from Freud's concept of metapsychology. Metapsychology provided a set of underlying points of view which attempted to explain what was seen clinically. Meta concepts furnish a broad framework into which ideas about psychotherapy can be placed. They include the items given in the list of basic orientation concepts given above.
Lord Kelvin's famous doctrine stated: If a thing exists, it exists in a certain amount. If it exists in a certain amount it can be measured. This was an ideal that I was taught in graduate school. When I actually got out into the clinical world the idea of measurement seemed an anathema. Reducing the complexities of human motivations to numbers seemed inappropriate. Ken Wilber's ideas in Eye to Eye untangled what appeared to be a confusion. He made a tripartite distinction, the eye of the senses, the eye of the mind, and the eye of the spirit. Each domain had a proper focus of inquiry. The eye of the senses is the physical material world, the monological domain of extension. The basic measure of physics are length, time, and mass. The realm of the mind can not be reduced to the physical senses. There are many mental constructs which have no physical properties. Classical examples include mathematical abstraction like the square root of minus one, and imaginary number. The domain of the mind can not be reduced to biological or physical functioning any more than the biological terrain can be reduced to physics. The construct of a logical or can be implemented in many different hardware configurations. The abstraction that if either a or b is true then c is true is an abstraction that can be realized in biological "wetware" of the brain as well as silicon computer chips. So the focus of this work is to explore the world of intention and meaning at the psychological level . This does not mean that the other levels are not important. They are simply outside the bounds of this inquiry.
In math there is the concept of operators. The "+" sign is an operator indicating that an addition function should be applied to two numbers, i.e. 2 + 2 = 4. The two numbers [2, 2]] are called arguments. In prefix notation addition would be represented, Plus[2, 2]. One of the projects of generic psychotherapy would be to locate a reasonably small set of mental operators which could serve as a basis for a generic understanding of mental functioning. In ordinary day to day functioning one is not aware of mental operations. Things go reasonably smoothly and we are simply not conscious of how we do most of the common activities of daily living. If we start in the territory of immediate experience we find a vast array of stimuli that the potentially can come into focal awareness. One of the fundamental mental operations is focusing attention. Gregory Bateson says mental functioning is based on the perception of differences. Mental operations start with separating figure from ground. In order to appreciate these ideas sit quietly and focus your attention on a single object like a beach stone . It quickly becomes apparent that attention quickly wanders and that is extremely difficult to sustain attention on a single object. Both internal and external distractions abound. Focusing attention is a voluntary activity, requiring repeated conscious efforts to not get lost in extraneous ideas, fantasies, bodily sensations and external sensations. Generic notation would be: FocusAttention[sensory_modality, object ]. Assigning values to the arguments would give, sensory_modality = vision, and object = {beach stone}. The operation is focusing attention. Another variant could be to make sensory_modality = hearing, and the object = {Brandenburg Concerto}.
In math there are sets of formal rules which are used to apply to operators. The operators that we naturally use are unconscious. The rules have to be inferred. Indeed, of a patient were asked if he or she had rules, he would have a hard time saying what they were. So lists of operators have to start somewhat arbitrarily. Marvin Minsky in his Society of the Mind (Minsky 1985) had the concept of agents and of agencies. The problem is an important philosophical one. Experientially I have a sense of myself as an agent. I focus my attention. I somehow am the doer, the seer, the maker of things that happen. Thus, I have a sense of self as subject who is able to initiate actions. Normally I do not break down the things that I do into their many complexity interacting parts. These small parts Minsky calls agents. They could also be called operators. Minsky was trying to start from bottom up materialistic causality. His basic premise was that there is no grand executive agent which is fundamentally different from the more primitive agents which execute the minutiae of daily activities. I am not sure that I can accept this materialistic position. Phenomenologically, it does violence to my direct immediate experience. The ancient "What am I" meditation drives one to the wisdom that I am not any particular aspect of my experience. Consciousness is not the mere sum of the parts of my mentations, body parts, or roles. One is immediately faced with the problem of logical levels. Consciousness, per se, is not is not any specific aspect of its contents. The conceptual map of psychological theory is not the clinical territory of immediate phenomenological experience. And the thought forms of introspection are not consciousness itself. As my identification shifts from body to mind to something beyond the mind my sense of myself changes, and what is important to me also shifts. Map-territory confusion plagues discussion of psychotherapy. There is a strong tendency to reify concepts and treat them as if they have substantial reality. Important examples of the tendency to reify is seen in analytic theory when the id, ego, and superego are discussed as if they were tangible people parts which had lives of their own.
Psychotherapy is in the province of the mind. Mental constructs are of a different logical type from consciousness itself. Psychotherapy is an exploration of the contents of consciousness. There is a fundamental distinction between psychotherapy and spiritual practice. Spiritual practice explores the nature of reality and/or consciousness itself. Psychotherapy is the study of illusion. This gets us into deep philosophical questions. I do not believe that the word processor that I am writing this on is an illusion. My fingers press keys, and if you came here and sat down you could press the keys and letters would appear on the screen. However, I have no way of knowing how congruent your experience would be with mine. If you were Chinese or Russian, the English characters would have very different meaning for you than they have for me. I believe that I am creating my own virtual reality. The notion of virtual reality comes from computer simulations which construct apparent domains of experience which can be controlled in much the same way that we control ordinary movements in our three dimensional world. One of the most striking examples of this phenomenon comes from the experiments in the inversion of vision. We know that the lens of the eye inverts the images that we see. The tree before me is projected up side down on my retina. Somehow in the visual processing the tree gets turned right side up. Experiments were done in which subjects were fitted with prisms which inverted their visual field. At first he trees and all the rest of their visual world looked up side down. After a period of adaptation wearing the prisms the visual world of the subjects returned to its normal right side up view. The point of this is that we are creating our own view of the world. We create it in such a way that it helps us to adapt. Seeing trees up side down would get us into serious trouble very quickly. There seems to be strong rather hard wired adaptive mechanisms that help us with biological-physical survival. Thus, we tend to make things look like what we think they should look like in order to get along. All systems that endure in time tend to be conservative. If they did not have ways of maintaining their organization they would disintegrate.
The relation of adaptation to perception is an interesting one. Raw sensations have no intrinsic meaning. Sensations, themselves are ambiguous. Meaning emerges when we clump sensation into perceptions. Context is necessary in order to resolve ambiguity. I remember a car ride with my daughter when she was 18 months old. She was sitting on my lap in the front seat. I wanted her to look out of the windshield at the passing scene. So I pointed to what I thought was the outside. She became fascinated with the dashboard and the windshield itself. The context that she made for her sensations was very different than the one I had in mind. She fixed on the stable sensations of the things that were in touching distance. She disregarded he rapidly changing external scene. The windshield, itself, was for all practical purposes, invisible for me. For her it was an fascinating object in its own right.
The interesting problem of resolving or clumping sensations into meaningful perceptions involves contexts and shifting contextual frameworks. Meaning emerges from relationship. Thus, a primary function is context setting. In mathematical language context setting is a bit like defining the domain of a function. The nesting of context leads to broader and broader contexts. From subatomic particles to the universe. In order to proceed it is necessary to limit the domain of this inquiry. This means that neuro physiological reductions are simply out side the scope of this inquiry. It is not that for some purposes that knowledge at the neurological level would not be important and useful. However, organs cells and molecules are at a different level from psychological functioning. Psychology is at a different level from brain function, and can not be reduced to it. As Ken Wilber put it, electrons do not have intentions. Certain levels of complexity are needed before classes of phenomena can emerge. The sides, top, and bottom separately and independently do not make a box. The boxiness comes from particular configurations of the parts . The whole box is at a different level from the sum of the parts. The gestaltan, box, has a different meaning from any of its individual parts.
Meaning is something that is directly experienced. It is a chunking (gestalting) together of sensations that just happens. We are both active and passive with respect to meaning. We give things meaning, and we feel things have meaning. In any case, meaning is a felt sense which has important cognitive and affective consequences. One of the most often asked questions in psychotherapy is, "What does that mean to you?" The construction and maintenance of meaning is central to psychological functioning. Indeed, a major focus of all psychotherapy is altering the meaning that thoughts, relationships, and affects have for patients. One of the most general concerns is the meaning given to pain, and the response that emerges from the meaning attributed to the pain. I am using pain in its most general sense -- unpleasure. Freud spoke of the pleasure principle, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, as a central motivating canon. Psychological defensiveness and symptom formation are efforts to minimize pain. In order to alter the symptom it is necessary to change the meaning of aspects of the conflict which leads to the symptom formation. There is a basic loop in conflict formation. Classically, the contending forces in a conflict are a wish and a prohibition. (Conflict[ wish, prohibition] ) This gets us into the whole question of where wishes come from, and how we come to be influenced by prohibitions.
Freud's position was that wishes are drive derivatives. In simple English, we are biological creatures that are driven by instinctual urges. Freud's conception of instinct was different from the American academic psychology's notion of instinct which was a specific highly programmed behavioral pattern like a wasp building its nest. Freud described an instinct as
a concept on the frontier between the mental and the somatic,... the psychical representative of the stimuli originating from within the organism and reaching the mind. (SE: Vol. XIV pp. 121-2)
An instinct [it self] can never become an object of consciousness -- only the idea [Vorstellung] that represents the instinct can. Even in the unconscious, more over, an instinct cannot be represented otherwise than by an idea. ... When we nevertheless speak of an unconscious instinctual impulse or of a repressed instinctual impulse ... we can only mean an instinctual impulse the ideational representative of which is unconscious. (Se: Vol. XIV p. 177)
Three basic instincts were given, 1) sexual, 2) aggressive, and 3) self preservative or ego instincts, i. e. hunger. However, there are gaps in our understanding. For example, we do not really know how we go from biological juxtapositions of hormones to the felt sense of a sexual urge. Clearly there is a biological basis for sex. However, we do not discern the buzzing of the molecules. We do notice a desire which impels us to thought and action. It is interesting to note that intensity of desire can be either a pleasure or a pain. Urges which become sufficiently intense are often experienced as painful. The classical example is sexual desire. The building up of sexual tension is pleasurable, but if the tension is not discharged after it reaches a protracted state of fervor, it can become tormenting. Indeed, from a Buddhist perspective, attachment to desire is the source of suffering. The elaboration of instincts into wishes involves many factors, developmental level, culture, and the availability of objects, to name a few. While there are only a few instincts, there are many kinds of wishes. Whether or not all wishes derive from drives is a interesting question. However, the class of wishes that are clinically important are the wishes which collide with considerations which would produce pain if they were fulfilled. If we were not concerned about getting into some kind of distress we would simply gratify our desires. The sources of pain constitute the other side of a conflict.
Pain has many faces. There are pains that signal danger of some kind. And there are pains that become a kind of noise, obscuring clarity of thought and action. Pain the narrower sense signals a threat to biological survival. It is a symptom of difficulty which requires attention. Pain warns one of physical or of psychological distress. Psychological pain which has no conscious object is anxiety. Fear is apprehension about some specific outcome. Other forms of psychic pain are depression, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, guilt, hurt, disappointment, etc. Our impulse is to do something to get rid of the pain as quickly as possible. Getting away from pain is a powerful motivation of both adaptive and maladaptive behavior. It is adaptive when the response to the pain corrects the underlying condition which generates the pain. Major clinical problems emerge from actions which eliminate pain in the short run, but do not resolve the underlying problem which repeatedly brings about the pain in the first place. Addictions are a prime example. People come for psychotherapy when the methods by which they deal with pain return them to repeated states of distress. Since pain management is so important clinically an extended discussion of self regulation, gestalt formation, and the resultant many faces of repetition is warranted.
Much of the confusion and bickering that takes among therapist has to do with confusion of levels of explanation and of logical levels. Lets start with logical levels. I believe it was Bernard Russell who helped to untangle the paradoxes that one gets into when he confuses logical levels. For example view the following sign:
Disregard This Sign
This creates a paradox. If you actually manage to disregard the sign you are doing what the sign tells you to do. Therefore, you are not disregarding it. If you pay attention to the sign you are not disregarding it. In either case you are not following the sign's instruction. Russell's insight was that paradox becomes possible when a class becomes a member of itself. In this case the class is the sign. A sign is a class because it can have many possible messages, just as a third grade class may have many combinations of different children in it. Any given message is a member of the class of all possible messages that the sign may have. The paradox is generated because the sign refers to itself. That is, it is a both a class and a member of its own class. Class and member are of different logical types. Variable and value, as well as map and territory are also different logical types. Diagnosis is a variable. Obsessive-compulsive is a value which can be assigned to the diagnosis variable. The variable and any specific value that may be assigned to the variable are different logical types. They are at different levels of abstraction. Similarly, a map is a representation of a territory, and thus is a different order of things. You will never be able to drive across a map of the United States. Perplexity and possibly even psycho pathology occur when logical types are confused. Id, Ego, and Superego are psychoanalytic abstractions. It is not uncommon for them to be reified. Often "a harsh punitive superego" is spoken of as if it were a living breathing real parent who is continuously vigilant and ready to castrate. One of the most common mix ups is the confusion between thoughts and deeds. Indeed people with harsh punitive superegos often react as if their thoughts were tantamount to deeds. It is extremely useful to be able to think in abstractions and to be able to mentally manipulate the basic variables in a situation to gain an understanding of what is going on. However, it is necessary to translate the abstractions of psychological theory into the more directly felt language of the patient. Conversely, it is also the task of the therapist to make maps of the complex territory of the patients utterances and non verbal behavior.
Confusion between levels of explanation is another significant source controversy and confusion among patients and therapists alike. There are several levels of explanation given in psychoanalysis. Bergmann (Bergmann & Hartman 1976, p. 6 - 7) follows Waelder in giving six broad levels of clinical abstraction. The levels move away from clinical data to theoretical abstractions.
1. "All the facts that the analyst has gathered about the analysand, facts such as biographical data--all that was conscious to the analysand--as well as new information that emerged in the course of the analysis (the varieties and intensities of the transference reaction, the type and strength of resistances, the predominant sexual fixations, and so forth). Together they constitute the level of observation. The word fact is, therefore interpreted in its broadest sense to include childhood memories, screen memories, dreams, fears, and so forth."
2. "In the course of an analysis, new connections are made among the various data of observation. These connections are usually made by the analyst and, broad speaking, they are called interpretations. ... When the raw data become organized into meaningful constellations, we deal with she second level, the level of clinical interpretation."
3. "From groups of data organized on the second level, generalizations can be made; for example, about the structure of the anal character (Freud 1908), or about differences in development between boys and girls, such as paths by which they reach the Oedipus Complex (Freud 1925a). This is the third level, that of clinical generalizations."
4. "Concepts, such as repression, the return of the repressed, the repetition compulsion, and the transference neurosis, constitute the fourth level, that of clinical theory."
5. "... Freud, even before the discovery of psychoanalysis, was searching for a psychology that would represent psychic processes abstractly and in quantitative terms. ... Freud defined the purpose of this metapsychology as follows: 'To clarify and carry deeper the theoretical assumptions on which a psychoanalytic system could be founded" (1917b, p. 222n). To Waelder, psychoanalytic metapsychology represents the fifth level, which he describes as an attempt to construct a physicalistic-mechanistic model of the personality that would reflect the motivational theory of psychoanalysis (1960)."
6. "Waedler draws a further distinction between metapsychology and Freud's philosophy that constitutes the sixth level of abstraction."
I must say that that the examples given in level 1 above strike me as being somewhat more abstract than the raw clinical data that actually confronts the therapist. i.e. It seems to me to say that a patient has a transference is a clinical interpretation, level 2 . This is a good example of being so steeped in theory that one tends to overlook the more concrete and specific behavior that would lead the analyst to make the interpretation of transference. The analyst does not observe a father transference as a basic clinical fact. In practice it is often not immediately apparent that the patient is making a transference of a particular kind. Rather he or she observes that the patient is deferential and fearful about what the analyst will think of him if he says that he is angry with the analyst. This is a confusion of levels of abstraction which makes it difficult for the general public and even graduate students of psychology to understand and accept analytic thought. It is also a good example of how the organization of sensations , gestalten, is in the perceiver and not in the sensations themselves. There is a significant gap between feeling fearful of the analyst and the interpretation that the analyst may make that the patient has a father transference on to him. The analyst needs a considerable amount of supporting data from the patient's history for such an interpretation to be valid. It is a significant labor for beginning therapists to learn to change the organization of their perceptions from folk psychology to theoretical scientific psychology. Learning the argot of psychoanalysis is a lengthy undertaking. A problem of another kind comes after the student masters the rudiments of the theoretical language. He or she then starts referring to people as if they were their diagnosis. i. e., He is an obsessive-compulsive, or she is hysterical. Here the label tends to obscure the richness and intricacy of the individual. The abstraction is treated as if it were something tangible. All of these examples refer to confusions and difficulties that occur when levels of abstraction and/or logical levels are jumbled.
Another set of levels of explanation comes from Daniel Dennett. He defines intentional systems:
"I wish to examine the concept of a system whose behavior can be--at least sometimes--explained and predicted by relying on ascriptions to the system of beliefs and desires (and hopes, fears, intention, hunches...). I will call such systems intentional systems, and such explanations and predictions intentional explanations and predictions, in virtue of the intentionally of the idions of belief and desire (and hope, fear, intention, hunch,...). (Dennett 1978 p. 3)
Clearly in psychotherapy we are dealing with intentional systems. People are intentional systems, par excellence. One of the central concerns of therapy is to try to understand the patients conscious and unconscious intentions. Therapists tend to live at this level of explanation. However, there are other levels. Dennett describes three levels. It is often necessary to step out of ones own domain and take examples from another area in order to begin to use unaccustomed terms. Dennett gives as an example a chess-playing computer to illustrate three levels of explanation:
1. The Intentional Stance
2. The Design Stance
3. The Physical Stance
He starts with the design stance.
If one knows exactly how the computer is designed (including the impermanent part of its design: its program) one can predict its designed response to any move one makes by following the computation instructions of the program. ... Different varieties of design stance predictions can be discerned, but all of them are alike in relying on the notion of function, which is purpose-relative or teleological. That is, a design of a system breaks it breaks it up into larger or smaller functional parts, and design-stance predictions are generated by assuming that each functional part will function properly. ... Thus one can make design-stance predictions of the computer's response at several different levels of abstraction, depending on whether one's design treats as smallest functional elements strategy-generators and consequence testers, multipliers and dividers, or transistors and switches.
... The essential feature of the design stance is that we make predictions solely from knowledge or assumptions about the system's functional design, irrespective of the physical constitution or condition of the innards of the particular object. (p. 4)
Very simply, if you understand the program, you will be able to figure out the next move. Another enormously important implication here is that the program, itself, is not dependent for its accurate functioning on any particular computer. The computer could be an IBM PC, a Mac, or a mainframe super computer. Indeed the program could be implemented on a computer which had silicon chips, or biologically alive neurons. This touches on the issue of reductionism which is another significant topic. If you have actually tried to debug a computer program by following it one instruction at a time you will understand the practical difficulties for humans to try to function at the design stance level. This level is generally used for making predictions about the behavior of mechanical objects, e. g. "When I turn the ignition key, the car will start". Here we make the assumption that all the parts are working up to design specifications. I am not sure that we are able to make predictions at the design stance level in humans because we do not have the programs. Clearly, there is strongly habitual behavior, and people do follow schedules. So in circumscribed situations we are able to make design stance predictions about people.
Dennett continues:
...There is what we may call the physical stance. From this stance our predictions are based on the actual physical state of the particular object, and are worked out by applying whatever knowledge we have of the laws of nature. It from this stance alone that we can predict the malfunction of systems. ... Instances of predictions from the psychical stance are common enough: "If you turn on the switch you'll get a nasty shock," ... One seldom adopts the physical stance in dealing with a computer just because the number of critical variables in the physical constitution of a computer would overwhelm the most prodigious calculator. The physical stance is generally reserved for instances of breakdown where the conditions preventing normal operation is generalized and easily locatable, e. g., "Nothing will happen when you type in your questions, because it isn't plugged in". (p. 4 - 5)
Reductionism to the physical level has serious limits. "Attempting to give a physical account or prediction of the chess-playing computer would be a pointless and Herculean labor, but it would work in principle." (p. 5) Whether or not it is in principle possible to give a physical account or prediction of a human playing chess is still an open philosophical question. The materialists would say that it is possible. The dualists, and spiritualists would say that there is something beyond the physical which determines our moves.
Dennett notes that the physical stance is reserved for specific breakdowns of the physical apparatus. The neurologists and the pharmacological psychiatrists devote themselves to explanations from the physical stance. Clearly, their approach has utility in explaining behavior. If a stroke or injury obliterates the speech centers an aphasia results. If ways could be found to regenerate neurons it might be possible to cure a stroke. Anxiety, depressions, and psychoses are helped by supplying the right molecules. How far we will be able to go from bottom up physiochemical level accounts to design level and finally to intentional level is an important question. Whether or not it is in principle possible is at the center of the mind body problem. Reductionism lures one to think that intentions are nothing more than elaborate programs. Programs are implemented in some kind of physical "machine", silicon or cells, which obey the fundamental laws of chemistry and physics. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that intentions are nothing more than programs, and programs are nothing more than the buzzing of the molecules. So then the proper study of humankind would be the physical sciences. After all we can synthesize music. The basic physical parameters of music are known and they can be reduced to specific wave forms that can be generated electronically. We are rapidly advancing to virtual reality where sight, sound, movement, and maybe even feel can be synthesized. But even here there has to be some external intelligence which programs the synthesizer. Sure it is possible to set the machine going and generate random patterns of sound. Just as it might be possible to produce literature of merit sitting a monkey at the keyboard of a word processor. However, the probability of good literature merging would be infinitesimally small. Nevertheless, it is an interesting non trivial question how much order and functioning complexity can emerge from the interaction of simple elements without an externally imposed top down plan. The notion of Gestalten and the whole being greater than the sum of its parts is critical here. Furthermore, none of these arguments take into consideration where consciousness fits in. This work could not be written without my consciousness. Many western scientists would agree that the activity of the neurons cause consciousness. An important question is to what extent does the arrow of causality run the other way around. Does consciousness cause alteration in nervous system functioning.? Sperry (1993) describes the paradigm shift from behaviorism to cognitive psychology that has taken American Psychology.
The map vs. territory is one example of the difference between logical levels. Although it is possible to make rather detailed conceptual theoretical and nosological maps, the map never becomes the territory itself. Treating the map as if it were the territory can create pathologies, confusions, and empathic failures. For example, to think of treating an obsessive compulsive rather than to think of treating a patient or client confuses the nosological map designation, obsessive compulsive, with the actuality of the territory of the whole person who comes in as a patient or client. Diagnostic labeling can be very helpful in orienting the therapist and helping to guide the treatment, but you can't treat a diagnositc label any more than you can eat a menu.
All of these meta conceptual discussions have to do with trying to unscramble metaphor, mediation, and mechanism. Not infrequently these three ideas get confused, and taking one for the other can lead to serious difficulties. They are different ways of approaching and or responding to the immediate data of the clinical landscape. The notion of a clinical landscape is a metaphor. Short of direct knowledge of the thing itself, we have to resort to some kind of representation. People claim that they can actually feel what other people feel, and in this way have direct knowledge. However, this is not common in our culture and it is often possible to feel that one knows what someone else feels with great certainty and simply be wrong. The most striking example of this occurs when one projects ones own feelings onto others. This is such an important source of error that a major part of training to be a psychotherapist has to do with learning to distinguish ones own reactions from those of the patient. Metaphor induces a sense of direct knowing. The metaphoric images stimulate associations and evoke emotional states similar to those of the one who is trying to communicate his or her experience. Using metaphor often helps one to convey empathy and closeness.
There is a vital distinction between a metaphor and a theoretical model. A metaphor makes no pretense at saying that this is the way things actually are or how they work. Metaphors do not make predictions. Hypothetical models do attempt to explain rather than to merely describe or evoke, and that is a big difference. Here we are talking about the distinction between poetry and art, on the one hand, and science on the other. Abstract mathematical models do not elicit the sensed ambiance of the phenomena that they are trying to explain. Indeed that is exactly why most people have so much trouble with them. Many people are unable to relate the theoretical abstractions to their own concrete experience. Hence, they do not mean anything to them. Metaphor tries to convey meaning in an immediately accessible way by using familiar images. Theoretical models in their effort to eliminate ambiguity are felt as cold and removed from experience. Warmth and fuzziness is not their intent. Most people like the ease of metaphor and avoid the austerity of abstractions.
Mediation and mechanism involve moving down a level or two from immediate perception. Freud said that the mechanism of paranoia is projection. Paranoia is a mental disorder characterized by tenacious delusions. Delusions are false opinions or beliefs which cannot be shaken by reason. So here we have the clinical data, unshakable false opinions or beliefs. The question is then raised as to the origin of false convictions. In order to answer this question it is necessary to move from classification (false belief) to a processes which would generate false belief. In a case of paranoia we eliminate external "reality" as the source of the belief. Obviously, if there is an exterior origin for the conviction it is not false. Thus, by definition, it is not paranoia (although there are often germs of truths in paranoid thinking). So if it does not come from the outside it must come from inside the patient himself. However, the patient does not feel or believe that it is coming from himself. Rather he has the conviction that it is result of outside influences. In order to account for this strange stage of affairs we conclude that the patient attributes his own thoughts and/or feelings to external events. This attribution is the defense mechanism of projection. How projection is mediated is a much more difficult question. The explanation of why projection is made is easier than how it is invoked. Freud answered the why question by means of mental conflict. Classically a conflict is between a wish and a prohibition. His original explanation of paranoia was the projection of homosexual wishes. The formula was:
1. I love him, but it is unacceptable for me to love a person of my own sex. This is the original conflict between a sexual impulse and an internalized taboo. This conflict generates discomfort in me which I have to get rid of.
2. He loves me. A projection of my feeling on to him which reduces my discomfort, but the feeling that he loves me is also unacceptable. So I have to conceal my feeling even to myself.
3. I hate him. Love is turned into hate, but my hatred is inadmissible.
4. He hates me. Then the whole affair is not my fault. It is happening to me. I am not the source of it. I am the victim. (It is a small step from here to gay bashing as a way to eliminate the conflict.)
In this evolution we see a complex layering of mechanisms. Freud constructed his metapsychology in order to account for these complexities. The metapsychology moves beyond direct clinical observation. It attempts to give mechanisms and paths of mediation. A key mechanism in all of this is repression and his theory of the dynamic unconscious. Repression is a mechanism that is employed to keep a thought from becoming conscious. If the repression is successful there is no symptom formation. The repression is mediated by withdrawal of cathexis. Now we are more deeply in the realm of metapsychology. Here Freud descended to a more physiological level. Cathexis in his theory is the basis of consciousness. A metaphor is helpful in this context. Consider how a television picture tube works. Electrons are drawn from the cathode at the rear of the tube by the high voltage of the anode near the front. As the electrons are accelerated toward the front of the tube they are deflected and focused to a raster of lines which scan the face of the tube. The electron stream is modulated by program that is coming into the TV set. The electrons cathect the phosphor coating on the face of the picture tube. That is, the electrons excite the phosphor and cause it to light up. The dark areas of the picture are less cathected and the bright regions are heavily charged. Freud thought this process was mediated by a filling of the neurons. This was very close to the idea of a synapse and neurotransmitters. In order for an idea to become conscious, the neurons which stored the idea in memory have to be cathected. Inhibit the cathexis and the idea ceases to be conscious. In the picture tube metaphor the charge on the grid of the tube acts as a valve which controls the flow of electrons. Right here we have the interesting junction of bottom-up and top-down causality. The electrons create the picture. If the electrons do not turn on the phosphor there is no light emanating from the tube. The electron-phosphor interaction mediates the production of light. This is bottom-up casualty. However, the electron-phosphor interaction itself does not create the pattern of hue, saturation, and brightness which we see as the whole picture. The Gestalten of the picture comes from the intelligence and consciousness which produces the TV program. This is top-down emergent determinism. The electrons have no intentions. They do not have a mind of their own. They merely follow the force, and go where they are directed by something that is larger than themselves. They have very little mass and thus are exquisitely compliant. To my knowledge their only resistance to going where directed is their inertia. They do not have their own agenda and ideologically resist being directed to a specific spot on the face of the tube. Although in fairness to the situation we only see the activity of great aggregates of electrons. The TV tube directs group activity, not the meanderings of individual electrons. Interestingly, we do not know how direct the behavior of a single electron. So maybe it is anthropocentricism to say that electrons have no intentions. If they do have intentions our sensory apparatus and intelligence does not have the resolving power to detect them. Here we have another example of range and scale. On the scale of the human mind electrons have no intentions. Ordinary consciousness does not penetrate to the scale of the electron, and thus can not know what if any complexities there is in the inner structure and functioning of an electron. Funny things happen at the level of quantum mechanics.
As stated above the why questions are more easily addressed than the how questions. The what questions are most directly accessible. How one creates a projection is not known. Defense mechanisms are unconscious processes. We are not aware of repressing a thought or of projecting it. To say that the thought is projected is a clinical convenience. It describes what is happening. When I project a thought I do not throw it like a ball and you catch it. It is a process that takes place within myself that alters my perception. I have not actually imparted my thought to you, but it really feels to me like it is coming from you. Somehow the mechanism has to do with how I alter my perception. I know that I can change my perception by altering my focus of attention. I have the distinct sense that I have some control over where I direct my attention. Yet my attention is frequently drawn to thoughts in spite of my best intentions to avoid them. The perimeter of what I regard as my self is quite fluid even though at times I would like to believe it is stable and secure. There is an important distinction between being active and being passive with respect to a thought or a feeling. When I am planning I actively think up things. When I am free associating I sit back and allow thoughts and feelings to occur to me. This is sometimes called regression in the service of the ego. One of the major lines of therapy is to help the patient direct his attention to more closely observe more specifically what is happening. There are many times that I wish I could run the tape recording of experience back and replay it a frame at a time. We could then have the leisure to see more clearly what is occurring. A careful review of what takes place makes it possible to reorder the chunking of experience. Old Gestalten are recast into new configurations. We have habits of framing attention. For example, patients commonly overlook their bodily sensations. Drawing attention to somatic perturbations can be a starting point for making connections to feelings, thoughts, and memories. It then becomes possible to begin to unscramble the how questions at the intention level. Freud's formula for unraveling paranoia is an example. In actually working with such a patient it would probably be necessary to go into much finer detail. The formula describes a sequence of thought changes. With paranoid patients it is very difficult for them to trust the therapist sufficiently to allow the necessary depth and detail of inquiry. Nevertheless, it would be necessary to help the patient to more carefully observe what was happening just prior to thinking the paranoid thought. Often such inquiry reveals some thought or feeling at the periphery of awareness that was not previously reported. Expanding awareness to include the bodily sensation can open up a new line of inquiry.
Thus we can see that mediation and mechanism involve a shift in level of inquiry. Most often the shift is from a level of classification to a level of some kind of explanation. The explanation is often removed from experience. We do not experience different frequencies of oscillations of electromagnetic energy which produce sound. We hear do re me. It is important to remember that we do not actually hear do re me. Do re me are words on a printed page -- not sounds. Living in our own minds is very useful for many proposes. However, if we loose sight of the distinctions between our linguistic representations and actual experience we are in danger of living an illusion. This is what the Eastern mystics call maya. Since we understand the underlying mechanisms of sound we are able to synthesize it. In this sense we are able to go from the bottom up and actually generate music without having people actually play instruments. Knowing that hearing is mediated through the ear drum which is connected to the stapes, which is connected to the incus, which is connected to the malleus, which is connected to the cochlea, which is connected to the auditory nerve, which is connected to the brain is very useful. Deafness can be explained by a malfunction of any of the structures along the chain to the brain. Hearing aids can be designed to compensate for some of the deficiencies in the function of these structures. This kind of knowledge is useful, grounding, reassuring, and gratifying, but note that the chain of mediation terminates in the brain. This might satisfy many people but it leaves out the most important link, consciousness. The nervous impulses, themselves, are not the experience of consciousness. Sometimes it is useful to use nervous impulses or brain activity as a metaphor for consciousness, but the metaphor only remains a resemblance. Thus, it would be logical to focus on consciousness per se, but that is a subject in its own right.
The great contribution of dynamic psychology was to increase our understanding of the processes of self regulation. Gregory Bateson's view is that all mental operations start with the perception of differences. Very simply if one can not distinguish a figure from its background perception of the figure does not exist. In Bateson's language one has to be able to see a difference which makes a difference. A blank page tells us nothing. Black letters are printed on a white page so as to make the letters discernible figures which can easily distinguished from the white background. Our perceptual system evolved to be able to amplify differences. When I was involved in physiological monitoring of psychotherapy I became interested in electronics, and in how electronic circuits can emulate behavior. An ordinary amplifier (Fig. 1)
magnifies the level of a signal. There is another class of amplifiers which amplify the difference between their inputs. Logically, they are called difference amplifiers. A difference amplifier, just as the name implies, responds to the difference between the two inputs. If one input had 10 volts applied to it and the other had 12 volts the output would be a function of the difference, 2 volts. The 10 volts that the inputs have in common would not be reflected in the output. The output only tells us about the inequality between the inputs. (See Fig. 2).
This is an important metaphor. The iris of the eye adjusts the absolute level of light that comes into the eye so as to maintain a reasonably constant level of illumination on the retina. The visual system is only able to detect contrasts in brightness over a limited range. Thus, if ones iris did not adjust to changing ambient conditions, small differences in illumination would be obscured. At night the iris opens to let as much light as possible in, and even a single photon can be detected in a fully light adapted eye. The reason that we do not see the stars in the daytime is not because the stars go away when the sun comes up. Our eyes are unable to resolve the difference in brightness between the stars and the background of the sun lit sky. Even though the iris contracts.
There are two ideas here, 1) being able to detect differences, and 2) limited range of functioning. The perceptual system is highly attuned to being able to detect change and distinction. However, it is only able to make discriminations over a limited range. In ideal difference amplifier, which would be noise free and have infinite gain, would be able to detect arbitrarily small differences. If the amplifier had infinite gain it would only be able to detect whether the two inputs were exactly equal. The slightest difference would drive the output to its maximum level. Actually, it would be a null, or equality detector which could only say whether or not there were any difference. It could say nothing about the magnitude of the difference. Its hyper sensitivity to any difference overwhelms its ability to sense shades of contrast. This is like someone who thinks in either or terms of black or white and can not see shades of gray.
The situation becomes more complicated when attempts are made to model control systems. Here we get into the conception of feedback. Feedback comes in two kinds, positive feedback and negative feedback. In this context, positive feedback is not saying good things to someone, and negative feedback making critical comments. In this instance the difference amplifier has a positive input and a negative input. In the case of positive feedback, the gain is positive. The gain is the amount the input is amplified. (See Fig. 3).
Positive input produces escalation. A little arithmetic shows how this works. If we input 1 volt and the gain (how much the input signal is amplified (multiplied) is 2, then the output is 1 times 2 = 2. If the output is then turned back and is fed into the input, the input becomes 2. Then 2 times 2 = 4, and 4 times 2 = 8 and on and on until some limit is reached. Psychologically, I feel anxious. I am anxious about being anxious. I get even more anxious...panic.
The negative input inverts the voltage. Thus, if a positive voltage is input, a negative voltage is output (input times (minus gain) = output). In the case of negative feedback the output is turned around and feed back to the negative input. Taking the same parameters. If we input 1 volt, and the gain is minus 2 then the output becomes -2. (See Fig. 4).
In order to get an immediate dynamic feel for negative feedback try the following experiment: Stand on both legs. We have no trouble balancing ourselves standing on both legs. It becomes a bit harder standing on one leg. Continue standing on one leg, close your eyes, and observe what happens. Notice when you begin to loose balance and start falling to one side or the other. When you start falling to the right you try to regain your balance by moving to the left. When you fall to the left you move the right. You may even begin to oscillate back and forth. Each correction is a form of negative feedback. You move in the direction which is opposite to the one which is throwing you off balance. There is another important element in this description. In order to balance yourself you must have some point of balance or reference that you are trying to achieve. At each moment you are comparing your position to an ideal balance point, a point of stability. You are trying to reduce the difference between your current position and the balance point to zero. This is what all servo systems do. (See Fig. 5)
There are several other points to be made about servo systems which have psychological implications. First, the referent controls the output. An example of a heating system will make this clear. If the room thermostat, the referent, is set at 70, and the room temperature is 70 nothing happens. There is no output from the furnace. In psychological terms, when things are the way you want them to be you do not have to do anything. If it is cold outside, the room temperature will slowly begin to fall. When the room temperature falls below 70 the furnace is turned on and heat is output. When the temperature heats up to above 70 the furnace is turned off. Thus, the temperature cycles around the 70 referent. In order to change the base temperature you have to change the referent. If 70 is too cold , you can raise the thermostat to 75. The furnace will pump out heat until the new referent temperature is reached, and then it will maintain that temperature. There is an important distinction between the oscillations around the referent, and changing the level of the referent itself. All real servo systems have a dead zone which does not recognize the discrepancy that exists between the referent level and actual value of input . The temperature may have to fall to 68 before the thermostat detects the change and turns on the furnace. There were fine oscillations in your body when tried to maintain your balance while standing on one leg. You may have been unaware of them. It is only when they became noticeable that you began to make conscious corrections. These small changes around the referent level are inevitable. The become a problem if the efforts at correction produce troublesome overshoots. If the thermostat is insensitive the temperature may go to 80 or down to 60 before the system corrects itself. These wide excursions can cause considerable discomfort. In behavioral terms, lets say ones desire (referent) is to feel reasonably alert. You get up in the morning and feel tired. In order to get rid of the tired feeling you drink a cup of coffee. The caffeine acts as a stimulant to eliminate the tired feeling. The tiredness may not go away immediately after drinking the first cup. So you drink a second or even a third cup. You are no longer drowsy, but then you become aware of becoming jittery from the caffeine (over shoot). So you take a tranquilizer in order to calm down. The tranquilizer makes you drowsy (over shoot in the other direction). You take another cup of coffee, and on and on. How does one get off the rounds of sluggish lows and jittery highs? You may tell yourself to stop drinking the coffee. That is difficult because you have as a referent the wish not to feel drowsy. You believe it is necessary to be alert first thing in the morning in order to do your work. Pledges of abstinence usually do not succeed. In order to alter cycle of lows and highs it is necessary to change the meaning of the drowsiness. As long as tiredness is something to be avoided there will be a strong incentive to take a "fix" for it. There are other kinds of behaviors that might wake you up. You could go for a run or take a cold shower, or you could just wait for your natural circadian rhythm to gradually attain to a higher level of arousal. However, in order to move off of the technological fixes in a sustained way it is necessary to change the referent, the attitude and or meanings that are given to being drowsy.
There is another important psychological insight that can be gained from the servo system metaphor. What makes a servo system work is its ability to continuously act in such a way as to make the difference between its sensing input and its referent zero (null). It is only activated by a difference between these inputs. That is, if things are the way ones referent says they should be one does not have to do anything. Basically one is not driven by what one does. One is activated by the difference between what one sees and what one wants to see. In psychological terms people usually do not see what they do (their output). They are trying to make things live up to some standard (referent) that they have. Talking to people about what they do runs the risk of giving them the idea that you are criticizing them. Discussing how things are different from what they would like (the difference between their referent, and what they see) is seen as an act of empathy. Most people are much more aware of how other people affect them than of how they treat others. Of course, there are people who are excessively self conscious. However, even in this case, they are monitoring how they see themselves in comparison to the standard of how they think they should be seen.
These ideas can be made clearer by taking an example of a couple interacting. A common case is that of an "hysterical" wife and emotionally detached husband. The wife expresses her complaints in vigorous emotional outbursts. The husband tends to remain silent, and the wife becomes even more frantic, and the husband withdraws further. A useful way to understand this common clinical situation is to take the point of view of each individual. The wife sees what the husband does and compares it to her referent.
If the wife wants the husband to be more emotionally open, she will try to prod him with fervent outbursts order to get him to respond to her. The husband who is troubled by displays of feeling will withdraw in an attempt to restore peace, order, and controlled emotion--his referent. Seeing his withdrawal, the wife becomes desperate. He becomes fearful that if he responds that she will become even more intense. So he withdraws even further. This unhappy state of affairs continues until some kind of a limit is reached. i. e. He finally can not stand it any longer and gets enraged, and she is hurt by his anger. He seeks comfort with another woman, or maybe she becomes ill and he responds to her illness. In any case the outcome is mutually frustrating. If the therapist starts by focusing on the behavioral output of either partner, he or she will feel criticized. Commenting on the wife's emotional intensity will leave her feeling criticized and misunderstood. From her point of view the husband's withdrawal is an abandonment. She will say that she does not like getting so upset. It is painful to her, but how can she get through to her husband who in fact does not respond. Focusing on the husband's withdrawal is likely to leave him feeling that the therapist is ganging up with his wife against him. He feels that he is trying to stabilize the situation by not responding. After all his wife was indeed just yelling and screaming. He feels abused by her outbursts and wishes that she were more considerate of him. He is just trying to protect himself. At this point trying to tell them how to behave differently does not work because it threatens the relationship with the therapist and because each can cite his wife's real behavior as just cause for his or her own reaction. This blaming the other is what I call "the problem of reality". Initially it is necessary to fully acknowledge the real justification of each partner's complaint and behavioral reaction. As stated above, the referent controls the output. Thus, it becomes essential to explore each spouse's wishes and expectations, as well as the meaning that each partner's behavior has for the other. Following the servo model, if the meanings and expectations, the referents, can be changed then the behavior will change. Conceptually it does not matter where the therapist starts to intervene in the loop of the interaction. However, it makes a big difference whether the therapist starts by focusing on the behavioral output or on the sensory input. Clearly, it is more effective to start on the input side.
A basic idea in using the servo metaphor is to give an understanding of some very general principles which can serve as guidance to the therapist. Empathic understanding is the basis for all psychotherapy. Behavioral change is another important aspect of therapy. The example of a uncomplicated device like a servo system provides a diagrammatic view of what is involved when one tries to help people change their behavior and be empathic at the same time. In insight oriented therapies self observation is central. Self observation is a kind of auto feedback. In classical psychoanalysis the patient is instructed to follow "the basic rule" of free association. The patient is to say everything that he or she experiences without censoring anything. This is an exquisite example of carrying out self observation. It is very easy to lay down the basic rule, but the actual analysis rests on the difficulties that the patient has in actually carrying it out. Looking at the therapy situation from the point of view of the servo model can clarify the situation. There are two people involved, the patient and the therapist. Each has his or her own referents, and each in his own way is trying to regulate the other to achieve his or her purpose. To the extent that the patient is focused on the therapist's reactions the patient's attention will be split. It will become harder for him to simply observe and report his internal passing scene because he becomes concerned about the therapist's reaction to what he may reveal. Now the therapist becomes an important aspect of the patient's referent. This is a translation of the usual analytic language which calls this process of making the analyst the patient's referent, transference, and the patient's reluctance to divulge his or her reactions resistance. The effort here is to recast these important concepts into more generic terms.
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