STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROPOLOG

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:09 am

Part 3 of 4

Balinese Ethos

The next step, therefore, is to ask about Balinese ethos. What actually are the motives and the values which accompany the complex and rich cultural activities of the Balinese? What, if not competitive and other types of cumulative interrelationship, causes the Balinese to carry out the elaborate patterns of their lives?

(1) It is immediately clear to any visitor to Bali that the driving force for cultural activity is not either acquisitiveness or crude physiological need. The Balinese, especially in the plains, are not hungry or poverty-stricken. They are wasteful of food, and a very considerable part of their activity goes into entirely nonproductive activities of an artistic or ritual nature in which food and wealth are lavishly expended. Essentially, we are dealing with an economy of plenty rather than an economy of scarcity. Some, indeed, are rated “poor” by their fellows, but none of these poor are threatened by starvation, and the suggestion that human beings may actually starve in great Occidental cities was, to the Balinese, unutterably shocking.

(2) In their economic transactions the Balinese show a great deal of carefulness in their small dealings. They are “penny wise.” On the other hand, this carefulness is counter-acted by occasional “pound foolishness” when they will expend large sums of money upon ceremonials and other forms of lavish consumption. There are very few Balinese who have the idea of steadily maximizing their wealth or property; these few are partly disliked and partly regarded as oddities. For the vast majority the “saving of pennies” is done with a limited time perspective and a limited level of aspiration. They are saving until they have enough to spend largely on some ceremonial. We should not describe Balinese economics in terms of the individual’s attempt to maximize value, but rather compare it with the relaxation oscillations of physiology and engineering, realizing that not only is this analogy descriptive of their sequences of transactions, but that they themselves see these sequences as naturally having some such form.

(3) The Balinese are markedly dependent upon spatial orientation. In order to be able to behave they must know their cardinal points, and if a Balinese is taken by motor car over twisting roads so that he loses his sense of direction, he may become severely disorientated and unable to act (e.g., a dancer may become unable to dance) until he has got back his orientation by seeing some important landmark, such as the central mountain of the island around which the cardinal points are structured. There is a comparable dependence upon social orientation, but with this difference: that where the spatial orientation is in a horizontal plane, social orientation is felt to be, in the main, vertical. When two strangers are brought together, it is necessary, before they can converse with any freedom, that their relative caste positions be stated. One will ask the other, “Where do you sit?” and this is a metaphor for caste. It is asking, essentially, “Do you sit high or low?” When each knows the caste of the other, each will then know what etiquette and what linguistic forms he should adopt, and conversation can then proceed. Lacking such orientation, a Balinese is tongue-tied.

(4) It is common to find that activity (other than the “penny wisdom” mentioned above) rather than being purposive, i.e., aimed at some deferred goal, is valued for itself. The artist, the dancer, the musician, and the priest may receive a pecuniary reward for their professional activity, but only in rare cases is this reward adequate to recompense the artist even for his time and materials. The reward is a token of appreciation, it is a definition of the context in which the theatrical company performs, but it is not the economic mainstay of the troupe. The earnings of the troupe may be saved up to enable them to buy new costumes, but when finally the costumes are bought it is usually necessary for every member to make a considerable contribution to the common fund in order to pay for them. Similarly, in regard to the offerings which are taken to every temple feast, there is no purpose in this enormous expenditure of artistic work and real wealth. The god will not bring any benefit because you made a beautiful structure of flowers and fruit for the calendric feast in his temple, nor will he avenge your abstention. Instead of deferred purpose there is an immediate and immanent satisfaction in performing beautifully, with everybody else, that which it is correct to perform in each particular context.

(5) In general there is evident enjoyment to be had from doing things busily with large crowds of other people. [39] Conversely there is such misfortune inherent in the loss of group membership that the threat of this loss is one of the most serious sanctions in the culture.

(6) It is of great interest to note that many Balinese actions are articulately accounted for in sociological terms rather than in terms of individual goals or values. [40]

This is most conspicuous in regard to all actions related to the village council, the hierarchy which includes all full citizens. This body, in its secular aspects, is referred to as I Desa (literally, “Mr. Village”), and numerous rules and procedures are rationalized by reference to this abstract personage. Similarly, in its sacred aspects, the village is deified as Betara Desa (God Village), to whom shrines are erected and offerings brought. (We may guess that a Durkheimian analysis would seem to the Balinese to be an obvious and appropriate approach to the understanding of much of their public culture.)

In particular all money transactions which involve the village treasury are governed by the generalization, “The village does not lose” (Desanne sing dadi potjol). This generalization applies, for example, in all cases in which a beast is sold from the village herd. Under no circumstances can the village accept a price less than that which it actually or nominally paid. (It is important to note that the rule takes the form of fixing a lower limit and is not an injunction to maximize the village treasury.)

A peculiar awareness of the nature of social processes is evident in such incidents as the following: A poor man was about to undergo one of the important and expensive rites de passage which are necessary for persons as they approach the top of the council hierarchy. We asked what would happen if he refused to undertake this expenditure. The first answer was that, if he were too poor, I Desa would lend him the money. In response to further pressing as to what would happen if he really refused, we were told that nobody ever had refused, but that if somebody did, nobody would go through the ceremony again. Implicit in this answer and in the fact that nobody ever does refuse is the assumption that the ongoing cultural process is itself to be valued.

(7) Actions which are culturally correct (patoet) are acceptable and aesthetically valued. Actions which are permissible (dadi) are of more or less neutral value; while actions which are not permissible (sing dadi) are to be deprecated and avoided. These generalizations, in their translated form, are no doubt true in many cultures, but it is important to get a clear understanding of what the Balinese mean by dadi. The notion is not to be equated with our “etiquette” or “law,” since each of these invokes the value judgment of some other person or sociological entity. In Bali there is no feeling that actions have been or are categorized as dadi or sing dadi by some human or supernatural authority. Rather, the statement that such-and-such an action is dadi is an absolute generalization to the effect that under the given circumstances this action is regular. [41] It is wrong for a casteless person to address a prince in other than the “polished language,” and it is wrong for a menstruating woman to enter a temple. The prince or the deity may express annoyance, but there is no feeling that either the prince, the deity, or the casteless person made the rules. The offense is felt to be against the order and natural structure of the universe rather than against the actual person offended. The offender, even in such serious matters as incest (for which he may be extruded from the society) [42] is not blamed for anything worse than stupidity and clumsiness. Rather, he is “an unfortunate person” (anak latfoer), and misfortune may come to any of us “when it is our turn.” Further, it must be stressed that these patterns which define correct and permissible behavior are exceedingly complex (especially the rules of language) and that the individual Balinese (even to some degree inside his own family) has continual anxiety lest he make an error. Moreover, the rules are not of such a kind that they can be summarized either in a simple recipe or an emotional attitude. Etiquette cannot be deduced from some comprehensive statement about the other person’s feelings or from respect for superiors. The details are too complex and too various for this, and so the individual Balinese is forever picking his way, like a tightrope walker, afraid at any moment lest he make some misstep.

(8) The metaphor from postural balance used in the last paragraph is demonstrably applicable in many contexts of Balinese culture:

The fear of loss of support is an important theme in Balinese childhood. [43]

(a) Elevation (with its attendant problems of physical and metaphorical balance) is the passive complement of respect. [44]

The Balinese child is elevated like a superior person or a god. [45]

(b) In cases of actual physical elevation [46] the duty of balancing the system falls on the supporting lower person, but control of the direction in which the system will move is in the hands of the elevated. The little girl in the figure standing in trance on a man’s shoulders can cause her bearer to go wherever she desires by merely leaning in that direction. He must then move in that direction in order to maintain the balance of the system.

(c) A large proportion of our collection of 1200 Balinese carvings shows preoccupation on the part of the artist with problems of balance. [47]


The Witch, the personification of fear, frequently uses a gesture called kapar, which is described as that of a man falling from a coconut palm on suddenly seeing a snake. In this gesture the arms are raised sideways to a position somewhat above the head.

The ordinary Balinese term for the period before the coming of the white man is “when the world was steady” (doegas goemine enteg).

Applications of the Von Neumannian Game

Even this very brief listing of some of the elements in Balinese ethos suffices to indicate theoretical problems of prime importance. Let us consider the matter in abstract terms. One of the hypotheses underlying most sociology is that the dynamics of the social mechanism can be described by assuming that the individuals constituting that mechanism are motivated to maximize certain variables. In conventional economic theory it is assumed that the individuals will maximize value, while in schismogenic theory it was tacitly assumed that the individuals would maximize intangible but still simple variables such as prestige, self-esteem, or even submissiveness. The Balinese, however, do not maximize any such simple variables.

In order to define the sort of contrast which exists between the Balinese system and any competitive system, let us start by considering the premisses of a strictly competitive Von Neumannian game and proceed by considering what changes we must make in these premisses in order to approximate more closely to the Balinese system.

(1) The players in a Von Neumannian game are, by hypothesis, motivated only in terms of a single linear (sc. monetary) scale of value. Their strategies are determined: (a) by the rules of the hypothetical game; and (b) by their intelligence, which is, by hypothesis, sufficient to solve all problems presented by the game. Von Neumann shows that, under certain definable circumstances depending upon the number of players and upon the rules, coalitions of various sorts will be formed by the players, and in fact Von Neumann’s analysis concentrates mainly upon the structure of these coalitions and the distribution of value among the members. In comparing these games with human societies we shall regard social organizations as analogous to coalition systems. [48]

(2) Von Neumannian systems differ from human societies in the following respects:

(a) His “players” are from the start completely intelligent, whereas human beings learn. For human beings we must expect that the rules of the game and the conventions associated with any particular set of coalitions will become incorporated into the character structures of the individual players.

(b) The mammalian value scale is not simple and monotone, but may be exceedingly complex. We know, even at a physiological level, that calcium will not replace vitamins, nor will an amino acid replace oxygen. Further, we know that the animal does not strive to maximize its supply of any of these discrepant commodities, but rather is required to maintain the supply of each within tolerable limits. Too much may be as harmful as too little. It is also doubtful whether mammalian preference is always transitive.

(c) In the Von Neumannian system the number of moves in a given “play” of a game is assumed to be finite. The strategic problems of the individuals are soluble because the individual can operate within a limited time perspective. He need only look forward a finite distance to the end of the play when the gains and losses will be paid up and everything will start again from a tabula rasa. In human society life is not punctuated in this way, and each individual faces a vista of unknowable factors whose number increases (probably exponentially) into the future.

(d) The Von Neumannian players are, by hypothesis, not susceptible either to economic death or to boredom. The losers can go on losing forever, and no player can withdraw from the game, even though the outcome of every play is definitely predictable in probability terms.

(3) Of these differences between Von Neumannian and human systems, only the differences in value scales and the possibility of “death” concern us here. For the sake of simplicity we shall assume that the other differences, though very profound, can for the moment be ignored.

(4) Curiously, we may note that, although men are mammals and therefore have a primary value system which is multidimensional and nonmaximizing, it is yet possible for these creatures to be put into contexts in which they will strive to maximize one or a few simple variables (money, prestige, power, etc.).

(5) Since the multidimensional value system is apparently primary, the problem presented by, for example, Iatmul social organization is not so much to account for the behavior of Iatmul individuals by invoking (or abstracting) their value system; we should also ask how that value system is imposed on the mammalian individuals by the social organization in which they find themselves. Conventionally in anthropology this question is attacked through genetic psychology. We endeavor to collect data to show how the value system implicit in the social paganization is built into the character structure of the individuals in their childhood. There is, however, an alternative approach which would momentarily ignore, as Von Neumann does, the phenomena of learning and consider merely the strategic implications of those contexts which must occur in accordance with the given “rules” and the coalition system. In this connection it is important to note that competitive contexts—provided the individuals can be made to recognize the contexts as competitive—inevitably reduce the complex gamut of values to very simple and even linear and monotone terms. [49] Considerations of this sort, plus descriptions of the regularities in the process of character formation, probably suffice to describe how simple value scales are imposed upon mammalian individuals in competitive societies such as that of the Iatmul or twentieth-century America.

(6) In Balinese society, on the other hand, we find an. entirely different state of affairs. Neither the individual nor the village is concerned to maximize any simple variable. Rather, they would seem to be concerned to maximize something which we may call stability, using this term perhaps in a highly metaphorical way. (There is, in fact, one simple quantitative variable which does appear to be maximized. This variable is the amount of any fine imposed by the village. When first imposed the fines are mostly very small, but if payment is delayed the amount of the fine is increased very steeply, and if there be any sign that the offender is refusing to pay— ”opposing the village”—the fine is at once raised to an enormous sum and the offender is deprived of membership in the community until he is willing to give up his opposition. Then a part of the fine may be excused.)

(7) Let us now consider an hypothetical system consisting of a number of identical players, plus an umpire who is concerned with the maintenance of stability among the players. Let us further suppose that the players are liable to economic death, that our umpire is concerned to see that this shall not occur, and that the umpire has power to make certain alterations in the rules of the game or in the probabilities associated with chance moves. Clearly this umpire will be in more or less continual conflict with the players. He is striving to maintain a dynamic equilibrium or steady state, and this we may rephrase as the attempt to maximize the chances against the maximization of any single simple variable.

(8.) Ashby has pointed out in rigorous terms that the steady state and continued existence of complex interactive systems depend upon preventing the maximization of any variable, and that any continued increase in any variable will inevitably result in, and be limited by, irreversible changes in the system. He has also pointed out that in such systems it is very important to permit certain variables to alter. [50]The steady state of an engine with a governor is unlikely to be maintained if the position of the balls of the governor is clamped. Similarly a tightrope walker with a balancing pole will not be able to maintain his balance except by varying the forces which he exerts upon the pole.

(9) Returning now to the conceptual model suggested in paragraph 7, let us take one further step toward making this model comparable with Balinese society. Let us substitute for the umpire a village council composed of all the players. We now have a system which presents a number of analogies to our balancing acrobat. When they speak as members of the village council, the players by hypothesis are interested in maintaining the steady state of the system—that is, in preventing the maximization of any simple variable the excessive increase of which would produce irreversible change. In their daily life, however, they are still engaged in simple competitive strategies.

(10) The next step toward making our model resemble Balinese society more closely is clearly to postulate in the character structure of the individuals and/or in the contexts of their daily life those factors which will motivate them toward maintenance of the steady state not only when they speak in council, but also in their other interpersonal relations. These factors are in fact recognizable in Bali and have been enumerated above. In our analysis of why Balinese society is nonschismogenic, we noted that the Balinese child learns to avoid cumulative interaction, i.e., the maximization of certain simple variables, and that the social organization and contexts of daily life are so constructed as to preclude competitive interaction. Further, in our analysis of the Balinese ethos, we noted recurrent valuation: (a) of the clear and static definition of status and spatial orientation, and (b) of balance and such movement as will conduce to balance.


In sum it seems that the Balinese extend to human relationships attitudes based upon bodily balance, and that they generalize the idea that motion is essential to balance. This last point gives us, I believe, a partial answer to the question of why the society not only continues to function but functions rapidly and busily, continually undertaking ceremonial and artistic tasks which are not economically or competitively determined. This steady state is maintained by continual nonprogressive change.

Schismogenic System versus the Steady State

I have discussed two types of social system in such schematic outline that it is possible to state clearly a contrast between them. Both types of system, so far as they are capable of maintaining themselves without progressive or irreversible change, achieve the steady state. There are, however, profound differences between them in the manner in which the steady state is regulated.

The Iatmul system, which is here used as a prototype of schismogenic systems, includes a number of regenerative causal circuits or vicious circles. Each such circuit consists of two or more individuals (or groups of individuals) who participate in potentially cumulative interaction. Each human individual is an energy source or “relay,” such that the energy used in his responses is not derived from the stimuli but from his own metabolic processes. It therefore follows that such a schismogenic system is—unless controlled—liable to excessive increase of those acts which characterize the schismogeneses. The anthropologist who attempts even a qualitative description of. such a system must therefore identify: (1) the individuals and groups involved in schismogenesis and the routes of communication between them; (2) the categories of acts and contexts characteristic of the schismogeneses; (3) the processes whereby the individuals become psychologically apt to perform these acts and/or the nature of the contexts which force these acts upon them; and lastly, (4) he must identify the mechanisms or factors which control the schismogeneses. These controlling factors may be of at least three distinct types: (a) degenerative causal loops may be superposed upon the schismogeneses so that when the latter reach a certain intensity some form of restraint is applied as occurs in Occidental systems when a government intervenes to limit economic competition; (b) there may be, in addition to the schismogeneses already considered, other cumulative interactions acting in an opposite sense and so promoting social integration rather than fission; (c) the increase in schismogenesis may be limited by factors which are internally or externally environmental to the parts of the schismogenic circuit. Such factors which have only small restraining effect at low intensities of schismogenesis may increase with increase of intensity. Friction, fatigue, and limitation of energy supply would be examples of such factors.

In contrast with these schismogenic systems, Balinese society is an entirely different type of mechanism, and in describing it the anthropologist must follow entirely different procedures, for which rules cannot as yet be laid down. Since the class of “nonschismogenic” social systems is defined only in negative terms, we cannot assume that members of the class will have common characteristics. In the analysts of the Balinese system, however, the following steps occurred, and it is possible that some at least of these may be applicable in the analysis of other cultures of this class: (1) it was observed that schismogenic sequences are rare in Bali; (2) the exceptional cases in which such sequences occur were investigated; (3) from this investigation it appeared, (a) that in general the contexts which recur in Balinese social life preclude cumulative interaction and ( b) that childhood experience trains the child away from seeking climax in personal interaction; (4) it was shown that certain positive values—related to balance—recur in the culture and are incorporated into the character structure during childhood, and, further, that these values may be specifically related to the steady state; (5) a more detailed study is now required to arrive at a systematic statement about the self-correcting characteristics of the system. It is evident that the ethos alone is insufficient to maintain the steady state. From time to time the village or some other entity does step in to correct infractions. The nature of these instances of the working of the corrective mechanism must be studied; but it is clear that this intermittent mechanism is very different from the continually acting restraints which must be present in all schismogenic systems.

Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art [51]

Introduction


This paper consists of several still-separate attempts to map a theory associated with culture and the nonverbal arts. Since no one of these attempts is completely successful, and since the attempts do not as yet meet in the middle of the territory to be mapped, it. may be useful to state, in non-technical language, what it is I am after.

Aldous Huxley used to say that the central problem for humanity is the quest for grace. This word he used in what he thought was the sense in, which it is used in the New Testament. He explained the word, however, in his own terms. He argued—like Walt Whitman—that the communication and behavior of animals has a naivete, a simplicity, which man has lost. Man’s behavior is corrupted by deceit—even self-deceit— by purpose, and by self-consciousness. As Aldous saw the matter, man has lost the “grace” which animals still have.

In terms of this contrast, Aldous argued that God resembles the animals rather than man: He is ideally unable to deceive and incapable of internal confusions.

In the total scale of beings, therefore, man is as if displaced sideways and lacks that grace which the animals have and which God has.

I argue that art is a part of man’s quest for grace; sometimes his ecstasy in partial success, sometimes his rage and agony at failure.

I argue also that there are many species of grace within the major genus; and also that there are many kinds of failure and frustration and departure from grace. No doubt each culture has its characteristic species of grace toward which its artists strive, and its own species of failure.

Some cultures may foster a negative approach to this difficult integration, an avoidance of complexity by crass preference either for total consciousness or total unconsciousness. Their art is unlikely to be “great.”

I shall argue that the problem of grace is fundamentally a problem of integration and that what is to be integrated is the diverse parts of the mind—especially those multiple levels of which one extreme is called “consciousness” and the other the “unconscious.” For the attainment of grace, the reasons of the heart must be integrated with the reasons of the reason.

Edmund Leach has confronted us, in this conference, with the question: How is it that the art of one culture can have meaning or validity for critics raised in a different culture? My answer would be that, if art is somehow expressive of something like grace or psychic integration, then the success of this expression might well be recognizable across cultural barriers. The physical grace of cats is profoundly different from the physical grace of horses, and yet a man who has the physical grace of neither can evaluate that of both.

And even when the subject matter of art is the frustration of integration, cross-cultural recognition of the products of this frustration is not too surprising.

The central question is: In what form is information about psychic integration contained or coded in the work of art?

Style and Meaning

They say that “every picture tells a story,” and this generalization holds for most of art if we exclude “mere” geometric ornamentation. But I want precisely to avoid analyzing the “story.” That aspect of the work of art which can most easily be reduced to words—the mythology connected with the subject matter—is not what I want to discuss. I shall not even mention the unconscious mythology of phallic symbolism, except at the end.

I am concerned with what important psychic information is in the art object quite apart from what it may “represent.” “Le style est l’homme meme” (“The style is the man himself”) (Buffon). What is implicit in style, materials, composition, rhythm, skill, and so on?

Clearly this subject matter will include geometrical ornamentation along with the composition and stylistic aspects of more representational works.

The lions in Trafalgar Square could have been eagles or bulldogs and still have carried the same (or similar) messages about empire and about the cultural premises of nineteenth-century England. And yet, how different might their message have been had they been made of wood!

But representationalism as such is relevant. The extremely realistic horses and stags of Altamira are surely not about the same cultural premises as the highly conventionalized black outlines of a later period. The code whereby perceived objects or persons (or supernaturals) are transformed into wood or paint is a source of information about the artist and his culture.

It is the very rules of transformation that are of interest to me—not the message, but the code.

My goal is not instrumental. I do not want to use the transformation rules when discovered to undo the transformation or to “decode” the message. To translate the art object into mythology and then examine the mythology would be only a neat way of dodging or negating the problem of “what is art?”

I ask, then, not about the meaning of the encoded message but rather about the meaning of the code chosen. But still that most slippery word “meaning” must be defined.

It will be convenient to define meaning in the most general possible way in the first instance.

“Meaning” may be regarded as an approximate synonym of pattern, redundancy, information, and “restraint,” within a paradigm of the following sort:

Any aggregate of events or objects (e.g., a sequence of phonemes, a painting, or a frog, or a culture) shall be said to contain “redundancy” or “pattern” if the aggregate can be divided in any way by a “slash mark,” such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can guess, with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. We may say that what is on one side of the slash contains information or has meaning about what is on the other side. Or, in engineer’s language, the aggregate contains “redundancy.” Or, again, from the point of view of a cybernetic observer, the information available on one side of the slash will restrain (i.e., reduce the probability of) wrong guessing. Examples:

The letter T in a given location in a piece of written English prose proposes that the next letter is likely to be an H or an R or a vowel. It is possible to make a better than random guess across a slash which immediately follows the T. English spelling contains redundancy.

From a part of an English sentence, delimited by a slash, it is possible to guess at the syntactic structure of the remainder of the sentence.

From a tree visible above ground, it is possible to guess at the existence of roots below ground. The top provides information about the bottom.

From an arc of a drawn circle, it is possible to guess at the position of other parts of the circumference. (From the diameter of an ideal circle, it is possible to assert the length of the circumference. But this is a matter of truth within a tautological system.)

From how the boss acted yesterday, it may be possible to guess how he will act today.

From what I say, it may be possible to make predictions about how you will answer. My words contain meaning or information about your reply.

Telegraphist A has a written message on his pad and sends this message over wire to B, so that B now gets the same sequence of letters on his message pad. This transaction (or “language game” in Wittgenstein’s phrase) has created a redundant universe for an observer O. If 0 knows what was on A’s pad, he can make a better than random guess at what is on B’s pad.

The essence and raison d’etre of communication is the creation of redundancy, meaning, pattern, predictability, information, and/or the reduction of the random by “restraint.”

It is, I believe, of prime importance to have a conceptual system which will force us to see the “message” (e.g., the art object) as both itself internally patterned and itself a part of a larger patterned universe—the culture or some part of it.

The characteristics of objects of art are believed to be about, or to be partly derived from, or determined by, other characteristics of cultural and psychological systems. Our problem might therefore be oversimply represented by the diagram:

[Characteristics of art object/Characteristics of rest of culture]

where square brackets enclose the universe of relevance, and where the oblique stroke represents a slash across which some guessing is possible, in one direction or in both. The problem, then, is to spell out what sorts of relationships, correspondences, etc., cross or transcend this oblique stroke.

Consider the case in which I say to you, “It’s raining,” and you guess that if you look out the window you will see raindrops. A similar diagram will serve:

[Characteristics of “It’s raining”/Perception of raindrops]

Notice, however, that this case is by no means simple. Only if you know the language and have some trust in my veracity will you be able to make a guess about the raindrops. In fact, few people in this situation restrain themselves from seemingly duplicating their information by looking out of the window. We like to prove that our guesses are right, and that our friends are honest. Still more important, we like to test or verify the correctness of our view of our relationship to others.

This last point is nontrivial. It illustrates the necessarily hierarchic structure of all communicational systems: the fact of conformity or nonconformity (or indeed any other relationship) between parts of a patterned whole may itself be informative as part of some still larger whole. The matter may he diagrammed thus:

[(“It’s raining”/raindrops)/You-me relationship)

where redundancy across the slash mark within the smaller universe enclosed in round brackets proposes (is a message about) a redundancy in the larger universe enclosed in square brackets.

But the message “It’s raining” is itself conventionally coded and internally patterned, so that several slash marks could be drawn across the message indicating patterning within the message itself.

And the same is true of the rain. It, too, is patterned and structured. From the direction of one drop, I could predict the direction of others. And so on.

But the slash marks across the verbal message “It’s raining” will not correspond in any simple way to the slash marks across the raindrops.

If, instead of a verbal message, I had given you a picture of the rain, some of the slashes on the picture would have corresponded with slashes on the perceived rain.

This difference provides a neat formal criterion to separate the “arbitrary” and digital coding characteristic of the verbal part of language from the iconic coding of depiction.

But verbal description is often iconic in its larger structure. A scientist describing an earthworm might start at the head end and work down its length—thus producing a description iconic in its sequence and elongation. Here again we observe a hierarchic structuring, digital or verbal at one level and iconic at another.

Levels and Logical Types

“Levels” have been mentioned: (a) It was noted that the combination of the message “It’s raining” with the perception of raindrops can itself constitute a message about a universe of personal relations; and (b) that when we change our focus of attention from smaller to larger units of message material, we may discover that a larger unit contains iconic coding though the smaller parts of which it was made are verbal: the verbal description of an earthworm may, as a whole, be elongated.

The matter of levels now crops up in another form which is crucial for any epistemology of art:

The word “know” is not merely ambiguous in covering both connaitre (to know through the senses, to recognize or perceive) and savoir (to know in the mind), but varies —actively shifts— in meaning for basic systemic reasons. That which we know through the senses can become knowledge in the mind.

“I know the way to Cambridge” might mean that I have studied the map and can give you directions. It might mean that I can recall details all along the route. It might mean that when driving that route I recognize many details even though I could recall only a few. It might mean that when driving to Cambridge I can trust to “habit” to make me turn at the right points, without having to think where I am going. And so on.

In all cases, we deal with a redundancy or patterning of a quite complex sort:

[(“I know…”/my mind)//the road]

and the difficulty is to determine the nature of the patterning within the round brackets, or, to put the matter another way: what parts of the mind are redundant with the particular message about “knowing.”

Last, there is a special form of “knowing” which is usually regarded as adaptation rather than information. A shark is beautifully shaped for locomotion in water, but the genome of the shark surely does not contain direct information about hydrodynamics. Rather, the genome must be supposed to contain information or instructions which are the complement of hydrodynamics. Not hydrodynamics, but what hydrodynamics requires, has been built up in the shark’s genome. Similarly, a migratory bird perhaps does not know the way to its destination in any of the senses outlined above, but the bird may contain the complementary instructions necessary td cause it to fly right.

“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point” (“The heart has its reasons which the reason does not at all perceive”). It is this—the complex layering of consciousness and unconsciousness—that creates difficulty when we try to discuss art or ritual or mythology. The matter of levels of the mind has been discussed from many points of view, at least four of which must be mentioned and woven into any scientific approach to art:

(1) Samuel Butler’s insistence that the better an organism “knows” something, the less conscious it becomes of its knowledge, i.e., there is a process whereby knowledge (or “habit” —whether of action, perception, or thought) sinks to deeper and deeper levels of the mind. This phenomenon, which is central to Zen discipline (cf. Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery), is also relevant to all art and all skill.

(2) Adalbert Ames’ demonstrations that the conscious, three-dimensional visual images, which we make of that which we see, are made by processes involving mathematical premises of perspective, etc., of the use of which we are totally unconscious. Over these processes, we have no voluntary control. A drawing of a chair with the perspective of van Gogh affronts the conscious expectations and, dimly, reminds the consciousness of what had been (unconsciously) taken for granted.

(3) The Freudian (especially Fenichel’s) theory of dreams as metaphors coded according to primary process. I shall consider style—neatness, boldness of contrast, etc.—as metaphoric and therefore as linked to those levels of the mind where primary process holds sway.

(4) The Freudian view of the unconscious as the cellar or cupboard to which fearful and painful memories are consigned by a process of repression.


Classical Freudian theory assumed that dreams were a secondary product, created by “dream work.” Material unacceptable to conscious thought was supposedly translated into the metaphoric idiom of primary process to avoid waking the dreamer. And this may be true of those items of information which are held in the unconscious by the process of repression. As we have seen, however, many other sorts of information are inaccessible to conscious inspection, including most of the premises of mammalian interaction. It would seem to me sensible to think of these items as existing primarily in the idiom of primary process, only with difficulty to be translated into “rational” terms. In other words, I believe that much of early Freudian theory was upside down. At that time many thinkers regarded conscious reason as normal and self-explanatory while the unconscious was regarded as mysterious, needing proof, and needing explanation. Repression was the explanation, and the unconscious was filled with thoughts which could have been conscious but which repression and dream work had distorted. Today we think of consciousness as the mysterious, and of the computational methods of the unconscious, e.g., primary process, as continually active, necessary, and all-embracing.

These considerations are especially relevant in any attempt to derive a theory of art or poetry. Poetry is not a sort of distorted and decorated prose, but rather prose is poetry which has been stripped down and pinned to a Procrustean bed of logic. The computer men who would program the translation of languages sometimes forget this fact about the primary nature of language. To try to construct a machine to translate the art of one culture into the art of another would be equally silly.

Allegory, at best a distasteful sort of art, is an inversion of the normal creative process. Typically an abstract relation, e.g., between truth and justice, is first conceived in rational terms. The relationship is then metaphorized and dolled up to look like a product of primary process. The abstractions are personified and made to participate in a pseudomyth, and so on. Much advertising art is allegorical in this sense, that the creative process is inverted.

In the cliche system of Anglo-Saxons, it is commonly assumed that it would be somehow better if what is unconscious were made conscious. Freud, even, is said to have said, “Where id was, there ego shall be,” as though such an increase in conscious knowledge and control would be both possible and, of course, an improvement. This view is the product of an almost totally distorted epistemology and a totally distorted view of what sort of thing a man, or any other organism, is.

Of the four sorts of unconsciousness listed above, it is very clear that the first three are necessary. Consciousness, for obvious mechanical reasons, [52] must always be limited to a rather small fraction of mental process. If useful at all, it must therefore be husbanded. The unconsciousness associated with habit is an economy both of thought and of consciousness; and the same is true of the inaccessability of the processes of perception. The conscious organism does not require (for pragmatic purposes) to know how it perceives —only to know what it perceives. (To suggest that we might operate without a foundation in primary process would be to suggest that the human brain ought to be differently structured.) Of the four types, only the Freudian cupboard for skeletons is perhaps undesirable and could be obviated. But there may still be advantages in keeping the skeleton off the dining room table.

In truth, our life is such that its unconscious components are continuously present in all their multiple forms. It follows that in our relationships we continuously exchange messages about these unconscious materials, and it becomes important also to exchange metamessages by which we tell each other what order and species of unconsciousness (or consciousness) attaches to our messages.

In a merely pragmatic way, this is important because the orders of truth are different for different sorts of messages. Insofar as a message is conscious and voluntary, it could be deceitful. I can tell you that the cat is on the mat when in fact she is not there. I can tell you “I love you” when in fact I do not. But discourse about relationship is commonly accompanied by a mass of semivoluntary kinesic and autonomic signals which provide a more trustworthy comment on the verbal message.

Similarly with skill, the fact of skill indicates the presence of large unconscious components in the performance.

It thus becomes relevant to look at any work of art with the question: What components of this message material had what orders of unconsciousness (or consciousness) for the artist? And this question, I believe, the sensitive critic usually asks, though perhaps not consciously.

Art becomes, in this sense, an exercise in communicating about the species of unconsciousness. Or, if you prefer it, a sort of play behavior whose function is, amongst other things, to practice and make more perfect communication of this kind.

I am indebted to Dr. Anthony Forge for a quotation from Isadora Duncan: “If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.”

Her statement is ambiguous. In terms of the rather vulgar premises of our culture, we would translate the statement to mean: “There would then be no point in dancing it, because I could tell it to you, quicker and with less ambiguity, in words.” This interpretation goes along with the silly idea that it would be a good thing to be conscious of everything of which we are unconscious.

But there is another possible meaning of Isadora Duncan’s remark: If the message were the sort of message that could be communicated in words, there would be no point in dancing it, but it is not that sort of message. It is, in fact, precisely the sort of message which would be falsified if communicated in words, because the use of words (other than poetry) would imply that this is a fully conscious and voluntary message, and this would be simply untrue.

I believe that what Isadora Duncan or any artist is trying to communicate is more like: “This is a particular sort of partly unconscious message. Let us engage in this particular sort of partly unconscious communication.” Or perhaps: “This is a message about the interface between conscious and unconscious.

The message of skill of any sort must always be of this kind. The sensations and qualities of skill can never be put in words, and yet the fact of skill is conscious.

The artist’s dilemma is of a peculiar sort. He must practice in order to perform the craft components of his job. But to practice has always a double effect. It makes him, on the one hand, more able to do whatever it is he is attempting; and, on the other hand, by the phenomenon of habit formation, it makes him less aware of how he does it.

If his attempt is to communicate about the unconscious components of his performance, then it follows that he is on a sort of moving stairway (or escalator) about whose position he is trying to communicate but whose movement is itself a function of his efforts to communicate.

Clearly, his task is impossible, but, as has been remarked, some people do it very prettily.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:10 am

Part 4 of 4

Primary Process

“The heart has its reasons which the reason does not at all perceive.” Among Anglo-Saxons, it is rather usual to think of the “reasons” of the heart or of the unconscious as inchoate forces or pushes or heavings—what Freud called Trieben. To Pascal, a Frenchman, the matter was rather different, and he no doubt thought of the reasons of the heart as a body of logic or computation as precise and complex as the reasons of consciousness.

(I have noticed that Anglo-Saxon anthropologists sometimes misunderstand the writings of Claude Levi-Strauss for precisely this reason. They say he emphasizes too much the intellect and ignores the “feelings.” The truth is that he assumes that the heart has precise algorithms.)

These algorithms of the heart, or, as they say, of the unconscious, are, however, coded and organized in a manner totally different from the algorithms of language. And since a great deal of conscious thought is structured in terms of the logics of language, the algorithms of the unconscious are doubly inaccessible. It is not only that the conscious mind has poor access to this material, but also the fact that when such access is achieved, e.g., in dreams, art, poetry, religion, intoxication, and the like, there is still a formidable problem of translation.

This is usually expressed in Freudian language by saying that the operations of the unconscious are structured in terms of primary process, while the thoughts of consciousness (especially verbalized thoughts) are expressed in secondary process.

Nobody, to my knowledge, knows anything about secondary process. But it is ordinarily assumed that everybody knows all about it, so I shall not attempt to describe secondary process in any detail, assuming that you know as much about it as I.

Primary process is characterized (e.g., by Fenichel) as lacking negatives, lacking tense, lacking in any identification of linguistic mood (i.e., no identification of indicative, subjunctive, optative, etc.) and metaphoric. These characterizations are based upon the experience of psychoanalysts, who must interpret dreams and the patterns of free association.

It is also true that the subject matter of primary-process discourse is different from the subject matter of language and consciousness. Consciousness talks about things or persons, and attaches predicates to the specific things or persons which have been mentioned. In primary process the things or persons are usually not identified, and the focus of the discourse is upon the relationships which are asserted to obtain between them. This is really only another way of saying that the discourse of primary process is metaphoric. A metaphor retains unchanged the relationship which it “illustrates” while substituting other things or persons for the relata. In a simile, the fact that a metaphor is being used is marked by the insertion of the words “as if” or “like.” In primary process (as in art) there are no markers to indicate to the conscious mind that the message material is metaphoric.

(For a schizophrenic, it is a major step towards a more conventional sanity when he can frame his schizophrenic utterances or the comments of his voices in an “as if” terminology.)

The focus of “relationship” is, however, somewhat more narrow than would be indicated merely by saying that primary-process material is metaphoric and does not identify the specific relata. The subject matter of dream and other primary-process material is, in fact, relationship in the more narrow sense of relationship between self and other persons or between self and the environment.

Anglo-Saxons who are uncomfortable with the idea that feelings and emotions are the outward signs of precise and complex algorithms usually have to be told that these matters, the relationship between self and others, and the relationship between self and environment, are, in fact, the subject matter of what are called “feelings”— love, hate, fear, confidence, anxiety, hostility, etc. It is unfortunate that these abstractions referring to patterns of relationship have received names, which are usually handled in ways that assume that the “feelings” are mainly characterized by quantity rather than by precise pattern. This is one of the nonsensical contributions of psychology to a distorted epistemology.

Be all that as it may, for our present purposes it is important to note that the characteristics of primary process as described above are the inevitable characteristics of any communicational system between organisms who must use only iconic communication. This same limitation is characteristic of the artist and of the dreamer and of the prehuman mammal or bird. (The communication of insects is, perhaps, another matter.)

In iconic communication, there is no tense, no simple negative, no modal marker.

The absence of simple negatives is of especial interest because it often forces organisms into saying the opposite of what they mean in order to get across the proposition. that they mean the opposite of what they say.

Two dogs approach each other and need to exchange the message: “We are not going to fight.” But the only way in which fight can be mentioned in iconic communication is by the showing of fangs. It is then necessary for the dogs to discover that this mention of fight was, in fact, only exploratory. They must, therefore, explore what the showing of fangs means. They therefore engage in a brawl; discover that neither ultimately intends to kill the other; and, after that, they can be friends.

(Consider the peace-making ceremonials of the Andaman Islanders. Consider also the functions of inverted statement or sarcasm, and other sorts of humor in dream, art, and mythology.)

In general, the discourse of animals is concerned with relationship either between self and other or self and environment. In neither case is it necessary to identify the relata. Animal A tells B about his relationship with B and he tells C about his relationship with C. Animal A does not have to tell animal C about his relationship with B. Always the relata are perceptibly present to illustrate the discourse, and always the discourse is iconic in the sense of being composed of part actions (“intention movements”) which mention the whole action which is being mentioned. Even when the cat asks you for milk, she cannot mention the object which she wants (unless it be perceptibly present). She says, “Mama, mama,” and you are supposed from this invocation of dependency to guess that it is milk that she requires.

All this indicates that primary-process thoughts and the communication of such thoughts to others are, in an evolutionary sense, more archaic than the more conscious operations of language, etc. This has implications for the whole economics and dynamic structure of the mind. Samuel Butler was perhaps first to point out that that which we know best is that of which we are least conscious, i.e., that the process of habit formation is a sinking of knowledge down to less conscious and more archaic levels. The unconscious contains not only the painful matters which consciousness prefers to not inspect, but also many matters which are so familiar that we do not need to inspect them. Habit, therefore, is a major economy of conscious thought. We can do things without consciously thinking about them. The skill of an artist, or rather his demonstration of a skill, becomes a message about these parts of his unconsciousness. (But not perhaps a message from the unconscious.)

But the matter is not quite so simple. Some types of knowledge can conveniently be sunk to unconscious levels, but other types must be kept on the surface. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The lion can sink into his unconscious the proposition that zebras are his natural prey, but in dealing with any particular zebra he must be able to modify the movements of his attack to fit with the particular terrain and the particular evasive tactics of the particular zebra.

The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatics of particular instances.

The premises may, economically, be sunk, but particular conclusions must be conscious. But the “sinking,” though economical, is still done at a price—the price of inaccessibility. Since the level to which things are sunk is characterized by iconic algorithms and metaphor, it becomes difficult for the organism to examine the matrix out or which his conscious conclusions spring. Conversely, we may note that what is common to a particular statement and a corresponding metaphor is of a generality appropriate for sinking.

Quantitative Limits of Consciousness

A very brief consideration of the problem shows that it is not conceivably possible for any system to be totally conscious. Suppose that on the screen of consciousness there are reports from many parts of the total mind, and consider the addition to consciousness of those reports necessary to cover what is, at a given stage of evolution, not already covered. This addition will involve a very great increase in the circuit structure of the brain but still will not achieve total coverage. The next step will be to cover the processes and events occurring in the circuit structure which we have just added. And so on.

Clearly, the problem is insoluble, and every next step in the approach to total consciousness will involve a great increase in the circuitry required.

It follows that all organisms must be content with rather little consciousness, and that if consciousness has any useful functions whatever (which has never been demonstrated but is probably true), then economy in consciousness will be of the first importance. No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.

This is the economy achieved by habit formation.

Qualitative Limits of Consciousness

It is, of course, true for the TV set that a satisfactory picture on the screen is an indication that many parts of the machine are working as they should; and similar considerations apply to the “screen” of consciousness. But what is provided is only a very indirect report of the working of all those parts. If the TV suffers from a blown tube, or the man from a stroke, effects of this pathology may be evident enough on the screen or to consciousness, but diagnosis must still be done by an expert.

This matter has bearings upon the nature of art. The TV which gives a distorted or otherwise imperfect picture is, in a sense, communicating about its unconscious pathologies—exhibiting its symptoms; and one may ask whether some artists are not doing something similar. But this still won’t do.

It is sometimes said that the distortions of art (say, van Gogh’s “Chair”) are directly representative of what the artist “sees.” If such statements refer to “seeing” in the simplest physical sense (e.g., remediable with spectacles), I presume that they are nonsense. If van Gogh could only see the chair in that wild way, his eyes would not serve properly to guide him in the very accurate placing of paint on canvas. And, conversely, a photographically accurate representation of the chair on the canvas would also be seen by van Gogh in the wild way. Re would see no need to distort the painting.

But suppose we say that the artist is painting today what he saw yesterday—or that he is painting what he somehow knows that he might see. “I see as well as you do—but do you realize that this other way of seeing a chair exists as a human potentiality? And that that potentiality is always in you and in me?” Is he exhibiting symptoms which he might have, because the whole spectrum of psychopathology is possible for us all?

Intoxication by alcohol or drugs may help us to see a distorted world, and these distortions may be fascinating in that we recognize the distortions as ours. In vino pars veritatis. We can be humbled or aggrandized by realizing that this, too, is a part of the human self, a part of Truth. But intoxication does not increase skill—at best it may release skill previously acquired.

Without skill is no art.

Consider the case of the man who goes to the blackboard —or to the side of his cave—and draws, freehand, a perfect reindeer in its posture of threat. He cannot tell you about the drawing of the reindeer (“If he could, there would be no point in drawing it”). “Do you know that his perfect way of seeing—and drawing—a reindeer exists as a human potentiality?” The consummate skill of the draftsman validates the artist’s message about his relationship to the animal—his empathy.

(They say the Altamira things were made for sympathetic hunting magic. But magic only needs the crudest sort of representations. The scrawled arrows which deface the beautiful reindeer may have been magical—perhaps a vulgar attempt to murder the artist, like moustaches scrawled on the Mona Lisa.)

The Corrective Nature of Art

It was noted above that consciousness is necessarily selective and partial, i.e., that the content of consciousness is, at best, a small part of truth about the self. But if this part be selected in any systematic manner, it is certain that the partial truths of consciousness will be, in aggregate, a distortion of the truth of some larger whole.

In the case of an iceberg, we may guess, from what is above surface, what sort of stuff is below; but we cannot make the same sort of extrapolation from the content of consciousness. It is not merely the selectivity of preference, whereby the skeletons accumulate in the Freudian unconscious, that makes such extrapolation unsound. Such a selection by preference would only promote optimism.

What is serious is the crosscutting of the circuitry of the mind. If, as we must believe, the total mind is an integrated network (of propositions, images, processes, neural pathology, or what have you—according to what scientific language you prefer to use), and if the content of consciousness is only a sampling of different parts and localities in this network; then, inevitably, the conscious view of the network as a whole is a monstrous denial of the integration of that whole. From the cutting of consciousness, what appears above the surface is arcs of circuits instead of either the complete circuits or the larger complete circuits of circuits.

What the unaided consciousness (unaided by art, dreams, and the like) can never appreciate is the systemic nature of mind.

This notion can conveniently be illustrated by an analogy: the living human body is a complex, cybernetically integrated system. This system has been studied by scientists—mostly medical men—for many years. What they now know about the body may aptly be compared with what the unaided consciousness knows about the mind. Being doctors, they had purposes: to cure this and that. Their research efforts were therefore focused (as attention focuses the consciousness) upon those short trains of causality which they could manipulate, by means of drugs or other intervention, to correct more or less specific and identifiable states or symptoms. Whenever they discovered an effective “cure” for something, research in that area ceased and attention was directed elsewhere. We can now prevent polio, but nobody knows much more about the systemic aspects of that fascinating disease. Research on it has ceased or is, at best, confined to improving the vaccines.

But a bag of tricks for curing or preventing a list of specified diseases provides no overall wisdom. The ecology and population dynamics of the species has been disrupted; parasites have been made immune to antibiotics; the relationship between mother and neonate has been almost destroyed; and so on.

Characteristically, errors occur wherever the altered causal chain is part of some large or small circuit structure of system. And the remainder of our technology (of which medical science is only a part) bids fair to disrupt the rest of our ecology.

The point, however, which I am trying to make in this paper is not an attack on medical science but a demonstration of an inevitable fact: that mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dream, and the like, is necessarily pathogenic and destructive of life; and that its virulence springs specifically from the circumstance that life depends upon interlocking circuits of contingency, while consciousness can see only such short arcs of such circuits as human purpose may direct.

In a word, the unaided consciousness must always involve man in the sort of stupidity of which evolution was guilty when she urged upon the dinosaurs the common-sense values of an armaments race. She inevitably realized her mistake a million years later and wiped them out.

Unaided consciousness must always tend toward hate; not only because it is good common sense to exterminate the other fellow, but for the more profound reason that, seeing only arcs of circuits, the individual is continually surprised and necessarily angered when his hardheaded policies return to plague the inventor.

If you use DDT to kill insects, you may succeed in reducing the insect population so far that the insectivores will starve. You will then have to use more DDT than before to kill the insects which the birds no longer eat. More probably, you will kill off the birds in the first round when they eat the poisoned insects. If the DDT kills off the dogs, you will have to have more police to keep down the burglars. The burglars will become better armed and more cunning… and so on.

That is the sort of world we live in—a world of circuit structures—and love can survive only if wisdom (i.e., a sense or recognition of the fact of circuitry) has an effective voice.

What has been said so far proposes questions about any particular work of art somewhat different from those which have been conventionally asked by anthropologists. The “culture and personality school,” for example, has traditionally used pieces of art or ritual as samples or probes to reveal particular psychological themes or states.

The question has been: Does the art tell us about what sort of person made it? But if art, as suggested above, has a positive function in maintaining what I called “wisdom,” i.e., in correcting a too purposive view of life and making the view more systemic, then the question to be asked of the given work of art becomes: What sorts of correction in the direction of wisdom would be achieved by creating or viewing this work of art?

The question becomes dynamic rather than static.

Analysis of Balinese Painting

Turning now from the consideration of epistemology to a specific art style, we note first what is most general and most obvious.

With almost no exceptions, the behaviors called art or their products (also called art) have two characteristics: they require or exhibit skill, and they contain redundancy or pattern.

But those two characteristics are not separate: the skill is first in maintaining and then in modulating the redundancies.

The matter is perhaps most clear where the skill is that of the journeyman and the redundancy is of comparatively low order. For example, in the Balinese painting by Ida Bagus Djati Sura of the village of Batuan, 1937 and in almost all painting of the Batuan school, skill of a certain elementary but highly disciplined sort was exercised or practiced in the background of foliage. The redundancies to be achieved involve rather uniform and rhythmical repetition of leaf forms, but this redundancy is, so to speak, fragile. It would be broken or interrupted by smudges or irregularities of size or tone in the painting of the successive leaves.

When a Batuan artist looks at the work of another, one of the first things he examines is the technique of the leafy background. The leaves are first drawn, in free outline in pencil; then each outline is tightly redefined with pen and black ink. When this has been done for all the leaves, the artist begins to paint with brush and Chinese ink. Each leaf is covered with a pale wash. When these washes are dry, each leaf receives a smaller concentric wash and after this another still smaller, and so on. The final result is a leaf with an almost white rim inside the inked outline, and successive steps of darker and darker color toward the center of the leaf.

A “good” picture has up to five or six such successive washes on every leaf. (This particular painting is not very “good” in this sense. The leaves are done in only three or four steps.)

The skill and the patterning so far discussed depend upon muscular rote and muscular accuracy—achieving the perhaps not negligible artistic level of a well-laid out field of turnips.

I was watching a very gifted American carpenter-architect at work on the woodwork of a house he had designed. I commented on the sureness and accuracy of each step. He said, “Oh, that. That’s only like using a typewriter. You have to be able to do that without thinking.”

But on top of this level of redundancy is another. The uniformity of the lowerlevel redundancy must be modulated to give higher orders of redundancy. The leaves in one area must be different from the leaves in another area, and these differences must be in some way mutually redundant: they must be part of a larger pattern.

Indeed, the function and necessity of the first-level control is precisely to make the second level possible. The perceiver of the work of art must receive information that the artist can paint a uniform area of leaves because without this information he will not be able to accept as significant the variations in that uniformity.

Only the violinist who can control the quality of his notes can use variations of that quality for musical purposes.

This principle is basic and accounts, I suggest, for the almost universal linkage in aesthetics between skill and pattern. The exceptions—e.g., the cult of natural landscapes, “found objects,” inkblots, scattergrams, and the works of Jackson Pollock—seem to exemplify the same rule in reverse. In these cases, a larger patterning seems to propose the illusion that the details must have been controlled. Intermediate cases also occur: e.g., in Balinese carving, the natural grain of the wood is rather frequently used to suggest details of the form or surface of the subject. In these cases, the skill lies not in the draftsmanship of the details, but in the artist’s placement of his design within the three-dimensional structure of the wood. A special “effect” is achieved, not by the mere representationalism, but by the perceiver’s partial awareness that a physical system other than that of draftsmanship has contributed to determine his perception.

We now turn to more complex matters, still concentrating attention upon the most obvious and elementary.

Composition

(1) The delineation of leaves and other forms does not reach to the edge of the picture but shades off into darkness so that almost all around the rectangle there is a band of undifferentiated dark pigment. In other words, the picture is framed within its own fadeout. We are allowed to feel that the matter is in some sense “out of this world”; and this in spite of the fact that the scene depicted is familiar—the starting out of a cremation procession.

(2) The picture is filled. The composition leaves no open spaces. Not only is none of the paper left unpainted, but no considerable area is left in uniform wash. The largest such areas are the very dark patches at the bottom between the legs of the men.

To Occidental eyes, this gives an effect of “fussiness.” To psychiatric eyes, the effect is of “anxiety” or “compulsivity.” We are all familiar with the strange look of those letters from cranks, who feel that they must fill the page.

(3) But before trying too fast to diagnose or evaluate, we have to note that the composition of the lower half of the picture, apart from this filling of background space, is turbulent. Not merely a depiction of active figures, but a swirling composition mounting upwards and closed off by the contrasting direction of the gestures of the men at the top of the pyramid.

The upper half of the picture, in contrast, is serene. Indeed, the effect of the perfectly balanced women with offerings on their heads is so serene that, at first glance, it appears that the men with musical instruments must surely be sitting. (They are supposed to be moving in procession.)

But this compositional structure is the reverse of the usual Occidental. We expect the lower part of a picture to be the more stable and expect to see action and movement in the upper part—if anywhere.

(4) At this point, it is appropriate to examine the picture as a sexual pun and, in this connection, the internal evidence for sexual reference is at least as strong as it is in the case of the Tangaroa figure discussed by Leach. All you have to do is to set your mind in the correct posture and you will see an enormous phallic object (the cremation tower) with two elephants’ heads at the base. This object must pass through a narrow entrance into a serene courtyard and thence onward and upward through a still more narrow passageway. Around the base of the phallic object you see a turbulent mass of homunculi, a crowd in which

Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried “Forward!”
And those before cried “Back!”

And if you are so minded, you will find that Macaulay’s poem about how Horatius kept the bridge is no less sexual than the present picture. The game of sexual interpretation is easy if you want to play it. No doubt the snake in the tree _ to the left of the picture could also be woven into the sexual story.

It is still possible, however, that something is added to our understanding of a work of art by the hypothesis that the subject matter is double: that the picture represents both the start of a cremation procession and a phallus with vagina. With a little imagination, we could also see the picture as a symbolic representation of Balinese social organization in which the smooth relations of etiquette and gaiety metaphorically cover the turbulence of passion. And, of course, “Horatius” is very evidently an idealized myth of nineteenth-century imperial England.

It is probably an error to think of dream, myth, and art as being about any one matter other than relationship. As was mentioned earlier, dream is metaphoric and is not particularly about the relata mentioned in the dream. In the conventional interpretation of dream, another set of relata, often sexual, is substituted for the set in the dream. But perhaps by doing this we only create another dream. There indeed is no a priori reason for supposing that the sexual relata are any more primary or basic than any other set.

In general, artists are very unwilling to accept interpretations of this sort, and it is not clear that their objection is to the sexual nature of the interpretation. Rather, it seems that rigid focusing upon any single set of relata destroys for the artist the more profound significance of the work. If the picture were only about sex or only about social organization, it would be trivial. It is nontrivial or profound precisely because it is about sex and social organization and cremation, and other things. In a word, it is only about relationship and not about any identifiable relata.

(5) It is appropriate then to ask how the artist has handled the identification of his subject matter within the picture. We note first that the cremation tower which occupies almost one-third of the picture is almost invisible. It does not stand out against its background as it should if the artist wanted to assert unequivocally “this is a cremation.” Notably also, the coffin, which might be expected to be a focal point, is appropriately placed just below the center but even so does not catch the eye. In fact, the artist has inserted details which label the picture as a cremation scene but these details become almost whimsical asides, like the snake and the little birds in the trees. The women are carrying the ritually correct offerings on their heads, and two men appropriately bring bamboo containers of palm toddy, but these details, too, are only whimsically added. The artist plays down the subject identification and thereby gives major stress to the contrast between the turbulent and the serene mentioned in 3, above.

(6) In sum, it is my opinion that the crux of the picture is the interwoven contrast between the serene and the turbulent. And a similar contrast or combination was also present, as we have seen, in the painting of the leaves. There, too, an exuberant freedom was overlaid by precision.


In terms of this conclusion, I can now attempt an answer to the question posed above: What sorts of correction, in the direction of systemic wisdom, could be achieved by creating or viewing this work of art? In final analysis, the picture can be seen as an affirmation that to choose either turbulence or serenity as a human purpose would be a vulgar error. The conceiving and creating of the picture must have provided an experience which exposed this error. The unity and integration of the picture assert that neither of these contrasting poles can be chosen to the exclusion of the other, because the poles are mutually dependent. This profound and general truth is simultaneously asserted for the fields of sex, social organization, and death.

Comment on Part II

Since World War II, it has been fashionable to engage in “interdisciplinary” research, and this usually means, for example, that an ecologist will need a geologist to tell him about the rocks and soils of the particular terrain which he is investigating. But there is another sense in which scientific work may claim to be interdisciplinary.

The man who studies the arrangement of leaves and branches in the growth of a flowering plant may note an analogy between the formal relations between stems, leaves, and buds, and the formal relations that obtain between different sorts of words in a sentence. He will think of a “leaf” not as something flat and green but as something related in a particular way to the stem from which it grows and to the secondary stem (or bud) which is formed in the angle between leaf and primary stem. Similarly the modern linguist thinks of a “noun” not as the “name of a person, place, or thing,” but as a member of a class of words defined by their relationship in sentence structure to “verbs” and other parts.

Those who think first of the “things” which are related (the “relata”) will dismiss any analogy between grammar and the anatomy of plants as far-fetched. After all, a leaf and a noun do not at all resemble each other in outward appearance. But if we think first of the relationships and consider the relata as defined solely by their relationships, then we begin to wonder. Is there a profound analogy between grammar and anatomy? Is there an interdisciplinary science which should concern itself with such analogies? What would such a science claim as its subject matter? And why should we expect such far-flung analogies to have significance?

In dealing with any analogy, it is important to define exactly what is claimed when we say that the analogy is meaningful. In the present example, it is not claimed that a noun should look like a leaf. It is not even claimed that the relation between leaf and stem is the same as the relation between noun and verb. What is claimed is, first, that in both anatomy and grammar the parts are to be classified according to the relations between them. In both fields, the relations are to be thought of as somehow primary, the relata as secondary. Beyond this, it is claimed that the relations are of the sort generated by processes of information exchange.

In other words, the mysterious and polymorphic relation between context and content obtains in both anatomy and linguistics; and evolutionists of the nineteenth century, preoccupied with what were called “homologies,” were, in fact, studying precisely the contextual structures of biological development.

All of this speculation becomes almost platitude when we realize that both grammar and biological structure are products of communicational and organizational process. The anatomy of the plant is a complex transform of genotypic instructions, and the “language” of the genes, like any other language, must of necessity have contextual structure. Moreover, in all communication, there must be a relevance between the contextual structure of the message and some structuring of the recipient. The tissues of the plant could not “read” the genotypic instructions carried in the chromosomes of every cell unless cell and tissue exist, at that given moment, in a contextual structure.

What has been said above will serve as sufficient definition of what is here meant by “form and pattern.” The focus of discussion was upon form rather than content, upon context rather than upon what occurs “in” the given context, upon relationship rather than upon the related persons or phenomena.

The essays included range from a discussion of “schismogenesis” (1935) to two essays written after the birth of cybernetics.

In 1935, I certainly had not clearly grasped the central importance of “context.” I thought that the processes of schismogenesis were important and nontrivial because in them I seemed to see evolution at work: if interaction between persons could undergo progressive qualitative change as intensity increased, then surely this could be the very stuff of cultural evolution. It followed that all directional change, even in biological evolution and phylogeny, might—or must —be due to progressive interaction between organisms. Under natural selection, such change in relationships would favor progressive change in anatomy and physiology.

The progressive increase in size and armament of the dinosaurs was, as I saw it, simply an interactive armaments race—a schismogenic process. But I could not then see that the evolution of the horse from Eohip pus was not a one-sided adjustment to life on grassy plains. Surely the grassy plains themselves were evolved pari passe with the evolution of the teeth and hooves of the horses and other ungulates. Turf was the evolving response of the vegetation to the evolution of the horse. It is the context which evolves.

The classification of schismogenic process into “symmetrical” and “complementary” was already a classification of contexts of behavior; and, already in this essay, there is a proposal to examine the possible combinations of themes in complementary behavior. By 1942, I had completely forgotten this old proposal, but I attempted to do precisely what I had proposed seven years previously. In 1942 many of us were interested in “national character” and the contrast between England and America fortunately brought into focus the fact that “spectatorship” is in England a filial characteristic, linked with dependency and submission, while in America spectatorship is a parental characteristic linked with dominance and succoring.

This hypothesis, which I called “end-linkage,” marked a turning point in my thinking. From that time on, I have consciously focused upon the qualitative structure of contexts rather than upon intensity of interaction. Above all, the phenomena of end-linkage showed that contextual structures could themselves be messages—an important point which is not made in the 1942 article. An Englishman when he is applauding another is indicating or signaling potential submission and/or dependency; when he shows off or demands spectatorship, he is signaling. dominance or superiority; and so on. Every Englishman who writes a book must be guilty of this. For the American, the converse must hold. His boasting is but a bid for quasiparental approval.

The notion of context reappears in the essay “Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art,” but here the idea of context has evolved to meet the related ideas of “redundancy,” “pattern,” and “meaning.”

_______________

Notes:

1. The whole controversy of which this article was a part has been reprinted in Beyond the Frontier, edited by Paul Bohannon and Fred Plog. But the ripples of this controversy have long since died down, and the article is included here only for its positive contributions. It is reprinted, unchanged, from Man, Article 199, Vol. XXXV, 1935, by permission of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

2. In any case it is clear that in a scientific study of processes and natural laws this invocation of free will can have no place.

3. Cf. Malinowski, Sexual Life and Crime and Custom; A. I. Richards, Hunger and Work. This question of the subdivision of a culture into “institutions” is not quite as simple as I have indicated; and, in spite of their own works, I believe that the London School still adheres to a theory that some such division is practicable. It is likely that confusion arises from the fact that certain native peoples—perhaps all, but in any case those of Western Europe—actually think that their culture is so subdivided. Various cultural phenomena also contribute something toward such a subdivision, e.g., (a) the division of labor and differentiation of norms of behavior between different groups of individuals in the same community, and (b) an emphasis, present in certain cultures, upon the subdivisions of place and time upon which behavior is ordered. These phenomena lead to the possibility, in such cultures, of dubbing all behavior which, for example, takes place in church between 11.30 and 12.30 on Sundays as “religious.” But even in the study of such cultures the anthropologist must look with some suspicion upon his classification of traits into institutions and must expect to find a great deal of overlapping between various institutions.

An analogous fallacy occurs in psychology, and consists in regarding behavior as classifiable according to the impulses which inspire it, e.g., into such categories as self-protective, assertive, sexual, acquisitive, etc. Here, too, confusion results from the fact that not only the psychologist, but also the individual studied, is prone to think in terms of these categories. The psychologists would do well to accept the probability that every bit of behavior is—at least in a well-integrated individual —simultaneously relevant to all these abstractions.

4. The present scheme is oriented toward the study of social rather than psychological processes, but a closely analogous scheme might be constructed for the study of psychopathology. Here the idea of “contact” would be studied, especially in the contexts of the molding of the individual, and the processes of schismogenesis would be seen to play an important part not only in accentuating the maladjustments of the deviant, but also in assimilating the normal individual to his group.

5. Cf. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament, 1935. Of the communities described in this book, the Arapesh and the Mundugumor have a preponderantly symmetrical relationship between the sexes, while the Chambuli have a complementary relationship. Among the Iatmul, a tribe in the same area, which I have studied, the relationship between the sexes is complementary, but on rather different lines from that of the Chambuli. I hope shortly to publish a book on the Iatmul with sketches of their culture from the points of view a, b, and e outlined in paragraph 10. (See Bibliography, items 1936 and 1958 B.)

6. In this, as in the other examples given, no attempt is made to consider the schismogenesis from all the points of view outlined in paragraph 10. Thus, inasmuch as the economic aspect of the matter is not here being considered, the effects of the slump upon the schismogenesis are ignored. A complete study would be subdivided into separate sections, each treating one of the aspects of the phenomena.

7. This paper was given at the Seventh Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences, held at the New School for Social Research, April 28, 1940. It is here reprinted from Philosophy of Science, Vol. 8, No. 1, copyright 1941, The Williams & Wilkins Co. Reproduced by permission.

8. For details of this and other similar incidents cfr. Naven, pp. 98-107, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1936.

9. 7 Loc. cit., p. 261.

10. This essay appeared in Civilian Morale, edited by Goodwin Watson, copyright 1942 by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. It is here reprinted by permission of the publisher. Some introductory material has been edited out.

11. Cf. M. Mead (Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, New York, Morrow, 1935), especially Part III, for an analysis of sex differentiation among the Chambuli; also G. Bateson (Naven, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1936) for an analysis of sex differentiation among adults in Iatmul, New Guinea.

12. We are considering here only those cases in which ethological differentiation follows the sex dichotomy. It is also probable that, where the ethos of the two sexes is not sharply differentiated, it would still be correct to say that the ethos of each promotes that of the other, e.g., through such mechanisms as competition and mutual imitation. Cf. M. Mead (op. cit.).

13. For a discussion of the role played by “change” and “heterogeneity” in melting-pot communities, cf. M. Mead (“Educative effects of social environment as disclosed by studies of primitive societies.” Paper read at the Symposium on Environment and Education, University of Chicago, September 22, 1941). Also F. Alexander (“Educative influence of personality factors in the environment.” Paper read at the Symposium on Environment and Education, University of Chicago, September 22, 1941).

14. In the South Seas, those special modes of behavior which Europeans adopt toward native peoples, and those other modes of behavior which the native adopts toward Europeans, are very obvious. Apart from analyses of “pidgin” languages, we have, however, no psychological data on these patterns. For a description of the analogous patterns in Negrowhite relationships, cf. J. Dollard (Caste and Class in a Southern Toivn, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1937), especially Chapter XII, Accommodation Attitudes of Negroes.

15. Cf. G. Bateson, “Culture Contact and Schismogenesis,” Man, 1935, 8: 199. (Reprinted in this volume.)

16. The Balinese social system in the mountain communities is almost entirely devoid of such dualisms. The ethological differentiation of the sexes is rather slight; political factions are completely absent. In the plains, there is a dualism which has resulted from the intrusive Hindoo caste system, those with caste being discriminated from those without caste. At the symbolic level (partly as a result of Hindoo influence) dualisms are much more frequent, however, than they are in the social structure (e.g., Northeast vs. Southwest, Gods vs. demons, symbolic Left vs. Right, symbolic Male vs. Female, etc.).

17. A fourth instance of this threefold pattern occurs in some great public schools (as in Charterhouse), where the authority is divided between the quieter, more polished, intellectual leaders (“monitors”) and the rougher, louder, athletic leaders (captain of football, head of long room, etc.), who have the duty of seeing to it that the “fags” run when the monitor calls.

18. For a general discussion of cultural variants of the Oedipus situation and the related systems of cultural sanctions, cf. M. Mead (“Social change and cultural [incomplete].

19. The term “cooperation,” which is sometimes used as the opposite of “competition,” covers a very wide variety of patterns, some of them symmetrical and others complementary, some bipolar and others in which the cooperating individuals are chiefly oriented to some personal or impersonal goal. We may expect that some careful analysis of these patterns will give us vocabulary for describing other sorts of national characteristics. Such an analysis cannot be attempted in this paper.

20. It is, however, possible that in certain sections of these nations, complementary patterns occur with some frequency—particularly among groups who have suffered from prolonged insecurity and uncertainty, e.g., racial minorities, depressed areas, the stock exchange, political circles, etc.

21. G. Bateson, unpublished research for the Council on Human Relations.

22. “For a fuller study, we ought to consider such other motifs as aggression-passivity, possessive-possessed, agent-tool, etc. And all of these motifs will require somewhat more critical definition than can be attempted in this paper.

23. This essay appeared in Social Structure: Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, edited by Meyer Fortes, 1949. It is reprinted by permission of the Clarendon Press. Preparation of the essay was aided by a Guggenheim Fellowship.

24. G. Bateson, Naven, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1936.

25. Naven, p. 118.

26. The terms “regenerative” and “degenerative” are borrowed from communications engineering. A regenerative or “vicious” circle is a chain of variables of the general type: increase in A causes increase in B; increase in B causes increase in C; .. increase in N causes increase in A. Such a system, if provided with the necessary energy sources and if external factors permit, will clearly operate at a greater and greater rate or intensity. A “degenerative” or “self-corrective” circle differs from a regenerative circle in containing at least one link of the type: “increase in N causes decrease in M.” The house thermostat or the steam engine with a governor are examples of such self-correcting systems. It will be noted that in many instances the same material circuit may be either regenerative or degenerative according to the amount of loading, frequency of impulses transmitted around the path, and time characteristics of the total path.

27. L. F. Richardson, “Generalized Foreign Politics,” British Journal of Psychology, Monograph Supplement xxiii, 1939.

28. Naven, p. 173.

29. E. H. Homburger, “Configurations in Play: Psychological Notes,” Psychoanalytical Quarterly, 1937, vi: 138-214. This paper, one of the most important in the literature seeking to state psychoanalytic hypotheses in more rigorous terms, deals with the “modes” appropriate to the various erogenous zones—intrusion, incorporation, retention, and the like—and shows how these modes may be transferred from one zone to another. This leads the writer to a chart of the possible permutations and combinations of such transferred modalities. This chart provides precise means of describing the course of the development of a large variety of different types of character structure (e.g., as met with in different cultures).

30. Naven, p. 197.

31. Op. cit., 1939.

32. See especially G. Bateson and M. Mead, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis. Since this photographic record is available, no photographs are included in the present paper.

33. Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis, pl. 47, and pp. 32-6.

34. lbid., pls. 49, 52, 53, and 69-72.

35. See Colin McPhee, “The Absolute Music of Bali,” Modern Music, 1935; and A House in Bali, London, Gollancz, 1947.

36. See G. Bateson, “An Old Temple and a New Myth,” Djawa, xvii, Batavia, 1937.

37. See M. Mead, “Public Opinion Mechanisms among Primitive Peoples,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 1937, is 5-16.

38. As is usual in anthropology, the data are not sufficiently precise to give us any clue as to the nature of the learning processes involved. Anthropology, at best, is only able to raise problems of this order. The next step must be left for laboratory experimentation.

39. Bateson and Mead, op. cit., p1. 5.

40. Cf. Naven, pp. 250 if., where it was suggested that we must expect to find that some peoples of the world would relate their actions to the sociological frame.

41. The word dadi is also used as a copula referring to changes in social status. I Anoe dadi Koebajan means “So-and-so has become a village official.”

42. Mead, “Public Opinion Mechanisms among Primitive Peoples,” loc. cit., 1937.

43. Bateson and Mead, op. cit., pls. 17, 67, and 79.

44. Ibid., pls. 10-14.

45. Ibid., p1. 45.

46. Ibid., p1. 10, fig. 3.

47. At present it is not possible to make such a statement in sharply defined quantitative terms, the available judgments being subjective and Occidental.

48. Alternatively, we might handle the analogy in another way. A social system is, as Von Neumann and Morgenstern point out, comparable to a non-zero sum game in which one or more coalitions of people play against each other and against nature. The non-zero sum characteristic is based on the fact that value is continually extracted from the natural environment. Inasmuch as Balinese society exploits nature, the total entity, including both environment and people, is clearly comparable to a game requiring coalition between people. It is possible, however, that that subdivision of the total game comprising the people only might be such that the formation of coalitions within it would not be essential—that is, Balinese society may differ from most other societies in that the “rules” of the relationship between people define a “game” of the type Von Neumann would call “non-essential.” This possibility is not here examined. (See Von Neumann and Morgenstern, op. cit.)

49. L. K. Frank, “The Cost of Competition,” Plan Age, 1940, vi : 314-24.

50. W. R. Ashby, “Effect of Controls on Stability,” Nature, clv, no. 3930, February 24, 1945, 242-43.

51. This essay was a position paper for the Wenner-Gren Conference on Primitive Art, 1967. It is here reprinted from A Study of Primitive Art, edited by Dr. Anthony Forge, to be published by Oxford University Press, by permission of the publisher.

52. Consider the impossibility of constructing a television set which would report upon its screen all the workings of its component parts, including especially those parts concerned in this reporting.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:15 am

Part 1 of 8

Part III: Form and Pathology in Relationship

Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning [1]


Let me take as focus for this comment the last item [2] in Dr. Mead’s summary of her paper. To the layman who has not occupied himself with the comparative study of human cultures, this recommendation may appear strange; it may appear to be an ethical or philosophical paradox, a suggestion that we discard purpose in order to achieve our purpose; it may even call to mind some of the basic aphorisms of Christianity and Taoism. Such aphorisms are familiar enough; but the layman will be a little surprised to find them coming from a scientist and dressed in all the paraphernalia of analytic thought. To other anthropologists and social scientists, Dr. Mead’s recommendations will be even more surprising, and perhaps more meaningless, because instrumentality and “blueprints” are an essential ingredient in the whole structure of life as science sees it. Likewise, to those in political life, Dr. Mead’s recommendation will be strange, since they see decisions as classifiable into policy-making decisions versus executive decisions. The governors and the scientists alike (not to mention the commercial world) see human affairs as patterned upon purpose, means and ends, connation and satisfaction.

If anybody doubts that we tend to regard purpose and instrumentality as distinctively human, let him consider the old quip about eating and living. The creature who “eats to live” is the highest human; he who “lives to eat” is coarser-grained, but still human; but if he just “eats and lives,” without attributing instrumentality or a spurious priority in time sequence to either process, he is rated only among the animals, and some, less kind, will regard him as vegetable.

Dr. Mead’s contribution consists in this—that she, fortified by comparative study of other cultures, has been able to transcend the habits of thought current in her own culture and has been able to say virtually this: “Before we apply social science to our own national affairs, we must re-examine and change our habits of thought on the subject of means and ends. We have learnt, in our cultural setting, to classify behavior into `means’ and `ends’ and if we go on. defining ends as separate from means and apply the social sciences as crudely instrumental means, using the recipes of science to manipulate people, we shall arrive at a totalitarian rather than a democratic system of life.” The solution which she offers is that we look for the “direction,” and “values” implicit in the means, rather than looking ahead to a blueprinted goal and thinking of this goal as justifying or not justifying manipulative means. We have to find the value of a planned act implicit in and simultaneous with the act itself, not separate from it in the sense that the act would derive its value from reference to a future end or goal. Dr. Mead’s paper is, in fact, not a direct preachment about ends and means; she does not say that ends either do or do not justify the means. She is talking not directly about ends and means, but about the way we tend to think about ways and means, and about the dangers inherent in our habit of thought.

It is specifically at this level that the anthropologist has most to contribute to our problems. It is his task to see the highest common factor implicit in a vast variety of human phenomena, or inversely, to decide whether phenomena which appear to be similar are not intrinsically different. He may go to one South Sea community, such as the Manus, and there find that though everything that the natives do is concretely different from our own behavior, yet the underlying system of motives is rather closely comparable with our own love of caution and wealth accumulation; or again he may go to another society such as Bali and there find that, while the outward appearance of the native religion is closely comparable with our own—kneeling to pray, incense, intoned utterances punctuated by a bell, etc.—the basic emotional attitudes are fundamentally different. In Balinese religion we find an approval accorded to rote, nonemotional performance of certain acts instead of the insistence upon correct emotional attitude, characteristic of Christian churches.

In every case the anthropologist is concerned not with mere description but with a slightly higher degree of abstraction, a wider degree of generalization. His first task is the meticulous collection of masses of concrete observations of native life—but the next step is not a mere summarizing of these data; it is rather to interpret the data in an abstract language which shall transcend and comprehend the vocabulary and notions explicit and implicit in our own culture. It is not possible to give a scientific description of a native culture in English words; the anthropologist must devise a more abstract vocabulary in terms of which both our own and the native culture can be described.

This then is the type of discipline which has enabled Dr. Mead to point out that a discrepancy—a basic and fundamental discrepancy—exists between “social engineering,” manipulating people in order to achieve a planned blue-print society, and the ideals of democracy, the “supreme worth and moral responsibility of the individual human person.” The two conflicting motifs have long been implicit in our culture, science has had instrumental leanings since before the Industrial Revolution, and emphasis upon individual worth and responsibility is even older. The threat of conflict between the two motifs has only come recently, with increasing consciousness of, and emphasis upon, the democratic motif and simultaneous spread of the instrumental motif. Finally, the conflict is now a life-or-death struggle over the role which the social sciences shall play in the ordering of human relationships. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that this war is ideologically about just this—the role of the social sciences. Are we to reserve the techniques and the right to manipulate people as the privilege of a few planning, goal-oriented, and power-hungry individuals, to whom the instrumentality of science makes a natural appeal? Now that we have the techniques, are we, in cold blood, going to treat people as things? Or what are we going to do with these techniques?

The problem is one of very great difficulty as well as urgency, and it is doubly difficult because we, as scientists, are deeply soaked in habits of instrumental thought those of us, at least, for whom science is a part of life, as well as a beautiful and dignified abstraction. Let us try to surmount this additional source of difficulty by turning the tools of science upon this habit of instrumental thought and upon the new habit which Dr. Mead envisages—the habit which looks for “direction” and “value” in the chosen act, rather than in defined goals. Clearly, both of these habits are ways of looking at time sequences. In the old jargon of psychology, they represent different ways of apperceiving sequences of behavior, or in the newer jargon of gestalt psychology, they might both be described as habits of looking for one or another sort of contextual frame for behavior. The problem which Dr. Mead—who advocates a change in such habits—raises is the problem of how habits of this abstract order are learned.

This is not the simple type of question which is posed in most psychological laboratories, “Under what circumstances will a dog learn to salivate in response to a bell?” or, “What variables govern success in rote learning?” Our question is one degree more abstract, and, in a sense, bridges the gap between the experimental work on simple learning and the approach of the gestalt psychologists. We are asking, “How does the dog acquire a habit of punctuating or apperceiving the infinitely complex stream of events (including his own behavior) so that this stream appears to be made up of one type of short sequences rather than another?” Or, substituting the scientist for the dog, we might ask, “What circumstances determine that a given scientist will punctuate the stream of events so as to conclude that all is predetermined, while another will see the stream of events as so regular as to be susceptible of control?” Or, again, on the same level of abstraction let us ask—and this question is very relevant to the promotion of democracy—”What circumstances promote that specific habitual phrasing of the universe which we call `free will’ and those others which we call `responsibility,’ `constructiveness,’ `energy,’ `passivity,’ `dominance,’ and the rest?” For all these abstract qualities, the essential stock-in-trade of the educators, can be seen as various habits of punctuating the stream of experience so that it takes on one or another sort of coherence and sense. They are abstractions which begin to assume some operational meaning when we see them take their place on a conceptual level between the statements of simple learning and those of gestalt psychology.

We can, for example, put our finger very simply on the process which leads to tragedy and disillusion whenever men decide that the “end justifies the means” in their efforts to achieve either a Christian or a blueprinted heaven-on-earth. They ignore the fact that in social manipulation, the tools are not hammers and screwdrivers. A screwdriver is not seriously affected when, in an emergency, we use it as a wedge; and a hammer’s outlook on life is not affected because we sometimes use its handle as a simple lever. But in social manipulation our tools are people, and people learn, and they acquire habits which are more subtle and pervasive than the tricks which the blueprinter teaches them. With the best intentions in the world, he may train children to spy upon their parents in order to eradicate some tendency prejudicial to the success of his blueprint, but because the children are people they will do more than learn this simple trick—they will build this experience into their whole philosophy of life; it will color all their future attitudes toward authority. Whenever they meet certain sorts of context, they will tend to see these contexts as structured on an earlier familiar pattern. The blueprinter may derive an initial advantage from the children’s tricks; but the ultimate success of his blueprint may be destroyed by the habits of mind which were learned with the trick. (Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the Nazi blueprint will break down for these reasons. It is probable that the unpleasant attitudes here referred to are envisaged as basic both to the plan itself and to the means of achieving it. The road to hell can also be paved with bad intentions, though well-intentioned people find this hard to believe.)

We are dealing, apparently, with a sort of habit which is a by-product of the learning process. When Dr. Mead tells us that we should leave off thinking in terms of blue-prints and should instead evaluate our planned acts in terms of their immediate implicit value, she is saying that in the upbringing and education of children, we ought to try to inculcate a sort of by-product habit rather different from that which we acquired and which we daily reinforce in ourselves in our contacts with science, politics, newspapers, and so on.

She states perfectly clearly that this new shift in the emphasis or gestalt of our thinking will be a setting forth into uncharted waters. We cannot know what manner of human beings will result from such a course, nor can we be sure that we ourselves would feel at home in the world of 1980. Dr. Mead can only tell us that if we proceed on the course which would seem most natural, planning our applications of social science as a means of attaining a defined goal, we shall surely hit a rock. She has charted the rock for us, and advises that we embark on a course in a direction where the rock is not; but in a new, still uncharted direction. Her paper raises the question of how we are to chart this new direction.

Actually, science can give us something approaching a chart. I indicated above that we might see a mixed bunch of abstract terms—free will, predestination, responsibility, constructiveness, passivity, dominance, etc.—as all of them descriptive of apperceptive habits, habitual ways of looking at the stream of events of which our own behavior is a part, and further that these habits might all be, in some sense, byproducts of the learning process. Our next task, if we are to achieve some sort of chart, is clearly to get something better than a random list of these possible habits. We must reduce this list to a classification which shall show how each of these habits is systematically related to the others.

We meet in common agreement that a sense of individual autonomy, a habit of mind somehow related to what I have called “free will,” is an essential of democracy, but we are still not perfectly clear as to how this autonomy should be defined operationally. What, for example, is the relation between “autonomy” and compulsive negativism? The gas stations which refuse to conform to the curfew—are they or are they not showing a fine democratic spirit? This sort of “negativism” is undoubtedly of the same degree of abstraction as “free will” or “determinism”; like them it is an habitual way of apperceiving contexts, event sequences and own behavior; but it is not clear whether this negativism is a “subspecies” of individual autonomy; or is it rather some entirely different habit? Similarly, we need to know how the new habit of thought which Dr. Mead advocates is related to the others.

Evidently our need is for something better than a random list of these habits of mind. We need some systematic framework or classification which shall show how each of these habits is related to the others, and such a classification might provide us with something approaching the chart we lack. Dr. Mead tells us to sail into as yet uncharted waters, adopting a new habit of thought; but if we knew how this habit is related to others, we might be able to judge of the benefits and dangers, the possible pitfalls of such a course. Such a chart might provide us with the answers to some of the questions which Dr. Mead raises—as to how we are to judge of the “direction” and value implicit in our planned acts.

You must not expect the social scientist to produce such a chart or classification at a moment’s notice, like a rabbit out of a hat, but I think we can take a first step in this direction; we can suggest some of the basic themes—the cardinal points, if you like—upon which the final classification must be built.

We have noted that the sorts of habit with which we are concerned are, in some sense, by-products of the learning processes, and it is therefore natural that we look first to the phenomena of simple learning as likely to provide us with a clue. We are raising questions one degree more abstract than those chiefly studied by the experimental psychologists, but it is still to their laboratories that we must look for our answers.

Now it so happens that in the psychological laboratories there is a common phenomenon of a somewhat higher degree of abstraction or generality than those which the experiments are planned to elucidate. It is a commonplace that the experimental subject—whether animal or man, becomes a better subject after repeated experiments. He not only learns to salivate at the appropriate moments, or to recite the appropriate nonsense syllables; he also, in some way, learns to learn. He not only solves the problems set him by the experimenter, where each solving is a piece of simple learning; but, more than this, he becomes more and more skilled in the solving of problems.

In semigestalt or semianthropomorphic phraseology, we might say that the subject is learning to orient himself to certain types of contexts, or is acquiring “insight” into the contexts of problem solving. In the jargon of this paper, we may say that the subject has acquired a habit of looking for contexts and sequences of one type rather than another, a habit of “punctuating” the stream of events to give repetitions of a certain type of meaningful sequence.

The line of argument which we have followed has brought us to a point at which statements about simple learning meet statements about gestalt and contextual structure, and we have reached the hypothesis that “learning to learn” is a synonym for the acquisition of that class of abstract habits of thought with which this paper is concerned; that the states of mind which we call “free will,” instrumental thinking, dominance, passivity, etc., are acquired by a process which we may equate with “learning to learn.”

This hypothesis is to some extent new [3] to psychologists as well as to laymen, and therefore I must digress at this point to supply technical readers with a more precise statement of my meaning. I must demonstrate at least my willingness to state this bridge between simple learning and gestalt in operational terms.

Let us coin two words, “proto-learning” and “deuterolearning,” to avoid the labor of defining operationally all the other terms in the field (transfer of learning, generalization, etc., etc.). Let us say that there are two sorts of gradient discernible in all continued learning. The gradient at any point on a simple learning curve (e.g., a curve of rote learning) we will say chiefly represents rate of proto-learning. If, however, we inflict a series of similar learning experiments on the same subject, we shall find that in each successive experiment the subject has a somewhat steeper proto-learning gradient, that he learns somewhat more rapidly. This progessive change in rate of proto-learning we will call “deutero-learning.”

From this point we can easily go on to represent deuterolearning graphically with a curve whose gradient shall represent rate of deutero-learning. Such a representation might be obtained, for example, by intersecting the series of protolearning curves at some arbitrarily chosen number of trials, and noting what proportion of successful responses occurred in each experiment at this point. The curve of deutero-learning would then be obtained by plotting these numbers against the serial numbers of the experiments. [4]

Image

Fig. 1. Three Successive Learning Curves with the same subject, showing increase in rate of learning in successive experiments.

Image

Fig. 2. Deutero-learning Curve derived from the three learning experiments in Fig. 1.

In this definition of proto- and deutero-learning, one phrase remains conspicuously vague, the phrase “a series of similar experiments.” For purposes of illustration, I imagined a series of experiments in rote learning, each experiment similar to the last, except for the substitution of a new series of nonsense syllables in place of those already learned. In this example, the curve of deutero-learning represented increasing proficiency in the business of rote learning, and, as an experimental fact, such increase in rote proficiency can be demonstrated. [5]

Apart from rote learning, it is much more difficult to define what we mean by saying that one learning context is “similar” to another, unless we are content to refer the matter back to the experimentalists by saying that learning contexts shall be considered to be “similar” one to another whenever it can be shown experimentally that experience of learning in one context does, as a matter of fact, promote speed of learning in another, and asking the experimentalists to find out for us what sort of classification they can build up by use of this criterion. We may hope that they will do this; but we cannot hope for immediate answers to our questions, because there are very serious difficulties in the way of such experimentation. Experiments in simple learning are already difficult enough to control and to perform with critical exactness, and experiments in deutero-learning are likely to prove almost impossible.

There is, however, an alternative course open to us. When we equated “learning to learn” with acquiring apperceptive habits, this did not exclude the possibility that such habits might be acquired in other ways. To suggest that the only method of acquiring one of these habits is through repeated experience of learning contexts of a given kind would be logically analogous to saying that the only way to roast pig is by burning the house down. It is obvious that in human education such habits are acquired in very various ways. We are not concerned with a hypothetical isolated individual in contact with an impersonal events stream, but rather with real individuals who have complex emotional patterns of relationship with other individuals. In such a real world, the individual will be led to acquire or reject apperceptive habits by the very complex phenomena of personal example, tone of voice, hostility, love, etc. Many such habits, too, will be conveyed to him, not through his own naked experience of the stream of events, for no human beings (not even scientists) are naked in this sense. The events stream is mediated to them through language, art, technology, and other cultural media which are structured at every point by tramlines of apperceptive habit.

It therefore follows that the psychological laboratory is not the only possible source of knowledge about these habits; we may turn instead to the contrasting patterns implicit and explicit in the various cultures of the world studied by the anthropologists. We can amplify our list of these obscure habits by adding those which have been developed in cultures other than our own.

Most profitably, I believe, we can combine the insights of the experimental psychologists with those of the anthropologists, taking the contexts of experimental learning in the laboratory and asking of each what sort of apperceptive habit we should expect to find associated with it; then looking around the world for human cultures in which this habit has been developed. Inversely, we may be able to get a more definite—more operational—definition of such habits as “free will” if we ask about each, “What sort of experimental learning context would we devise in order to inculcate this habit?” “How would we rig the maze or problem-box so that the anthropomorphic rat shall obtain a repeated and reinforced impression of his own free will?”

The classification of contexts of experimental learning is as yet very incomplete, but certain definite advances have been made. [6] It is possible to classify the principal contexts of positive learning (as distinct from negative learning or inhibition, learning not to do things) under four heads, as follows:

(1) Classical Pavlovian contexts


These are characterized by a rigid time sequence in which the conditioned stimulus (e.g., buzzer) always precedes the unconditioned stimulus (e.g., meat powder) by a fixed interval of time. This rigid sequence of events is not altered by anything that the animal may do. In these contexts, the animal learns to respond to the conditioned stimulus with behavior (e.g., salivation) which was formerly evoked only by the unconditioned stimulus.
(2) Contexts of instrumental reward or escape


These are characterized by a sequence which depends upon the animal’s behavior. The unconditioned stimulus in these contexts is usually vague (e.g., the whole sum of circumstances in which the animal is put, the problem-box) and may be internal to the animal (e.g., hunger). If and when, under these circumstances, the animal performs some act within its behavioral repertoire and previously selected by the experimenter (e.g., lifts its leg), it is immediately rewarded.

(3) Contexts of instrumental avoidance


These are also characterized by a conditional sequence. The unconditioned stimulus is usually definite (e.g., a warning buzzer) and this is followed by an unpleasant experience (e.g., electric shock) unless in the interval the animal performs some selected act (e.g., lifts leg).

(4) Contexts of serial and rote learning


These are characterized by the predominant conditioned stimulus being an act of the subject. He learns, for example, always to give the conditioned response (nonsense syllable B) after he has himself uttered the conditioned stimulus (nonsense syllable A).

This small beginning of a classification [7] will be sufficient to illustrate the principles with which we are concerned and we can now go on to ask about the occurrence of the appropriate apperceptive habits among men of various cultures. Of greatest interest—because least familiar—are the Pavlovian patterns and the patterns of rote. It is a little hard for members of Western civilization to believe that whole systems of behavior can be built on premises other than our own mixture of instrumental reward and instrumental avoidance. The Trobriand Islanders, however, appear to live a life whose coherence and sense is based upon looking at events through Pavlovian spectacles, only slightly tinted with the hope of instrumental reward, while the life of the Balinese is sensible if we accept premises based upon combining rote with instrumental avoidance.

Clearly, to the “pure” Pavlovian, only a very limited fatalism would be possible. He would see all events as preordained and he would see himself as fated only to search for omens, not able to influence the course of events—able, at most, from his reading of the omens, to put himself in the properly receptive state, e.g., by salivation, before the inevitable occurred. Trobriand culture is not so purely Pavlovian as this, but Dr. Lee, [8] analyzing Professor Malinowski’s rich observations, has shown that Trobriand phrasings of purpose, cause, and effect are profoundly different from our own; and though Dr. Lee does not use the sort of classification here proposed, it appears from Trobriand magic that these people continually exhibit a habit of thinking that to act as if a thing were so will make it so. In this sense, we may describe them as semi-Pavlovians who have decided that “salivation” is instrumental to obtaining “meat powder.” Malinowski, for example, gives us a dramatic description of the almost physiological extremes of rage [9] which the Trobriand black magician practices in his incantations, and we may take this as an illustration of the semi-Pavlovian frame of mind in contrast with the very various types of magical procedure in other parts of the world, where, for example, the efficacy of a spell may be associated not with the intensity but with the extreme rote accuracy of the recitation.

Among the Balinese [10] we find another pattern which contrasts sharply both with our own and with that of the Trobrianders. The treatment of children is such that they learn not to see life as composed of connative sequences ending in satisfaction, but rather to see it as composed of rote sequences inherently satisfying in themselves—a pattern which is to some extent related to that pattern which Dr. Mead has recommended, of looking for value in the act itself rather than regarding the act as a means to an end. There is, however, one very important difference between the Balinese pattern and that recommended by Dr. Mead. The Balinese pattern is essentially derivative from contexts of instrumental avoidance; they see the world as dangerous, and themselves as avoiding, by the endless rote behavior of ritual and courtesy, the ever-present risk of faux pas. Their life is built upon fear, albeit that in general they enjoy fear. The positive value with which they endow their immediate acts, not looking for a goal, is somehow associated with this enjoyment of fear. It is the acrobat’s enjoyment both of the thrill and of his own virtuosity in avoiding disaster.

We are now, after a somewhat long and technical excursion into psychological laboratories and foreign cultures, in a position to examine Dr. Mead’s proposal in somewhat more concrete terms. She advises that when we apply the social sciences we look for “direction” and “value” in our very acts, rather than orient ourselves to some blueprinted goal. She is not telling us that we ought to be like the Balinese, except in our time orientation, and she would be the first to disparage any suggestion that fear (even enjoyed fear) should be our basis for assigning value to our acts. Rather, as I understand it, this basis should be some sort of hope—not looking to some far-off future, but still some sort of hope or optimism. In fact, we might summarize the recommended attitude by saying that it ought to be formally related to instrumental reward, as the Balinese attitude is related to instrumental avoidance.

Such an attitude is, I believe, feasible. The Balinese attitude might be defined as a habit of rote sequences inspired by a thrilling sense of ever-imminent but indefinite danger, and I think that what Dr. Mead is urging us toward might be defined in like terms, as a habit of rote sequences inspired by a thrilling sense of ever-imminent but undefined reward.

As to the rote component, which is almost certainly a necessary concomitant of the peculiar time orientation advocated by Dr. Mead, 1, personally, would welcome it, and I believe that it would be infinitely preferable to the compulsive type of accuracy after which we strive. Anxious taking-care and automatic, rote caution are alternative habits which perform the same function. We can either have the habit of automatically looking before we cross the street, or the habit of carefully remembering to look. Of the two I prefer the automatic, and I think that, if Dr. Mead’s recommendation implies as increase in rote automatism, we ought to accept it. Already, indeed, our schools are inculcating more and more automatism in such processes as reading, writing, arithmetic, and languages.

As to the reward component, this, too, should not be beyond our reach. If the Balinese is kept busy and happy by a nameless, shapeless fear, not located in space or time, we might be kept on our toes by a nameless, shapeless, unlocated hope of enormous achievement. For such a hope to be effective, the achievement need scarcely be defined.

All we need to be sure of is that, at any moment, achievement may be just around the corner, and, true or false, this can never be tested. We have got to be like those few artists and scientists who work with this urgent sort of inspiration, the urgency that comes from feeling that great discovery, the answer to all our problems, or great creation, the perfect sonnet, is always only just beyond our reach, or like the mother of a child who feels that, provided she pay constant enough attention, there is a real hope that her child may be that infinitely rare phenomenon, a great and happy person.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:17 am

Part 2 of 8

A Theory of Play and Fantasy [11]

This research was planned and started with an hypothesis to guide our investigations, the task of the investigators being to collect relevant observational data and, in the process, to amplify and modify the hypothesis.

The hypothesis will here be described as it has grown in our thinking.

Earlier fundamental work of Whitehead, Russell, [12] Wittgenstein, [13] Carnap, [14] Whorf, [15] etc., as well as my own attempt [16] to use this earlier thinking as an epistemological base for psychiatric theory, led to a series of generalizations:

(1) That human verbal communication can operate and always does operate at many contrasting levels of abstraction. These range in two directions from the seemingly simple denotative level (“The cat is on the mat”). One range or set of these more abstract levels includes those explicit or implicit messages where the subject of discourse is the language. We will call these metalinguistic (for example, “The verbal sound `cat’ stands for any member of such and such class of objects,” or “The word, `cat,’ has no fur and cannot scratch”). The other set of levels of abstraction we will call metacommunicative (e.g., “My telling you where to find the cat was friendly,” or “This is play”). In these, the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers.

It will be noted that the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit; and also that, especially in the psychiatric interview, there occurs a further class of implicit messages about how metacommunicative messages of friendship and hostility are to be interpreted.

(2) If we speculate about the evolution of communication, it is evident that a very important stage in this evolution occurs when the organism gradually ceases to respond quite “automatically” to the mood-signs of another and becomes able to recognize the sign as a signal: that is, to recognize that the other individual’s and its own signals are only signals, which can be trusted, distrusted, falsified, denied, amplified, corrected, and so forth.

Clearly this realization that signals are signals is by no means complete even among the human species. We all too often respond automatically to newspaper headlines as though these stimuli were direct object-indications of events in our environment instead of signals concocted and transmitted by creatures as complexly motivated as ourselves. The nonhuman mammal is automatically excited by the sexual odor of another; and rightly so, inasmuch as the secretion of that sign is an “involuntary” mood-sign; i.e., an outwardly perceptible event which is a part of the physiological process which we have called a mood. In the human species a more complex state of affairs begins to be the rule. Deodorants mask the involuntary olfactory signs, and in their place the cosmetic industry provides the individual with perfumes which are not involuntary signs but voluntary signals, recognizable as such. Many a man has been thrown off balance by a whiff of perfume, and if we are to believe the advertisers, it seems that these signals, voluntarily worn, have sometimes an automatic and autosuggestive effect even upon the voluntary wearer.

Be that as it may, this brief digression will serve to illustrate a stage of evolution—the drama precipitated when organisms, having eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, discover that their signals are signals. Not only the characteristically human invention of language can then follow, but also all the complexities of empathy, identification, projection, and so on. And with these comes the possibility of communicating at the multiplicity of levels of abstraction mentioned above.

(3) The first definite step in the formulation of the hypothesis guiding this research occurred in January, 1952, when I went to the Fleishhacker Zoo in San Francisco to look for behavioral criteria which would indicate whether any given organism is or is not able to recognize that the signs emitted by itself and other members of the species are signals. In theory, I had thought out what such criteria might look like—that the occurrence of metacommunicative signs (or signals) in the stream of interaction between the animals would indicate that the animals have at least some awareness (conscious or unconscious) that the signs about which they metacommunicate are signals.

I knew, of course, that there was no likelihood of finding denotative messages among nonhuman mammals, but I was still not aware that the animal data would require an almost total revision of my thinking. What I encountered at the zoo was a phenomenon well known to everybody: I saw two young monkeys playing, i.e., engaged in an interactive sequence of which the unit actions or signals were similar to but not the same as those of combat. It was evident, even to the human observer, that the sequence as a whole was not combat, and evident to the human observer that to the participant monkeys this was “not combat.”

Now, this phenomenon, play, could only occur if the participant organisms were capable of some degree of meta-communication, i.e., of exchanging signals which would carry the message “this is play.”

(4) The next step was the examination of the message “This is play,” and the realization that this message contains those elements which necessarily generate a paradox of the Russellian or Epimenides type - a negative statement containing an implicit negative metastatement. Expanded, the statement “This is play” looks something like this: “These actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote.”

We now ask about the italicized words, “for which they stand.” We say the word “cat” stands for any member of a certain class. That is, the phrase “stands for” is a near synonym of “denotes.” If we now substitute “which they denote” for the words “for which they stand” in the expanded definition of play, the result is: “These actions, in which we now engage, do not denote what would be denoted by those actions which these actions denote.” The playful nip denotes the bite, but it does not denote what would be denoted by the bite.

According to the Theory of Logical Types such a message is of course inadmissible, because the word “denote” is being used in two degrees of abstraction, and these two uses are treated as synonymous. But all that we learn from such a criticism is that it would be bad natural history to expect the mental processes and communicative habits of mammals to conform to the logician’s ideal. Indeed, if human thought and communication always conformed to the ideal, Russell would not in fact could not have formulated the ideal.

(5) A related problem in the evolution of communication concerns the origin of what Korzybski [17] has called the map-territory relation: the fact that a message, of whatever kind, does not consist of those objects which it denotes (“The word `cat’ cannot scratch us”). Rather, language bears to the objects which it denotes a relationship comparable to that which a map bears to a territory. Denotative communication as it occurs at the human level is only possible after the evolution of a complex set of metalinguistic (but not verbalized) [18] rules which govern how words and sentences shall be related to objects and events. It is therefore appropriate to look for the evolution of such metalinguistic and/or meta-communicative rules at a prehuman and preverbal level.

It appears from what is said above that play is a phenomenon in which the actions of “play” are related to, or denote, other actions of “not play.” We therefore meet in play with an instance of signals standing for other events, and it appears, therefore, that the evolution of play may have been an important step in the evolution of communication.

(6) Threat is another phenomenon which resembles play in that actions denote, but are different from, other actions. The clenched fist of threat is different from the punch, but it refers to a possible future (but at present nonexistent) punch. And threat also is commonly recognizable among non-human mammals. Indeed it has lately been argued that a great part of what appears to be combat among members of a single species is rather to be regarded as threat (Tinbergen, [19] Lorenz [20]).

(7) Histrionic behavior and deceit are other examples of the primitive occurrence of map-territory differentiation. And there is evidence that dramatization occurs among birds: a jackdaw may imitate her own mood-signs (Lorenz [21]), and deceit has been observed among howler monkeys (Carpenter [22]).

(8) We might expect threat, play, and histrionics to be three independent phenomena all contributing to the evolution of the discrimination between map and territory. But it seems that this would be wrong, at least so far as mammalian communication is concerned. Very brief analysis of childhood behavior shows that such combinations as histrionic play, bluff, playful threat, teasing play in response to threat, histrionic threat, and so on form together a single total complex of phenomena. And such adult phenomena as gambling and playing with risk have their roots in the combination of threat and play. It is evident also that not only threat but the reciprocal of threat—the behavior of the threatened individual—are a part of this complex. It is probable that not only histrionics but also spectatorship should be included within this field. It is also appropriate to mention self-pity.

(9) A further extension of this thinking leads us to include ritual within this general field in which the discrimination is drawn, but not completely, between denotative action and that which is to be denoted. Anthropological studies of peacemaking ceremonies, to cite only one example, support this conclusion.

In the Andaman Islands, peace is concluded after each side has been given ceremonial freedom to strike the other. This example, however, also illustrates the labile nature of the frame “This is play,” or “This is ritual.” The discrimination between map and territory is always liable to break down, and the ritual blows of peace-making are always liable to be mistaken for the “real” blows of combat. In this event, the peace-making ceremony becomes a battle (Radcliffe-Brown [23]).

(10) But this leads us to recognition of a more complex form of play; the game which is constructed not upon the premise “This is play” but rather around the question “Is this play?” And this type of interaction also has its ritual forms, e.g., in the hazing of initiation.

(11) Paradox is doubly present in the signals which are exchanged within the context of play, fantasy, threat, etc. Not only does the playful nip not denote what would be denoted by the bite for which it stands, but, in addition, the bite itself is fictional. Not only do the playing animals not quite mean what they are saying but, also, they are usually communicating about something which does not exist. At the human level, this leads to a vast variety of complications and inversions in the fields of play, fantasy, and art. Conjurers and painters of the trompe l’oeil school concentrate upon acquiring a virtuosity whose only reward is reached after the viewer detects that he has been deceived and is forced to smile or marvel at the skill of the deceiver. Hollywood film-makers spend millions of dollars to increase the realism of a shadow. Other artists, perhaps more realistically, insist that art be nonrepresentational; and poker players achieve a strange addictive realism by equating the chips for which they play with dollars. They still insist, however, that the loser accept his loss as part of the game.

Finally, in the dim region where art, magic, and religion meet and overlap, human beings have evolved the “metaphor that is meant,” the flag which men will die to save, and the sacrament that is felt to be more than “an outward and visible sign, given unto us.” Here we can recognize an attempt to deny the difference between map and territory, and to get back to the absolute innocence of communication by means of pure mood-signs.

(12) We face then two peculiarities of play: (a) that the messages or signals exchanged in play are in a certain sense untrue or not meant; and (b) that that which is denoted by these signals is nonexistent. These two peculiarities sometimes combine strangely to a reverse a conclusion reached above. It was stated (4) that the playful nip denotes the bite, but does not denote that which would be denoted by the bite. But there are other instances where an opposite phenomenon occurs. A man experiences the full intensity of subjective terror when a spear is flung at him out of the 3D screen or when he falls headlong from some peak created in his own mind in the intensity of nightmare. At the moment of terror there was no questioning of “reality,” but still there was no spear in the movie house and no cliff in the bedroom. The images did not denote that which they seemed to denote, but these same images did really evoke that terror which would have been evoked by a real spear or a real precipice. By a similar trick of self-contradiction, the film-makers of Hollywood are free to offer to a puritanical public a vast range of pseudosexual fantasy which otherwise would not be tolerated. In David and Bathsheba, Bathsheba can be a Troilistic link between David and Uriah. And in Hans Christian Andersen, the hero starts out accompanied by a boy. He tries to get a woman, but when he is defeated in this attempt, he returns to the boy. In all of this, there is, of course, no homosexuality, but the choice of these symbolisms is associated in these fantasies with certain characteristic ideas, e.g., about the hopelessness of the heterosexual masculine position when faced with certain sorts of women or with certain sorts of male authority. In sum, the pseudohomosexuality of the fantasy does not stand for any real homosexuality, but does stand for and express attitudes which might accompany a real homosexuality or feed its etiological roots. The symbols do not denote homosexuality, but do denote ideas for which homosexuality is an appropriate symbol. Evidently it is necessary to re-examine the precise semantic validity of the interpretations which the psychiatrist offers to a patient, and, as preliminary to this analysis, it will be necessary to examine the nature of the frame in which these interpretations are offered.

(13) What has previously been said about play can be used as an introductory example for the discussion of frames and contexts. In sum, it is our hypothesis that the message “This is play” establishes a paradoxical frame comparable to Epimenides’ paradox. This frame may be diagrammed thus:

Image

The first statement within this frame is a self-contradictory proposition about itself. If this first statement is true, then it must be false. If it be false, then it must be true. But this first statement carries with it all the other statements in the frame. So, if the first statement be true, then all the others must be false; and vice versa, if the first statement be untrue then all the others must be true.

(14) The logically minded will notice a non-sequitur. It could be urged that even if the first statement is false, there remains a logical possibility that some of the other statements in the frame are untrue. It is, however, a characteristic of unconscious or “primary-process” thinking that the thinker is unable to discriminate between “some” and “all,” and unable to discriminate between “not all” and “none.” It seems that the achievement of these discriminations is performed by higher or more conscious mental processes which serve in the non-psychotic individual to correct the black-and-white thinking of the lower levels. We assume, and this seems to be an orthodox assumption, that primary process is continually operating, and that the psychological validity of the paradoxical play frame depends upon this part of the mind.

(15) But, conversely, while it is necessary to invoke the primary process as an explanatory principle in order to delete the notion of “some” from between “all” and “none,” this does not mean that play is simply a primary-process phenomenon. The discrimination between “play” and “nonplay,” like the discrimination between fantasy and non-fantasy, is certainly a function of secondary process, or “ego.” Within the dream the dreamer is usually unaware that he is dreaming, and within “play” he must often be reminded that “This is play.”

Similarly, within dream or fantasy the dreamer does not operate with the concept “untrue.” He operates with all sorts of statements but with a curious inability to achieve meta-statements. He cannot, unless close to waking, dream a statement referring to (i.e., framing) his dream.

It therefore follows that the play frame as here used as an explanatory principle implies a special combination of primary and secondary processes. This, however, is related to what was said earlier, when it was argued that play marks a step forward in the evolution of communication—the crucial step in the discovery of map-territory relations. In primary process, map and territory are equated; in secondary process, they can be discriminated. In play, they are both equated and discriminated.

(16) Another logical anomaly in this system must be mentioned: that the relationship between two propositions which is commonly described by the word “premise” has become intransitive. In general, all asymmetrical relationships are transitive. The relationship “greater than” is typical in this respect; it is conventional to argue that if A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, then A is greater than C. But in psychological processes the transitivity of asymmetrical relations is not observed. The proposition P may be a premise for Q; Q may be a premise for R; and R may be a premise for P. Specifically, in the system which we are considering, the circle is still more contracted. The message, “All statements within this frame are untrue” is itself to be taken as a premise in evaluating its own truth or untruth. (Cf. the intransitivity of psychological preference discussed by McCulloch. [24] The paradigm for all paradoxes of this general type is Russell’s [25] “class of classes which are not members of themselves.” Here Russell demonstrates that paradox is generated by treating the relationship, “is a member of,” as an intransitive.) With this caveat, that the “premise” relation in psychology is likely to be intransitive, we shall use the word “premise” to denote a dependency of one idea or message upon another comparable to the dependency of one proposition upon another which is referred to in logic by saying that the proposition P is a premise for Q.

(17) All this, however, leaves unclear what is meant by “frame” and the related notion of “context.” To clarify these, it is necessary to insist first that these are psychological concepts. We use two sorts of analogy to discuss these notions: the physical analogy of the picture frame and the more abstract, but still not psychological, analogy of the mathematical set. In set theory the mathematicians have developed axioms and theorems to discuss with rigor the logical implications of membership in overlapping categories or “sets.” The relationships between sets are commonly illustrated by diagrams in which the items or members of a larger universe are represented by dots, and the smaller sets are delimited by imaginary lines enclosing the members of each set. Such diagrams then illustrate a topological approach to the logic of classification. The first step in defining a psychological frame might be to say that it is (or delimits) a class or set of messages (or meaningful actions). The play of two individuals on a certain occasion would then be defined as the set of all messages exchanged by them within a limited period of time and modified by the paradoxical premise system which we have described. In a set-theoretical diagram these messages might be represented by dots, and the “set” enclosed by a line which would separate these from other dots representing non-play messages. The mathematical analogy breaks down, however, because the psychological frame is not satisfactorily represented by an imaginary line. We assume that the psychological frame has some degree of real existence. In many instances, the frame is consciously recognized and even represented in vocabulary (“play,” “movie,” “interview,” “job,” “language,” etc.). In other cases, there may be no explicit verbal reference to the frame, and the subject may have no consciousness of it. The analyst, however, finds that his own thinking is simplified if he uses the notion of an unconscious frame as an explanatory principle; usually he goes further than this and infers its existence in the subject’s unconscious.

But while the analogy of the mathematical set is perhaps over abstract, the analogy of the picture frame is excessively concrete. The psychological concept which we are trying to define is neither physical nor logical. Rather, the actual physical frame is, we believe, added by human beings to physical pictures because these human beings operate more easily in a universe in which some of their psychological characteristics are externalized. It is these characteristics which. we are trying to discuss, using the externalization as an illustrative device.

(18) The common functions and uses of psychological frames may now be listed and illustrated by reference to the analogies whose limitations have been indicated in the previous paragraph:

(a) Psychological frames are exclusive, i.e., by including certain messages (or meaningful actions) within a frame, certain other messages are excluded.

(b) Psychological frames are inclusive, i.e., by excluding certain messages certain others are included. From the point of view of set theory these two functions are synonymous, but from the point of view of psychology it is necessary to list them separately. The frame around a picture, if we consider this frame as a message intended to order or organize the perception of the viewer, says, “Attend to what is within and do not attend to what is outside.” Figure and ground, as these terms are used by gestalt psychologists, are not symmetrically related as are the set and non-set of set theory. Perception of the ground must be positively inhibited and perception of the figure (in this case the picture) must be positively enhanced.

(c) Psychological frames are related to what we have called “premises.” The picture frame tells the viewer that he is not to use the same sort of thinking in interpreting the picture that he might use in interpreting the wallpaper outside the frame. Or, in terms of the analogy from set theory, the messages enclosed within the imaginary line are defined as members of a class by virtue of their sharing common premises or mutual relevance. The frame itself thus becomes a part of the premise system. Either, as in the case of the play frame, the frame is involved in the evaluation of the messages which it contains, or the frame merely assists the mind in understanding the contained messages by reminding the thinker that these messages are mutually relevant and the messages outside the frame may be ignored.

(d) In the sense of the previous paragraph, a frame is metacommunicative. Any message, which either explicitly or implicitly defines a frame, ipso facto gives the receiver instructions or aids in his attempt to understand the messages included within the frame.

(e) The converse of (d) is also true. Every meta-communicative or metalinguistic message defines, either explicitly or implicitly, the set of messages about which it communicates, i.e., every metacommunicative message is or defines a psychological frame. This, for example, is very evident in regard to such small metacommunicative signals as punctuation marks in a printed message, but applies equally to such complex metacommunicative messages as the psychiatrist’s definition of his own curative role in terms of which his contributions to the whole mass of messages in psychotherapy are to be understood.

(f) The relation between psychological frame and perceptual gestalt needs to be considered, and here the analogy of the picture frame is useful. In a painting by Roualt or Blake, the human figures and other objects represented are outlined. “Wise men see outlines and therefore they draw them.” But outside these lines, which delimit the perceptual gestalt or “figure,” there is a background or “ground” which in turn is limited by the picture frame. Similarly, in set-theoretical diagrams, the larger universe within which the smaller sets are drawn is itself enclosed in a frame. This double framing is, we believe, not merely a matter of “frames within frames” but an indication that mental processes resemble logic in needing an outer frame to delimit the ground against which the figures are to be perceived. This need is often unsatisfied, as when we see a piece of sculpture in a junk shop window, but this is uncomfortable. We suggest that the need for this outer limit to the ground is related to a preference for avoiding the paradoxes of abstraction. When a logical class or set of items is defined—for example, the class of matchboxes—it is necessary to delimit the set of items which are to be excluded, in this case, all those things which are not matchboxes. But the items to be included in the background set must be of the same degree of abstraction, i.e., of the same “logical type” as those within the set itself. Specifically, if paradox is to be avoided, the “class of matchboxes” and the “class of non-matchboxes” (even though both these items are clearly not matchboxes) must not be regarded as members of the class of non-matchboxes. No class can be a member, of itself. The picture frame then, because it delimits a background, is here regarded as an external representation of a very special and important type of psychological frame—namely a frame whose function is to delimit a logical type. This, in fact, is what was indicated above when it was said that the picture frame is an instruction to the viewer that he should not extend the premises which obtain between the figures within the picture to the., wall paper behind it.

But, it is precisely this sort of frame that precipitates paradox. The rule for avoiding paradoxes insists that the items outside any enclosing line be of the same logical type as those within, but the picture frame, as analyzed above, is a line dividing items of one logical type from those of another. In passing, it is interesting to note that Russell’s rule cannot be stated without breaking the rule. Russell insists that all items of inappropriate logical type be excluded (i.e., by an imaginary line) from the background of any class, i.e., he insists upon the drawing of an imaginary line of precisely the sort which he prohibits.

(19) This whole matter of frames and paradoxes may be illustrated in terms of animal behavior, where three types of message may be recognized or deduced: (a) Messages of the sort which we here call mood-signs; (b) messages which simulate mood-signs (in play, threat, histrionics, etc.) ; and (c) messages which enable the receiver to discriminate between mood-signs and those other signs which resemble them. The message “This is play” is of this third type. It tells the receiver that certain nips and other meaningful actions are not messages of the first type.

The message “This is play” thus sets a frame of the sort which is likely to precipitate paradox: it is an attempt to discriminate between, or to draw a line between, categories of different logical types.

(20) This discussion of play and psychological frames establishes a type of triadic constellation (or system of relationships) between messages. One instance of this constellation is analyzed in paragraph 19, but it is evident that constellations of this sort occur not only at the nonhuman level but also in the much more complex communication of human beings. A fantasy or myth may simulate a denotative narrative, and, to discriminate between these types of discourse, people use messages of the frame-setting type, and so on.

(21) In conclusion, we arrive at the complex task of applying this theoretical approach to the particular phenomena of psychotherapy. Here the lines of our thinking may most briefly be summarized by presenting and partially answering these questions:

(a) Is there any indication that certain forms of psycho-pathology are specifically characterized by abnormalities in the patient’s handling of frames and paradoxes?

(b) Is there any indication that the techniques of psycho-therapy necessarily depend upon the manipulation of frames and paradoxes?

(c) Is it possible to describe the process of a given psychotherapy in terms of the interaction between the patient’s abnormal use of frames and the therapist’s manipulation of them?

(22) In reply to the first question, it seems that the “word salad” of schizophrenia can be described in terms of the patient’s failure to recognize the metaphoric nature of his fantasies. In what should be triadic constellations of messages., the framesetting message (e.g., the phrase “as if”) is omitted, and the metaphor or fantasy is narrated and acted upon in a manner which would be appropriate if the fantasy were a message of the more direct kind. The absence of metacommunicative framing which was noted in the case of dreams (15) is characteristic of the waking communications of the schizophrenic. With the loss of the ability to set metacommunicative frames, there is also a loss of ability to achieve the more primary or primitive message. The metaphor is treated directly as a message of the more primary type. (This matter is discussed at greater length in the paper given by Jay Haley at this Conference.)

(23) The dependence of psychotherapy upon the manipulation of frames follows from the fact that therapy is an attempt to change the patient’s metacommunicative habits. Before therapy, the patient thinks and operates in terms of a certain set of rules for the making and understanding of messages. After successful therapy; he operates in terms of a different set of such rules. (Rules of this sort are in general, unverbalized, and unconscious both before and after.) It follows that, in the process of therapy, there must have been communication at a level meta to these rules. There must have been communication about a change in rules.

But such a communication about change could not conceivably occur in messages of the type permitted by the patient’s metacommunicative rules as they existed either before or after therapy.

It was suggested above that the paradoxes of play are characteristic of an evolutionary step. Here we suggest that similar paradoxes are a necessary ingredient in that process of change which we call psychotherapy.

The resemblance between the process of therapy and the phenomenon of play is, in fact, profound. Both occur within a delimited psychological frame, a spatial and temporal bounding of a set of interactive messages. In both play and therapy, the messages have a special and peculiar relationship to a more concrete or basic reality. Just as the pseudocombat of play is not real combat, so also the pseudolove and pseudohate of therapy are not real love and hate. The “transfer” is discriminated from real love and hate by signals invoking the psychological frame; and indeed it is this frame which permits the transfer to reach its full intensity and to be discussed between patient and therapist.

The formal characteristics of the therapeutic process may be illustrated by building up a model in stages. Imagine first two players who engage in a game of canasta according to a standard set of rules. So long as these rules govern and are unquestioned by both players, the game is unchanging, i.e.:, no therapeutic change will occur. (Indeed many attempts at psychotherapy fail for this reason.) We may imagine, however, that at a certain moment the two canasta players cease to play canasta and start a discussion of the rules. Their discourse is now of a different logical type from that of their play. At the end of this discussion, we can imagine that they return to playing but with modified rules.

This sequence of events is, however, still an imperfect model of therapeutic interaction, though it illustrates our contention that therapy necessarily involves a combination of discrepant logical types of discourse. Our imaginary players avoided paradox by separating their discussion of the rules from their play, and it is precisely this separation that is impossible in psychotherapy. As we see it, the process of psychotherapy is a framed interaction between two persons, in which the rules are implicit but subject to change. Such change can only be proposed by experimental action, but every such experimental action, in which a proposal to change the rules is implicit, is itself a part of the ongoing game. It is this combination of logical types within the single meaningful act that gives to therapy the character not of a rigid game like canasta but, instead, that of an evolving system of interaction. The play of kittens or otters has this character.

(24) In regard to the specific relationship between the way in which the patient handles frames and the way in which the therapist manipulates them, very little can at present be said. It is, however, suggestive to observe that the psychological frame of therapy is an analogue of the frame-setting message which the schizophrenic is unable to achieve. To talk in “word salad” within the psychological frame of therapy is, in a sense, not pathological. Indeed the neurotic is specifically encouraged to do precisely this, narrating his dreams and free associations so that patient and therapist may achieve an understanding of this material. By the process of interpretation, the neurotic is driven to insert an “as if” clause into the productions of his primary process thinking, which productions he had previously deprecated or repressed. He must learn that fantasy contains truth.

For the schizophrenic the problem is somewhat different. His error is in treating the metaphors of primary process with the full intensity of literal truth. Through the discovery of what these metaphors stand for he must discover that they are only metaphors.

(25) From the point of view of the project, however, psychotherapy constitutes only one of the many fields which we are attempting to investigate. Our central thesis may be summed up as a statement of the necessity of the paradoxes of abstraction. It is not merely bad natural history to suggest that people might or should obey the Theory of Logical Types in their communications; their failure to do this is not due to mere carelessness or ignorance. Rather, we believe that the paradoxes of abstraction must make their appearance in all communication more complex than that of moodsignals, and that without these paradoxes the evolution of communication would be at an end. Life would then be an endless interchange of stylized messages, a game with rigid rules, unrelieved by change or humor.


Epidemiology of a Schizophrenia [26]

If we are to discuss the epidemiology of mental conditions, i.e., conditions partly induced by experience, our first task is to pinpoint a defect of an ideational system sufficiently so that we can go on from that pinpointing to postulate what sort of contexts of learning might induce this formal defect.

It is conventionally said that schizophrenics have “ego weakness.” I now define ego weakness as trouble in identifying and interpreting those signals which should tell the individual what sort of a message a message is, i.e., trouble with the signals of the same logical type as the signal “This is play.” For example, a patient comes into the hospital canteen and the girl behind the counter says, “What can I do for you?” The patient is in doubt as to what sort of a message this is—is it a message about doing him in? Is it an indication that she wants him to go to bed with her? Or is it an offer of a cup of coffee? He hears the message and does not know what sort or order of a message it is. He is unable to pick up the more abstract labels which we are most of us able to use conventionally but are most of us unable to identify in the sense that we don’t know what told us what sort of a message it was. It is as if we somehow make a correct guess. We are actually quite unconscious of receiving these messages which tell us what sorts of message we receive.

Difficulty with signals of this sort seems to be the center of a syndrome which is characteristic for a group of schizophrenics, so therefore we can reasonably look for an etiology starting from this symptomatology as formally defined.

When you begin thinking in this way, a great deal of what the schizophrenic says falls into place as a description of his experience. That is, we have a second lead toward the theory of etiology or transmission. The first lead is from the symptom. We ask, “How does a human individual acquire an imperfect ability to discriminate these specific signals?” and when we look at his speeches, we find that, in that peculiar language which is schizophrenic salad, he is describing a traumatic situation which involves a metacommunicative tangle.

A patient, for example, has a central notion, that “something moved in space,” and that that is why he cracked up. I somehow, from the way he spoke about “space,” got an idea that space is his mother and said so. He said, “No, space is the mother.” I suggested to him that she might be in some way a cause of his troubles. He said, “I never condemned her.” At a certain point he got angry, and he said—this is verbatim—”If we say she had movement in her because of what she caused, we are only condemning ourselves.” Something moved in space that made him crack up. Space is not his mother, it is the mother. But now we focus upon his mother whom he says he never condemned. And he now says, “If we say that she had movement in her because of what she caused, we are only condemning ourselves.”

Look very carefully at the logical structure of that last quotation. It is circular. It implies a way of interaction and chronic cross-purposes with the mother such that for the child to make those moves which might straighten out the misunderstanding was also prohibited.

On another occasion he had skipped his therapy session in the morning, and I went over to the dining hall at supper time to see him and assure him that he would see me next day. He refused to look at me. He looked away. I made some remark about 9.30 the next morning—no answer. Then, with great difficulty, he said, “The judge disapproves.” Before I left him, I said, “You need a defense attorney,” and when I found him on the grounds next morning I said, “Here is your defense attorney,” and we went into session together. I started out by saying, “Am I right in supposing that the judge not only disapproves of your talking to me but also disapproves of your telling me that he disapproves?” He said, “Yes!” That is, we are dealing with two levels here. The “judge” disapproves of the attempt to straighten out the confusions and disapproves of communicating the fact of his (the judge’s) disapproval.

We have to look for an etiology involving multiple levels of trauma.

I am not talking at all about the content of these traumatic sequences, whether they be sexual, or oral. Nor am I talking about the age of the subject at the time of trauma, nor about which parent is involved. That is all episodic as far as I’m concerned. I’m only building up toward the statement that the trauma must have had formal structure in the sense that multiple logical types were played against each other to generate this particular pathology in this individual.

Now, if you look at our conventional communication with one another, what you find is that we weave these logical types with incredible complexity and quite surprising facility. We even make jokes, and these may be difficult for a foreigner to understand. Most jokes, both canned and spontaneous, and nearly anywhere, are weavings of multiple logical types. Kidding and hazing similarly depend upon the unresolved question whether the kidee can identify that this is kidding. In any culture, the individuals acquire quite extraordinary skill in handling not only the flat identification of what sort of a message a message is but in dealing in multiple identifications of what sort of a message a message is. When we meet these multiple identifications we laugh, and we make new psychological discoveries about what goes on inside ourselves, which is perhaps the reward of real humor.

But there are people who have the utmost difficulty with this problem of multiple levels, and it seems to me that this unequal distribution of ability is a phenomenon which we can approach with the questions and terms of epidemiology. What is needed for a child to acquire, or to not acquire, a skill in the ways of interpreting these signals?

There is not only the miracle that any of them acquire the skills—and a lot of them do—there is also the other side, that a great many people have difficulty. There are people, for example, who, when Big Sister in the soap opera suffers from a cold, will send a bottle of aspirin to the radio station or recommend a cure for Big Sister’s cold, in spite of the fact that Big Sister is a fictitious character within a radio soap opera. These particular members of the audience are apparently a little bit askew in their identification of what sort of a communication this is that is coming from their radio.

We all make errors of that kind at various times. I’m not sure that I’ve ever met anybody that doesn’t suffer from “schizophrenia P” more or less. We all have some difficulty in deciding sometimes whether a dream was a dream or not, and it would not be very easy for most of us to say how we know that a piece of our own fantasy is fantasy and not experience. The ability to place an experience in time is one of the important cues, and referring it to a sense organ is another.

When you look at the mothers and fathers of patients for an answer to this etiological question, you meet with several sorts of answers.

First of all there are answers connected with what we may call the intensifying factors. Any disease is made worse or more probable by various circumstances, such as fatigue, cold, the number of days of combat, the presence of other diseases, etc. These seem to have a quantitative effect upon the incidence of almost any pathology. Then there are those factors which I mentioned—the hereditary characteristics and potentialities. To get confused about the logical types, one presumably has to be intelligent enough to know that there is something wrong, and not so intelligent as to be able to see what it is that is wrong. I presume that these characteristics are hereditarily determined.

But the nub of the problem, it seems to me, is to identify what real circumstances lead to the specific pathology. I acknowledge that the bacteria are not really by any means the sole determinant of a bacterial disease, and grant also therefore that the occurrence of such traumatic sequences or contexts is not by any means the sole determinant of mental illness. But still it seems to me that the identification of those contexts is the nub of understanding the disease, as identifying the bacteria is essential to understanding a bacterial disease.

I have met the mother of the patient whom I mentioned earlier. The family is not badly off. They live in a nice tract house. I went there with the patient, and when we arrived nobody was home. The newspaper boy had tossed the evening paper out in the middle of the lawn, and my patient wanted to get that paper from the middle of that perfect lawn. He came to the edge of the lawn and started to tremble.

The house looks like what is called a “model” home—a house which has been furnished by the real estate people in order to sell other houses to the public. Not a house furnished to live in, but rather furnished to look like a furnished house.

I discussed his mother with him one day, and suggested that perhaps she was a rather frightened person. He said, “Yes.” I said, “What is she frightened of?” He said, “The appeariential securities.”

There is a beautiful, perfectly centered mass of artificial, plastic vegetation on the middle of the mantle. A china pheasant here and a china pheasant there, symmetrically arranged. The wall-to-wall carpet is exactly as it should be.

After his mother arrived, I felt a little uncomfortable, intruding in this house. He had not visited there for about five years, but things seemed to be going all right, so I decided to leave him there and to come back when it was time to go back to the hospital. That gave me an hour in the streets with absolutely nothing to do, and I began to think what I would like to do to this setup. What and how could I communicate? I decided that I would like to put into it something that was both beautiful and untidy. In trying to implement that decision, I decided that flowers were the answer, so I bought some gladioluses. I took the gladioluses, and, when I went to get him, I presented them to the mother with a speech that I wanted her to have in her house something that was “both beautiful and untidy.” “Oh!” she said, “Those are not untidy flowers. As each one withers, you can snip it off.”

Now, as I see it, what is interesting is not so much the castrative statement in that speech, but the putting me in the position of having apologized when in fact I had not. That is, she took my message and reclassified it. She changed the label which indicated what sort of a message it was, and that is, I believe, what she does all the time. An endless taking of the other person’s message and replying to it as if it were either a statement of weakness on the part of the speaker or an attack on her which should be turned into a weakness on the part of the speaker; and so on.

What the patient is up against today—and was up against in childhood—is the false interpretation of his messages. If he says, “The cat is on the table,” she replies with some reply which makes out that his message is not the sort of message that he thought it was when he gave it. His own message identifier is obscured or distorted by her when the message comes back. And her own message identifier she continually contradicts. She laughs when she is saying that which is least funny to her, and so on.

Now there is a regular maternal dominance picture in this family, but I am not concerned at the moment to say that this is the necessary form of the trauma. I am only concerned with the purely formal aspects of this traumatic constellation; and I presume the constellation could be made up with father taking certain parts of it, mother taking certain other parts of it, and so forth.

I am trying to make only one point: that there is here a probability of trauma which will contain certain formal characteristics. It will propagate a specific syndrome in the patient because the trauma itself has impact upon a certain element in the communicational process. That which is attacked is the use of what I have called the “message-identifying signals”—those signals without which the “ego” dare not discriminate fact from fantasy or the literal from the metaphoric.

What I tried to do was pinpoint a group of syndromata, namely those syndromata related to an inability to know what sort of a message a message is. At one end of the classification of those, there will be more or less hebephrenic individuals for whom no message is of any particular definite type but who live in a sort of chronic shaggy-dog story. At the other end are those who try to overidentify, to make an overly rigid identification of what sort of a message every message is. This will give a much more paranoid type of picture. Withdrawal is another possibility.

Finally, it seems to me that with a hypothesis of this kind, one could look for the determinants in a population which might lead to the occurrence of that sort of constellation. This would seem to me an appropriate matter for epidemiological study.

Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia [27]

Schizophrenia—its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it— remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the “double bind”—a situation in which no matter what a person does, he “can’t win.” It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms. How and why the double bind may arise in a family situation is discussed, together with illustrations from clinical and experimental data.

This is a report [28] on a research project which has been formulating and testing a broad, systematic view of the nature, etiology, and therapy of schizophrenia. Our research in this field has proceeded by discussion of a varied body of data and ideas, with all of us contributing according to our varied experience in anthropology, communications analysis, psychotherapy, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. We have now reached common agreement on the broad outlines of a communicational theory of the origin and nature of schizophrenia; this paper is a preliminary report on our continuing research.

The Base in Communications Theory

Our approach is based on that part of communications theory which Russell has called the Theory of Logical Types. [29] The central thesis of this theory is that there is a discontinuity between a class and its members. The class cannot be a member of itself nor can one of the members be the class, since the term used for the class is of a different level of abstraction—a different Logical Type—from terms used for members. Although in formal logic there is an attempt to maintain this discontinuity between a class and its members, we argue that in the psychology of real communications this discontinuity is continually and inevitably breached, [30] and that a priori we must expect a pathology to occur in the human organism when certain formal patterns of the breaching occur in the communication between mother and child. We shall argue that this pathology at its extreme will have symptoms whose formal characteristics would lead the pathology to be classified as a schizophrenia.

Illustrations of how human beings handle communication involving multiple Logical Types can be derived from the following fields:

1. The use of various communicational modes in human communication. Examples are play, non-play, fantasy, sacrament, metaphor, etc. Even among the lower mammals there appears to be an exchange of signals which identify certain meaningful behavior as “play,” etc. [31] These signals are evidently of higher Logical Type than the messages they classify. Among human beings this framing and labeling of messages and meaningful actions reaches considerable complexity, with the peculiarity that our vocabulary for such discrimination is still very poorly developed, and we rely preponderantly upon nonverbal media of posture, gesture, facial expression, intonation, and the context for the communication of these highly abstract, but vitally important, labels.

2. Humor. This seems to be a method of exploring the implicit themes in thought or in a relationship. The method of exploration involves the use of messages which are characterized by a condensation of Logical Types or communicational modes. A discovery, for example, occurs when it suddenly becomes plain that a message was not only metaphoric but also more literal, or vice versa. That is to say, the explosive moment in humor is the moment when the labeling of the mode undergoes a dissolution and re-synthesis. Commonly, the punch line compels a re-evaluation of earlier signals which ascribed to certain messages a particular mode (e.g., literalness or fantasy). This has the peculiar effect of attributing mode to those signals which had previously the status of that higher Logical Type which classifies the modes.

3. The falsification of mode-identifying signals. Among human beings mode identifiers can be falsified, and we have the artificial laugh, the manipulative simulation of friendliness, the confidence trick, kidding, and the like. Similar falsifications have been recorded among mammals. [32] Among human beings we meet with a strange phenomenon—the unconscious falsification of these signals. This may occur within the self—the subject may conceal from himself his own real hostility under the guise of metaphoric play—or it may occur as an unconscious falsification of the subject’s understanding of the other person’s mode-identifying signals. He may mistake shyness for contempt, etc. Indeed most of the errors of self-reference fall under this head.

4. Learning. The simplest level of this phenomenon is exemplified by a situation in which a subject receives a message and acts appropriately on it: “I heard the clock strike and knew it was time for lunch. So I went to the table.” In learning experiments the analogue of this sequence of events is observed by the experimenter and commonly treated as a single message of a higher type. When the dog salivates between buzzer and meat powder, this sequence is accepted by the experimenter as a message indicating that “The dog has learned that buzzer means meat powder.” But this is not the end of the hierarchy of types involved. The experimental subject may become more skilled in learning. He may learn to learn, [33] and it is not inconceivable that still higher orders of learning may occur in human beings.

5. Multiple levels of learning and the Logical Typing of signals. These are two inseparable sets of phenomena—inseparable because the ability to handle the multiple types of signals is itself a learned skill and therefore a function of the multiple levels of learning.

According to our hypothesis, the term “ego function” (as this term is used when a schizophrenic is described as having “weak ego function”) is precisely the process of discriminating communicational modes either within the self or between the self and others. The schizophrenic exhibits weakness in three areas of such function: (a) He has difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode to the messages he receives from other persons. (b) He has difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode to those messages which he himself utters or emits nonverbally. (c) He has difficulty in assigning the correct communicational mode to his own thoughts, sensations, and percepts.

At this point it is appropriate to compare what was said in the previous paragraph with von Domarus’ approach to the systematic description of schizophrenic utterance. He suggests that the messages (and thought) of the schizophrenic are deviant in syllogistic structure. In place of structures which derive from the syllogism, Barbara, the schizophrenic, according to this theory, uses structures which identify predicates. An example of such a distorted syllogism is:

Men die. Grass dies. Men are grass.

But as we see it, von Domarus [34] formulation is only a more precise—and therefore valuable—way of saying that schizophrenic utterance is rich in metaphor. With that generalization we agree. But metaphor is an indispensable tool of thought and expression—a characteristic of all human communication, even of that of the scientist. The conceptual models of cybernetics and the energy theories of psychoanalysis are, after all, only labeled metaphors. The peculiarity of the schizophrenic is not that he uses metaphors, but that he uses unlabeled metaphors. He has special difficulty in handling signals of that class whose members assign Logical Types to other signals.

If our formal summary of the symptomatology is correct and if the schizophrenia of our hypothesis is essentially a result of family interaction, it should be possible to arrive a priori at a formal description of these sequences of experience which would induce such a symptomatology. What is known of learning theory combines with the evident fact that human beings use context as a guide for mode discrimination. Therefore, we must look not for some specific traumatic experience in the infantile etiology but rather for characteristic sequential patterns. The specificity for which we search is to be at an abstract or formal level. The sequences must have this characteristic: that from them the patient will acquire the mental habits which are exemplified in schizophrenic communication. That is to say, he must live in a universe where the sequences of events are such that his unconventional communicational habits will be in some sense appropriate. The hypothesis which we offer is that sequences of this kind in the external experience of the patient are responsible for the inner conflicts of Logical Typing. For such unresolvable sequences of experiences, we use the term “double bind.”
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:18 am

Part 3 of 8

The Double Bind

The necessary ingredients for a double bind situation, as we see it, are:

1. Two or more persons. Of these, we designate one, for purposes of our definition, as the “victim.”. We do not assume that the double bind is inflicted by the mother alone, but that it may be done either by mother alone or by some combination of mother, father, and/or siblings.

2. Repeated experience. We assume that the double bind is a recurrent theme in the experience of the victim. Our hypothesis does not invoke a single traumatic experience, but such repeated experience that the double bind structure comes to be an habitual expectation.

3. A primary negative injunction. This may have either of two forms: (a) “Do not do so and so, or I will punish you,” or (b) “If you do not do so and so, I will punish you.” Here we select a context of learning based on avoidance of punishment rather than a context of reward seeking. There is perhaps no formal reason for this selection. We assume that the punishment may be either the withdrawal of love or the expression of hate or anger—or most devastating—the kind of abandonment that results from the parent’s expression of extreme helplessness. [35]

4. A secondary injunction conflicting with the first at amore abstract level, and like the first enforced by punishments or signals which threaten survival. This secondary injunction is more difficult to describe than the primary for two reasons. First, the secondary injunction is commonly communicated to the child by nonverbal means. Posture, gesture, tone of voice, meaningful action, and the implications concealed in verbal comment may all be used to convey this more abstract message. Second, the secondary injunction may impinge upon any element of the primary prohibition. Verbalization of the secondary injunction may, therefore, include a wide variety of forms; for example, “Do not see this as punishment”; “Do not see me as the punishing agent”; “Do not submit to my prohibitions”; “Do not think of what you must not do”; “Do not question my love of which the primary prohibition is (or is not) an example”; and so on. Other examples become possible when the double bind is inflicted not by one individual but by two. For example, one parent may negate at a more abstract level the injunctions of the other.

5. A tertiary negative injunction prohibiting the victim from escaping from the field. In a formal sense it is perhaps unnecessary to list this injunction as a separate item since the reinforcement at the other two levels involves a threat to survival, and if the double binds are imposed during infancy, escape is naturally impossible. However, it seems that in some cases the escape from the field is made impossible by certain devices which are not purely negative, e.g., capricious promises of love, and the like.

6. Finally, the complete set of ingredients is no longer necessary when the victim has learned to perceive his universe in double bind patterns. Almost any part of a double bind sequence may then be sufficient to precipitate panic or rage.

The pattern of conflicting injunctions may even be taken over by hallucinatory voices. [36]


The Effect of the Double Bind

In the Eastern religion, Zen Buddhism, the goal is to achieve enlightenment. The Zen master attempts to bring about enlightenment in his pupil in various ways. One of the things he does is to hold a stick over the pupil’s head and say fiercely, “If you say this stick is real, I will strike you with it. If you say this stick is not real, I will strike you with it. If you don’t say anything, I will strike you with it.” We feel that the schizophrenic finds himself continually in the same situation as the pupil, but he achieves something like disorientation rather than enlightenment. The Zen pupil might reach up and take the stick away from the master—who might accept this response, but the schizophrenic has no such choice since with him there is no not caring about the relationship, and his mother’s aims and awareness are not like the master’s.

We hypothesize that there will be a breakdown in any individual’s ability to discriminate between Logical Types whenever a double bind situation occurs. The general characteristics of this situation are the following:

(A) When the individual is involved in an intense relationship; that is, a relationship in which he feels it is vitally important that he discriminate accurately what sort of message is being communicated so that he may respond appropriately.

(B) And, the individual is caught in a situation in which the other person in the relationship is expressing two orders of message and one of these denies the other.

(C) And, the individual is unable to comment on the messages being expressed to correct his discrimination of what order of message to respond to, i.e., he cannot make a metacommunicative statement.


We have suggested that this is the sort of situation which occurs between the preschizophrenic and his mother, but it also occurs in normal relationships. When a person is caught in a double bind situation, he will respond defensively in a manner similar to the schizophrenic. An individual will take a metaphorical statement literally when he is in a situation where he must respond, where he is faced with contradictory messages, and when he is unable to comment on the contradictions. For example, one day an employee went home during office hours. A fellow employee called him at his home, and said lightly, “Well, how did you get there?” The employee replied, “By automobile.” He responded literally because he was faced with a message which asked him what he was doing at home when he should have been at the office, but which denied that this question was being asked by the way it was phrased. (Since the speaker felt it wasn’t really his business, he spoke metaphorically.) The relationship was intense enough so that the victim was in doubt how the information would be used, and he therefore responded literally. This is characteristic of anyone who feels “on the spot,” as demonstrated by the careful literal replies of a witness on the stand in a court trial. The schizophrenic feels so terribly on the spot at all times that he habitually responds with a defensive insistence on the literal level when it is quite inappropriate, e.g., when someone is joking.

Schizophrenics also confuse the literal and metaphoric in their own utterance when they feel themselves caught in a double bind. For example, a patient may wish to criticize his therapist for being late for an appointment, but he may be unsure what sort of a message that act of being late was—particularly if the therapist has anticipated the patient’s reaction and apologized for the event. The patient cannot say, “Why were you late? Is it because you don’t want to see me today?” This would be an accusation, and so he shifts to a metaphorical statement. He may then say, “I knew a fellow once who missed a boat, his name was Sam and the boat almost sunk,… etc.,” Thus he develops a metaphorical story and the therapist may or may not discover in it a comment on his being late. The convenient thing about a metaphor is that it leaves it up to the therapist (or mother) to see an accusation in the statement if he chooses, or to ignore it if he chooses. Should the therapist accept the accusation in the metaphor, then the patient can accept the statement he has made about Sam as metaphorical. If the therapist points out that this doesn’t sound like a true statement about Sam, as a way of avoiding the accusation in the story, the patient can argue that there really was a man named Sam. As an answer to the double bind situation, a shift to a metaphorical statement brings safety. However, it also prevents the patient from making the accusation he wants to make. But instead of getting over his accusation by indicating that this is a metaphor, the schizophrenic patient seems to try to get over the fact that it is a metaphor by making it more fantastic. If the therapist should ignore the accusation in the story about Sam, the schizophrenic may then tell a story about going to Mars in a rocket ship as a way of putting over his accusation. The indication that it is a metaphorical statement lies in the fantastic aspect of the metaphor, not in the signals which usually accompany metaphors to tell the listener that a metaphor is being used.

It is not only safer for the victim of a double bind to shift to a metaphorical order of message, but in an impossible situation it is better to shift and become somebody else, or shift and insist that he is somewhere else. Then the double bind cannot work on the victim, because it isn’t he and besides he is in a different place. In other words, the statements which show that a patient is disoriented can be interpreted as ways of defending himself against the situation he is in. The pathology enters when the victim himself either does not know that his responses are metaphorical or cannot say so. To recognize that he was speaking metaphorically he would need to be aware that he was defending himself and therefore was afraid of the other person. To him such an awareness would be an indictment of the other person and therefore provoke disaster.

If an individual has spent his life in the kind of double bind relationship described here, his way of relating to people after a psychotic break would have a systematic pattern. First, he would not share with normal people those signals which accompany messages to indicate what a person means. His metacommunicative system—the communications about communication—would have broken down, and he would not know what kind of message a message was. If a person said to him, “What would you like to do today?” he would be unable to judge accurately by the context or by the tone of voice or gesture whether he was being condemned for what he did yesterday, or being offered a sexual invitation, or just what was meant. Given this inability to judge accurately what a person really means and an excessive concern with what is really meant, an individual might defend himself by choosing one or more of several alternatives. He might, for example, assume that behind every statement there is a concealed meaning which is detrimental to his welfare. He would then be excessively concerned with hidden meanings and determined to demonstrate that he could not be deceived—as he had been all his life. If he chooses this alternative, he will be continually searching for meanings behind what people say and behind chance occurrences in the environment, and he will be characteristically suspicious and defiant.

He might choose another alternative, and tend to accept literally everything people say to him; when their tone or gesture or context contradicted what they said, he might establish a pattern of laughing off these metacommunicative signals. He would give up trying to discriminate between levels of message and treat all messages as unimportant or to be laughed at.

If he didn’t become suspicious of metacommunicative messages or attempt to laugh them off, he might choose to try to ignore them. Then he would find it necessary to see and hear less and less of what went on around him, and do his utmost to avoid provoking a response in his environment. He would try to detach his interest from the external world and concentrate on his own internal processes and, therefore, give the appearance of being a withdrawn, perhaps mute, individual.

This is another way of saying that if an individual doesn’t know what sort of message a message is, he may defend himself in ways which have been described as paranoid, hebephrenic, or catatonic. These three alternatives are not the only ones. The point is that he cannot choose the one alternative which would help him to discover what people mean; he cannot, without considerable help, discuss the messages of others. Without being able to do that, the human being is like any self-correcting system which has lost accept the accusation in the metaphor, then the patient can accept the statement he has made about Sam as metaphorical. If the therapist points out that this doesn’t sound like a true statement about Sam, as a way of avoiding the accusation in the story, the patient can argue that there really was a man named Sam. As an answer to the double bind situation, a shift to a metaphorical statement brings safety. However, it also prevents the patient from making the accusation he wants to make. But instead of getting over his accusation by indicating that this is a metaphor, the schizophrenic patient seems to try to get over the fact that it is a metaphor by making it more fantastic. If the therapist should ignore the accusation in the story about Sam, the schizophrenic may then tell a story about going to Mars in a rocket ship as a way of putting over his accusation. The indication that it is a metaphorical statement lies in the fantastic aspect of the metaphor, not in the signals which usually accompany metaphors to tell the listener that a metaphor is being used.

It is not only safer for the victim of a double bind to shift to a metaphorical order of message, but in an impossible situation it is better to shift and become somebody else, or shift and insist that he is somewhere else. Then the double bind cannot work on the victim, because it isn’t he and besides he is in a different place. In other words, the statements which show that a patient is disoriented can be interpreted as ways of defending himself against the situation he is in. The pathology enters when the victim himself either does not know that his responses are metaphorical or cannot say so. To recognize that he was speaking metaphorically he would need to be aware that he was defending himself and therefore was afraid of the other person. To him such an awareness would be an indictment of the other person and therefore provoke disaster.

If an individual has spent his life in the kind of double bind relationship described here, his way of relating to people after a psychotic break would have a systematic pattern. First, he would not share with normal people those signals which accompany messages to indicate what a person means. His metacommunicative system—the communications about communication—would have broken down, and he would not know what kind of message a message was. If a person said to him, “What would you like to do today?” he would be unable to judge accurately by the context or by the tone of voice or gesture whether he was being condemned for what he did yesterday, or being offered a sexual invitation, or just what was meant. Given this inability to judge accurately what a person really means and an excessive concern with what is really meant, an individual might defend himself by choosing one or more of several alternatives. He might, for example, assume that behind every statement there is a concealed meaning which is detrimental to his welfare. He would then be excessively concerned with hidden meanings and determined to demonstrate that he could not be deceived—as he had been all his life. If he chooses this alternative, he will be continually searching for meanings behind what people say and behind chance occurrences in the environment, and he will be characteristically suspicious and defiant.

He might choose another alternative, and tend to accept literally everything people say to him; when their tone or gesture or context contradicted what they said, he might establish a pattern of laughing off these metacommunicative signals. He would give up trying to discriminate between levels of message and treat all messages as unimportant or to be laughed at.

If he didn’t become suspicious of metacommunicative messages or attempt to laugh them off, he might choose to try to ignore them. Then he would find it necessary to see and hear less and less of what went on around him, and do his utmost to avoid provoking a response in his environment. He would try to detach his interest from the external world and concentrate on his own internal processes and, therefore, give the appearance of being a withdrawn, perhaps mute, individual.

This is another way of saying that if an individual doesn’t know what sort of message a message is, he may defend himself in ways which have been described as paranoid, hebephrenic, or catatonic. These three alternatives are not the only ones. The point is that he cannot choose the one alternative which would help him to discover what people mean; he cannot, without considerable help, discuss the messages of others. Without being able to do that, the human being is like any self-correcting system which has lost its governor; it spirals into never-ending, but always systematic, distortions.

A Description of the Family Situation

The theoretical possibility of double bind situations stimulated us to look for such communication sequences in the schizophrenic patient and in his family situation. Toward this end we have studied the written and verbal reports of psychotherapists who have treated such patients intensively; we have studied tape recordings of psychotherapeutic interviews, both of our own patients and others; we have inter-viewed and taped parents of schizophrenics; we have had two mothers and one father participate in intensive psychotherapy; and we have interviewed and taped parents and patients seen conjointly.

On the basis of these data we have developed a hypothesis about the family situation which ultimately leads to an individual suffering from schizophrenia. This hypothesis has not been statistically tested; it selects and emphasizes a rather simple set of interactional phenomena and does not attempt to describe comprehensively the extraordinary complexity of a family relationship.

We hypothesize that the family situation of the schizophrenic has the following general characteristics:

(1) A child whose mother becomes anxious and withdraws if the child responds to her as a loving mother. That is, the child’s very existence has a special meaning to the mother which arouses her anxiety and hostility when she is in danger of intimate contact with the child.

(2) A mother to whom feelings of anxiety and hostility toward the child are not acceptable, and whose way of denying them is to express overt loving behavior to persuade the child to respond to her as a loving mother and to withdraw from him if he does not. “Loving behavior” does not necessarily imply “affection”; it can, for example, be set in a framework of doing the proper thing, instilling “goodness,” and the like.

(3) The absence of anyone in the family, such as a strong and insightful father, who can intervene in the relationship between the mother and child and support the child in the face of the contradictions involved.


Since this is a formal description we are not specifically concerned with why the mother feels this way about the child, but we suggest that she could feel this way for various reasons. It may be that merely having a child arouses anxiety about herself and her relationships to her own family; or it may be important to her that the child is a boy or a girl, or that the child was born on the anniversary of one of her own siblings, [37] or the child may be in the same sibling position in the family that she was, or the child may be special to her for other reasons related to her own emotional problems.

Given a situation with these characteristics, we hypothesize that the mother of a schizophrenic will be simultaneously expressing at least two orders of message. (For simplicity in this presentation we shall confine ourselves to two orders.) These orders of message can be roughly characterized as (a) hostile or withdrawing behavior which is aroused whenever the child approaches her, and (b) simulated loving or approaching behavior which is aroused when the child responds to her hostile and withdrawing behavior, as a way of denying that she is withdrawing. Her problem is to control her anxiety by controlling the closeness and distance between herself and her child. To put this another way, if the mother begins to feel affectionate and close to her child, she begins to feel endangered and must withdraw from him; but she cannot accept this hostile act and to deny it must simulate affection and closeness with her child. The important point is that her loving behavior is then a comment on (since it is compensatory for) her hostile behavior and consequently it is of a different order of message than the hostile behavior—it is a message about a sequence of messages. Yet by its nature it denies the existence of those messages which it is about, i.e., the hostile withdrawal.

The mother uses the child’s responses to affirm that her behavior is loving, and since the loving behavior is simulated, the child is placed in a position where he must not accurately interpret her communication if he is to maintain his relationship with her. In other words, he must not discriminate accurately between orders of message, in this case the difference between the expression of simulated feelings (one Logical Type) and real feelings (another Logical Type). As a result the child must systematically distort his perception of metacommunicative signals. For example, if mother begins to feel hostile (or affectionate) toward her child and also feels compelled to withdraw from him, she might say, “Go to bed, you’re very tired and I want you to get your sleep.” This overtly loving statement is intended to deny a feeling which could be. verbalized as “Get out of my sight because I’m sick of you.” If the child correctly discriminates her metacommunicative signals, he would have to face the fact that she both doesn’t want him and is deceiving him by her loving behavior. He would be “punished” for learning to discriminate orders of messages accurately. He therefore would tend to accept the idea that he is tired rather than recognize his mother’s deception. This means that he must deceive himself about his own internal state in order to support mother in her deception. To survive with her he must falsely discriminate his own internal messages as well as falsely discriminate the messages of others.

The problem is compounded for the child because the mother is “benevolently” defining for him how he feels; she is expressing overt maternal concern over the fact that he is tired. To put it another way, the mother is controlling the child’s definitions of his own messages, as well as the definition of his responses to her (e.g., by saying, “You don’t really mean to say that,” if he should criticize her) by insisting that she is not concerned about herself but only about him. Consequently, the easiest path for the child is to accept mother’s simulated loving behavior as real, and his desires to interpret what is going on are undermined. Yet the result is that the mother is withdrawing from him and defining this withdrawal as the way a loving relationship should be.

However, accepting mother’s simulated loving behavior as real also is no solution for the child. Should he make this false discrimination, he would approach her; this move toward closeness would provoke in her feelings of fear and helplessness, and she would be compelled to withdraw. But if he then withdrew from her, she would take his withdrawal as a statement that she was not a loving mother and would either punish him for withdrawing or approach him to bring him closer. If he then approached, she would respond by putting him at a distance. The child is punished for discriminating accurately what she is expressing, and he is punished for discriminating inaccurately—he is caught in a double bind.

The child might try various means of escaping from this situation. He might, for example, try to lean on his father or some other member of the family. However, from our preliminary observations we think it is likely that the fathers of schizophrenics are not substantial enough to lean on. They are also in the awkward position where if they agreed with the child about the nature of mother’s deceptions, they would need to recognize the nature of their own relationships to the mother, which they could not do and remain attached to her in the modus operandi they have worked out.

The need of the mother to be wanted and loved also prevents the child from gaining support from some other person in the environment, a teacher, for example. A mother with these characteristics would feel threatened by any other attachment of the child and would break it up and bring the child back closer to her with consequent anxiety when the child became dependent on her.

The only way the child can really escape from the situation is to comment on the contradictory position his mother has put him in. However, if he did so, the mother would take this as an accusation that she is unloving and both punish him and insist that his perception of the situation is distorted. By preventing the child from talking about the situation, the mother forbids him using the metacommunicative level—the level we use to correct our perception of communicative behavior. The ability to communicate about communication, to comment upon the meaningful actions of oneself and others, is essential for successful social intercourse. In any normal relationship there is a constant interchange of metacommunicative messages such as “What do you mean?” or “Why did you do that?” or “Are you kidding me?” and so on. To discriminate accurately what people are really expressing, we must be able to comment directly or indirectly on that expression. This metacommunicative level the schizophrenic seems unable to use successfully. [38] Given these characteristics of the mother, it is apparent why. If she is denying one order of message, then any statement about her statements endangers her and she must forbid it. Therefore, the child grows up unskilled in his ability to communicate about communication and, as a result, unskilled in determining what people really mean and unskilled in expressing what he really means, which is essential for normal relationships.

In summary, then, we suggest that the double bind nature of the family situation of a schizophrenic results in placing the child in a position where, if he responds to his mother’s simulated affection, her anxiety will be aroused and she will punish him (or insist, to protect herself, that his overtures are simulated, thus confusing him about the nature of his own messages) to defend herself from closeness with him. Thus the child is blocked off from intimate and secure associations with his mother. However, if he does not make overtures of affection, she will feel that this means she is not a loving mother and her anxiety will be aroused. Therefore, she will either punish him for withdrawing or make overtures toward the child to insist that he demonstrate that he loves her. If he then responds and shows her affection, she will not only feel endangered again, but she may resent the fact that she had to force him to respond. In either case in a relationship, the most important in his life and the model for all others, he is punished if he indicates love and affection and punished if he does not; and his escape routes from the situation, such as gaining support from others, are cut off. This is the basic nature of the double bind relationship between mother and child. This description has not depicted, of course, the more complicated interlocking gestalt that is the “family” of which the “mother” is one important part. [39]

Illustrations from Clinical Data

An analysis of an incident occurring between a schizophrenic patient and his mother illustrates the double bind situation. A young man who had fairly well recovered from an acute schizophrenic episode was visited in the hospital by his mother. He was glad to see her and impulsively put his arm around her shoulders, whereupon she stiffened. He withdrew his arm and she asked, “Don’t you love me any more?” He then blushed, and she said, “Dear, you must not be so easily embarrassed and afraid of your feelings.” The patient was able to stay with her only a few minutes more and following her departure he assaulted an aide and was put in the tubs.

Obviously, this result could have been avoided if the young man had been able to say, “Mother, it is obvious that you become uncomfortable when I put my arm around you, and that you have difficulty accepting a gesture of affection from me.” However, the schizophrenic patient doesn’t have this possibility open to him. His intense dependency and training prevents him from commenting upon his mother’s communicative behavior, though she comments on his and forces him to accept and to attempt to deal with the complicated sequence. The complications for the patient include the following:

(1) The mother’s reaction of not accepting her son’s affectionate gesture is masterfully covered up by her condemnation of him for withdrawing, and the patient denies his perception of the situation by accepting her condemnation.

(2) The statement “Don’t you love me any more” in this context seems to imply:

(a) “I am lovable.”

(b) “You should love me and if you don’t you are bad or at fault.”

(c) “Whereas you did love me previously you don’t any longer,” and thus focus is shifted from his expressing affection to his inability to be affectionate. Since the patient has also hated her, she is on good ground here, and he responds appropriately with guilt, which she then attacks.

(d) “What you just expressed was not affection,” and in order to accept this statement, the patient must deny what she and the culture have taught him about how one expresses affection. He must also question the times with her, and with others, when he thought he was experiencing affection and when they seemed to treat the situation as if he had. He experiences here loss-of-support phenomena and is put in doubt about the reliability of past experience.

(3) The statement, “You must not be so easily embarrassed and afraid of your feelings,” seems to imply:

(a) “You are not like me and are different from other nice or normal people because we express our feelings.”

(b) “The feelings you express are all right, it’s only that you can’t accept them.” However, if the stiffening on her part had indicated “These are unacceptable feelings,” then the boy is told that he should not be embarrassed by unacceptable feelings. Since he has had a long training in what is and is not acceptable to both her and society, he again comes into conflict with the past. If he is unafraid of his own feelings (which mother implies is good), he should be unafraid of his affection and would then notice it was she who was afraid, but he must not notice that because her whole approach is aimed at covering up this shortcoming in herself.


The impossible dilemma thus becomes: “If I am to keep my tie to mother, I must not show her that I love her, but if I do not show her that I love her, then I will lose her.”

The importance to the mother of her special method of control is strikingly illustrated by the interfamily situation of a young woman schizophrenic who greeted the therapist on their first meeting with the remark, “Mother had to get married and now I’m here.” This statement meant to the therapist that:

(1) The patient was the result of an illegitimate pregnancy.

(2) This fact was related to her present psychosis (in her opinion).

(3) “Here” referred to the psychiatrist’s office and to the patient’s presence on earth for which she had to be eternally indebted to her mother, especially since her mother had sinned and suffered in order to bring her into the world.

(4) “Had to get married” referred to the shotgun nature of mother’s wedding and to the mother’s response to pressure that she must marry, and the reciprocal, that she resented the forced nature of the situation and blamed the patient for it.


Actually, all these suppositions subsequently proved to be factually correct and were corroborated by the mother during an abortive attempt at psychotherapy. The flavor of the mother’s communications to the patient seemed essentially this: “I am lovable, loving, and satisfied with myself. You are lovable when you are like me and when you do what I say.” At the same time the mother indicated to the daughter both by words and behavior: “You are physically delicate, unintelligent, and different from me (`not normal’). You need me and me alone because of these handicaps, and I will take care of you and love you.” Thus the patient’s life was a series of beginnings, of attempts at experience, which would result in failure and withdrawal back to the maternal hearth and bosom because of the collusion between her and her mother.

It was noted in collaborative therapy that certain areas important to the mother’s self-esteem were especially conflictual situations for the patient. For example, the mother needed the fiction that she was close to her family and that a deep love existed between her and her own mother. By analogy the relationship to the grandmother served as the prototype for the mother’s relationship to her own daughter. On one occasion when the daughter was seven or eight years old, the grandmother in a rage threw a knife which barely missed the little girl. The mother said nothing to the grandmother but hurried the little girl from the room with the words, “Grandmommy really loves you.” It is significant that the grandmother took the attitude toward the patient that she was not well enough controlled, and she used to chide her daughter for being too easy on the child. The grandmother was living in the house during one of the patient’s psychotic episodes, and the girl took great delight in throwing various objects at the mother and grandmother while they cowered in fear.

Mother felt herself very attractive as a girl, and she felt that her daughter resembled her rather closely, although by damning with faint praise, it was obvious that she felt the daughter definitely ran second. One of the daughter’s first acts during a psychotic period was to announce to her mother that she was going to cut off all her hair. She proceeded to do this while the mother pleaded with her to stop. Subsequently the mother would show a picture of herself as a girl and explain to people how the patient would look if she only had her beautiful hair.

The mother, apparently without awareness of the significance of what she was doing, would equate the daughter’s illness with not being very bright and with some sort of organic brain difficulty. She would invariably contrast this with her own intelligence as demonstrated by her own scholastic record. She treated her daughter with a completely patronizing and placating manner which was insincere. For example, in the psychiatrist’s presence she promised her daughter that she would not allow her to have further shock treatments, and as soon as the girl was out of the room she asked the doctor if he didn’t feel she should be hospitalized and given electric shock treatments. One clue to this deceptive behavior arose during the mother’s therapy. Although the daughter had had three previous hospitalizations, the mother had never mentioned to the doctors that she herself had had a psychotic episode when she discovered that she was pregnant. The family whisked her away to a small sanitarium in a nearby town, and she was, according to her own statement, strapped to a bed for six weeks. Her family did not visit her during this time, and no one except her parents and her sister knew that she was hospitalized.

There were two times during therapy when the mother showed intense emotion. One was in relating her own psychotic experience; the other was on the occasion of her last visit when she accused the therapist of trying to drive her crazy by forcing her to choose between her daughter and her husband. Against medical advice, she took her daughter out of therapy.

The father was as involved in the homeostatic aspects of the intrafamily situation as the mother. For example, he stated that he had to quit his position as an important attorney in order to bring his daughter to an area where competent psychiatric help was available. Subsequently, acting on cues from the patient (e.g., she frequently referred to a character named “Nervous Ned”), the therapist was able to elicit from him that he had hated his job and for years had been trying to “get out from under.” However, the daughter was made to feel that the move was initiated for her.

On the basis of our examination of the clinical data, we have been impressed by a number of observations including:

(1) The helplessness, fear, exasperation, and rage which a double bind situation provokes in the patient, but which the mother may serenely and un-understandingly pass over. We have noted reactions in the father that both create double bind situations, or extend and amplify those created by the mother, and we have seen the father, passive and outraged, but helpless, become ensnared in a similar manner to the patient.

(2) The psychosis seems, in part, a way of dealing with double bind situations to overcome their inhibiting and controlling effect. The psychotic patient may make astute, pithy, often metaphorical remarks that reveal an insight into the forces binding him. Contrariwise, he may become rather expert in setting double bind situations himself.

(3) According to our theory, the communication situation described is essential to the mother’s security, and by inference to the family homeostasis. If this be so, then when psychotherapy of the patient helps him become less vulnerable to mother’s attempts at control, anxiety will be produced in the mother. Similarly, if the therapist interprets to the mother the dynamics of the situation she is setting up with the patient, this should produce an anxiety response in her. Our impression is that when there is a perduring contact between patient and family (especially when the patient lives at home during psychotherapy), this leads to a disturbance (often severe) in the mother and sometimes in both mother and father and other siblings. [40]


Current Position and Future Prospects

Many writers have treated schizophrenia in terms of the most extreme contrast with any other form of human thinking and behavior. While it is an isolable phenomenon, so much emphasis on the differences from the normal—rather like the fearful physical segregation of psychotics—does not help in understanding the problems. In our approach we assume that schizophrenia involves general principles which are important in all communication and therefore many informative similarities can be found in “normal” communication situations.

We have been particularly interested in various sorts of communication which involve both emotional significance and the necessity of discriminating between orders of message. Such situations include play, humor, ritual, poetry, and fiction. Play, especially among animals, we have studied at some length. [41] It is a situation which strikingly illustrates the occurrence of metamessages whose correct discrimination is vital to the cooperation of the individuals involved; for example, false discrimination could easily lead to combat. Rather closely related to play is humor, a continuing subject of our research. It involves sudden shifts in Logical Types as well as discrimination of those shifts. Ritual is a field in which unusually real or literal ascriptions of Logical Type are made and defended as vigorously as the schizophrenic defends the “reality” of his delusions. Poetry exemplifies the communicative power of metaphor—even very unusual metaphor—when labeled as such by various signs, as contrasted to the obscurity of unlabeled schizophrenic metaphor. The entire field of fictional communication, defined as the narration or depiction of a series of events with more or less of a label of actuality, is most relevant to the investigation of schizophrenia. We are not so much concerned with the content interpretation of fiction—although analysis of oral and destructive themes is illuminating to the student of schizophrenia—as with the formal problems involved in simultaneous existence of multiple levels of message in the fictional presentation of “reality.” The drama is especially interesting in this respect, with both performers and spectators responding to messages about both the actual and the theatrical reality.

We are giving extensive attention to hypnosis. A great array of phenomena that occur as schizophrenic symptoms—hallucinations, delusions, alterations of personality, amnesias, and so on—can be produced temporarily in normal subjects with hypnosis. These need not be directly suggested as specific phenomena, but can be the “spontaneous” result of an arranged communication sequence. For example, Erickson [42] will produce a hallucination by first inducing catalepsy in a subject’s hand and then saying, “There is no conceivable way in which your hand can move, yet when I give the signal, it must move.” That is, he tells the subject his hand will remain in place, yet it will move, and in no way the subject can consciously conceive. When Erickson gives the signal, the subject hallucinates the hand moved, or hallucinates himself in a different place and therefore the hand was moved. This use of hallucination to resolve a problem posed by contradictory commands which cannot be discussed seems to us to illustrate the solution of a double bind situation via a shift in Logical Types. Hypnotic responses to direct suggestions or statements also commonly involve shifts in type, as in accepting the words “Here’s a glass of water” or “You feel tired” as external or internal reality, or in literal response to metaphorical statements, much like schizophrenics. We hope that further study of hypnotic induction, phenomena, and waking will, in this controllable situation, help sharpen our view of the essential communicational sequences which produce phenomena like those of schizophrenia.

Another Erickson experiment seems to isolate a double bind communicational sequence without the specific use of hypnosis. Erickson arranged a seminar so as to have a young chain smoker sit next to him and to be without cigarettes; other participants were briefed on what to do. All was ordered so that Erickson repeatedly turned to offer the young man a cigarette, but was always interrupted by a question from someone so that he turned away, “inadvertently” withdrawing the cigarettes from the young man’s reach. Later another participant asked this young man if he had received the cigarette from Dr. Erickson. He replied, “What cigarette?”, showed clearly that he had forgotten the whole sequence, and even refused a cigarette offered by another member, saying that he was too interested in the seminar discussion to smoke. This young man seems to us to be in an experimental situation paralleling the schizophrenic’s double bind situation with mother: an important relationship, contradictory messages (here of giving and taking away), and comment blocked—because there was a seminar going on, and anyway it was all “inadvertent.” And note the similar outcome: amnesia for the double bind sequence and reversal from “He doesn’t give” to “I don’t want.”

Although we have been led into these collateral areas, our main field of observation has been schizophrenia itself. All of us have worked directly with schizophrenic patients and much of this case material has been recorded on tape for detailed study. In addition, we are recording interviews held jointly with patients and their families, and we are taking sound motion pictures of mothers and disturbed, presumably pre-schizophrenic, children. Our hope is that these operations will provide a clearly evident record of the continuing, repetitive double binding which we hypothesize goes on steadily from infantile beginnings in the family situation of individuals who become schizophrenic. This basic family situation, and the overtly communicational characteristics of schizophrenia, have been the major focus of this paper. However, we expect our concepts and some of these data will also be useful in future work on other problems of schizophrenia, such as the variety of other symptoms, the character of the “adjusted state” before schizophrenia becomes manifest, and the nature and circumstances of the psychotic break.

Therapeutic Implications of this Hypothesis

Psychotherapy itself is a context of multilevel communication, with exploration of the ambiguous lines between the literal and metaphoric, or reality and fantasy, and indeed, various forms of play, drama, and hypnosis have been used extensively in therapy. We have been interested in therapy, and in addition to our own data we have been collecting and examining recordings, verbatim transcripts, and personal accounts of therapy from other therapists. In this we prefer exact records since we believe that how a schizophrenic talks depends greatly, though often subtly, on how another person talks to him; it is most difficult to estimate what was really occurring in a therapeutic interview if one has only a description of it, especially if the description is already in theoretical terms.

Except for a few general remarks and some speculation, however, we are not yet prepared to comment on the relation of the double bind to psychotherapy. At present we can only note:

(1) Double bind situations are created by and within the psychotherapeutic setting and the hospital milieu. From the point of view of this hypothesis, we wonder about the effect of medical “benevolence” on the schizophrenic patient. Since hospitals exist for the benefit of personnel as well as—as much as—more than—for the patient’s benefit, there will be contradictions at times in sequences where actions are taken “benevolently” for the patient when actually they are intended to keep the staff more comfortable. We would assume that whenever the system is organized for hospital purposes and it is announced to the patient that the actions are for his benefit, then the schizophrenogenic situation is being perpetuated. This kind of deception will provoke the patient to respond to it as a double bind situation, and his response will be “schizophrenic” in the sense that it will be indirect and the patient will be unable to comment on the fact that he feels that he is being deceived. One vignette, fortunately amusing, illustrates such a response. On a ward with a dedicated and “benevolent” physician in charge there was a sign on the physician’s door which said “Doctor’s Office. Please Knock.” The doctor was driven to distraction and finally capitulation by the obedient patient who carefully knocked every time he passed the door.

(2) The understanding of the double bind and its communicative aspects may lead to innovations in therapeutic technique. Just what these innovations may be is difficult to say, but on the basis of our investigation we are assuming that double bind situations occur consistently in psychotherapy. At times these are inadvertent in the sense that the therapist is imposing a double bind situation similar to that in the patient’s history, or the patient is imposing a double bind situation on the therapist. At other times therapists seem to impose double binds, either deliberately or intuitively, which force the patient to respond differently than he has in the past.


An incident from the experience of a gifted psychotherapist illustrates the intuitive understanding of a double bind communicational sequence. Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann [43] was treating a young woman who from the age of seven had built a highly complex religion of her own replete with powerful gods. She was very schizophrenic and quite hesitant about entering into a therapeutic situation. At the beginning of the treatment she said, “God R says I shouldn’t talk with you.” Dr. Fromm-Reichmann replied, “Look, let’s get something into the record. To me God R doesn’t exist, and that whole world of yours doesn’t exist. To you it does, and far be it from me to think that I can take that away from you, I have no idea what it means. So I’m willing to talk with you in terms of that world, if only you know I do it so that we have an understanding that it doesn’t exist for me. Now go to God R and tell him that we have to talk and he should give you permission. Also you must tell him that I am a doctor and that you have lived with him in his kingdom now from seven to sixteen—that’s nine years —and he hasn’t helped you. So now he must permit me to try and see whether you and I can do that job. Tell him that I am a doctor and this is what I want to try.”

The therapist has her patient in a “therapeutic double bind.” If the patient is rendered doubtful about her belief in her god, then she is agreeing with Dr. Fromm-Reichmann, and is admitting her attachment to therapy. If she insists that God R is real, then she must tell him that Dr. Fromm-Reichmann is “more powerful” than he— again admitting her involvement with the therapist.

The difference between the therapeutic bind and the original double bind situation is in part the fact that the therapist is not involved in a life and death struggle himself. He can therefore set up relatively benevolent binds and gradually aid the patient in his emancipation from them. Many of the uniquely appropriate therapeutic gambits arranged by therapists seem to be intuitive. We share the goal of most psychotherapists who strive toward the day when such strokes of genius will be well enough understood to be systematic and commonplace.

Additional References

J. Haley, “Paradoxes in Play, Fantasy, and Psychotherapy,” Psychiatric Research Reports, 1955, 2: 52-8.

J. Ruesch and G. Bateson, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, New York, Norton, 1951.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:22 am

Part 4 of 8

The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia [44]

First, I intend to attach very specific meaning to the title of this paper. An essential notion attached to the word “group” as I shall use it is the idea of relatedness between members. Our concern is not with the sort of phenomena which occur in experimentally formed groups of graduate students who have no previously determined habits of communication—no habitual differentiations of role. The group to which I mostly refer is the family; in general, those families in which the parents maintain an adjustment to the world around them without being recognized as grossly deviant, while one or more of their offspring differ conspicuously from the normal population in the frequency and obvious nature of their responses. I shall also be thinking of other groups analogous to these, i.e., ward organizations, which work in such a way as to promote schizophrenic or schizophrenoid behavior in some of the members.

The word “dynamics” is loosely and conventionally used for all studies of personal interaction and especially when they stress change or learning exhibited by the subjects. Despite our following its conventional use, this word is a misnomer. It evokes analogies with physics which are totally false.

“Dynamics” is principally a language devised by physicists and mathematicians for the description of certain events. In this strict sense, the impact of one billiard ball upon another is subject matter for dynamics, but it would be an error of language to say that billiard balls “behave.” Dynamics appropriately describe those events whose descriptions can be checked by asking whether they contravene the First Law of Thermodynamics, the Law of the Conservation of Energy. When one billiard ball strikes another, the motion of the second is energized by the impact of the first, and such transferences of energy are the central subject matter of dynamics. We, however, are not concerned with event sequences which have this characteristic. If I kick a stone, the movement of the stone is energized by the act, but if I kick a dog, the behavior of the dog may indeed be partly conservative—he may travel along a Newtonian trajectory if kicked hard enough, but this is mere physics. What is important is that he may exhibit responses which are energized not by the kick but by his metabolism; he may turn and bite.

This, I think, is what people mean by magic. The realm of phenomena in which we are interested is always characterized by the fact that “ideas” may influence events. To the physicist, this is a grossly magical hypothesis. It is one which cannot be tested by asking questions about the conservation of energy.

All this, however, has been better and more rigorously said by Bertalanffy, which makes it easier for me to further explore this realm of phenomena in which communication occurs. We shall settle for the conventional term “dynamics” provided it is clearly understood that we are not talking about dynamics in the physical sense.

Robert Louis Stevenson [45] in “The Poor Thing” has achieved perhaps the most vivid characterization of this magical realm:

“In my thought one thing is as good as another in this world; and a shoe of a horse will do.” The word “yes” or a whole performance of Hamlet, or an injection of epinephrine in the right place on the surface of the brain may be interchangeable objects. Any one of them may, according to the conventions of communication established at that moment, be an affirmative (or a negative) answer to any question. In the famous message, “One if by land; two if by sea,” the objects actually used were lamps, but from the point of view of communications theory, they could have been anything from aardvarks to zygomatic arches.

It might well be sufficiently confusing to be told that, according to the conventions of communication in use at the moment, anything can stand for anything else. But this realm of magic is not that simple. Not only can the shoe of a horse stand for anything else according to the conventions of communication, it can also and simultaneously be a signal which will alter the conventions of communication. My fingers crossed behind my back may alter the whole tone and implication of everything. I recall a schizophrenic patient who, like many other schizophrenics, had difficulty with the first person pronoun; in particular, he did not like to sign his name. He had a number of aliases, alternative named aspects of self. The ward organization, of which he was a part, required that he sign his name to obtain a pass, and for one or two weekends he did not receive a pass because he insisted on signing one of his aliases. One day he remarked that he was going out the next weekend. I said, “Oh, did you sign?” He said, “Yes,” with an odd grin. His real name, we will say, was Edward W. Jones. What he had actually signed was “W. Edward Jones.” The ward officials did not notice the difference. It appeared to them that they had won a battle and had succeeded in forcing him to act sanely. But to himself the message was, “He (the real me) did not sign.” He had won the battle. It was as if his fingers were crossed behind his back.

All communication has this characteristic—it can be magically modified by accompanying communication. In this conference, we have been discussing various ways of interacting with patients, describing what we do and what our strategy seems to us to be. It would have been more difficult to discuss our actions from the patients’ point of view. How do we qualify our communications to the patients, so that the experience which they receive will be therapeutic?

Appleby, for example, described a set of procedures on his ward, and if I were a schizophrenic listening to him, I would have been tempted to say, “It all sounds like occupational therapy to me.” He tells us very convincingly and with figures that his program is successful, and in documenting his success he is no doubt telling the truth. If this is so, then his description of the program must necessarily be incomplete. The experiences which the program provides for the patients must be something a little more alive than the dry bones of the program which he has described. The whole series of therapeutic procedures must have been qualified, possibly with enthusiasm or with humor, with some set of signals which altered the mathematical sign—plus or minus—of what was being done. Appleby has told us only about the shoe of the horse, not about the multitude of realities which determined for what that horseshoe stood.

It is as if he had related that a given musical composition was set in the key of C major, and asked us to believe that this skeletal statement was a sufficient description to enable us to understand why this particular composition altered the mood of the listener in a particular way. What is omitted in all such descriptions is the enormous complexity of modulation of communication. It is this modulation which is music.

Let me shift from a musical to a wide biological analogy in order to examine further this magical realm of communication. All organisms are partially determined by genetics, i.e., by complex constellations of messages carried principally in the chromosomes. We are products of a communicational process, modified and qualified in various ways by environmental impact. It follows, therefore, that the differences between related organisms, say, a crab and a lobster, or between a tall pea and a short pea, must always be the sort of differences that can be created by changes and modulations in a constellation of messages. Sometimes these changes in the message system will be relatively concrete—a shift from “yes” to “no” in the answer to some question governing a relatively superficial detail of the anatomy. The total picture of the animal may be altered by as little as one spot in the whole halftone block, or the change may be one which modifies or modulates the whole system of genetic messages, so that every message in the system takes on a different look while retaining its former relationship to all neighboring messages. It is, I believe, this stability of the relationship between messages under the impact of the change in one part of the constellation that provides a basis for the French aphorism “Plus get change, plus c’est la même chose.” It is a recognized fact that the skulls of the various anthropoids can be drawn upon diversely skewed coordinates ‘to demonstrate the fundamental similarity of relations and the systematic nature of the transformation from one species to another. [46]

My father was a geneticist, and he used to say, “It’s all vibrations,” [47] and to illustrate this he would point out that the striping of the common zebra is an octave higher than that of Grevy’s zebra. While it is true that in this particular case the “frequency” is doubled, I don’t think that it is entirely a matter of vibrations as he endeavored to explain it. Rather, he was trying to say that it is all a matter of the sort of modifications which could be expected among systems whose determinants are not a matter of physics in the crude sense, but a matter of messages and modulated systems of messages.

It is worth noting, too, that perhaps organic forms are beautiful to us and the systematic biologist can find aesthetic satisfaction in the differences between related organisms simply because the differences are due to modulations of communication, while we ourselves are both organisms who communicate and whose forms are determined by constellations of genetic messages. This is not the place, however, for such a revision of aesthetic theory. An expert in the theory of mathematical groups could make a major contribution in this field.

All messages and parts of messages are like phrases or segments of equations which a mathematician puts in brackets. Outside the brackets there may always be a qualifier or multiplier which will alter the whole tenor of the phrase. Moreover, these qualifiers can always be added, even years later.

They do not have to precede the phrase inside the brackets. Otherwise, there could be no psychotherapy. The patient would be entitled and even compelled to argue, “My mother slapped me down in such and such ways, and, therefore, I am now sick; and because those traumata occurred in the past they cannot be altered, and I, therefore, cannot get well.” In the realm of communication, the events of the past constitute a chain of old horseshoes so that the meaning of that chain can be changed and is continually being changed. What exists today are only messages about the past which we call memories, and these messages can always be framed and modulated from moment to moment.

Up to this point the realm of communication appears to be more and more complex, more flexible, and less amenable to analysis. Now the introduction of the group concept—the consideration of many persons—suddenly simplifies this confused realm of slipping and sliding meanings. If we shake up a number of irregular stones in a bag, or subject them to an almost random beating by the waves on the seashore, even at the crudely physical level, there will be a gradual simplification of the system—the stones will resemble each other. In the end, they will all become spherical, but in practice we usually encounter them as partly rounded pebbles. Certain forms of homogenization result from multiple impact even at the crude physical level, and when the impacting entities are organisms capable of complex learning and communication, the total system operates rapidly toward either uniformity or toward systematic differentiation—an increase of simplicity— which we call organization. If there are differences between the impacting entities, these differences will undergo change, either in the direction of reducing the difference, or in the direction of achieving a mutual fitting or complementarity. Among groups of people, whether the direction of change is toward homogeneity or toward complementarity, the achievement is a sharing of premises regarding the meaning and appropriateness of messages and other acts in the context of the relationship.

I shall not go into the complex problems of learning involved in this process but shall proceed to the problem of schizophrenia. An individual, i.e., the identified patient, exists within a family setting, but when we view him singularly, certain peculiarities of his communicational habits are noted.

These peculiarities may be partly determined by genetics or physiological accident, but it is still reasonable to question the function of these peculiarities within the communicational system of which they are a part the family. A number of living creatures have been, in a sense, shaken up together and one of them has come out apparently different from the rest; we have to ask not only about differences in the material of which this particular individual may be made, but also how his particular characteristics were developed in this family system. Can the peculiarities of the identified patient be seen as appropriate, i.e., as either homogeneous with, or complementary to, the characteristics of the other members of the group? We do not doubt that a large part of schizophrenic. symptomatology is, in some sense, learned or determined by experience, but an organism can learn only that which it is taught by the circumstances of living and the experiences of exchanging messages with those around him. He cannot learn at random, but only to be like or unlike those around him. We have, therefore, the necessary task of looking at the experiential setting of schizophrenia.

We shall outline briefly what we have been calling the double bind hypothesis, which has been more fully described elsewhere. [48] This hypothesis contains two parts; a formal description of the communicational habits of the schizophrenic, and a formal description of the sequences of experience which would understandably train the individual in his peculiar distortions of communication. Empirically we find that one description of the symptoms is, on the whole, satisfactory, and that the families of schizophrenics are characterized by the behavioral sequences which are predicted by the hypothesis.

Typically, the schizophrenic will eliminate from his messages everything that refers explicitly or implicitly to the relationship between himself and the person he is addressing. Schizophrenics commonly avoid the first and second person pronouns. They avoid telling you what sort of a message they are transmitting—whether it be literal or metaphoric, ironic or direct and they are likely to have difficulty with all messages and meaningful acts which imply intimate contact between the self and some other. To receive food may be almost impossible, but so also may be the repudiation of food.

When leaving for the A.P.A. meetings in Honolulu, I told my patient that I would be away and where I was going. He looked out the window and said, “That plane flies awfully slowly.” He could not say, “I shall miss you,” because he would thus be identifying himself in a relationship to me, or me in relationship to himself. To say, “I shall miss you” would be to assert a basic premise about our mutual relationship by defining the sorts of messages which should be characteristic of that relationship.

Observably, the schizophrenic avoids or distorts anything which might seem to identify either himself or the person whom he is addressing. He may eliminate anything which implies that his message refers to, and is a part of, a relationship between two identifiable people, with certain styles and premises governing their behavior in that relationship. He may avoid anything which might enable the other to interpret what he says. He may obscure the fact that he is speaking in metaphor or in some special code, and he is likely to distort or omit all reference to time and place. If we use a Western Union telegram form as an analogy, we might say that he omits what would be put on the procedural parts of the telegraph form and will modify the text of his message to distort or omit any indication of these metacommunicative elements in the total normal message. What remains is likely to be a metaphoric statement unlabelled as to context. Or, in extreme cases, there may be nothing left but a stolid acting out of the message, “There is no relationship between us.”

This much is observable and may be summarized by saying that the schizophrenic communicates as if he expected to be punished every time he indicates that he is right in his view of the context of his own message.

The “double bind,” which is central to the etiological half of our hypothesis, may now simply be summarized by saying that it is an experience of being punished precisely for being right in one’s own view of the context. Our hypothesis assumes that repeated experience of punishment in sequences of this kind will lead the individual to behave habitually as if he expected such punishment.

The mother of one of our patients poured out blame upon her husband for refusing for fifteen years to hand over control of the family finances to her. The father of the patient said, “I admit that it was a great mistake of me not to let you handle it, I admit that. I have corrected that. My reasons for thinking it was a mistake are entirely different from yours, but I admit that it was a very serious error on my part.”

Mother: Now, you’re just being facetious.

Father: No, I am not being facetious.

Mother: Well, anyway I don’t care because when you come right down to it the debts were incurred, still there is no reason why a person would not be told of them. I think the woman should be told.

Father: It may be the same reason why when Joe (their psychotic son) comes home from school and he has had trouble he doesn’t tell you.

Mother: Well, that’s a good dodge.

The pattern of such a sequence is simply the successive disqualification of each of the father’s contributions to the relationship. He is continuously being told that the messages are not valid. They are received as if they were in some way different from that which he thought he intended.

We may say that he is penalized either for being right about his views of his own intentions, or he is penalized whenever his reply is appropriate to what she said.

But, per contra, from her viewpoint, it seems that he is endlessly misinterpreting her, and this is one of the most peculiar characteristics of the dynamic system which surrounds—or is—schizophrenia. Every therapist who has dealt with schizophrenics will recognize the recurrent trap. The patient endeavors to put the therapist in the wrong by his interpretation of what the therapist said, and the patient does this because he expects the therapist to misinterpret what he (the patient) said. The bind becomes mutual. A stage is reached in the relationship in which neither person can afford to receive or emit metacommunicative messages without distortion.

There is, however, usually, an asymmetry in such relationships. This mutual doublebinding is a type of struggle and commonly one or the other has the upper hand. We have deliberately chosen to work with families where one of the offspring is the identified patient, and, partly for this reason, in our data, it is the supposedly normal parents who have the upper hand over an identifiably psychotic younger member of the group. In such cases, the asymmetry takes the curious form that the identified patient sacrifices himself to maintain the sacred illusion that what the parent says makes sense. To be close to that parent, he must sacrifice his right to indicate that he sees any metacommunicative incongruencies, even when his perception of these incongruencies is correct. There is, therefore, a curious disparity in the distribution of awareness of what is happening. The patient may know but must not tell, and thereby enables the parent to not know what he or she is doing. The patient is an accomplice in the parent’s unconscious hypocrisy. The result may be very great unhappiness and very gross, but always systematic, distortions of communication.

Moreover, these distortions are always precisely those which would seem appropriate when the victims are faced with a trap to avoid which would be to destroy the very nature of the self. This paradigm is neatly illustrated by a passage which is worth quoting in full from Festing Jones’ life of Samuel Butler. [49] Butler went to dinner at Mr. Seebohm’s where he met Skertchley, who told them about a rat-trap invented by Mr. Tylor’s coachman.

DUNKETT’S RAT-TRAP

Mr. Dunkett found all his traps fail one after another, and was in such despair at the way the corn got eaten that he resolved to invent a rat-trap. He began by putting himself as nearly as possible in the rat’s place.

“Is there anything,” he asked himself, “in which, if I were a rat, I should have such complete confidence that I could not suspect it without suspecting everything in the world and being unable henceforth to move fearlessly in any direction?” He pondered for a while and had no answer, till one night the room seemed to become full of light and he hears a voice from heaven saying:

“Drain-pipes.”

Then he saw his way. To suspect a common drain-pipe would be to cease to be a rat. Here Skertchley enlarged a little, explaining that a spring was to be concealed inside, but that the pipe was to be open at both ends; if the pipe were closed at one end, a rat would naturally not like going into it, for he would not feel sure of being able to get out again; on which I [Butler] interrupted and said:

“Ah, it was just this which stopped me from going into the Church.”

When he [Butler] told me this I [Jones] knew what was in his mind, and that, if he had not been in such respectable company, he would have said: “It was just this which stopped me from getting married.”

Notice that Dunkett could only invent this double bind for rats by way of an hallucinatory experience, and that both Butler and Jones immediately regarded the trap as a paradigm for human relations. Indeed, this sort of dilemma is not rare and is not confined to the contexts of schizophrenia.

The question which we must face, therefore, is why these sequences are either specially frequent or specially destructive in those families which contain schizophrenics. I do not have the statistics to assert this; however, from limited but intense observation of a few of these families, I can offer an hypothesis about the group dynamics which would determine a system of interaction, such that double bind experiences must recur ad nauseam. The problem is to construct a model which will necessarily cycle to recreate these patterned sequences over and over again.

Such a model is provided in Von Neumann’s and Morgenstern’s [50] theory of games, presented here not, indeed, with its full mathematical rigor, but at least in terms somewhat technical.

Von Neumann was concerned with mathematical study of the formal conditions under which entities, with total intelligence and a preference for gain, would form coalitions among themselves in order to maximize the profits which coalition members might receive at the expense of the non-members. He imagined these entities as engaged in something like a game and proceeded to ask about the formal characteristics of the rules which would compel the totally intelligent but gain-oriented players to form coalitions. A very curious conclusion emerged, and it is this conclusion which I would propose as a model.

Evidently, coalition between players can only emerge when there are at least three of them. Any two may then get together to exploit the third, and if such a game be symmetrically devised, it evidently has three solutions which we may represent as

AB vs. C

BC vs. A

AC vs. B


For this three-person system, Von Neumann demonstrates that once formed, any one of these coalitions will be stable. If A and B are in alliance, there is nothing C can do about it. And, interestingly enough, A and B will necessarily develop conventions (supplementary to the rules) which will, for example, forbid them from listening to C’s approaches.

In the five-person game, the position becomes quite different; there will be a variety of possibilities. It may be that four players contemplate a combination against one, illustrated in the following five patterns:

A vs. BCDE

B vs. ACDE

C vs. ABDE

D vs. ABCE

E vs. ABCD


But none of these would be stable. The four players within the coalition must, necessarily, engage in a subgame in which they maneuver against each other to achieve an unequal division of the gains which the coalition could squeeze out of the fifth player. This must lead to a coalition pattern which we may describe as 2 vs. 2 vs. 1, i.e., BC vs. DE vs. A. In such a situation, it would become possible for A to approach and join one of these pairs, so that the coalition system will become 3 vs. 2.

But in the system 3 vs. 2, it would be advantageous for the three to recruit over to their side one of the two, in order to make their gains more certain. Now we are back to a 4 vs. 1 system—not necessarily the particular line-up that we started from but at any rate a system having the same general properties. It, in turn, must break down into 2 vs. 2 vs. 1, and so on.

In other words, for every possible pattern of coalitions, there is at least one other pattern which will “dominate” it—to use Von Neumann’s term—and the relationship of domination between solutions is intransitive. There will always be a circular list of alternative solutions so that the system will never cease from passing on from solution to solution, always selecting another solution which is preferable to that which preceded it. This means, in fact, that the robots (owing to their total intelligence) will be unable to decide upon a single “play” of the game.

I offer this model as being reminiscent of what happens in schizophrenic families. No two members seem able to get together in a coalition stable enough to be decisive at the given moment. Some other member or members of the family will always intervene. Or, lacking such intervention, the two members who contemplate a coalition will feel guilty vis-a-vis what the third might do or say, and will draw back from the coalition.

Notice that it takes five hypothetical entities with total intelligence to achieve this particular sort of instability or oscillation in a Von Neumannian game. But three human beings seem to be enough. Perhaps they are not totally intelligent or perhaps they are systematically inconsistent regarding the sort of “gain” in terms of which they are motivated.

I want to stress that in such a system, the experience of each separate individual will be of this kind: every move which he makes is the common-sense move in the situation as he correctly sees it at that moment, but his every move is subsequently demonstrated to have been wrong by the moves which other members of the system make in response to his “right” move. The individual is thus caught in a perpetual sequence of what we have called double bind experiences.

I do not know how valid this model may be, but I offer it for two reasons. First, it is proposed as a sample of trying to talk about the larger system—the family— instead of talking, as we habitually do, about the individual. If we are to understand the dynamics of schizophrenia, we must devise a language adequate to the phenomena which are emergent in this larger system. Even if my model is inappropriate, it is still worthwhile to try to talk in the sort of language which we shall need for describing these emergent phenomena. Secondly, conceptual models, even when incorrect, are useful to the extent that criticism of the model may point to new theoretical developments.

Let me, therefore, point out one criticism of this model, and consider to what ideas it will lead. There is no theorem in Von Neumann’s book which would indicate that his entities or robots, engaged in this infinite dance of changing coalitions, would ever become schizophrenic. According to the abstract theory, the entities simply remain totally intelligent ad infinitum.

Now, the major difference between people and von Neumann’s robots lies in the fact of learning. To be infinitely intelligent implies to be infinitely flexible, and the players in the dance which I have described could never experience the pain which human beings would feel if continually proven wrong whenever they had been wise. Human beings have a commitment to the solutions which they discover, and it is this psychological commitment that makes it possible for them to be hurt in the way members of a schizophrenic family are hurt.

It appears then, from consideration of the model, that the double bind hypothesis, to be explanatory of schizophrenia, must depend upon certain psychological assumptions about the nature of the human individual as a learning organism. For the individual to be prone to schizophrenia, individuation must comprise two contrasting psychological mechanisms. The first is a mechanism of adaptation to demands of the personal environment; and the second, a process or mechanism whereby the individual becomes either briefly or enduringly committed to the adaptations which the first process has discovered.

I think that what l am calling a brief commitment to an adaptation is what Bertalanffy called the immanent state of action; and that the more enduring commitment to adaptation is simply what we usually call “habit.”

What is a person? What do I mean when I say “I?” Perhaps what each of us means by the “self” is in fact an aggregate of habits of perception and adaptive action plus, from moment to moment, our “immanent states of action.” If somebody attacks the habits and immanent states which characterize me at the given moment of dealing with that somebody—that is, if they attack the very habits and immanent states which have been called into being as part of my relationship to them at that moment—they are negating me. If I care deeply about that other person, the negation of me will be still more painful.

What we have said so far is enough to indicate the sorts of strategy—or perhaps we should say symptoms—which are to be expected in that strange institution, the schizophrenic family. But it is still surprising to observe how these strategies may be continually and habitually practiced without friends and neighbors noticing that something is wrong. From theory we may predict that every participant member of such an institution must be defensive of his or her own immanent states of action and enduring adaptive habits; protective, that is, of the self.

To illustrate with one example: a colleague had been working for some weeks with one of these families, particularly with the father, the mother, and their adult schizophrenic son. His meetings were on the conjoint pattern—the members of the family being present together. This apparently provoked some anxiety in the mother and she requested face-to-face interviews with me. This move was discussed at the next conjoint meeting and in due course she came to her first session. Upon arrival she made a couple of conversational remarks, and then opened her purse and from it handed me a piece of paper, saying, “It seems my husband wrote this.” I unfolded the paper and found it to be a single sheet of single-spaced typescript, starting with the words, “My husband and I much appreciate the opportunity of discussing our problems with you,” etc. The document then went on to outline certain specific questions which “I would like to raise.

It appeared that the husband had, in fact, sat down at his typewriter the night before and had written this letter to me as though it were written by his wife, and in it he outlined the questions for her to discuss with me.

In normal daily life this sort of thing is common enough; it passes muster. When attention is focused upon the characteristic strategies, however, these self-protecting and self-destroying maneuvers become conspicuous. One suddenly discovers that in such families these strategies seem to predominate over all others. It becomes hardly surprising that the identified patient exhibits behavior which is almost a caricature of that loss of identity which is characteristic of all the family members.

I believe that this is the essence of the matter, that the schizophrenic family is an organization with great ongoing stability whose dynamics and inner workings are such that each member is continually undergoing the experience of negation of self.

Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia [51]


Every science, like every person, has a duty toward its neighbors, not perhaps to love them as itself, but still to lend them its tools, to borrow tools from them, and, generally, to keep the neighboring sciences straight. We may perhaps judge of the importance of an advance in any one science in terms of the changes which this advance compels the neighboring sciences to make in their methods and in their thinking. But always there is the rule of parsimony. The changes which we in the behavioral sciences may ask for in genetics, or in philosophy, or in information theory must always be minimal. The unity of science as a whole is achieved by this system of minimal demands imposed by each science upon its neighbors, and—not a little—by the lending of conceptual tools and patterns which occurs among the various sciences.

My purpose, therefore, in the present lecture is not so much to discuss the particular theory of schizophrenia which we have been developing at Palo Alto. Rather, I want to indicate to you that this theory and others like it have impact upon ideas about the very nature of explanation. I have used the title “Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia,” and what I had in mind in choosing this title was a discussion of the implications of the double bind theory for the wider field of behavioral science and even, beyond that, its effect upon evolutionary theory and biological epistemology. What minimal changes does this theory demand in related sciences?

I want to deal with questions about the impact of an experiential theory of schizophrenia upon that triad of related sciences, learning theory, genetics, and evolution.

The hypothesis may first be briefly described. In its essentials, the idea appeals only to everyday experience, and elementary common sense. The first proposition from which the hypothesis is derived is that learning occurs always in some context which has formal characteristics. You may think, if you will, of the formal characteristics of an instrumental avoidance sequence, or of the formal characteristics of a Pavlovian experiment. To learn to lift a paw in a Pavlovian context is different from learning the same action in a context of instrumental reward.

Further, the hypothesis depends upon the idea that this structured context also occurs within a wider context—a metacontext if you will—and that this sequence of contexts is an open, and conceivably infinite, series. The hypothesis also assumes that what occurs within the narrow context (e.g., instrumental avoidance) will be affected by the wider context within which this smaller one has its being. There may be incongruence or conflict between context and metacontext. A context of Pavlovian learning may, for example, be set within a metacontext which would punish learning of this kind, perhaps by insisting upon insight. The organism is then faced with the dilemma either of being wrong in the primary context or of being right for the wrong reasons or in a wrong way. This is the so-called double bind. We are investigating the hypothesis that schizophrenic communication is learned and becomes habitual as a result of continual traumata of this kind.

That is all there is to it.

But even these “common-sense” assumptions break away from the classical rules of scientific epistemology. We have learned from the paradigm of the freely falling body—and from many similar paradigms in many other sciences—to approach scientific problems in a peculiar way: the problems are to be simplified by ignoring— or postponing consideration of—the possibility that the larger context may influence the smaller. Our hypothesis runs counter to this rule, and is focused precisely upon the determining relations between larger and smaller contexts.

Even more shocking is the fact that our hypothesis suggests —but does not stand or fall with the suggestion—that there may be an infinite regress of such relevant contexts.

In all of this, the hypothesis requires and reinforces that revision in scientific thought which has been occurring in many fields, from physics to biology. The observer must be included within the focus of observation, and what can be studied is always a relationship or an infinite regress of relationships. Never a “thing.”

An example will make clear the relevance of the larger contexts. Let us consider the larger context within which a learning experiment might be conducted using a schizophrenic as a subject. The schizophrenic is what is called a patient, vis-a-vis a member of a superior and unloved organization, the hospital staff. If the patient were a good pragmatic Newtonian, he would be able to say to himself: “The cigarettes which I can get by doing what this fellow expects me to do are after all only cigarettes, and as an applied scientist I will go ahead and do what he wants me to do. I will solve the experimental problem and obtain the cigarettes.” But human beings, and especially schizophrenics, do not always see the matter this way. They are affected by the circumstance that the experiment is being conducted by somebody whom they would rather not please. They may even feel that there would be a certain shamelessness about seeking to please some one whom they dislike. It thus comes about that the sign of the signal which the experimenter emits, giving or withholding cigarettes, is reversed. What the experimenter thought was a reward turns out to be a message of partial indignity, and what the experimenter thought was a punishment becomes in part a source of satisfaction.

Consider the acute pain of the mental patient in a large hospital who is momentarily treated as a human being by a member of the staff.

To explain the observed phenomena we always have to consider the wider context of the learning experiment, and every transaction between persons is a context of learning.

The double bind hypothesis, then, depends upon attributing certain characteristics to the learning process. If this hypothesis is even approximately true, room must be made for it within the theory of learning. In particular, learning theory must be made discontinuous so as to accommodate the discontinuities of the hierarchy of the contexts of learning to which I have referred.

Moreover, these discontinuities are of a peculiar nature. I have said that the larger context may change the sign of the reinforcement proposed by a given message, and evidently the larger context may also change the mode—may place the message in the category of humor, metaphor, etc. The setting may make the message inappropriate. The message may be out of tune with the larger context, and so on. But there are limits to these modifications. The context may tell the recipient anything about the message, but it cannot ever destroy or directly contradict the latter. “I was lying when I said `The cat is on the mat’ “ tells the vis-a-vis nothing about the location of the cat. It tells him only something about the reliability of his previous information. There is a gulf between context and message (or between metamessage and message) which is of the same nature as the gulf between a thing and the word or sign which stands for it, or between the members of a class and the name of the class. The context (or metamessage) classifies the message, but can never meet it on equal terms.

In order to fit these discontinuities into learning theory, it is necessary to enlarge the scope of what is to be included within the concept of learning. What the experimenters have described as “learning” are in general changes in what an organism does in response to a given signal. The experimenter observes, for example, that at first the buzzer evokes no regular response, but that after repeated trials in which the buzzer has been followed by meat powder, the animal will begin to salivate whenever it hears the buzzer. We may say loosely that the animal has begun to attach significance or meaning to the buzzer.

A change has occurred. In order to construct a hierarchic series, we pick on the word “change.” Series such as we are interested in are in general built in two ways. Within the field of pure communications theory, the steps of an hierarchic series may be constructed by successive use of the word “about,” or “meta.” Our hierarchic series will then consist of message, metamessage, meta-metamessage, and so on. Where we deal with phenomena marginal to communications theory, similar hierarchies may be constructed by the piling up of “change” upon “change.” In classical physics, the sequence: position; velocity (i.e., change in position); acceleration (i.e., change in velocity or change in change of position); change of acceleration, etc., is an example of such a hierarchy.

Further complications are added—rarely in classical physics but commonly in human communication—by noting that messages may be about (or “meta” to) the relationship between messages of different levels. The smell of the experimental harness may tell the dog that the buzzer will mean meat powder. We will then say that the message of the harness is meta to the message of the buzzer. But in human relations another sort of complexity may be generated; e.g., messages may be emitted forbidding the subject to make the meta connection. An alcoholic parent may punish a child for showing that he knows that he should look out for storms whenever the parent gets the bottle out of the cupboard. The hierarchy of messages and contexts thus becomes a complex branching structure.

So we can construct a similar hierarchic classification within learning theory in substantially the same way as the physicists. What the experimenters have investigated is change in the receipt of a signal. But, clearly, to receive a signal already denotes change—a change of a simpler or lower order than that which the experimenters have investigated. This gives us the two first steps in a hierarchy of learning, and above these an infinite series can be imagined. This hierarchy [52] can now be laid out as follows:

(1) The Receipt of a Signal I am working at my desk on which there is a paper bag, containing my lunch. I hear the hospital whistle, and from this I know that it is twelve o’clock. I reach out and take my lunch. The whistle may be regarded as an answer to a question laid down in my mind by previous learning of the second order; but the single event—the receiving of this piece of information—is a piece of learning, and is demonstrated to be so by the fact that having received it, I am now changed and respond in a special way to the paper bag.

(2) Those Learnings Which Are Changes in (1) These are exemplified by the classical learning experiments of various kinds: Pavlovian, instrumental reward, instrumental avoidance, rote, and so on.

(3) Those Learnings Which Constitute Changes in Second-Order Learning I have in the past, unfortunately, called these phenomena “deutero-learning,” and have translated this as “learning to learn.” It would have been more correct to coin the word tritolearning and to translate it as “learning to learn to receive signals.” These are the phenomena in which the psychiatrist is preponderantly interested, namely, the changes whereby an individual comes to expect his world to be structured in one way rather than another. These are the phenomena which underlie “transference”— the expectation on a patient’s part that the relationship with the therapist will contain the same sorts of contexts of learning that the patient has previously met with in dealing with his parents.

(4) Changes in Those Processes of Change Referred to in (3) Whether learning of this fourth order occurs in human beings is unknown. What the psychotherapist attempts to produce in his patient is usually a third-order learning, but it is possible, and certainly conceivable, that some of the slow and unconscious changes may be shifts in sign of some higher derivative in the learning process.


At this point it is necessary to compare three types of hierarchy with which we are faced: (a) the hierarchy of orders of learning; (b) the hierarchy of contexts of learning, and (c) hierarchies of circuit structure which we may—indeed, must— expect to find in a telencephalized brain.

It is my contention that (a) and (b) are synonymous in the sense that all statements made in terms of contexts of learning could be translated (without loss or gain) into statements in terms of orders of learning, and, further, that the classification or hierarchy of contexts must be isomorphic with the classification or hierarchy of orders of learning. Beyond this, I believe that we should look forward to a classification or hierarchy of neurophysiological structures which will be isomorphic with the other two classifications.

This synonymy between statements about context and statements about orders of learning seems to me to be self-evident, but experience shows that it must be spelled out. “The truth cannot be said so as to be understood, and not be believed,” but, conversely, it cannot be believed until it is said so as to be understood.

It is necessary first to insist that in the world of communication the only relevant entities or “realities” are messages, including in this term parts of messages, relations between messages, significant gaps in messages, and so on. The perception of an event or object or relation is real. It is a neurophysiological message. But the ‘event itself or the object itself cannot enter this world and is, therefore, irrelevant and, to that extent, unreal. Conversely, a message has no reality or relevance qua message, in the Newtonian world: it there is reduced to sound waves or printer’s ink.

By the same token, the “contexts” and “contexts of contexts” upon which I am insisting are only real or relevant insofar as they are communicationally effective, i.e., function as messages or modifiers of messages.

The difference between the Newtonian world and the world of communication is simply this: that the Newtonian world ascribes reality to objects and achieves its simplicity by excluding the context of the context—excluding indeed all metarelationships—a fortiori excluding an infinite regress of such relations. In contrast, the theorist of communication insists upon examining the metarelationships while achieving its simplicity by excluding all objects.

This world, of communication, is a Berkeleyan world, but the good bishop was guilty of understatement. Relevance or reality must be denied not only to the sound of the tree which falls unheard in the forest but also to this chair which I can see and on which I am sitting. My perception of the chair is communicationally real, and that on which I sit is, for me, only an idea, a message in which I put my trust.

“In my thought, one thing is as good as another in this world, and the shoe of a horse will do,” because in thought and in experience there are no things, but only messages and the like.

In this world, indeed, I, as a material object, have no relevance and, in this sense, no reality. “I,” however, exist in the communicational world as an essential element in the syntax of my experience and in the experience of others, and the communications of others may damage my identity, even to the point of breaking up the organization of my experience.

Perhaps one day, an ultimate synthesis will be achieved to combine the Newtonian and the communicational worlds. But that is not the purpose of the present discussion. Here I am concerned to make clear the relation between the contexts and the orders of learning, and to do this it was first necessary to bring into focus the difference between Newtonian and communicational discourse.

With this introductory statement, however, it becomes clear that the separation between contexts and orders of learning is only an artifact of the contrast between these two sorts of discourse. The separation is only maintained by saying that the contexts have location outside the physical individual, while the orders of learning are located inside. But in the communicational world, this dichotomy is irrelevant and meaningless. The contexts have communicational reality only insofar as they are effective as messages, i.e., insofar as they are represented or reflected (correctly or with distortion) in multiple parts of the communicational system which we are studying; and this system is not the physical individual but a wide network of pathways of messages. Some of these pathways happen to be located outside the physical individual, others inside; but the characteristics of the system are in no way dependent upon any boundary lines which we may superpose upon the communicational map. It is not communicationally meaningful to ask whether the blind man’s stick or the scientist’s microscope are “parts” of the man who uses them. Both stick and microscope are important pathways of communication and, as such, are parts of the network in which we are interested; but no boundary line—e.g., halfway up the stick—can be relevant in a description of the topology of this net.

However, this discarding of the boundary of the physical individual does not imply (as some might fear) that communicational discourse is necessarily chaotic. On the contrary, the proposed hierarchic classification of learning and/or context is an ordering of what to the Newtonian looks like chaos, and it is this ordering that is demanded by the double-bind hypothesis.

Man must be the sort of animal whose learning is characterized by hierarchic discontinuities of this sort, else he could not become schizophrenic under the frustrations of the double bind.

On the evidential side, there is beginning to be a body of experiment demonstrating the reality of third-order learning [53]; but on the precise point of discontinuity between these orders of learning there is, so far as I know, very little evidence. The experiments of John Stroud are worth quoting. These were tracking experiments. The subject is faced with a screen on which a spot moves to represent a moving target. A second spot, representing the aim of a gun, can be controlled by the subject, who operates a pair of knobs. The subject is challenged to maintain coincidence between the target spot and the spot over which he has control. In such an experiment the target can be given various sorts of motion, characterized by second-, third-, or higher-order derivatives. Stroud showed that, as there is a discontinuity in the orders of the equations which a mathematician might use to describe the movements of the target spot, so also there is a discontinuity in the learning of the experimental subject. It is as if a new learning process were involved with each step to a higher order of complexity in the movement of the target.

It is to me fascinating to find that what one had supposed was a pure artifact of mathematical description is also apparently an inbuilt characteristic of the human brain, in spite of the fact that this brain certainly does not operate by means of mathematical equations in such a task.

There is also evidence of a more general nature which would support the notion of discontinuity between the orders of learning. There is, for example, the curious fact that psychologists have not habitually regarded what I call learning of the first order, the receipt of a meaningful signal, as learning at all; and the other curious fact, that psychologists have until recently shown very little appreciation of that third order of learning, in which the psychiatrist is predominantly interested. There is a formidable gulf between the thinking of the experimental psychologist and the thinking of the psychiatrist or anthropologist. This gulf I believe to be due to the discontinuity in the hierarchic structure.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:24 am

Part 5 of 8

Learning, Genetics, and Evolution

Before we consider the impact of the double bind hypothesis upon genetics and evolutionary theory, it is necessary to examine the relationship between theories of learning and these two other bodies of knowledge. I referred earlier to the three subjects together as a triad. The structure of this triad we must now consider.

Genetics, which covers the communicational phenomena of variation, differentiation, growth, and heredity, is commonly recognized as the very stuff of which evolutionary theory is made. The Darwinian theory, when purged of Lamarckian ideas, consisted of a genetics in which variation was presumed to be random, combined with a theory of natural selection would impart adaptive direction to the accumulation of changes. But the relation between learning and this theory has been a matter of violent controversy which has raged over the so-called “inheritance of acquired characteristics.”

Darwin’s position was acutely challenged by Samuel Butler, who argued that heredity should be compared with—even identified with—memory. Butler proceeded from this premise to argue that the processes of evolutionary change, and especially adaptation, should be regarded as the achievements of a deep cunning in the ongoing flow of life, not as fortuitous bonuses conferred by luck. He drew a close analogy between the phenomena of invention and the phenomena of evolutionary adaptation, and was perhaps the first to point out the existence of residual organs in machines. The curious homology whereby the engine is located in the front of an automobile, where the horse used to be, would have delighted him. He also argued very cogently that there is a process whereby the newer inventions of adaptive behavior are sunk deeper into the biological system of the organism. From planned and conscious actions they become habits, and the habits become less and less conscious and less and less subject to voluntary control. He assumed, without evidence, that this habitualization, or sinking process, could go so deep as to contribute to the body of memories, which we would call the genotype, and which determine the characteristics of the next generation.

The controversy about the inheritance of acquired characteristics has two facets. On the one hand, it appears to be an argument which could be settled by factual material. One good case of such inheritance might settle the matter for the Lamarckian side. But the case against such inheritance, being negative, can never be proved by evidence and must rely upon an appeal to theory. Usually those who take the negative view argue from the separation between germ plasm and somatic tissue, urging that there can be no systematic communication from the soma to the germ plasm in the light of which the genotype might revise itself.

The difficulty looks like this: conceivably a biceps muscle modified by use or disuse might secrete specific metabolites into the circulation, and these might conceivably serve as chemical messengers from muscle to gonad. But (a) it is difficult to believe that the chemistry of biceps is so different from that of, say, triceps that the message could be specific, and (b) it is difficult to believe that the gonad tissue could be equipped to be appropriately affected by such messages. After all, the receiver of any message must know the code of the sender, so that if the germ cells are able to receive the messages from the somatic tissue, they must already be carrying some version of the somatic code. The directions which evolutionary change could take with the aid of such messages from the soma would have to be prefigured in the germ plasm.

The case against the inheritance of acquired characteristics thus rests upon a separation, and the difference between the schools of thought crystallizes around philosophic reactions to such a separation. Those who are willing to think of the world as organized upon multiple and separable principles will accept the notion that somatic changes induced by environment may be covered by an explanation which could be totally separate from the explanation of evolutionary change. But those who prefer to see a unity in nature will hope that these two bodies of explanation can somehow be interrelated.

Moreover, the whole relationship between learning and evolution has undergone a curious change since the days when Butler maintained that evolution was a matter of cunning rather than luck, and the change which has taken place is certainly one which neither Darwin nor Butler could have foreseen. What. has happened is that many theorists now assume learning to be fundamentally a stochastic or probabilistic affair, and indeed, apart from nonparsimonious theories which would postulate some entelechy at the console of the mind, the stochastic approach is perhaps the only organized theory of the nature of learning. The notion is that random changes occur, in the brain or elsewhere, and that the results of such random change are selected for survival by processes of reinforcement and extinction. In basic theory, creative thought has come to resemble the evolutionary process in its fundamentally stochastic nature. Reinforcement is seen as giving direction to the accumulation of random changes of the neural system, just as natural selection is seen as giving direction to the accumulation of random changes of variation.

In both the theory of evolution and the theory of learning, however, the word “random” is conspicuously undefined, and the word is not an easy one to define. In both fields, it is assumed that while change may be dependent upon probabilistic phenomena, the probability of a given change is determined by something different from probability. Underlying both the stochastic theory of evolution and that of learning, there are unstated theories regarding the determinants of the probabilities in question. [54] If, however, we ask about change in these determinants, we shall again be given stochastic answers, so that the word “random,” upon which all of these explanations turn, appears to be a word whose meaning is hierarchically structured, like the meaning of the word “learning,” which was discussed in the first part of this lecture.

Lastly, the question of the evolutionary function of acquired characteristics has been reopened by Waddington’s work on phenocopies in Drosophila. At the very least, this work indicates that the changes of phenotype which can be achieved by the organism under environmental stress are a very important part of the machinery by which the species or hereditary line maintains its place in a stressful and competitive environment, pending the later appearance of some mutation or other genetic change which may make the species or line better able to deal with the ongoing stress. In this sense at least, the acquired characteristics have important evolutionary function. However, the actual experimental story indicates something more than this and is worth reproducing briefly.

What Waddington works with is a phenocopy of the phenotype brought about by the gene bithorax. This gene has very profound effects upon the adult phenotype. In its presence the third segment of the thorax is modified to resemble the second, and the little balancing organs, or halteres, on this third segment become wings. The result is a four-winged fly. This four-winged characteristic can be produced artificially in flies which do not carry the gene bithorax by subjecting the pupae to a period of intoxication with ethyl ether. Waddington works with large populations of Drosophila flies derived from a wild strain believed to be free of the gene bithorax. He subjects the pupae of this population in successive generations to the ether treatment, and from the resulting adults selects for breeding those which show the best approximation to bithorax. He has continued this experiment over many generations, and already in the twenty-seventh generation he finds that the bithorax appearance is achieved by a limited number of flies whose pupae were withdrawn from the experimental treatment and not subjected to ether. Upon breeding from these, it turns out that their bithorax appearance is not due to the presence of the specific gene, bithorax, but is due to a constellation of genes which work together to give this effect.

These very striking results can be read in various ways. We can say that in selecting the best phenocopies, Waddington was in fact selecting for a genetic potentiality for achieving this phenotype. Or we can say that he was selecting to reduce the threshold of ether stress necessary to produce this result.

Let me suggest a possible model for the description of these phenomena. Let us suppose that the acquired characteristic is achieved by some process of fundamentally stochastic nature—perhaps some sort of somatic learning—and the mere fact that Waddington is able to select the “best” phenocopies would lend support to this assumption. Now, it is evident that any such process is, in the nature of the case, wasteful. To achieve a result by trial and error which could have been achieved in any more direct way necessarily consumes time and effort in some sense of these words. Insofar as we think of adaptability as achieved by stochastic process, we let in the notion of an economics of adaptability.

In the field of mental process, we are very familiar with this sort of economics, and in fact a major and necessary saving is achieved by the familiar process of habit formation. We may, in the first instance, solve a given problem by trial and error; but when similar problems recur later, we tend to deal with them more and more economically by taking them out of the range of stochastic operation and handing over the solutions to a deeper and less flexible mechanism, which we call “habit.” It is, therefore, perfectly conceivable that some analogous phenomenon may obtain in regard to the production of bithorax characteristics. It may be more economical to produce these by the rigid mechanism of genetic determination rather than by the more wasteful, more flexible (and perhaps less predictable) method of somatic change.

This would mean that in Waddington’s population of flies there would be a selective benefit for any hereditary line of flies which might contain appropriate genes for the whole—or for some part—of the bithorax phenotype. It is also possible that such flies would have an extra advantage in that their somatic adaptive machinery might then be available for dealing with stresses of other kinds. It would appear that in learning, when the solution of the given problem has been passed on to habit, the stochastic or exploratory mechanisms are set free for the solution of other problems, and it is quite conceivable that a similar advantage is achieved by passing on the business of determining a somatic characteristic to the genescript. [55]

It may be noted that such a model would be characterized by two stochastic mechanisms: first, the more superficial mechanism by which the changes are achieved at the somatic level, and, second, the stochastic mechanism of mutation (or the shuffling of gene constellations) at the chromosomal level. These two stochastic systems will, in the long run under selective conditions, be compelled to work together, even though no message can pass from the more superficial somatic system to the germ plasm. Samuel Butler’s hunch that something like “habit” might be crucial in evolution was perhaps not too wide of the mark.

With this introduction we can now proceed to look at the problems which a double bind theory of schizophrenia would pose for the geneticist.

Genetic Problems Posed by Double Bind Theory

If schizophrenia be a modification or distortion of the learning process, then when we ask about the genetics of schizophrenia, we cannot be content just with genealogies upon which we discriminate some individuals who have been committed to hospitals, and others who have not. There is no a priori expectation that these distortions of the learning process, which are highly formal and abstract in their nature, will necessarily appear with that appropriate content which would result in hospital commitment. Our task as geneticists will not be the simple one upon which the Mendelians concentrated, assuming a one-to-one relation between phenotype and genotype. We cannot simply assume that the hospitalized members carry a gene for schizophrenia and that the others do not. Rather, we have to expect that several genes or constellations of genes will alter patterns and potentialities in the learning process, and that certain of the resultant patterns, when confronted by appropriate forms of environmental stress, will lead to overt schizophrenia.

In the most general terms, any learning, be it the absorption of one bit of information or a basic change in the character structure of the whole organism, is, from the point of view of genetics, the acquisition of an “acquired characteristic.” It is a change in the phenotype, of which that phenotype was capable thanks to a whole chain of physiologic and embryologic processes which lead back to the genotype. Every step in this backward leading series may (conceivably) be modified or interrupted by environmental impacts; but, of course, many of the steps will be rigid in the sense that environmental impact at that point would destroy the organism. We are concerned only with those points in the hierarchy at which environment can take effect and the organism still be viable. How many such points there may be we are far from knowing. And ultimately, when we reach the genotype, we are concerned to know whether the genotypic elements in which we are interested are or are not variable. Do differences occur from genotype to genotype which will affect the modifiability of the processes leading to the phenotypic behaviors which we observe?

In the case of schizophrenia we deal evidently with a relatively long and complex hierarchy; and the natural history of the disease indicates that the hierarchy is not merely a chain of causes and effects from gene-script to phenotype, which chain becomes at certain points conditional upon environmental factors. Rather, it seems that in schizophrenia the enviromental factors themselves are likely to be modified by the subject’s behavior whenever behavior related to schizophrenia starts to appear.

To illustrate these complexities, it is perhaps worthwhile to consider for a moment the genetic problems presented by other forms of communicational behavior—humor, mathematical skill, or musical composition. Perhaps in all these cases, there are considerable genetic differences between individuals in those factors which make for an ability to acquire the appropriate skills. But the skills themselves and their particular expression also depend largely upon environmental circumstances and even upon specific training. In addition, however, to these two components of the situation, there is the fact that the individual who shows ability, e.g., in musical composition, is likely to mold his environment in a direction which will favor his developing his ability, and that he will, in turn, create an environment for others which will favor their development in the same direction.

In the case of humor, the situation may even be one degree more complicated. It is not clear that in this case the relationship between humorist and his human environment will necessarily be symmetrical. Granted that in some cases the humorist promotes humor in others, in many other cases there occurs the well-known complementary relationship between humorist and “straight” man. Indeed, the humorist, insofar as he hogs the center of the stage, may reduce others to the position of receiving humor but not themselves contributing.

These considerations can be applied unchanged to the problem of schizophrenia. Anybody watching the transactions which occur between the members of a family containing an identified schizophrenic will perceive immediately that the symptomatic behavior of the identified patient fits with this environment and, indeed, promotes in the other members those characteristics which evoke the schizophrenic behavior. Thus, in addition to the two stochastic mechanisms outlined in the previous section, we now face a third, namely the mechanism of those changes whereby the family, perhaps gradually, becomes organized (i.e., limits the behaviors of the component individuals) in such a way as to fit the schizophrenia.

A question which is frequently asked is this: “If this family is schizophrenogenic, how does it happen that all of the siblings are not diagnosable as schizophrenic patients?” Here it is necessary to insist that the family, like any other organization, creates and depends upon differentiation among its members. As in many organizations, there is room only for one boss, in spite of the fact that the organization operates upon those premises which would induce administrative skill and ambition in its members; so also in the schizophrenogenic family there may be room for only one schizophrenic. The case of the humorist is quite comparable. The organization of the Marx family, which could create four professional humorists, must have been quite exceptional. More usually one such individual would suffice to reduce the others to more commonplace behavioral roles. Genetics may play a role in deciding which of several siblings shall be the schizophrenic—or which shall be the clown—but it is by no means clear that such hereditary factors could completely determine the evolution or roles within the family organization.

A second question—to which we have no final answer—concerns the degree of schizophrenia (genetic and/or acquired) which must be assigned to the schizophrenogenic parent. Let me, for purposes of the present inquiry, define two degrees of schizophrenic symptomatology, and note that the so-called “psychotic break” sometimes divides these two degrees.

The more serious and conspicuous degree of symptomatology is what is conventionally called schizophrenia. I will call it “overt schizophrenia.” The persons so afflicted behave in ways which are grossly deviant from the cultural-environment. In particular, their behavior seems characterized by conspicuous or exaggerated errors and distortions regarding the nature and typing of their own messages (internal and external), and of the messages which they receive from others. Imagination is seemingly confused with perception. The literal is confused with the metaphoric. Internal messages are confused with external. The trivial is confused with the vital. The originator of the message is confused with the recipient and the perceiver with the thing perceived. And so on. In general, these distortions boil down to this: that the patient behaves in such a way that he shall be responsible for no metacommunicative aspect of his messages. He does this, moreover, in a manner which makes his condition conspicuous: in some cases, flooding the environment with messages whose logical typing is either totally obscure or misleading; in other cases, overtly withdrawing to such a point that he commits himself to no overt message.

In the “covert” case the behavior of the identified patient is similarly but less conspicuously characterized by a continual changing of the logical typing of his or her messages, and a tendency to respond to the messages of others (especially to those of other family members) as though these were of logical type, different from that which the speaker intended. In this system of behavior the messages of the vis-a-vis are continually disqualified, either by indicating that they are inappropriate replies to what the covert schizophrenic has said or by indicating that they are the product of some fault in the character or motivation of the speaker. Moreover, this destructive behavior is in general maintained in such a way as to be undetected. So long as the covert schizophrenic can succeed in putting the other in the wrong, his or her pathology is obscured and the blame falls elsewhere. There is some evidence that these persons fear collapse into overt schizophrenia when faced by circumstances which would force them to recognize the pattern of their operations. They will even use the threat, “You are driving me crazy,” as a defense of their position.

What I am here calling covert schizophrenia is characteristic of the parents of schizophrenics in the families which we have studied. This behavior, when it occurs in the mother, has been extensively caricatured; so I shall use here an example of which the central figure is the father. Mr. and Mrs. P. had been married some eighteen years and have a near-hebephrenic son of sixteen. Their marriage is difficult and is characterized by almost continual hostility. However, she is a keen gardener, and on a certain Sunday afternoon they worked together planting roses in what was to be her rose garden. She recalls that this was an unusually pleasant occasion. On Monday morning, the husband went to work as usual, and while he was gone Mrs. P. received a phone call from a complete stranger inquiring, rather apologetically, when Mrs. P. was going to leave the house. This came as somewhat of a surprise. She did not know that from her husband’s point of view the messages of shared work on the rose garden were framed within the larger context of his having agreed during the previous week to sell the house.

In some cases, it almost looks as though the overt schizophrenic were a caricature of the covert.

If we assume that both the grossly schizophrenic symptoms of the identified patient and the “covert schizophrenia” of the parents are in part determined by genetic factors, i.e., that, given the appropriate experiential setting, genetics in some degree renders the patient more liable to develop these particular patterns of behavior, then we have to ask how these two degrees of pathology might be related in a genetic theory.

Certainly, no answer to this question is at present available, but it is clearly possible we here face two quite distinct problems. In the case of the overt schizophrenic, the geneticist will have to identify those formal characteristics of the patient which will render him more likely to be driven to a psychotic break by the covertly inconsistent behavior of his parents (or by this in conjunction and contrast with the more consistent behavior of people outside the family). It is too early to make a specific guess at these characteristics, but we may reasonably assume that they would include some sort of rigidity. Perhaps the person prone to overt schizophrenia would be characterized by some extra strength of psychological commitment to the status quo as he at the moment sees it, which commitment would be hurt or frustrated by the parents’ rapid shifts of frame and context. Or perhaps this patient might be characterized by the high value of some parameter determining the relationship between problem solving and habit formation. Perhaps it is the person who too readily hands over the solutions to habit who is hurt by those changes in context which invalidate his solutions just at the moment when he has incorporated them into his habit structure.

In the case of covert schizophrenia, the problem for the geneticist will be different. He will have to identify those formal characteristics which we observe in the parents of the schizophrenic. Here what is required would seem to be a flexibility rather than a rigidity. But, having had some experience in dealing with these people, ‘I must confess to feeling that they are rigidly committed to their patterns of inconsistency.

Whether the two questions which the geneticist must answer can simply be lumped together by regarding the covert patterns as merely a milder version of the overt, or can be brought under a single head by suggesting that in some sense the same rigidity operates at different levels in the two cases, I do not know.

Be that as it may, the difficulties which we here face are entirely characteristic of any attempt to find a genetic base for any behavioral characteristic. Notoriously, the sign of any message or behavior is subject to reversal, and this generalization is one of the most important. contributions of psycho-analysis, to our thinking. If we find that a sexual exhibitionist is the child of a prudish parent, are we justified in going to the geneticist to ask him to trace out the genetics of some basic characteristic which will find its phenotypic expression both in the prudishness of the parent and in the exhibitionism of the offspring? The phenomena of suppression and overcompensation lead continually to the difficulty that an excess of something at one level (e.g., in the genotype) may lead to a deficiency of the direct expression of that something at some more superficial level (e.g,. in the phenotype). And conversely.

We are very far, then, from being able to pose specific questions for the geneticist; but I believe that the wider implications of what I have been saying modify somewhat the philosophy of genetics. Our approach to the problems of schizophrenia by way of a theory of levels or logical types has disclosed first that the problems of adaptation and learning and their pathologies must be considered in terms of a hierarchic system in which stochastic change occurs at the boundary points between the segments of the hierarchy. We have considered three such regions of stochastic change —the level of genetic mutation, the level of learning, and the level of change in family organization. We have disclosed the possibility of a relationship of these levels which orthodox genetics would deny, and we have disclosed that at least in human societies the evolutionary system consists not merely in the selective survival of those persons who happen to select appropriate environments but also in the modification of family environment in a direction which might enhance the phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of the individual members.

What Is Man?

If I had been asked fifteen years ago what I understood by the word materialism, I think I should have said that materialism is a theory about the nature of the universe, and I would have accepted as a matter of course the notion that this theory is in some sense nonmoral. I would have agreed that the scientist is an expert who can provide himself and others with insights and techniques, but that science could have nothing to say about whether these techniques should be used. In this, I would have been following the general trend of scientific philosophy associated with such names at Democritus, Galileo, Newton, [56] Lavoisier, and Darwin. I would have been discarding the less respectable views of such men as Heraclitus, the alchemists, William Blake, Lamarck, and Samuel Butler. For these, the motive for scientific inquiry was the desire to build a comprehensive view of the universe which should show what Man is and how he is related to the rest of the universe. The picture which these men were trying to build was ethical and aesthetic.

There is this much connection certainly between scientific truth, on the one hand, and beauty and morality, on the other: that if a man entertain false opinions regarding his own nature, he will be led thereby to courses of action which will be in some profound sense immoral or ugly.

Today, if asked the same question regarding the meaning of materialism, I would say that this word stands in my thinking for a collection of rules about what questions should be asked regarding the nature of the universe. But I would not suppose that this set of rules has any claim to be uniquely right.

The mystic “sees the world in a grain of sand,” and the world which he sees is either moral or aesthetic, or both. The Newtonian scientist sees a regularity in the behavior of falling bodies and claims to draw from this regularity no normative conclusions whatsoever. But his claim ceases to be consistent at the moment when he preaches that this is the right way to view the universe. To preach is possible only in terms of normative conclusions.

I have touched upon several matters in the course of this lecture which have been foci of controversy in the long battle between a nonmoral materialism and a more romantic view of the universe. The battle between Darwin and Samuel Butler may have owed some of its bitterness to what looked like personal affronts, but behind all this the argument concerned a question which had religious status. The battle was really about “vitalism.” It was a question of how much life and what order of life could be assigned to organisms; and Darwin’s victory amounted to this, that while he had not succeeded in detracting from the mysterious liveliness of the individual organism, he had at least demonstrated that the evolutionary picture could be reduced to natural “law.”

It was, therefore, very important to demonstrate that the as yet unconquered territory—the life of the individual organism—could not contain anything which would recapture this evolutionary territory. It was still mysterious that living organisms could achieve adaptive change during their individual lives, and at all costs these adaptive changes, the famous acquired characteristics, must not have influence upon the evolutionary tree. The “inheritance of acquired characteristics” threatened always to recapture the field of evolution for the vitalist side. One part of biology must be separate from the other. The objective scientists claimed, of course, to believe in a unity in nature—that ultimately the whole of natural phenomena would prove susceptible to their analysis, but for about a hundred years it was convenient to set up an impermeable screen between the biology of the individual and the theory of evolution. Samuel Butler’s “inherited memory” was an attack upon this screen.

The question with which I am concerned in this concluding section of the lecture could be put in various ways. Is the battle between nonmoral materialism and the more mystical view of the universe affected by a change in the function assigned to the “acquired characteristics?” Does the older materialist thesis really depend upon the premise that contexts are isolable? Or is our view of the world changed when we admit an infinite regress of contexts, linked to each other in a complex network of metarelations? Does the possibility that the separate levels of stochastic change (in phenotype and genotype) may be connected in the larger context of the ecological system alter our allegiance in the battle?

In breaking away from the premise that contexts are always conceptually isolable, I have let in the notion of a universe much more unified—and in that sense much more mystical—than the conventional universe of nonmoral materialism. Does the new position so achieved give us new grounds for hope that science might answer moral or aesthetic questions?

I believe that the position is significantly changed, and perhaps I can best make this clear by considering a matter which you as psychiatrists have thought about many times. I mean the matter of “control” and the whole related complex suggested by such words as manipulation, spontaneity, free will, and technique. I think you will agree with me that there is no area in which false premises regarding the nature of the self and its relation to others can be so surely productive of destruction and ugliness as this area of ideas about control. A human being in relation with another has very limited control over what happens in that relationship. He is a part of a two-person unit, and the. control which any part can have over any whole is strictly limited.

The infinite regress of contexts which I have talked about is only another example of the same phenomenon. What I have contributed to this discussion is the notion. that the contrast between part and whole, whenever this contrast appears in the realm of communication, is simply a contrast in logical typing. The whole is always in a metarelationship with its parts. As in logic the proposition can never determine the meta proposition, so also in matters of control the smaller context can never determine the larger. I have remarked (e.g., when discussing the phenomena of phenotypic compensation) that in hierarchies of logical typing there is often some sort of change of sign at each level, when the levels are related to each other in such a way as to create a self-corrective system. This appears in a simple diagrammatic form in the initiatory hierarchy which I studied in a New Guinea tribe. The initiators are the natural enemies of the novices, because it is their task to bully the novices into shape. The men who initiated the present initiators now have a role of criticizing what is now being done in the initiation ceremonies, and this makes them the natural allies of the present novices. And so on. Something of the same sort also occurs in American college fraternities, where juniors tend to be allied with freshmen and seniors with sophomores.

This gives us a view of the world which is still almost unexplored. But some of its complexities may be suggested by a very crude and imperfect analogy. I think that the functioning of such hierarchies may be compared with the business of trying to back a truck to which one or more trailers are attached. Each segmentation of such a system denotes a reversal of sign, and each added segment denotes a drastic decrease in the amount of control that can be exerted by the driver of the truck. If the system is parallel to the right-hand side of the road, and he wants the trailer immediately behind him to approach the right-hand side, he must turn his front wheels to the left. This will guide the rear of the truck away from the right-hand side of the road so that the front of the trailer is pulled over to its left. This will now cause the rear of the trailer to point toward the right. And so on.

As anybody who has attempted this will know, the amount of available control falls off rapidly. To back a truck with one trailer is already difficult because there is only a limited range of angles within which the control can be exerted. If the trailer is in line, or almost in line, with the truck, the control is easy, but as the angle between trailer and truck diminishes, a point is reached at which control is lost and the attempt to exert it only results in jackknifing of the system. When we consider the problem of controlling a second trailer, the threshold for jackknifing is drastically reduced, and control becomes, therefore, almost negligible.

As I see it, the world is made up of a very complex network (rather than a chain) of entities which have this sort of relationship to each other, but with this difference, that many of the entities have their own supplies of energy and perhaps even their own ideas of where they would like to go.

In such a world the problems of control become more akin to art than to science, not merely because we tend to think of the difficult and the unpredictable as contexts for art but also because the results of error are likely to be ugliness.

Let me then conclude with a warning that we social scientists would do well to hold back our eagerness to control that world which we so imperfectly understand. The fact of our imperfect understanding should not be allowed to feed our anxiety and so increase the need to control. Rather, our studies could be inspired by a more ancient, but today less honored, motive: a curiosity about the world of which we are part. The rewards of such work are not power but beauty.

It is a strange fact that every great scientific advance—not least the advances which Newton achieved—has been elegant.

Additional References

W. R. Ashby, Design for a Brain, New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1952.

-----, Introduction to Cybernetics, New York and London, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1956.

G. Bateson, D. D. Jackson, J. Haley, and J. H. Weakland, “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” Behavioral Science, 1956, 1: 251-64.

G. Bateson, “Cultural Problems Posed by a Study of Schizophrenic Process,” Symposium on Schizophrenia, an Integrated Approach, by Alfred Auerback, M. D., ed., American Psychiatric Association, Symposium of the Hawaiian Divisional Meeting, 1958, New York, Ronald Press, 1959.

-----, “The New Conceptual Frames for Behavioral Research,” Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Psychiatric Conference at the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute, Princeton, 1958, pp. 54-71.

-----, “The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia,” Chronic Schizophrenia, L. Appleby, J. M. Scher, and J. H. Cummings, eds., Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press, 1960.

-----, “Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning,” Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium, led by L. Bryson and L. Finkelstein, New York, Harper & Bros., 1942.

-----, Naven, a Survey of Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View, Ed. 2, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1958.

S. Butler, Thought and Language, 1890, published in the Shrewsbury Edition of the works of Samuel Butler, 1925, vol. xix.

-----, Luck or Cunning as the Main Means of Organic Modification, London, Trubner, 1887.

C. D. Darlington, “The Origins of Darwinism,” Scientific American, 1959, 200: 60-65.

C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection, London, Murray, 1859.

C. C. GiIlispie, “Lamarck and Darwin in the History of Science,” American Scientist, 1958, 46: 388-409.

J. Stroud, “Psychological Moment in Perception-Discussion,” Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems, Transactions of the Sixth Conference, H. Von Foerster, et al:, eds., New York, Josiah Macy; Jr. Foundation, 1949, pp. 27-63.

C. H. Waddington, The Strategy of the Genes, London, George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1957.

-----, “The Integration of Gene-Controlled Processes and Its Bearing on Evolution,” Caryologia, Supplement, 1954, pp. 232-45.

-----, “Genetic Assimilation of an Acquired Character,” Evolution, 1953, 7: 118-26.

A. Weismann, Essays upon Heredity, authorized translation, E. B. Poulton, et al., eds., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1889.

Double Bind, 1969 [57]

Double bind theory was, for me, an exemplification of how to think about such matters and, in this aspect at least, the whole business is worth some re-examination.

Sometimes—often in science and always in art—one does not know what the problems were till after they have been solved. So perhaps it will be useful to state retrospectively what problems were solved for me by double bind theory.

First there was the problem of reification.

Clearly there are in the mind no objects or events—no pigs, no coconut palms, and no mothers. The mind contains only transforms, percepts, images, etc., and rules for making these transforms, percepts, etc. In what form these rules exist we do not know, but presumably they are embodied in the very machinery which creates the transforms. The rules are certainly not commonly explicit as conscious “thoughts.”

In any case, it is nonsense to say that a man was frightened by a lion, because a lion is not an idea. The man makes an idea of the lion.

The explanatory world of substance can invoke no differences and no ideas but only forces and impacts. And, per contra, the world of form and communication invokes no things, forces, or impacts but only differences and ideas. (A difference which makes a difference is an idea. It is a “bit,” a unit of information.)

But these things I learned only later—was enabled to learn them by double bind theory. And yet, of course, they are implicit in the theory which could hardly have been created without them.

Our original paper on the double bind contains numerous errors due simply to our having not yet articulately examined the reification problem. We talk in that paper as though a double bind were a something and as though such somethings could be counted.

Of course that’s all nonsense. You cannot count the bats in an inkblot because there are none. And yet a man—if he be “bat-minded”—may “see” several.

But are there double binds in the mind? The question is not trivial. As there are in the mind no coconuts but only percepts and transforms of coconuts, so also, when I perceive (consciously or unconsciously) a double bind in my boss’ behavior, I acquire in my mind no double bind but only a percept or transform of a double bind. And that is not what the theory is about.

We are talking then about some sort of tangle in the rules for making the transforms and about the acquisition or cultivation of such tangles. Double bind theory asserts that there is an experiential component in the determination or etiology of schizophrenic symptoms and related behavioral patterns, such as humor, art, poetry, etc. Notably the theory does not distinguish between these subspecies. Within its terms there is nothing to determine whether a given individual shall become a clown, a poet, a schizophrenic, or some combination of these. We deal not with a single syndrome but with a genus of syndromes, most of which are not conventionally regarded as pathological.

Let me coin the word “transcontextual” as a general term for this genus of syndromes.

It seems that both those whose life is enriched by trans-contextual gifts and those who are impoverished by transcontextual confusions are alike in one respect: for them there is always or often a “double take.” A falling leaf, the greeting of a friend, or a “primrose by the river’s brim” is not “just that and nothing more.” Exogenous experience may be framed in the contexts of dream, and internal thought may be projected into the contexts of the external world. And so on. For all this, we seek a partial explanation in learning and experience.

There must, of course, also be genetic components in the etiology of the transcontextual syndromes. These would expectably operate at levels more abstract than the experiential. For example, genetic components might determine skill in learning to be transcontextual or (more abstractly) the potentialities for acquiring this skill. Or, conversely, the genome might determine skills in resisting transcontextual pathways, or the potentiality for acquiring this latter skill. (Geneticists have paid very little attention to the necessity of defining the logical typing of messages carried by DNA.)

In any case, the meeting point where the genetic determination meets the experiential is surely quite abstract, and this must be true even though the embodiment of the genetic message be a single gene. (A single bit of information—a single difference—may be the yes-or-no answer to a question of any degree of complexity, at any level of abstraction. )

Current theories which propose (for “schizophrenia”) a single dominant gene of “low penetrance” seem to leave the field open for any experiential theory which would indicate what class of experiences might cause the latent potentiality to appear in the phenotype.

I must confess however that these theories seem to me of little interest until the proponents try to specify what components of the complex process of determining “schizophrenia” are provided by the hypothetical gene. To identify these components must be a subtractive process. Where the contribution of environment is large, the genetics cannot be investigated until the environmental effect has been identified and can be controlled.

But sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, and what is said above about geneticists places an obligation upon me to make clear what components of transcontextual process could be provided by double bind experience. It is appropriate therefore to re-examine the theory of deuterolearning upon which double bind theory is based.

All biological systems (organisms and social or ecological organizations of organisms) are capable of adaptive change. But adaptive change takes many forms, such as response, learning, ecological succession, biological evolution, cultural evolution, etc., according to the size and complexity of the system which we choose to consider.

Whatever the system, adaptive change depends upon feedback loops, be it those provided by natural selection or those of individual reinforcement. In all cases, then, there must be a process of trial and error and a mechanism of comparison.

But trial and error must always involve error, and error is always biologically and/or psychically expensive. It follows therefore that adaptive change must always be hierarchic.

There is needed not only that first-order change which suits the immediate environmental (or physiological) demand but also second-order changes which will reduce the amount of trial and error needed to achieve the first-order change. And so on. By superposing and interconnecting many feedback loops, we (and all other biological systems) not only solve particular problems but also form habits which we apply to the solution of classes of problems.

We act as though a whole class of problems could be solved in terms of assumptions or premises, fewer in number than the members of the class of problems. In other words, we (organisms) learn to learn, or in the more technical phrase, we deutero-learn.

But habits are notoriously rigid and their rigidity follows as a necessary corollary of their status in the hierarchy of adaptation. The very economy of trial and error which is achieved by habit formation is only possible because habits are comparatively “hard programmed,” in the engineers’ phrase. The economy consists precisely in not re-examining or rediscovering the premises of habit every time the habit is used. We may say that these premises are partly “unconscious”, or—if you please—that a habit of not examining them is developed.

Moreover, it is important to note that the premises of habit are almost necessarily abstract. Every problem is in some degree different from every other and its description or representation in the mind will therefore contain unique propositions. Clearly to sink these unique propositions to the level of premises of habit would be an error. Habit can deal successfully only with propositions which have general or repetitive truth, and these are commonly of a relatively high order of abstraction. [58]

Now the particular propositions which I believe to be important in the determination of the transcontextual syndromes are those formal abstractions which describe and determine interpersonal relationship.

I say “describe and determine,” but even this is inadequate. Better would be to say that the relationship is the exchange of these messages; or that the relationship is immanent in these messages.

Psychologists commonly speak as if the abstractions of relationship (“dependency,” “hostility,” “love,” etc.) were real things which are to be described or “expressed” by messages. This is epistemology backwards: in truth, the messages constitute the relationship, and words like `.`dependency” are verbally coded descriptions of patterns immanent in the combination of exchanged messages.

As has already been mentioned, there are no “things” in the mind—not even “dependency.”

We are so befuddled by language that we cannot think straight, and it is convenient, sometimes, to remember that we are really mammals. The epistemology of the “heart” is that of any nonhuman mammal. The cat does not say “milk”; she simply acts out (or is) her end of an interchange, the pattern of which we in language would call “dependency.”

But to act or be one end of a pattern of interaction is to propose the other end. A context is set for a certain class of response.

This weaving of contexts and of messages which propose context—but which, like all messages whatsoever, have “meaning” only by virtue of context—is the subject matter of the so-called double bind theory.

The matter may be illustrated by a famous and formally correct [59] botanical analogy. Goethe pointed out 150 years ‘ ago that there is a sort of syntax or grammar in the anatomy of flowering plants. A “stem” is that which bears “leaves”; a “leaf” is that which has a bud in its axil; a bud is a stem which originates in the axil of a leaf; etc. The formal (i.e., the communicational) nature of each organ is determined by its contextual status—the context in which it occurs and the context which it sets for other parts.

I said above that double bind theory is concerned with the experiential component in the genesis of tangles in the rules or premises of habit. I now go on to assert that experienced breaches in the weave of contextual structure are in fact “double binds” and must necessarily (if they contribute at all to the hierarchic processes of learning and adaptation) promote what I am calling transcontextual syndromes.

Consider a very simple paradigm: a female porpoise (Steno bredanensis) is trained to accept the sound of the trainer’s whistle as a “secondary reinforcement.” The whistle is expectably followed by food, and if she later repeats what she was doing when the whistle blew, she will expectably again hear the whistle and receive food.

This porpoise is now used by the trainers to demonstrate “operant conditioning” to the public. When she enters the exhibition tank, she raises her head above surface, hears the whistle and is fed. She then raises her head again and is again reinforced. Three repetitions of this sequence is enough for the demonstration and the porpoise is then sent off-stage to wait for the next performance two hours later. She has learned some simple rules which relate her actions, the whistle, the exhibition tank, and the trainer into a pattern—a contextual structure, a set of rules for how to put the information together.

But this pattern is fitted only for a single episode in the exhibition tank. She must break that pattern to deal with the class of such episodes. There is a larger context of contexts which will put her in the wrong.

At the next performance, the trainer again wants to demonstrate “operant conditioning,” but to do this she must pick on a different piece of conspicuous behavior.

When the porpoise comes on stage, she again raises her head. But she gets no whistle. The trainer waits for the next piece of conspicuous behavior—likely a tail flap, which is a common expression of annoyance. This behavior is then reinforced and repeated.

But the tail flap was, of course, not rewarded in the third performance.

Finally the porpoise learned to deal with the context of contexts—by offering a different or new piece of conspicuous behavior whenever she came on stage.

All this had happened in the free natural history of the relationship between porpoise and trainer and audience. The sequence was then repeated experimentally with a new porpoise and carefully recorded. [60]

Two points from this experimental repeat of the sequence must be added:

First, that it was necessary (in the trainer’s judgment) to break the rules of the experiment many times. The experience of being in the wrong was so disturbing to the porpoise that in order to preserve the relationship between porpoise and trainer (i.e., the context of context of context) it was necessary to give many reinforcements to which the porpoise was not entitled.

Second, that each of the first fourteen sessions was characterized by many futile repetitions of whatever behavior had been reinforced in the immediately previous session. Seemingly only by “accident” did the animal provide a piece of different behavior. In the timeout between the fourteenth and fifteenth sessions, the porpoise appeared to be much excited, and when she came on stage for the fifteenth session she put on an elaborate performance including eight conspicuous pieces of behavior of which four were entirely new—never before observed in this species of animal.

The story illustrates, I believe, two aspects of the genesis of a transcontextual syndrome:

First, that severe pain and maladjustment can be induced by putting a mammal in the wrong regarding its rules for making sense of an important relationship with another mammal.

And second, that if this pathology can be warded off or resisted, the total experience may promote creativity.

Bibliography

G. Bateson, “Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning,” Science, Philosophy and Religion; Second Symposium, L. Bryson and L. Finkelstein, eds., New York, Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., 1942.

-----, “Minimal Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia,” A.M.A. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1960, 2: 477-91.

-----, Perceval’s Narrative, A Patient’s Account of his Psychosis, 1830-1832, edited and with an introduction by Gregory Bateson, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1961.

-----, “Exchange of Information about Patterns of Human Behavior,” Information Storage and Neural Control; Tenth Annual Scientific Meeting of the Houston Neurological Society, W. S. Fields and W. Abbott, eds., Springfield, Ill., Charles C. Thomas, 1963.

-----, “The Role of Somatic Change in Evolution,” Evolution, 1963, 17: 529-39.

The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication [61]

All species of behavioral scientists are concerned with “learning” in one sense or another of that word. Moreover, since “learning” is a communicational phenomenon, all are affected by that cybernetic revolution in thought which has occurred in the last twenty-five years. This revolution was triggered by the engineers and communication theorists but has older roots in the physiological work of Cannon and Claude Bernard, in the physics of Clarke Maxwell, and in the mathematical philosophy of Russell and Whitehead. Insofar as behavioral scientists still ignore the problems of Principia Mathematica, [62] they can claim approximately sixty years of obsolescence.

It appears, however, that the barriers of misunderstanding which divide the various species of behavioral scientists can be illuminated (but not eliminated) by an application of Russell’s Theory of Logical Types to the concept of “learning” with which all are concerned. To attempt this illumination will be a purpose of the present essay.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

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Part 6 of 8

The Theory of Logical Types

First, it is appropriate to indicate the subject matter of the Theory of Logical Types: the theory asserts that no class can, in formal logical or mathematical discourse, be a member of itself; that a class of classes cannot be one of the classes which are its members; that a name is not the thing named; that “John Bateson” is the class of which that boy is the unique member; and so forth. These assertions may seem trivial and even obvious, but we shall see later that it is not at all unusual for the theorists of behavioral science to commit errors which are precisely analogous to the error of classifying the name with the thing named—or eating the menu card instead of the dinner—an error of logical typing.

Somewhat less obvious is the further assertion of the theory: that a class cannot be one of those items which are correctly classified as its nonmembers. If we classify chairs together to constitute the class of chairs, we can go on to note that tables and lamp shades are members of a large class of “nonchairs,” but we shall commit an error in formal discourse if we count the class of chairs among the items within the class of nonchairs.

Inasmuch as no class can be a member of itself, the class of nonchairs clearly cannot be a nonchair. Simple considerations of symmetry may suffice to convince the nonmathematical reader: (a) that the class of chairs is of the same order of abstraction (i.e., the same logical type) as the class of nonchairs; and further, (b) that if the class of chairs is not a chair, then, correspondingly, the class of nonchairs is not a nonchair.

Lastly, the theory asserts that if these simple rules of formal discourse are contravened, paradox will be generated and the discourse vitiated.

The theory, then, deals with highly abstract matters and was first derived within the abstract world of logic. In that world, when a train of propositions can be shown to generate a paradox, the entire structure of axioms, theorems, etc., involved in generating that paradox is thereby negated and reduced to nothing. It is as if it had never been. But in the real world (or at least in our descriptions of it), there is always time, and nothing which has been can ever be totally negated in this way. The computer which encounters a paradox (due to faulty programming) does not vanish away.

The “if… then…” of logic contains no time. But in the computer, cause and effect are used to simulate the “if… then…” of logic; and all sequences of cause and effect necessarily involve time. (Conversely, we may say that in scientific explanations the “if… then…” of logic is used to simulate the “if… then…” of cause and effect.)

The computer never truly encounters logical paradox, but only the simulation of paradox in trains of cause and effect. The computer therefore does not fade away. It merely oscillates.

In fact, there are important differences between the world of logic and the world of phenomena, and these differences must be allowed for whenever we base our arguments upon the partial but important analogy which exists between them.

It is the thesis of the present essay that this partial analogy can provide an important guide for behavioral scientists in their classification of phenomena related to learning. Precisely in the field of animal and mechanical communication something like the theory of types must apply.

Questions of this sort, however, are not often discussed in zoological laboratories, anthropological field camps, or psychiatric conventions, and it is necessary therefore to demonstrate that these abstract considerations are important to behavioral scientists.

Consider the following syllogism:

(a) Changes in frequency of items of mammalian behavior can be described and predicted in terms of various “laws” of reinforcement.

(b) “Exploration” as observed in rats is a category, or class, of mammalian behavior.

(c) Therefore, changes in frequency of “exploration” should be describable in terms of the same “laws” of reinforcement.


Be it said at once: first, that empirical data show that the conclusion (c) is untrue; and second, that if the conclusion (c) were demonstrably true, then either (a) or (b) would be untrue. [63]

Logic and natural history would be better served by an expanded and corrected version of the conclusion (c) somewhat as follows:

(c) If, as asserted in (b), “exploration” is not an item of mammalian behavior but is a category of such items, then no descriptive statement which is true of items of behavior can be true of “exploration.” If, however, descriptive statements which are true of items of behavior are also true of “exploration,” then “exploration” is an item and not a category of items.


The whole matter turns on whether the distinction between a class and its members is an ordering principle in the behavioral phenomena which we study.

In less formal language: you can reinforce a rat (positively or negatively) when he investigates a particular strange object, and he will appropriately learn to approach or avoid it. But the very purpose of exploration is to get information about which objects should be approached and which avoided. The discovery that a given object is dangerous is therefore a success in the business of getting information. The success will not discourage the rat from future exploration of other strange objects.

A priori it can be argued that all perception and all response, all behavior and all classes of behavior, all learning and all genetics, all neurophysiology and endocrinology, all organization and all evolution—one entire subject matter must be regarded as communicational in nature, and therefore subject to the great generalizations or “laws” which apply to communicative phenomena. We therefore are warned to expect to find in our data those principles of order which fundamental communication theory would propose. The Theory of Logical Types, Information Theory, and so forth, are expectably to be our guides.

The “Learning” of Computers, Rats, and Men

The word “learning” undoubtedly denotes change of some kind. To say what kind of change is a delicate matter.

However, from the gross common denominator, “change,” we can deduce that our descriptions of “learning” will have to make the same sort of allowance for the varieties of logical type which has been routine in physical science since the days of Newton. The simplest and most familiar form of change is motion, and even if we work at that very simple physical level we must structure our descriptions in terms of “position or zero motion,” “constant velocity,” “acceleration,” “rate of change of acceleration,” and so on. [64]

Change denotes process. But processes are themselves subject to “change.” The process may accelerate, it may slow down, or it may undergo other types of change such that we shall say that it is now a “different” process.

These considerations suggest that we should begin the ordering of our ideas about “learning” at the very simplest level.

Let us consider the case of specificity of response, or zero learning. This is the case in which an entity shows minimal change in its response to a repeated item of sensory input. Phenomena which approach this degree of simplicity occur in various contexts:

(a) In experimental settings, when “learning” is complete and the animal gives approximately 100 per cent correct responses to the repeated stimulus.

(b) In cases of habituation, where the animal has ceased to give overt response to what was formerly a disturbing stimulus.

(c) In cases where the pattern of the response is minimally determined by experience and maximally determined by genetic factors.

(d) In cases where the response is now highly stereotyped.

(e) In simple electronic circuits, where the circuit structure is not itself subject to change resulting from the passage of impulses within the circuit—i.e., where the causal links between “stimulus” and “response” are as the engineers say “soldered in.”


In ordinary, nontechnical parlance, the word “learn” is often applied to what is here called “zero learning,” i.e., to the simple receipt of information from an external event, in such a way that a similar event at a later (and appropriate) time will convey the same information: I “learn” from the factory whistle that it is twelve o’clock.

It is also interesting to note that within the frame of our definition many very simple mechanical devices show at least the phenomenon of zero learning. The question is not, “Can machines learn?” but what level or order of learning does a given machine achieve? It is worth looking at an extreme, if hypothetical, case:

The “player” of a Von Neumannian game is a mathematical fiction, comparable to the Euclidean straight line in geometry or the Newtonian particle in physics. By definition, the “player” is capable of all computations necessary to solve whatever problems the events of the game may present; he is incapable of not performing these computations whenever they are appropriate; he always obeys the findings of his computations. Such a “player” receives information from the events of the game and acts appropriately upon that information. But his learning is limited to what is here called zero learning.

An examination of this formal fiction will contribute to our definition of zero learning.

The “player” may receive, from the events of the game, information of higher or lower logical type, and he may use this information to make decisions of higher or lower type. That is, his decisions may be either strategic or tactical, and he can identify and respond to indications of both the tactics and the strategy of his opponent. It is, however, true that in Von Neumann’s formal definition of a “game,” all problems which the game may present are conceived as computable, i.e., while the game may contain problems and information of many different logical types, the hierarchy of these types is strictly finite.

It appears then that a definition of zero learning will not depend upon the logical typing of the information received by the organism nor upon the logical typing of the adaptive decisions which the organism may make. A very high (but finite) order of complexity may characterize adaptive behavior based on nothing higher than zero learning.

(1) The “player” may compute the value of information which would benefit him and may compute that it will pay him to acquire this information by engaging in “exploratory” moves. Alternatively, he may make delaying or tentative moves while he waits for needed information.

It follows that a rat engaging in exploratory behavior might do so upon a basis of zero learning.

(2) The “player” may compute that it will pay him to make random moves. In the game of matching pennies, he will compute that if he selects “heads” or “tails” at random, he will have an even chance of winning. If he uses any plan or pattern, this will appear as a pattern or redundancy in the sequence of his moves and his opponent will thereby receive information. The “player” will therefore elect to play in a random manner.

(3) The “player” is incapable of “error.” He may, for good reason, elect to make random moves or exploratory moves, but he is by definition incapable of “learning by trial and error.”


If we assume that, in the name of this learning process, the word “error” means what we meant it to mean when we said that the “player” is incapable of error, then “trial and error” is excluded from the repertoire of the Von Neumannian player. In fact, the Von Neumannian “player” forces us to a very careful examination of what we mean by “trial and error” learning, and indeed what is meant by “learning” of any kind. The assumption regarding the meaning of the word “error” is not trivial and must now be examined.

There is a sense in which the “player” can be wrong. For example, he may base a decision upon probabilistic considerations and then make that move which, in the light of the limited available information, was most probably right. When more information becomes available, he may discover that that move was wrong. But this discovery can contribute nothing to his future skill. By definition, the player used correctly all the available information. He estimated the probabilities correctly and made the move which was most probably correct. The discovery that he was wrong in the particular instance can have no bearing upon future instances. When the same problem returns at a later time, he will correctly go through the same computations and reach the same decision. Moreover, the set of alternatives among which he makes his choice will be the same set—and correctly so.

In contrast, an organism is capable of being wrong in a number of ways of which the “player” is incapable. These wrong choices are appropriately called “error” when they are of such a kind that they would provide information to the organism which might contribute to his future skill. These will all be cases in which some of the available information was either ignored or incorrectly used. Various species of such profitable error can be classified.

Suppose that the external event system contains details which might tell the organism: (a) from what set of alternatives he should choose his next move; and (b) which member of that set he should choose. Such a situation permits two orders of error:

The organism may use correctly the information which tells him from what set of alternatives he should choose, but choose the wrong alternative within this set; or

He may choose from the wrong set of alternatives. (There is also an interesting class of cases in which the sets of alternatives contain common members. It is then possible for the organism to be “right” but for the wrong reasons. This form of error is inevitably self-reinforcing.)

If now we accept the overall notion that all learning (other than zero learning) is in some degree stochastic (i.e., contains components of “trial and error”), it follows that an ordering of the processes of learning can be built upon an hierarchic classification of the types of error which are to be corrected in the various learning processes. Zero learning will then be the label for the immediate base of all those acts (simple and complex) which are not subject to correction by trial and error. Learning I will be an appropriate label for the revision of choice within an unchanged set of alternatives; Learning II will be the label for the revision of the set from which the choice is to be made; and so on.

Learning I

Following the formal analogy provided by the “laws” of motion (i.e., the “rules” for describing motion), we now look for the class of phenomena which are appropriately described as changes in zero learning (as “motion” describes change of position). These are the cases in which an entity gives at Time 2 a different response from what it gave at Time 1, and again we encounter a variety of cases variously related to experience, physiology, genetics, and mechanical process:

(a) There is the phenomenon of habituation—the change from responding to each occurrence of a repeated event to not overtly responding. There is also the extinction or loss of habituation, which may occur as a result of a more or less long gap or other interruption in the sequence of repetitions of the stimulus event. (Habituation is of especial interest. Specificity of response, which we are calling zero learning, is characteristic of all protoplasm, but it is interesting to note that “habituation” is perhaps the only form of Learning I which living things can achieve without a neural circuit.)

The most familiar and perhaps most studied case is that of the classical Pavlovian conditioning. At Time 2 the dog salivates in response to the buzzer; he did not do this at Time 1.

(b) There is the “learning” which occurs in contexts of instrumental reward and instrumental avoidance.

There is the phenomenon of rote learning, in which an item in the behavior of the organism becomes a stimulus for another item of behavior.

There is the disruption, extinction, or inhibition of “completed” learning which may follow change or absence of reinforcement.

In a word, the list of Learning I contains those items which are most commonly called “learning” in the psychological laboratory.

Note that in all cases of Learning I, there is in our description an assumption about the “context.” This assumption must be made explicit. The definition of Learning I assumes that the buzzer (the stimulus) is somehow the “same” at Time 1 and at Time 2. And this assumption of “sameness” must also delimit the “context,” which must (theoretically) be the same at both times. It follows that the events which occurred at Time 1 are not, in our description; included in our definition of the context at Time 2, because to include them would at once create a gross difference between “context at Time 1” and “context at Time 2.” (To paraphrase Heraclitus: “No man can go to bed with the same girl for the first time twice.”)

The conventional assumption that context can be repeated, at least in some cases, is one which the writer adopts in this essay as a cornerstone of the thesis that the study of behavior must be ordered according to the Theory of Logical Types. Without the assumption of repeatable context (and the hypothesis that for the organisms which we study the sequence of experience is really somehow punctuated in this manner), it would follow that all “learning” would be of one type: namely, all would be zero learning. Of the Pavlovian experiment, we would simply say that the dog’s neural circuits contain “soldered in” from the beginning such characteristics that in Context A at Time 1 he will not salivate, and that in the totally different Context B at Time 2 he will salivate. What previously we called “learning” we would now describe as “discrimination” between the events of Time 1 and the events of Time 1 plus Time 2. It would then follow logically that all questions of the type, “Is this behavior `learned’ or `innate’?” should be answered in favor of genetics.

We would argue that without the assumption of repeatable context, our thesis falls to the ground, together with the whole general concept of “learning.” If, on the other hand, the assumption of repeatable context is accepted as somehow true of the organisms which we study, then the case for logical typing of the phenomena of learning necessarily stands, because the notion “context” is itself subject to logical typing.

Either we must discard the notion of “context,” or we retain this notion and, with it, accept the hierarchic series—stimulus, context of stimulus, context of context of stimulus, etc. This series can be spelled out in the form of a hierarchy of logical types as follows:

Stimulus is an elementary signal, internal or external. Context of stimulus is a metamessage which classifies the elementary signal.

Context of context of stimulus is a meta-metamessage which classifies the metamessage.

And so on.

The same hierarchy could have been built up from the notion of “response” or the notion of “reinforcement.”

Alternatively, following up the hierarchic classification of errors to be corrected by stochastic process or “trial and error,” we may regard “context” as a collective term for all those events which tell the organism among what set of alternatives he must make his next choice.

At this point it is convenient to introduce the term “context marker.” An organism responds to the “same” stimulus differently in differing contexts, and we must therefore ask about the source of the organisms’s information. From what percept does he know that Context A is different from Context B?

In many instances, there may be no specific signal or label which will classify and differentiate the two contexts, and the organism will be forced to get his information from the actual congeries of events that make up the context in each case. But, certainly in human life and probably in that of many other organisms, there occur signals whose major function is to classify contexts. It is not unreasonable to suppose that when the harness is placed upon the dog, who has had prolonged training in the psychological laboratory, he knows from this that he is now embarking upon a series of contexts of a certain sort. Such a source of information we shall call a “context marker,” and note immediately that, at least at the human level, there are also “markers of contexts of contexts.” For example: an audience is watching Hamlet on the stage, and hears the hero discuss suicide in the context of his relationship with his dead father, Ophelia, and the rest. The audience members do not immediately telephone for the police because they have received information about the context of Hamlet’s context. They know that it is a “play” and have received this information from many “markers of context of context”—the playbills, the seating arrangements, the curtain, etc., etc. The “King,” on the other hand, when he lets his conscience be pricked by the play within the play, is ignoring many “markers of context of context.”

At the human level, a very diverse set of events falls within the category of “context markers.” A few examples are here listed:

(1) The Pope’s throne from which he makes announcements ex cathedra, which announcements are thereby endowed with a special order of validity.

(2) The placebo, by which the doctor sets the stage for a change in the patient’s subjective experience.

(3) The shining object used by some hypnotists in “inducing trance.”

(4) The air raid siren and the “all clear.”

(5) The handshake of boxers before the fight.

(6) The observances of etiquette.


These, however, are examples from the social life of a highly complex organism, and it is more profitable at this stage to ask about the analogous phenomena at the pre-verbal level.

A dog may see the leash in his master’s hand and act as if he knows that this indicates a walk; or he may get information from the sound of the word “walk” that this type of context or sequence is coming.

When a rat starts a sequence of exploratory activities, does he do so in response to a “stimulus?” Or in response to a context? Or in response to a context marker?

These questions bring to the surface formal problems about the Theory of Logical Types which must be discussed. The theory in its original form deals only with rigorously digital communication, and it is doubtful how far it may be applied to analogue or iconic systems. What we are here calling “context markers” may be digital (e.g., the word “walk” mentioned above) ; or they may be analogue signals — a briskness in the master’s movements may indicate that a walk is pending; or some part of the coming context may serve as a marker (the leash as a part of the walk) ; or in the extreme case, the walk itself in all its complexity may stand for itself, with no label or marker between the dog and the experience. The perceived event itself may communicate its own occurrence. In this case, of course, there can be no error of the “menu card” type. Moreover, no paradox can be generated because in purely analogue or iconic communication there is no signal for “not.”

There is, in fact, almost no formal theory dealing with analogue communication and, in particular, no equivalent of Information Theory or Logical Type Theory. This gap in formal knowledge is inconvenient when we leave the rarified world of logic and mathematics and come face to face with the phenomena of natural history. In the natural world, communication is rarely either purely digital or purely analogic. Often discrete digital pips are combined together to make analogic pictures as in the printer’s halftone block; and sometimes, as in the matter of context markers, there is a continuous gradation from the ostensive through the iconic to the purely digital. At the digital end of this scale all the theorems of information theory have their full force, but at the ostensive and analogic end they are meaningless.

It seems also that while much of the behavioral communication of even higher mammals remains ostensive or analogic, the internal mechanism of these creatures has become digitalized at least at the neuronal level. It would seem that analogic communication is in some sense more primitive than digital and that there is a broad evolutionary trend toward the substitution of digital for analogic mechanisms. This trend seems to operate faster in the evolution of internal mechanisms than in the evolution of external behavior.

Recapitulating and extending what was said above:

(a) The notion of repeatable context is a necessary premise for any theory which defines “learning” as change.


This notion is not a mere tool of our description but contains the implicit hypothesis that for the organisms which we study, the sequence of life experience, action, etc., is somehow segmented or punctuated into subsequences or “contexts” which may be equated or differentiated by the organism.

The distinction which is commonly drawn between perception and action, afferent and efferent, input and output, is for higher organisms in complex situations not valid. On the one hand, almost every item of action may be reported either by external sense or endoceptive mechanism to the C.N.S., and in this case the report of this item becomes an input. And, on the other hand, in higher organisms, perception is not by any means a process of mere passive receptivity but is at least partly determined by efferent control from higher centers. Perception, notoriously, can be changed by experience. In principle, we must allow both for the possibility that every item of action or output may create an item of input; and that percepts may in some cases partake of the nature of output. It is no accident that almost all sense organs are used for the emission of signals between organisms. Ants communicate by their antennae; dogs by the pricking of their ears; and so on.

In principle, even in zero learning, any item of experience or behavior may be regarded as either “stimulus” or “response” or as both, according to how the total sequence is punctuated. When the scientist says that the buzzer is the “stimulus” in a given sequence, his utterance implies an hypothesis about how the organism punctuates that sequence. In Learning I, every item of perception or behavior may be stimulus or response or reinforcement according to how the total sequence of interaction is punctuated.

Learning II

What has been said above has cleared the ground for the consideration of the next level or logical type of “learning” which we shall here call Learning II. Various terms have been proposed in the literature for various phenomena of this order. “Deutero-learning,” [65] “set learning,” [66] “learning to learn,” and “transfer of learning” may be mentioned.

We recapitulate and extend the definitions so far given:

Zero learning is characterized by specificity of response, which—right or wrong—is not subject to correction.

Learning I is change in specificity of response by correction of errors of choice within a set of alternatives.

Learning II is change in the process of Learning I, e.g., a corrective change in the set of alternatives from which choice is made, or it is a change in how the sequence of experience is punctuated.

Learning III is change in the process of Learning II, e.g., a corrective change in the system of sets of alternatives from which choice is made. (We shall see later that to demand this level of performance of some men and some mammals is sometimes pathogenic.)

Learning IV would be change in Learning III, but probably does not occur in any adult living organism on this earth. Evolutionary process has, however, created organisms whose ontogeny brings them to Level III. The combination of phylogenesis with ontogenesis, in fact, achieves Level IV.

Our immediate task is to give substance to the definition of Learning II as “change in Learning I,” and it is for this that the ground has been prepared. Briefly, I believe that the phenomena of Learning II can all be included under the rubric of changes in the manner in which the stream of action and experience is segmented or punctuated into contexts together with changes in the use of context markers.

The list of phenomena classified under Learning I includes a considerable (but not exhaustive) set of differently structured contexts. In classical Pavlovian contexts, the contingency pattern which describes the relation between “stimulus” (CS), animal’s action (CR), and reinforcement. (UCS ) is profoundly different from the contingency pattern characteristic of instrumental contexts of learning.

In the Pavlovian case: If stimulus and a certain lapse of time: then reinforcement.

In the Instrumental Reward case: If stimulus and a particular item of behavior: then reinforcement.

In the Pavlovian case, the reinforcement is not contingent upon the animal’s behavior, whereas in the instrumental case, it is. Using this contrast as an example, we say that Learning II has occurred if it can be shown that experience of one or more contexts of the Pavlovian type results in the animal’s acting in some later context as though this, too, had the Pavlovian contingency pattern. Similarly, if past experience of instrumental sequences leads an animal to act in some later context as though expecting this also to be an instrumental context, we shall again say that Learning II has occurred.

When so defined, Learning II is adaptive only if the animal happens to be right in its expectation of a given contingency pattern, and in such a case we shall expect to see a measurable learning to learn. It should require fewer trials in the new context to establish “correct” behavior. If, on the other hand, the animal is wrong in his identification of the later contingency pattern, then we shall expect a delay of Learning I in the new context. The animal who has had prolonged experience of Pavlovian contexts might never get around to the particular sort of trial-and-error behavior necessary to discover a correct instrumental response.

There are at least four fields of experimentation where Learning II has been carefully recorded:

(a) In human rote learning. Hull [67] carried out very careful quantitative studies which revealed this phenomenon, and constructed a mathematical model which would simulate or explain the curves of Learning I which he recorded. He also observed a second-order phenomenon which we may call “learning to rote learn” and published the curves for this phenomenon in the Appendix to his book. These curves were separated from the main body of the book because, as he states, his mathematical model (of Rote Learning I) did not cover this aspect of the data.

It is a corollary of the theoretical position which we here take that no amount of rigorous discourse of a given logical type can “explain” phenomena of a higher type. Hull’s model acts as a touchstone of logical typing, automatically excluding from explanation phenomena beyond its logical scope. That this was so—and that Hull perceived it—is testimonial both to his rigor and to his perspicacity.

What the data show is that for any given subject, there is an improvement in rote learning with successive sessions, asymptotically approaching a degree of skill which varied from subject to subject.

The context for this rote learning was quite complex and no doubt appeared subjectively different to each learner. Some may have been more motivated by fear of being wrong, while others looked rather for the satisfactions of being right. Some would be more influenced to put up a good record as compared with the other subjects; others would be fascinated to compete in each session with their own previous showing, and so on. All must have had ideas (correct or incorrect) about the nature of the experimental setting, all must have had “levels of aspiration,” and all must have had previous experience of memorizing various sorts of material. Not one of Hull’s subjects could have come into the learning context uninfluenced by previous Learning II.

In spite of all this previous Learning II, and in spite of genetic differences which might operate at this level, all showed improvement over several sessions. This improvement cannot have been due to Learning I because any recall of the specific sequence of syllables learned in the previous session would not be of use in dealing with the new sequence. Such recall would more probably be a hindrance. I submit, therefore, that the improvement from session to session can only be accounted for by some sort of adaptation to the context which Hull provided for rote learning.

It is also worth noting that educators have strong opinions about the value (positive or negative) of training in rote learning. “Progressive” educators insist on training in “insight,” while the more conservative insist on rote and drilled recall.

(b) The second type of Learning II which has been experimentally studied is called “set learning.” The concept and term are derived from Harlow and apply to a rather special case of Learning II. Broadly, what Harlow did was to present rhesus monkeys with more or less complex gestalten or “problems.” These the monkey had to solve to get a food reward. Harlow showed that if these problems were of similar “set,” i.e., contained similar types of logical complexity, there was a carry-over of learning from one problem to the next. There were, in fact, two orders of contingency patterns involved in Harlow’s experiments: first the overall pattern of instrumentalism (if the monkey solves the problem, then reinforcement); and second, the contingency patterns of logic within the specific problems.

(c) Bitterman and others have recently set a fashion in experimentation with “reversal learning.” Typically in these experiments the subject is first taught a binary discrimination. When this has been learned to criterion, the meaning of the stimuli is reversed. If X initially “meant” R1, and Y initially meant R2, then after reversal X comes to mean R2, and, Y comes to mean R1. Again the trials are run to criterion when again the meanings are reversed. In these experiments, the crucial question is: Does the subject learn about the reversal? I.e., after a series of reversals, does the subject reach criterion in fewer trials than he did at the beginning of the series?

In these experiments, it is conspicuously clear that the question asked is of logical type higher than that of questions about simple learning. If simple learning is based upon a set of trials, then reversal learning is based upon a set of such sets. The parallelism between this relation and Russell’s relation between “class” and “class of classes” is direct.

(d) Learning II is also exemplified in the well-known phenomena of “experimental neurosis.” Typically an animal is trained, either in a Pavlovian or instrumental learning context, to discriminate between some X and some Y; e.g., between an ellipse and a circle. When this discrimination has been learned, the task is made more difficult: the ellipse is made progressively fatter and the circle is flattened. Finally a stage is reached at which discrimination is impossible. At this stage the animal starts to show symptoms of severe disturbance.

Notably, (a) a naive animal, presented with a situation in which some X may (on some random basis) mean either A or B, does not show disturbance; and (b) the disturbance does not occur in absence of the many context markers characteristic of the laboratory situation. [68]

It appears, then, that Learning II is a necessary preparation for the behavioral disturbance. The information, “This is a context for discrimination,” is communicated at the beginning of the sequence and underlined in the series of stages in which discrimination is made progressively more difficult. But when discrimination becomes impossible, the structure of the context is totally changed. The context markers (e.g., the smell of the laboratory and the experimental harness) now become misleading because the animal is in a situation which demands guesswork or gambling, not discrimination. The entire experimental sequence is, in fact, a procedure for putting the animal in the wrong at the level of Learning 11.

In my phrase, the animal is placed in a typical “double bind,” which is expectably schizophrenogenic. [69]

In the strange world outside the psychological laboratory, phenomena which belong to the category Learning II are a major preoccupation of anthropologists, educators, psychiatrists, animal trainers, human parents, and children. All who think about the processes which determine the character of the individual or the processes of change in human (or animal) relationship must use in their thinking a variety of assumptions about Learning II. From time to time, these people call in the laboratory psychologist as a consultant, and then are confronted with a linguistic barrier. Such barriers must always result when, for example, the psychiatrist is talking about Learning II, the psychologist is talking about Learning I, and neither recognizes the logical structure of the difference.

Of the multitudinous ways in which Learning II emerges in human affairs, only three will be discussed in this essay:

(a) In describing individual human beings, both the scientist and the layman commonly resort to adjectives descriptive of “character.” It is said that Mr. Jones is dependent, hostile, fey, finicky, anxious, exhibitionistic, narcissistic, passive, competitive, energetic, bold, cowardly, fatalistic, humorous, playful, canny, optimistic, perfectionist, careless, careful, casual, etc. In the light of what has already been said, the reader will be able to assign all these adjectives to their appropriate logical type. All are descriptive of (possible) results of Learning II, and if we would define these words more carefully, our definition will consist in laying down the contingency pattern of that context of Learning I which would expectably bring about that Learning II which would make the adjective applicable.

We might say of the “fatalistic” man that the pattern of his transactions with the environment is such as he might have acquired by prolonged or repeated experience as subject of Pavlovian experiment; and note that this definition of “fatalism” is specific and precise. There are many other forms of “fatalism” besides that which is defined in terms of this particular context of learning. There is, for example, the more complex type characteristic of classical Greek tragedy where a man’s own action is felt to aid the inevitable working of fate.

(b) In the punctuation of human interaction. The critical reader will have observed that the adjectives above which purport to describe individual character are really not strictly applicable to the individual but rather describe transactions between the individual and his material and human environment. No man is “resourceful” or “dependent” or “fatalistic” in a vacuum. His characteristic, whatever it be, is not his but is rather a characteristic of what goes on between him and something (or somebody) else.

This being so, it is natural to look into what goes on between people, there to find contexts of Learning I which are likely to lend their shape to processes of Learning II. In such systems, involving two or more persons, where most of the important events are postures, actions, or utterances of the living creatures, we note immediately that the stream of events is commonly punctuated into contexts of learning by a tacit agreement between the persons regarding the nature of their relationship—or by context markers and tacit agreement that these context markers shall “mean” the same for both parties. It is instructive to attempt analysis of an ongoing interchange between A and B. We ask about any particular item of A’s behavior: Is this item a stimulus for B? Or is it a response of A to something B said earlier? Or is it a reinforcement of some item provided by B? Or is A, in this item, consummating a reinforcement for himself? Etc.

Such questions will reveal at once that for many items of A’s behavior the answer is often quite unclear. Or if there be a clear answer, the clarity is due only to a tacit (rarely fully explicit) agreement between A and B as to the nature of their mutual roles, i.e., as to the nature of the contextual structure which they will expect of each other.

If we look at such an exchange in the abstract:

a1b1a2b2a3b3a4b4a5b5 where the a’s refer to items of A’s behavior, and the b’s to items of B’s behavior, we can take any a1 and construct around it three simple contexts of learning. These will be:

(a1 b1 a1+ 1) , in which a1 is the stimulus for b1.

(b1_1 a1 b1) , in which a1 is the response to b.1-1, which response B reinforces with b1.

(a1_1 b1 _1 a1) , in which a1 is now A’s reinforcement of B’s b1-1, which was response to a1_1.

It follows that a1 may be a stimulus for B or it may be A’s response to B, or it may be A’s reinforcement of B.

Beyond this, however, if we consider the ambiguity of the notions “stimulus” and “response,” “afferent” and “efferent”—as discussed above—we note that any ai may also be a stimulus for A; it may be A’s reinforcement of self; or it may be A’s response to some previous behavior of his own, as is the case in sequences of rote behavior.

This general ambiguity means in fact that the ongoing sequence of interchange between two persons is structured only by the person’s own perception of the sequence as a series of contexts, each context leading into the next. The particular manner in which the sequence is structured by any particular person will be determined by that person’s previous Learning II (or possibly by his genetics).

In such a system, words like “dominant” and “submissive,” “succoring” and “dependent” will take on definable meaning as descriptions of segments of interchange. We shall say that “A dominates B” if A and B show by their behavior that they see their relationship as characterized by sequences of the type a1b1a2, where a1 is seen (by A and B) as a signal defining conditions of instrumental reward or punishment; b1 as a signal or act obeying these conditions; and a2 as a signal reinforcing b1.

Similarly we shall say that “A is dependent on B” if their relationship is characterized by sequences a1b1a2,, where al is seen as a signal of weakness; b1 as a helping act; and a2 as an acknowledgement of b1.

But it is up to A and B to distinguish (consciously or unconsciously or not at all) between “dominance” and “dependence.” A “command” can closely resemble a cry for “help.”

(c) In psychotherapy, Learning II is exemplified most conspicuously by the phenomena of “transference.” Orthodox Freudian theory asserts that the patient will inevitably bring to the therapy room inappropriate notions about his relationship to the therapist. These notions (conscious or unconscious) will be such that he will act and talk in a way which would press the therapist to respond in ways which would resemble the patient’s picture of how some important other person (usually a parent) treated the patient in the near or distant past. In the language of the present paper, the patient will try to shape his interchange with the therapist according to the premises of his (the patient’s) former Learning II.

It is commonly observed that much of the Learning II which determines a patient’s transference patterns and, indeed, determines much of the relational life of all human beings, (a) dates from early infancy, and (b) is unconscious. Both of these generalizations seem to be correct and both need some explanation.

It seems probable that these two generalizations are true because of the very nature of the phenomena which we are discussing. We suggest that what is learned in Learning II is a way of punctuating events. But a way of punctuating is not true or false. There is nothing contained in the propositions of this learning that can be tested against reality. It is like a picture seen in an inkblot; it has neither correctness nor incorrectness. It is only a way of seeing the inkblot.

Consider the instrumental view of life. An organism with this view of life in a new situation will engage in trial-and-error behavior in order to make the situation provide a positive reinforcement. If he fails to get this reinforcement, his purposive philosophy is not thereby negated. His trial-and-error behavior will simply continue. The premises of “purpose” are simply not of the same logical type as the material facts of life, and therefore cannot easily be contradicted by them.

The practitioner of magic does not unlearn his magical view of events when the magic does not work. In fact, the propositions which govern punctuation have the general characteristic of being self-validating. [70] What we term “context” includes the subject’s behavior as well as the external events. But this behavior is controlled by former Learning II and therefore it will be of such a kind as to mold the total context to fit the expected punctuation. In sum, this self-validating characteristic of the content of Learning II has the effect that such learning is almost ineradicable. It follows that Learning II acquired in infancy is likely to persist through life. Conversely, we must expect many of the important characteristics of an adult’s punctuation to have their roots in early infancy.

In regard to the unconsciousness of these habits of punctuation, we observe that the “unconscious” includes not only repressed material but also most of the processes and habits of gestalt perception. Subjectively we are aware of our “dependency” but unable to say clearly how this pattern was constructed nor what cues were used in our creation of it.

Learning III

What has been said above about the self-validating character of premises acquired by Learning II indicates that Learning III is likely to be difficult and rare even in human beings. Expectably, it will also be difficult for scientists, who are only human, to imagine or describe this process. But it is claimed that something of the sort does from time to time occur in psychotherapy, religious conversion, and in other sequences in which there is profound reorganization of character.

Zen Buddhists, Occidental mystics, and some psychiatrists assert that these matters are totally beyond the reach of language. But, in spite of this warning, let me begin to speculate about what must (logically) be the case.

First a distinction must be drawn: it was noted above that the experiments in reversal learning demonstrate Learning II whenever there is measurable learning about the fact of reversal. It is possible to learn (Learning I) a given premise at a given time and to learn the converse premise at a later time without acquiring the knack of reversal learning. In such a case, there will be no improvement from one reversal to the next. One item of Learning I has simply replaced another item of Learning I without any achievement of Learning II. If, on the other hand, improvement occurs with successive reversals, this is evidence for Learning II.

If we apply the same sort of logic to the relation between Learning II and Learning III, we are led to expect that there might be replacement of premises at the level of Learning II without the achievement of any Learning III.

Preliminary to any discussion of Learning III, it is therefore necessary to discriminate between mere replacement without Learning III and that facilitation of replacement which would be truly Learning III.

That psychotherapists should be able to aid their patients even in a mere replacement of premises acquired by Learning II is already no mean feat when we consider the self-validating character of such premises and their more or less unconscious nature. But that this much can be done there is no doubt.

Within the controlled and protected setting of the therapeutic relationship, the therapist may attempt one or more of the following maneuvers:

to achieve a confrontation between the premises of the patient and those of the therapist—who is carefully trained not to fall into the trap of validating the old premises;

to get the patient to act, either in the therapy room or outside, in ways which will confront his own premises;

to demonstrate contradiction among the premises which currently control the patient’s behavior;

to induce in the patient some exaggeration or caricature (e.g., in dream or hypnosis) of experience based on his old premises.

As William Blake noted, long ago, “Without Contraries is no progression.” (Elsewhere I have called these contradictions at level II “double binds.”)

But there are always loopholes by which the impact of contradiction can be reduced. It is a commonplace of learning psychology that while the subject will learn (Learning I) more rapidly if he is reinforced every time he responds correctly, such learning will disappear rather rapidly if reinforcement ceases. If, on the other hand, reinforcement is only occasional, the subject will learn more slowly but the resulting learning will not easily be extinguished when reinforcement ceases altogether. In other words, the subject may learn (Learning 11) that the context is such that absence of reinforcement does not indicate that his response was wrong or inappropriate. His view of the context was, in fact, correct until the experimenter changed his tactics.

The therapist must certainly so support or hedge the contraries by which the patient is driven that loopholes of this and other kinds are blocked. The Zen candidate who has been assigned a paradox (koan) must labor at his task “like a mosquito biting on an iron bar.”

I have argued elsewhere (“Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art,” see p. 128) that an essential and necessary function of all habit formation and Learning I1 is an economy of the thought processes (or neural pathways) which are used for problem-solving or Learning I. The premises of what is commonly called “character”—the definitions of the “self” —save the individual from having to examine the abstract, philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical aspects of many sequences of life. “I don’t know whether it’s good music; I only know whether I like it.”

But Learning III will throw these unexamined premises open to question and change.

Let us, as was done above for Learning I and II, list some of the changes which we shall be willing to call Learning III.

The individual might learn to form more readily those habits the forming of which we call Learning II.

He might learn to close for himself the “loopholes” which would allow him to avoid Learning III.

He might learn to change the habits acquired by Learning II.

(d) He might learn that he is a creature which can and does unconsciously achieve Learning II.

(e) He might learn to limit or direct his Learning II.

If Learning II is a learning of the contexts of Learning I, then Learning III should be a learning of the contexts of those contexts.

But the above list proposes a paradox. Learning III (i.e., learning about Learning II) may lead either to an increase in Learning II or to a limitation and perhaps a reduction of that phenomenon. Certainly it must lead to a greater flexibility in the premises acquired by the process of Learning II —a freedom from their bondage.

I once heard a Zen master state categorically: “To become accustomed to anything is a terrible thing.”

But any freedom from the bondage of habit must also denote a profound redefinition of the self. If I stop at the level of Learning II, “I” am the aggregate of those characteristics which I call my “character.” “I” am my habits of acting in context and shaping and perceiving the contexts in which I act. Selfhood is a product or aggregate of Learning II. To the degree that a man achieves Learning III, and learns to perceive and act in terms of the contexts of contexts, his “self” will take on a sort of irrelevance. The concept of “self” will no longer function as a nodal argument in the punctuation of experience.

This matter needs to be examined. In the discussion of Learning II, it was asserted that all words like “dependency,” “pride,” “fatalism,” refer to characteristics of the self which are learned (Learning II) in sequences of relationship. These words are, in fact, terms for “roles” in relationships and refer to something artificially chopped out of interactive sequences. It was also suggested that the correct way to assign rigorous meaning to any such words is to spell out the formal structure of the sequence in which the named characteristic might have been learned. Thus the interactive sequence of Pavlovian learning was proposed as a paradigm for a certain sort of “fatalism,” etc.

But now we are asking about the contexts of these contexts of learning, i.e., about the larger sequences within which such paradigms are embedded. Consider the small item of Learning II which was mentioned above as providing a “loophole” for escape from Learning III. A certain characteristic of the self—call it “persistence”—is generated by experience in multiple sequences among which reinforcement is sporadic. We must now ask about the larger context of such sequences. How are such sequences generated?

The question is explosive. The simple stylized experimental sequence of interaction in the laboratory is generated by and partly determines a network of contingencies which goes out in a hundred directions leading out of the laboratory into the processes by which psychological research is designed, the interactions between psychologists, the economics of research money, etc., etc.

Or consider the same formal sequence in a more “natural” setting. An organism is searching for a needed or missing object. A pig is rooting for acorns, a gambler is feeding a slot machine hoping for a jackpot, or a man must find the key to his car. There are thousands of situations where living things must persist in certain sorts of behavior precisely because reinforcement is sporadic or improbable. Learning II will simplify the universe by handling these instances as a single category. But if Learning III be concerned with the contexts of these instances, then the categories of Learning II will be burst open.

Or consider what the word “reinforcement” means at the various levels. A porpoise gets a fish from the trainer when he does what the trainer wants. At level I, the fact of the fish is linked with the “rightness” of the particular action. At level II, the fact of the fish confirms the porpoise’s understanding of his (possibly instrumental or dependent) relationship with the trainer. And note that at this level, if the porpoise hates or fears the trainer, pain received from the latter may be a positive reinforcement confirming that hate. (“If it’s not the way I want it, I’ll prove it.”)

But what of “reinforcement” at level III (for porpoise or for man)?

If, as I have suggested above, the creature is driven to level III by “contraries” generated at level II, then we may expect that it is the resolving of these contraries that will constitute positive reinforcement at level III. Such resolution can take many forms.

Even the attempt at level III can be dangerous, and some fall by the wayside. These are often labeled by psychiatry as psychotic, and many of them find themselves inhibited from using the first person pronoun.

For others, more successful, the resolution of the contraries may be a collapsing of much that was learned at level II, revealing a simplicity in which hunger leads directly to eating, and the identified self is no longer in charge of organizing the behavior. These are the incorruptible innocents of the world.

For others, more creative, the resolution of contraries reveals a world in which personal identity merges into all the processes of relationship in some vast ecology or aesthetics of cosmic interaction. That any of these can survive seems almost miraculous, but some are perhaps saved from being swept away on oceanic feeling by their ability to focus in on the minutiae of life. Every detail of the universe is seen as proposing a view of the whole. These are the people for whom Blake wrote the famous advice in the “Auguries of Innocence”:

To see the World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.


The Role of Genetics in Psychology

Whatever can be said about an animal’s learning or inability to learn has bearing upon the genetic make-up of the animal. And what has been said here about the levels of learning has bearing upon the whole interplay between genetic make-up and the changes which that individual can and must achieve.

For any given organism, there is an upper limit beyond which all is determined by genetics. Planarians can probably not go beyond Learning I. Mammals other than man are probably capable of Learning II but incapable of Learning III. Man may sometimes achieve Learning III.

This upper limit for any organism is (logically and presumably) set by genetic phenomena, not perhaps by individual genes or combinations of genes, but by whatever factors control the development of basic phylar characteristics.

For every change of which an organism is capable, there is the fact of that capability. This fact may be genetically determined; or the capability may have been learned. If the latter, then genetics may have determined the capability of learning the capability. And so on.

This is in general true of all somatic changes as well as of those behavioral changes which we call learning. A man’s skin tans in the sun. But where does genetics enter this picture? Does genetics completely determine his ability to tan? Or can some men increase their ability to tan? In the latter case, the genetic factors evidently have effect at a higher logical level.

The problem in regard to any behavior is clearly not “Is it learned or is it innate?” but “Up to what logical level is learning effective and down to what level does genetics play a determinative or partly effective role?”

The broad history of the evolution of learning seems to have been a slow pushing back of genetic determinism to levels of higher logical type.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:35 am

Part 7 of 8

A Note on Hierarchies


The model discussed in this paper assumes, tacitly, that the logical types can be ordered in the form of a simple, unbranching ladder. I believe that it was wise to deal first with the problems raised by such a simple model.

But the world of action, experience, organization, and learning cannot be completely mapped onto a model which excludes propositions about the relation between classes of different logical type.

If C1 is a class of propositions, and C2 is a class of propositions about the members of C1; C3 then being a class of propositions about the members of C2; how then shall we classify propositions about the relation between these classes? For example, the proposition “As members of C1 are to members of C2, so members of C2 are to members of C3” cannot be classified within the unbranching ladder of types.

The whole of this essay is built upon the premise that the relation between C2 and C3 can be compared with the relation between C1 and C2. I have again and again taken a stance to the side of my ladder of logical types to discuss the structure of this ladder. The essay is therefore itself an example of the fact that the ladder is not unbranching.

It follows that a next task will be to look for examples of learning which cannot be classified in terms of my hierarchy of learning but which fall to the side of this hierarchy as learning about the relation between steps of the hierarchy. I have suggested elsewhere (“Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art”) that art is commonly concerned with learning of this sort, i.e., with bridging the gap between the more or less unconscious premises acquired by Learning II and the more episodic content of consciousness and immediate action.

It should also be noted that the structure of this essay is inductive in the sense that the hierarchy of orders of learning is presented to the reader from the bottom upward, from level zero to level III. But it is not intended that the explanations of the phenomenal world which the model affords shall be unidirectional. In explaining the model to the reader, a unidirectional approach was necessary, but within the model it is assumed that higher levels are explanatory of lower levels and vice versa. It is also assumed that a similar reflexive relation—both inductive and deductive—obtains among ideas and items of learning as these exist in the lives of the creatures which we study.

Finally, the model remains ambiguous in the sense that while it is asserted that there are explanatory or determinative relations between ideas of adjacent levels both upward and downward, it is not clear whether direct explanatory relations exist between separated levels, e.g., between level III and level I or between level zero and level II.

This question and that of the status of propositions and ideas collateral to the hierarchy of types remains unexamined.

The Cybernetics of “Self”: A Theory of Alcoholism [71]

The “logic” of alcoholic addiction has puzzled psychiatrists no less than the “logic” of the strenuous spiritual regime whereby the organization Alcoholics Anonymous is able to counteract the addiction. In the present essay it is suggested:

(1) that an entirely new epistemology must come out of cybernetics and systems theory, involving a new understanding of mind, self, human relationship, and power;

(2) that the addicted alcoholic is operating, when sober, in terms of an epistemology which is conventional in Occidental culture but which is not acceptable to systems theory;

(3) that surrender to alcoholic intoxication provides a partial and subjective short cut to a more correct state of mind; and

(4) that the theology of Alcoholics Anonymous coincides closely with an epistemology of cybernetics.


The present essay is based upon ideas which are, perhaps all of them, familiar either to psychiatrists who have had dealings with alcoholics, or to philosophers who have thought about the implications of cybernetics and systems theory. The only novelty which can be claimed for the thesis here offered derives from treating these ideas seriously as premises of argument and from the bringing together of commonplace ideas from two too separate fields of thought.

In its first conception, this essay was planned to be a systems-theoretic study of alcoholic addiction, in which I would use data from the publications of Alcoholics Anonymous, which has the only outstanding record of success in dealing with alcoholics. It soon became evident, however, that the religious views and the organizational structure of AA presented points of great interest to systems theory, and that the correct scope of my study should include not only the premises of alcoholism but also the premises of the AA system of treating it and the premises of AA organization.

My debt to AA will be evident throughout—also, I hope, my respect for that organization and especially for the extraordinary wisdom of its cofounders, Bill W. and Dr. Bob.

In addition, I have to acknowledge a debt to a small sample of alcoholic patients with whom I worked intensively for about two years in 1949-52, in the Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California. These men, it should be mentioned, carried other diagnoses—mostly of “schizophrenia”—in addition to the pains of alcoholism. Several were members of AA. I fear that I helped them not at all.

The Problem

It is rather generally believed that “causes” or “reasons” for alcoholism are to be looked for in the sober life of the alcoholic. Alcoholics, in their sober manifestations, are commonly dubbed “immature,” “maternally fixated,” “oral,” “homosexual,” “passive-aggressive,” “fearful of success,” “oversensitive,” “proud,” “affable,” or simply “weak.” But the logical implications of this belief are usually not examined:

If the sober life of the alcoholic somehow drives him to drink or proposes the first step toward intoxication, it is not to be expected that any procedure which reinforces his particular style of sobriety will reduce or control his alcoholism.

If his style of sobriety drives him to drink, then that style must contain error or pathology; and intoxication must provide some—at least subjective—correction of this error. In other words, compared with his sobriety, which is in some way “wrong,” his intoxication must be in some way “right.” The old tag In vino veritas may contain a truth more profound than is usually attributed to it.

An alternative hypothesis would suggest that when sober, the alcoholic is somehow more sane than the people around him, and that this situation is intolerable. I have heard alcoholics argue in favor of this possibility, but I shall ignore it in this essay. I think that Bernard Smith, the non-alcoholic legal representative of AA, came close to the mark when he said, “the [AA] member was never enslaved by alcohol. Alcohol simply served as an escape from personal enslavement to the false ideals of a materialistic society.” [72] It is not a matter of revolt against insane ideals around him but of escaping from his own insane premises, which are continually reinforced by the surrounding society. It is possible, however, that the alcoholic is in some way more vulnerable or sensitive than the normal to the fact that his insane (but conventional) premises lead to unsatisfying results.

The present theory of alcoholism, therefore, will provide a converse matching between the sobriety and the intoxication, such that the latter may be seen as an appropriate subjective correction for the former.

There are, of course, many instances in which people resort to alcohol and even to extreme intoxication as an anesthetic giving release from ordinary grief, resentment, or physical pain. It might be argued that the anesthetic action of alcohol provides a sufficient converse matching for our theoretical purposes. I shall, however, specifically exclude these cases from consideration as being not relevant to the problem of addictive or repetitive alcoholism; and this in spite of the undoubted fact that “grief,” “resentment,” and “frustration” are commonly used by addicted alcoholics as excuses for drinking.

I shall demand, therefore, a converse matching between sobriety and intoxication more specific than that provided by mere anesthesia.

Sobriety

The friends and relatives of the alcoholic commonly urge him to be “strong,” and to “resist temptation.” What they mean by this is not very clear, but it is significant that the alcoholic himself—while sober—commonly agrees with their view of his “problem.” He believes that he could be, or, at least, ought to be “the captain of his soul.” [73] But it is a cliche of alcoholism that after “that first drink,” the motivation to stop drinking is zero. Typically the whole matter is phrased overtly as a battle between “self” and “John Barleycorn.” Covertly the alcoholic may be planning or even secretly laying in supplies for the next binge, but it is almost impossible (in the hospital setting) to get the sober alcoholic to plan his next binge in an overt manner. He cannot, seemingly, be the “captain” of his soul and overtly will or command his own drunkenness. The “captain” can only command sobriety —and then not be obeyed.

Bill W., the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, himself an alcoholic, cut through all this mythology of conflict in the very first of the famous “Twelve Steps” of AA. The first step demands that the alcoholic agree that he is powerless over alcohol. This step is. usually regarded as a “surrender” and many alcoholics are either unable to achieve it or achieve it only briefly during the period of remorse following a binge. AA does not regard these cases as promising: they have not yet “hit bottom”; their despair is inadequate and after a more or less brief spell of sobriety they will again attempt to use “self-control” to fight the “temptation.” They will not or cannot accept the premise that, drunk or sober, the total personality of an alcoholic is an alcoholic personality which cannot conceivably fight alcoholism. As an AA leaflet puts it, “trying to use will power is like trying to lift yourself by your bootstraps.”

The first two steps of AA are as follows:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. [74]


Implicit in the combination of these two steps is an extraordinary—and I believe correct—idea: the experience of defeat not only serves to convince the alcoholic that change is necessary; it is the first step in that change. To be defeated by the bottle and to know it is the first “spiritual experience.” The myth of self-power is thereby broken by the demonstration of a greater power.

In sum, I shall argue that the “sobriety” of the alcoholic is characterized by an unusually disastrous variant of the Cartesian dualism, the division between Mind and Matter, or, in this case, between conscious will, or “self,” and the remainder of the personality. Bill W.’s stroke of genius was to break up with the first “step” the structuring of this dualism.

Philosophically viewed, this first step is not a surrender; it is simply a change in epistemology, a change in how to know about the personality-in-the-world. And, notably, the change is from an incorrect to a more correct epistemology.

Epistemology and Ontology

Philosophers have recognized and separated two sorts of problem. There are first the problems of how things are, what is a person, and what sort of a world this is. These are the problems of ontology. Second, there are the problems of how we know anything, or more specifically, how we know what sort of a world it is and what sort of creatures we are that can know something (or perhaps nothing) of this matter. These are the problems of epistemology. To these questions, both ontological and epistemological, philosophers try to find true answers.

But the naturalist, observing human behavior, will ask rather different questions. If he be a cultural relativist, he may agree with those philosophers who hold that a “true” ontology is conceivable, but he will not ask whether the ontology of the people he observes is “true.” He will expect their epistemology to be culturally determined or even idiosyncratic, and he will expect the culture as a whole to make sense in terms of their particular epistemology and ontology.

If, on the other hand, it is clear that the local epistemology is wrong, then the naturalist should be alert to the possibility that the culture as a whole will never really make “sense,” or will make sense only under restricted circumstances, which contact with other cultures and new technologies might disrupt.

In the natural history of the living human being, ontology and epistemology cannot be separated. His (commonly unconscious) beliefs about what sort of world it is will determine how he sees it and acts within it, and his ways of perceiving and acting will determine his beliefs about its nature. The living man is thus bound within a net of epistemological and ontological premises which—regardless of ultimate truth or falsity—become partially self-validating for him. [75]

It is awkward to refer constantly to both epistemology and ontology and incorrect to suggest that they are separable in human natural history. There seems to be no convenient word to cover the combination of these two concepts. The nearest approximations are “cognitive structure” or “character structure,” but these terms fail to suggest that what is important is a body of habitual assumptions or premises implicit in the relationship between man and environment, and that these premises may be true or false. I shall therefore use the single term “epistemology” in this essay to cover both aspects of the net of premises which govern adaptation (or maladaptation) to the human and physical environment. In George Kelly’s vocabulary, these are the rules by which an individual “construes” his experience.

I am concerned especially with that group of premises upon which Occidental concepts of the “self” are built, and conversely, with premises which are corrective to some of the more gross Occidental errors associated with that concept.

The Epistemology of Cybernetics

What is new and surprising is that we now have partial answers to some of these questions. In the last twenty-five years extraordinary advances have been made in our knowledge of what sort of thing the environment ‘is, what sort of thing an organism is, and, especially, what sort of thing a mind is. These advances have come out of cybernetics, systems theory, information theory, and related sciences.

We now know, with considerable certainty, that the ancient problem of whether the mind is immanent or transcendent can be answered in favor of immanence, and that this answer is more economical of explanatory entities than any transcendent answer: it has at least the negative support of Occam’s Razor.

On the positive side, we can assert that any ongoing ensemble of events and objects which has the appropriate complexity of causal circuits and the appropriate energy relations will surely show mental characteristics. It will compare, that is, be responsive to difference (in addition to being affected by the ordinary physical “causes” such as impact or force). It will “process information” and will inevitably be self-corrective either toward homeostatic optima or toward the maximization of certain variables.

A “bit” of information is definable as a difference which makes a difference. Such a difference, as it travels and undergoes successive transformation in a circuit, is an elementary idea.

But, most relevant in the present context, we know that no part of such an internally interactive system can have unilateral control over the remainder or over any other part. The mental characteristics are inherent or immanent in the ensemble as a whole.

Even in very simple self-corrective systems, this holistic character is evident. In the steam engine with a “governor,” the very word “governor” is a misnomer if it be taken to mean that this part of the system has unilateral control. The governor is, essentially, a sense organ or transducer which receives a transform of the difference between the actual running speed of the engine and some ideal or preferred speed. This sense organ transforms these differences into differences in some efferent message, for example, to fuel supply or to a brake. The behavior of the governor is determined, in other words, by the behavior of the other parts of the system, and indirectly by its own behavior at a previous time.

The holistic and mental character of the system is most clearly demonstrated by this last fact, that the behavior of the governor (and, indeed, of every part of the causal circuit) is partially determined by its own previous behavior. Message material (i.e., successive transforms of difference) must pass around the total circuit, and the time required for the message material to return to the place from which it started is a basic characteristic of the total system. The behavior of the governor (or any other part of the circuit) is thus in some degree determined not only by its immediate past, but by what it did at a time which precedes the present by the interval necessary for the message to complete the circuit. There is thus a sort of determinative memory in even the simplest cybernetic circuit.

The stability of the system (i.e., whether it will act self-correctively or oscillate or go into runaway) depends upon the relation between the operational product of all the transformations of difference around the circuit and upon this characteristic time. The “governor” has no control over these factors. Even a human governor in a social system is bound by the same limitations. He is controlled by information from the system and must adapt his own actions to its time characteristics and to the effects of his own past action.

Thus, in no system which shows mental characteristics can any part have unilateral control over the whole. In other words, the mental characteristics of the system are immanent, not in some part, but in the system as a whole.

The significance of this conclusion appears when we ask, “Can a computer think?” or, “Is the mind in the brain?” And the answer to both questions will be negative unless the question is focused upon one of the few mental characteristics which are contained within the computer or the brain. A computer is self-corrective in regard to some of its internal variables. It may, for example, include thermometers or other sense organs which are affected by differences in its working temperature, and the response of the sense organ to these differences may affect the action of a fan which in turn corrects the temperature. We may therefore say that the system shows mental characteristics in regard to its internal temperature. But it would be incorrect to say that the main business of the computer—the transformation of input differences into output differences—is “a mental process.” The computer is only an are of a larger circuit which always includes a man and an environment from which information is received and upon which efferent messages from the computer have effect. This total system, or ensemble, may legitimately be said to show mental characteristics. It operates by trial and error and has creative character.

Similarly, we may say that “mind” is immanent in those circuits of the brain which are complete within the brain. Or that mind is immanent in circuits which are complete within the system, brain plus body. Or, finally, that mind is immanent in the larger system—man plus environment.

In principle, if we desire to explain or understand the mental aspect of any biological event, we must take into account the system—that is, the network of closed circuits, within which that biological event is determined. But when we seek to explain the behavior of a man or any other organism, this “system” will usually not have the same limits as the “self”—as this term is commonly (and variously) understood.

Consider a man felling a tree with an axe. Each stroke of the axe is modified or corrected, according to the shape of the cut face of the tree left by the previous stroke. This self-corrective (i.e., mental) process is brought about by a total system, tree-eyes-brain- muscles-axe-stroke-tree; and it is this total system that has the characteristics of immanent mind.

More correctly, we should spell the matter out as: (differences in tree) - (differences in retina) -(differences in brain) - (differences in muscles) -(differences in movement of axe) -(differences in tree), etc. What is transmitted around the circuit is transforms of differences. And, as noted above, a difference which makes a difference is an idea or unit of information.

But this is not how the average Occidental sees the event sequence of tree felling. He says, “I cut down the tree” and he even believes that there is a delimited agent, the “self,” which performed a delimited “purposive” action upon a delimited object.

It is all very well to say that “Billiard ball A hit billiard ball B and sent it into the pocket”; and it would perhaps be all right (if we could do it) to give a complete hard-science account of the events all around the circuit containing the man and the tree. But popular parlance includes mind in its utterance by invoking the personal pronoun, and then achieves a mixture of mentalism and physicalism by restricting mind within the man and reifying the tree. Finally the mind itself becomes reified by the notion that, since the “self” acted upon the axe which acted upon the tree, the “self” must also be a “thing.” The parallelism of syntax between “I hit the billiard ball” and “The ball hit another ball” is totally misleading.

If you ask anybody about the localization and boundaries of the self, these confusions are immediately displayed. Or consider a blind man with a stick. Where does the blind man’s self begin? At the tip of the stick? At the handle of the stick? Or at some point halfway up the stick? These questions are nonsense, because the stick is a pathway along which differences are transmitted under transformation, so that to draw a delimiting line across this pathway is to cut off a part of the systemic circuit which determines the blind man’s locomotion.

Similarly, his sense organs are transducers or pathways for information, as also are his axons, etc. From a systems-theoretic point of view, it is a misleading metaphor to say that what travels in an axon is an “impulse.” It would be more correct to say that what travels is a difference, or a transform of a difference. The metaphor of “impulse” suggests a hard-science line of thought which will ramify only too easily into nonsense about “psychic energy,” and those who talk this kind of nonsense will disregard the information content of quiescence. The quiescence of an axon differs as much from activity as its activity does from quiescence. Therefore quiescence and activity have equal informational relevance. The message of activity can only be accepted as valid if the message of quiescence can also be trusted.

It is even incorrect to speak of the “message of activity” and the “message of quiescence.” Always the fact that in-formation is a transform of difference should be remembered, and we might better call the one message “activity —not quiescence” and the other “quiescence—not activity.”

Similar considerations apply to the repentant alcoholic. He cannot simply elect “sobriety.” At best he could only elect “sobriety—not drunkenness,” and his universe remains polarized, carrying always both alternatives.

The total self-corrective unit which processes information, or, as I say, “thinks” and “acts” and “decides,” is a system whose boundaries do not at all coincide with the boundaries either of the body or of what is popularly called the “self” or “consciousness”; and it is important to notice that there are multiple differences between the thinking system and the “self” as popularly conceived:

The system is not a transcendent entity as the “self” is commonly supposed to be. The ideas are immanent in a network of causal pathways along which transforms of difference are conducted. The “ideas” of the system are in all cases at least binary in structure. They are not “impulses” but “information.”

This network of pathways is not bounded with consciousness but extends to include the pathways of all unconscious mentation—both autonomic and repressed, neural and hormonal.

The network is not bounded by the skin but includes all external pathways along which information can travel. It also includes those effective differences which are immanent in the “objects” of such information. It includes the pathways of sound and light along which travel transforms of differences originally immanent in things and other people —and especially in our own actions.

It is important to note that the basic—and I believe erroneous—tenets of popular epistemology are mutually reinforcing. If, for example, the popular premise of transcendence is discarded, the immediate substitute is a premise of immanence in the body. But this alternative will be unacceptable because large parts of the thinking network are located outside the body. The so-called “Body-Mind” problem is wrongly posed in terms which force the argument toward paradox: if mind be supposed immanent in the body, then it must be transcendent. If transcendent, it must be immanent. And so on. [76]

Similarly, if we exclude the unconscious processes from the “self” and call them “ego-alien,” then these processes take on the subjective coloring of “urges” and “forces”; and this pseudodynamic quality is then extended to the conscious “self” which attempts to “resist” the “forces” of the unconscious. The “self” thereby becomes itself an organization of seeming “forces.” The popular notion which would equate “self” with consciousness thus leads into the notion that ideas are “forces”; and this fallacy is in turn supported by saying that the axon carries “impulses.” To find a way out of this mess is by no means easy.

We shall proceed by first examining the structure of the alcoholic’s polarization. In the epistemologically unsound resolution, “I will fight the bottle,” what is supposedly lined up against what?

Alcoholic “Pride”

Alcoholics are philosophers in that universal sense in which all human beings (and all mammals) are guided by highly abstract principles of which they are either quite unconscious, or unaware that the principle governing their perception and action is philosophic. A common misnomer for such principles is “feelings.” [77]

This misnomer arises naturally from the Anglo-Saxon epistemological tendency to reify or attribute to the body all mental phenomena which are peripheral to consciousness. And the misnomer is, no doubt, supported by the fact that the exercise and/or frustration of these principles is often accompanied by visceral and other bodily sensations. I believe, however, that Pascal was correct when he said, “The heart has its reasons which the reason does not at all perceive.

But the reader must not expect the alcoholic to present a consistent picture. When the underlying epistemology is full of error, derivations from it are inevitably either self-contradictory or extremely restricted in scope. A consistent corpus of theorems cannot be derived from an inconsistent body of axioms. In such cases, the attempt to be consistent leads either to the great proliferation of complexity characteristic of psychoanalytic theory and Christian theology or to the extremely narrow view characteristic of contemporary behaviorism.

I shall therefore proceed to examine the “pride” which is characteristic of alcoholics to show that this principle of their behavior is derived from the strange dualistic epistemology characteristic of Occidental civilization.

A convenient way of describing such principles as “pride,” “dependency,” “fatalism,” and so forth, is to examine the principle as if it were a result of deutero-learning [78] and to ask what contexts of learning might understandably inculcate this principle.

(1) It is clear that the principle of alcoholic life which AA calls “pride” is not contextually structured around past achievement. They do not use the word to mean pride in something accomplished. The emphasis is not upon “I succeeded,” but rather upon “I can….” It is an obsessive acceptance of a challenge, a repudiation of the proposition “I cannot.”

(2) After the alcoholic has begun to suffer from—or be blamed for— alcoholism, this principle of “pride” is mobilized behind the proposition, “I can stay sober.” But, noticeably, success in this achievement destroys the “challenge.” The alcoholic becomes “cocksure,” as AA says. He relaxes his determination, risks a drink, and finds himself on a binge. We may say that the contextual structure of sobriety changes with its achievement. Sobriety, at this point, is no longer the appropriate contextual setting for “pride.” It is the risk of the drink that now is challenging and calls out the fatal “I can….

(3) AA does its best to insist that this change in contextual structure shall never occur. They restructure the whole context by asserting over and over again that “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” They try to have the alcoholic place alcoholism within the self, much as a Jungian analyst tries to have the patient discover his “psychological type” and to learn to live with the strengths and weaknesses of that type. In contrast, the contextual structure of alcoholic “pride” places the alcoholism outside the self: “I can resist drinking.”

(4) The challenge component of alcoholic “pride” is linked with risk-taking. The principle might be put in words: “I can do something where success is improbable and failure would be disastrous.” Clearly this principle will never serve to maintain continued sobriety. As success begins to appear probable, the alcoholic must challenge the risk of a drink. The element of “bad luck” or “probability” of failure places failure beyond the limits of the self. “If failure occurs, it is not mine.” Alcoholic “pride” progressively narrows the concept of “self,” placing what happens outside its scope.

(5) The principle of pride-in-risk is ultimately almost suicidal. It is all very well to test once whether the universe is on your side, but to do so again and again, with increasing stringency of proof, is to set out on a project which can only prove that the universe hates you. But, still and all, the AA narratives show repeatedly that, at the very bottom of despair, pride sometimes prevents suicide. The final quietus must not be delivered by the “self.” [79]


Pride and Symmetry

The so-called pride of the alcoholic always presumes a real or fictitious “other,” and its complete contextual definition therefore demands that we characterize the real or imagined relationship to this “other.” A first step in this task is to classify the relationship as either “symmetrical” or “complementary.” [80] To do this is not entirely simple when the “other” is a creation of the unconscious, but we shall see that the indications for such a classification are clear.

An explanatory digression is, however, necessary. The primary criterion is simple:

If, in a binary relationship, the behaviors of A and B are regarded (by A and B) as similar and are linked so that more of the given behavior by A stimulates more of it in B, and vice versa, then the relationship is “symmetrical” in regard to these behaviors.

If, conversely, the behaviors of A and B are dissimilar but mutually fit together (as, for example, spectatorship fits exhibitionism), and the behaviors are linked so that more of A’s behavior stimulates more of B’s fitting behavior, then the relationship is “complementary” in regard to these behaviors.

Common examples of simple symmetrical relationship are armaments races, keeping up with the Joneses, athletic emulation, boxing matches, and the like. Common examples of complementary relationship are dominance-submission, sadism-masochism, nurturance-dependency, spectatorship-exhibitionism, and the like.

More complex considerations arise when higher logical typing is present. For example: A and B may compete in gift-giving, thus superposing a larger symmetrical frame upon primarily complementary behaviors. Or, conversely, a therapist might engage in competition with a patient in some sort of play therapy, placing a complementary nurturant frame around the primarily symmetrical transactions of the game.

Various sorts of “double binds” are generated when A and B perceive the premises of their relationship in different terms—A may regard B’s behavior as competitive when B thought he was helping A. And so on.

With these complexities we are not here concerned, because the imaginary “other” or counterpart in the “pride” of the alcoholic does not, I believe, play the complex games which are characteristic of the “voices” of schizophrenics.

Both complementary and symmetrical relationships are liable to progressive changes of the sort which I have called “schismogenesis.” [81] Symmetrical struggles and armaments races may, in the current phrase, “escalate”; and the normal pattern of succoring-dependency between parent and child may become monstrous. These potentially pathological developments are due to undamped or uncorrected positive feedback in the system, and may—as stated—occur in either complementary or symmetrical systems. However, in mixed systems schismogenesis is necessarily reduced. The armaments race between two nations will be slowed down by acceptance of complementary themes such as dominance, dependency, admiration, and so forth, between them. It will be speeded up by the repudiation of these themes.

This antithetical relationship between complementary and symmetrical themes is, no doubt, due to the fact that each is the logical opposite of the other. In a merely symmetrical armaments race, nation A is motivated to greater efforts by its estimate of the greater strength of B. When it estimates that B is weaker, nation A will relax its efforts. But the exact opposite will happen if A’s structuring of the relationship is complementary. Observing that B is weaker than they, A will go ahead with hopes of conquest. [82]

This antithesis between complementary and symmetrical patterns may be more than simply logical. Notably, in psychoanalytic theory, [83] the patterns which are called “libidinal” and which are modalities of the erogenous zones are all complementary. Intrusion, inclusion, exclusion, reception, retention, and the like—all of these are classed as “libidinal.” Whereas rivalry, competition, and the like fall under the rubric of “ego” and “defense.”

It is also possible that the two antithetical codes—symmetrical and complementary—may be physiologically represented by contrasting states of the central nervous system. The progressive changes of schismogenesis may reach climactic discontinuities and sudden reversals. Symmetrical rage may suddenly turn to grief; the retreating animal with tail between his legs may suddenly “turn at bay” in a desperate battle of symmetry to the death. The bully may suddenly become the coward when he is challenged, and the wolf who is beaten in a symmetrical conflict may suddenly give “surrender” signals which prevent further attack.

The last example is of special interest. If the struggle between the wolves is symmetrical—that is, if wolf A is stimulated to more aggressive behavior by the aggressive behavior of B—then if B suddenly exhibits what we may call “negative aggression,” A will not be able to continue to fight unless he can quickly switch over to that complementary state of mind in which B’s weakness would be a stimulus for his aggression. Within the hypothesis of symmetrical and complemetary modes, it becomes unnecessary to postulate a specifically “inhibitory” effect for the surrender signal.

Human beings who possess language can apply the label “aggression” to all attempts to damage the other, regardless of whether the attempt is prompted by the other’s strength or weakness; but at the prelinguistic mammalian level these two sorts of “aggression” must appear totally different. We are told that from the lion’s point of view, an “attack” on a zebra is totally different from an “attack” on another lion. [84]

Enough has now been said so that the question can be posed: Is alcoholic pride contextually structured in symmetrical or complementary form?

First, there is a very strong tendency toward symmetry in the normal drinking habits of Occidental culture. Quite apart from addictive alcoholism, two men drinking together are impelled by convention to match each other, drink for drink. At this stage, the “other” is still real and the symmetry, or rivalry, between the pair is friendly.

As the alcoholic becomes addicted and tries to resist drinking, he begins to find it difficult to resist the social context in which he should match his friends in their drinking. The AA says, “Heaven knows, we have tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people!”

As things get worse, the alcoholic is likely to become a solitary drinker and to exhibit the whole spectrum of response to challenge. His wife and friends begin to suggest that his drinking is a weakness, and he may respond, with symmetry, both by resenting them and by asserting his strength to resist the bottle. But, as is characteristic of symmetrical responses, a brief period of successful struggle weakens his motivation and he falls off the wagon. Symmetrical effort requires continual opposition from the opponent.

Gradually the focus of the battle changes, and the alcoholic finds himself committed to a new and more deadly type of symmetrical conflict. He must now prove that the bottle cannot kill him. His “head is bloody but unbowed.” He is still the “captain of his soul”—for what it’s worth.

Meanwhile, his relationships with wife and boss and friends have been deteriorating. He never did like the complementary status of his boss as an authority; and now as he deteriorates his wife is more and more forced to take a complementary role. She may try to exert authority, or she becomes protective, or she shows forbearance, but all those provoke either rage or shame. His symmetrical “pride” can tolerate no complementary role.

In sum, the relationship between the alcoholic and his real or fictitious “other” is clearly symmetrical and clearly schismogenic. It escalates. We shall see that the religious conversion of the alcoholic when saved by AA can be described as a dramatic shift from this symmetrical habit, or epistemology, to an almost purely complementary view of his relationship to others and to the universe or God.

Pride or Inverted Proof?

Alcoholics may appear to be stiff-necked, but they are not stupid. The part of the mind in which their policy is decided certainly lies too deep for the word “stupidity” to be applicable. These levels of the mind are prelinguistic and the computation which goes on there is coded in primary process.

Both in dream and in mammalian interaction, the only way to achieve a proposition which contains its own negation (“I will not bite you,” or “I am not afraid of him”) is by an elaborate imagining or acting out of the proposition to be negated, leading to a reductio ad absurdum. “I will not bite you” is achieved between two mammals by an experimental combat which is a “not combat,” sometimes called “play.” It is for this reason that “agonistic” behavior commonly evolves into friendly greeting. [85]

In this sense, the so-called pride of the alcoholic is in some degree ironic. It is a determined effort to test something like “self-control” with an ulterior but unstateable purpose of proving that “self-control” is ineffectual and absurd. “It simply won’t work.” This ultimate proposition, since it contains a simple negation, is not to be expressed in primary process. Its final expression is in an action—the taking of a drink. The heroic battle with the bottle, that fictitious “other,” ends up in a “kiss and make friends.”

In favor of this hypothesis, there is the undoubted fact that the testing of self-control leads back into drinking. And, as I have argued above, the whole epistemology of self-control which his friends urge upon the alcoholic is monstrous. If this be so, then the alcoholic is right in rejecting it. He has achieved a reductio ad absurdum of the conventional epistemology.

But this description of achieving a reductio ad absurdum verges upon teleology. If the proposition “It won’t work” cannot be entertained within the coding of primary process, how then can the computations of primary process direct the organism to try out those courses of action which will demonstrate that “It won’t work”?

Problems of this general type are frequent in psychiatry and can perhaps only be resolved by a model in which, under certain circumstances, the organism’s discomfort activates a positive feedback loop to increase the behavior which preceded the discomfort. Such positive feedback would provide a verification that it was really that particular behavior which brought about the discomfort, and might increase the discomfort to some threshold level at which change would become possible.

In psychotherapy such a positive feedback loop is commonly provided by the therapist who pushes the patient in the direction of his symptoms—a technique which has been called the “therapeutic double bind.” An example of this technique is quoted later in this essay, where the AA member challenges the alcoholic to go and do some “controlled drinking” in order that he may discover for himself that he has no control.

It is also usual that the symptoms and hallucinations of the schizophrenic—like dreams—constitute a corrective experience, so that the whole schizophrenic episode takes on the character of a self-initiation. Barbara O’Brien’s account of her own psychosis [86] is perhaps the most striking example of this phenomenon, which has been discussed elsewhere. [87]

It will be noted that the possible existence of such a positive feedback loop, which will cause a runaway in the direction of increasing discomfort up to some threshold (which might be on the other side of death), is not included in conventional theories of learning. But a tendency to verify the unpleasant by seeking repeated experience of it is a common human trait. It is perhaps what Freud called the “death instinct.”

The Drunken State

What has been said above about the treadmill of symmetrical pride is only one half of the picture. It is the picture of the state of mind of the alcoholic battling with the bottle. Clearly this state is very unpleasant and clearly it is also unrealistic. His “others” are either totally imaginary or are gross distortions of persons on whom he is dependent and whom he may love. He has an alternative to this uncomfortable state—he can get drunk. Or, “at least,” have a drink.

With this complementary surrender, which the alcoholic will often see as an act of spite—a Barthian dart in a symmetrical struggle—his entire epistemology changes. His anxieties and resentments and panic vanish as if by magic. His self-control is lessened, but his need to compare himself with others is reduced even further. He feels the physiological warmth of alcohol in his veins and, in many cases, a corresponding psychological warmth toward others. He may be either maudlin or angry, but he has at least become again a part of the human scene.

Direct data bearing upon the thesis that the step from sobriety into intoxication is also a step from symmetrical challenge into complementarity are scarce, and always confused both by the distortions of recall and by the complex toxicity of the alcohol. But there is strong evidence from song and story to indicate that the step is of this kind. In ritual, partaking of wine has always stood for the social aggregation of persons united in religious “communion” or secular Gemütlichkeit. In a very literal sense, alcohol supposedly makes the individual see himself as and act as a part of the group. That is, it enables complementarity in the relationships which surround him.
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Re: STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF MIND: COLLECTED ESSAYS IN ANTHROP

Postby admin » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:36 am

Part 8 of 8

Hitting Bottom

AA attaches great importance to this phenomenon and regards the alcoholic who has not hit bottom as a poor prospect for their help. Conversely, they are inclined to explain their failure by saying that the individual who goes back to his alcoholism has not yet “hit bottom.”

Certainly many sorts of disaster may cause an alcoholic to hit bottom. Various sorts of accidents, an attack of delirium tremens, a patch of drunken time of which he has no memory, rejection by wife, loss of job, hopeless diagnosis, and so on—any of these may have the required effect. AA says that “bottom” is different for different men and some may be dead before they reach it. [88]

It is possible, however, that “bottom” is reached many times by any given individual; that “bottom” is a spell of panic which provides a favorable moment for change, but not a moment at which change is inevitable. Friends and relatives and even therapists may pull the alcoholic out of his panic, either with drugs or reassurance, so that he “recovers” and goes back to his “pride” and alcoholism— only to hit a more disastrous “bottom” at some later time, when he will again be ripe for a change. The attempt to change the alcoholic in a period between such moments of panic is unlikely to succeed.

The nature of the panic is made clear by the following description of a “test.”

We do not like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself. Step over to the nearest barroom and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide, if you are honest with yourself about it. It may be worth a bad case of jitters if you get a full knowledge of your condition. [89]

We might compare the test quoted above to commanding a driver to brake suddenly when traveling on a slippery road: he will discover fast that his control is limited. (The metaphor “skid row” for the alcoholic section of town is not inappropriate.)

The panic of the alcoholic who has hit bottom is the panic of the man who thought he had control over a vehicle but suddenly finds that the vehicle can run away with him. Suddenly, pressure on what he knows is the brake seems to make the vehicle go faster. It is the panic of discovering that it (the system, self plus vehicle) is bigger than he is.

In terms of the theory here presented, we may say that hitting bottom exemplifies systems theory at three levels:

(1) The alcoholic works on the discomforts of sobriety to a threshold point at which he has bankrupted the epistemology of “self-control.” He then gets drunk— because the “system” is bigger than he is—and he may as well surrender to it.

(2) He works repeatedly at getting drunk until he proves that there is a still larger system. He then encounters the panic of “hitting bottom.”

(3) If friends and therapists reassure him, he may achieve a further unstable adjustment—becoming addicted to their help—until he demonstrates that this system won’t work, and “hits bottom” again but at a lower level. In this, as in all cybernetic systems, the sign (plus or minus) of the effect of any intrusion upon the system depends upon timing.

(4) Lastly, the phenomenon of hitting bottom is complexly related to the experience of double bind. [90] Bill W. narrates that he hit bottom when diagnosed as a hopeless alcoholic by Dr. William D. Silkworth in 1939, and this event is regarded as the beginning of AA history. [91] Dr. Silkworth also “supplied us with the tools with which to puncture the toughest alcoholic ego, those shattering phrases by which he described our illness: the obsession of the mind that compels us to drink and the allergy of the body that condemns us to go mad or die.” [92] This is a double bind correctly founded upon the alcoholic’s dichotomous epistemology of mind versus body. He is forced by these words back and back to the point at which only an involuntary change in deep unconscious epistemology—a spiritual experience—will make the lethal description irrelevant.


The Theology of Alcoholics Anonymous

Some outstanding points of the theology of AA are:

(1) There is a Power greater than the self. Cybernetics would go somewhat further and recognize that the “self” as ordinarily understood is only a small part of a much larger trial-and-error system which does the thinking, acting, and deciding. This system includes all the informational pathways which are relevant at any given moment to any given decision. The “self” is a false reification of an improperly delimited part of this much larger field of interlocking processes. Cybernetics also recognizes that two or more persons —any group of persons—may together form such a thinking-and-acting system.

(2) This Power is felt to be personal and to be intimately linked with each person. It is “God as you understand him to be.”

Cybernetically speaking, “my” relation to any larger system around me and including other things and persons will be different from “your” relation to some similar system around you. The relation “part of” must necessarily and logically always be complementary but the meaning of the phrase “part of” will be different for every person. [93] This difference will be especially important in systems containing more than one person. The system or “power” must necessarily appear different from where each person sits. Moreover, it is expectable that such systems, when they encounter each other, will recognize each other as systems in this sense. The “beauty” of the woods through which I walk is my recognition both of the individual trees and of the total ecology of the woods as systems. A similar esthetic recognition is still more striking when I talk with another person.

(3) A favorable relationship with this Power is discovered through “hitting bottom” and “surrender.”

(4) By resisting this Power, men and especially alcoholics bring disaster upon themselves. The materialistic philosophy which sees “man” as pitted against his environment is rapidly breaking down as technological man becomes more and more able to oppose the largest systems. Every battle that he wins brings a threat of disaster. The unit of survival—either in ethics or in evolution—is not the organism or the species but the largest system or “power” within which the creature lives. If the creature destroys its environment, it destroys itself.

(5) But—and this is important—the Power does not reward and punish. It does not have “power” in that sense. In the biblical phrase, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” And, conversely, to them that do not. The idea of power in the sense of unilateral control is foreign to AA. Their organization is strictly “democratic” (their word), and even their deity is still bound by what we might call a systemic determinism. The same limitation applies both to the relationship between the AA sponsor and the drunk whom he hopes to help and to the relationship between AA central office and every local group.

(6) The first two “steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous taken together identify the addiction as a manifestation of this Power.

(7) The healthy relation between each person and this Power is complementary. It is in precise contrast to the “pride” of the alcoholic, which is predicated upon a symmetrical relationship to an imagined “other.” The schismogenesis is always more powerful than the participants in it.

(8) The quality and content of each person’s relation to the Power is indicated or reflected in the social structure of AA. The secular aspect of this system—its governance—is delineated in “Twelve Traditions” [94] which supplement the “Twelve Steps,” the latter developing man’s relationship to the Power. The two documents overlap in the Twelfth Step, which enjoins aid to other alcoholics as a necessary spiritual exercise without which the member is likely to relapse. The total system is a Durkheimian religion in the sense that the relationship between man and his community parallels the relationship between man and God. “AA is a power greater than any of us.” [95]

In sum, the relationship of each individual to the “Power” is best defined in the words is part of.”

(9) Anonymity. It must be understood that anonymity means much more in AA thinking and theology than the mere protection of members from exposure and shame. With increasing fame and success of the organization as a whole, it has become a temptation for members to use the fact of their membership as a positive asset in public relations, politics, education, and many other fields. Bill W., the cofounder of the organization, was himself caught by this temptation in early days and has discussed the matter in a published article. [96] He sees first that any grabbing of the spotlight must be a personal and spiritual danger to the member, who cannot affort such self-seeking; and beyond this that it would be fatal for the organization as a whole to become involved in politics, religious controversy, and social reform. He states clearly that the errors of the alcoholic are the same as the “forces which are today ripping the world apart at its seams,” but that it is not the business of AA to save the world. Their single purpose is “to carry the AA message to the sick alcoholic who wants it.” [97] He concludes that anonymity is “the greatest symbol of self-sacrifice that we know.” Elsewhere the twelfth of the “Twelve Traditions” states that “anonymity is the spiritual foundation of our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”

To this we may add that anonymity is also a profound statement of the systemic relation, part-to-whole. Some systems theorists would go even further, because a major temptation for systems theory lies in the reification of theoretical concepts. Anatol Holt says he wants a bumper sticker which would (paradoxically) say, “Stamp out nouns.” [98]

(10) Prayer. The AA use of prayer similarly affirms the complementarity of part-whole relationship by the very simple technique of asking for that relationship. They ask for those-personal characteristics, such as humility, which are in fact-exercised in the very act of prayer. If the act of prayer be sincere (which is not so easy), God cannot but grant the request. And this is peculiarly true of “God, as you understand him.” This self-affirming tautology, which contains its own beauty, is precisely the balm required after the anguish of the double binds which went with hitting bottom.

Somewhat more complex is the famous “Serenity Prayer”: “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.” [99]

If double binds cause anguish and despair and destroy personal epistemological premises at some deep level, then it follows, conversely, that for the healing of these wounds and the growth of a new epistemology, some converse of the double bind will be appropriate. The double bind leads The Serenity Prayer explicitly frees the worshipper from these maddening bonds.

to the conclusion of despair, “There are no alternatives.”

In this connection it is worth mentioning that the great schizophrenic, John Perceval, observed a change in his “voices.” In the beginning of his psychosis they bullied him with “contradictory commands” (or as I would say, double binds), but later he began to recover when they offered him choice of clearly defined alternatives. [100]

(11) In one characteristic, AA differs profoundly from such natural mental systems as the family or the redwood forest. It has a single purpose—”to carry the AA message to the sick alcoholic who wants it”—and the organization is dedicated to the maximization of that purpose. In this respect, AA is no more sophisticated than General Motors or an Occidental nation. But biological systems, other than those premised upon Occidental ideas (and especially money), are multipurposed. There is no single variable in the redwood forest of which we can say that the whole system is oriented to maximizing that variable and all other variables are subsidiary to it; and, indeed, the redwood forest works toward optima, not maxima. Its needs are satiable, and too much of anything is toxic.


There is, however, this: that the single purpose of AA is directed outward and is aimed at a noncompetitve relationship to the larger world. The variable to be maximized is a complementarity and is of the nature of “service” rather than dominance.

The Epistemological Status of Complementary and Symmetrical Premises

It was noted above that in human interaction, symmetry and complementarity may be complexly combined. It is therefore reasonable to ask how it is possible to regard these themes as so fundamental that they shall be called “epistemological,” even in a natural history study of cultural and interpersonal premises.

The answer seems to hang upon what is meant by “fundamental” in such a study of man’s natural history; and the word seems to carry two sorts of meaning.

First, I call more fundamental those premises which are the more deeply embedded in the mind, which are the more “hard programmed” and the less susceptible to change. In this sense, the symmetrical pride or hubris of the alcoholic is fundamental.

Second, I shall call more fundamental those premises of mind which refer to the larger rather than the smaller systems or gestalten of the universe. The proposition “Grass is green” is less fundamental than the proposition “Color differences make a difference.”

But, if we ask about what happens when premises are changed, it becomes clear that these two definitions of the “fundamental” overlap to a very great extent. If a man achieves or suffers change in premises which are deeply embedded in his mind, he will surely find that the results of that change will ramify throughout his whole universe. Such changes we may well call “epistemological.”

The question then remains regarding what is epistemologically “right” and what is epistemologically “wrong.” Is the change from alcoholic symmetrical “pride” to the AA species of complementarity a correction of his epistemology? And is complementarity always somehow better than symmetry?

For the AA member, it may well be true that complementarity is always to be preferred to symmetry and that even the trivial rivalry of a game of tennis or chess may be dangerous. The superficial episode may touch off the deeply embedded symmetrical premise. But this does not mean that tennis and chess propose epistemological error for everybody.

The ethical and philosophic problem really concerns only the widest universe and the deepest psychological levels. If we deeply and even unconsciously believe that our relation to the largest system which concerns us—the “Power greater than self”—is symmetrical and emulative, then we are in error.

Limitations of the Hypothesis

Finally, the above analysis is subject to the following limitations and implications:

It is not asserted that all alcoholics operate according to the logic which is here outlined. It is very possible that other types of alcoholics exist and almost certain that alcoholic addiction in other cultures will follow other lines.

1. It is not asserted that the way of Alcoholics Anonymous is the only way to live correctly or that their theology is the only correct derivation from the epistemology of cybernetics and systems theory.

2. It is not asserted that all transactions between human beings ought to be complementary, though it is clear that the relation between the individual and the larger system of which he is a part must necessarily be so. Relations between persons will (I hope) always be complex.


It is, however, asserted that the nonalcoholic world has many lessons which it might learn from the epistemology of systems theory and from the ways of AA. If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also continue to see the world in terms of God versus man; elite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation; and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at its world can endure.

Comment on Part III

In the essays collected in Part III, I speak of an action or utterance as occurring “in” a context, and this conventional way of talking suggests that the particular action is a “dependent” variable, while the context is the “independent” or determining variable. But this view of how an action is related to its context is likely to distract the reader—as it has distracted me—from perceiving the ecology of the ideas which together constitute the small subsystem which I call “context.”

This heuristic error—copied like so many others from the ways of thought of the physicist and chemist—requires correction.

It is important to see the particular utterance or action as part of the ecological subsystem called context and not as the product or effect of what remains of the context after the piece which we want to explain has been cut out from it.

The mistake in question is the same formal error as that mentioned in the comment on Part II where I discuss the evolution of the horse. We should not think of this process just as a set of changes in the animal’s adaptation to life on the grassy plains but.as a constancy in the relationship between animals and environment. It is the ecology which survives and slowly evolves. In this evolution, the relata—the animals and the grass—undergo changes which are indeed adaptive from moment to moment. But if the process of adaptation were the whole story, there could be no systemic pathology. Trouble arises precisely because the “logic” of adaptation is a different “logic” from that of the survival and evolution of the ecological system.

In Warren Brodey’s phrase, the “time-grain” of the adaptation is different from that of the ecology.

“Survival” means that certain descriptive statements about some living system continue to be true through some period of time; and, conversely, “evolution” refers to changes in the truth of certain descriptive statements about some living system. The trick is to define which statements about which systems remain true or undergo change.

The paradoxes (and the pathologies) of systemic process arise precisely because the constancy and survival of some larger system is maintained by changes in the constituent subsystems.

The relative constancy—the survival—of the relationship between animals and grass is maintained by changes in both relata. But any adaptive change in either of the relata, if uncorrected by some change in the other, will always jeopardize the relationship between them. These arguments propose a new conceptual frame for the “double bind” hypothesis, a new conceptual frame for thinking about “schizophrenia,” and a new way of looking at context and levels of learning.

In a word, schizophrenia, deutero-learning, and the double bind cease to be matters of individual psychology and become part of the ecology of ideas in systems or “minds” whose boundaries no longer coincide with the skins of the participant individuals.

_______________

Notes:

1. This article was my comment on Margaret Mead's article “The Comparative Study of Culture and the Purposive Cultivation of Democratic Values,” published as Chapter IV of Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium, copyright 1942 by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, New York. It is here reprinted by permission of the Conference and of Harper & Row, Inc.

I have italicized a parenthesis in footnote 5 which pre-figures the concept of the “double bind.”

2. Dr. Mead writes: “. . those students who have devoted themselves to studying cultures as wholes, as systems of dynamic equilibrium, can make the following contributions:… “4. Implement plans for altering our present culture by recognizing the importance of including the social scientist within his experimental material, and by recognizing that by working toward defined ends we commit ourselves to the manipulation of persons, and therefore to the negation of democracy. Only by working in terms of values which are limited to defining a direction is it possible for us to use scientific methods in the control of the process without the negation of the moral autonomy of the human spirit.” (Italics hers.)

3. Psychological papers bearing upon this problem of the relationship between gestalt and simple learning are very numerous, if we include all who have worked on the concepts of transfer of learning, generalization, irradiation, reaction threshold (Hull), insight, and the like. Historically, one of the first to pose these questions was Mr. Frank (L. K. Frank, “The Problems of Learning,” Psych. Review, 1926, 33: 329–51; and Professor Maier has recently introduced a concept of “direction” which is closely related to the notion of “deutero-learning.” He says: “direction … is the force which integrates memories in a particular manner without being a memory itself.” (N. R. F. Maier, “The Behavior Mechanisms Concerned with Problem Solving,” Psych. Review, 1940, 47: 43–58.) If for “force” we substitute “habit,” and for “memory” we substitute “experience of the stream of events,” the concept of deutero-learning can be seen as almost synonymous with Professor Maier's concept of “direction.”

4. It will be noted that the operational definition of deutero-learning is necessarily somewhat easier than that of proto-learning. Actually, no simple learning curve represents proto-learning alone. Even within the duration of the single learning experiment we must suppose that some deutero-learning will occur, and this will make the gradient at any point somewhat steeper than the hypothetical gradient of “pure” proto-learning.

5. C. Hull, Mathematico-Deductive Theory of Rote Learning, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1940.

6. Various classifications have been devised for purposes of exposition. Here I follow that of Hilgard and Marquis (E. R. Hilgard and D. G. Marquis, Conditioning and Learning, New York, Appleton Century Co., 1940). These authors subject their own classification to a brilliant critical analysis, and to this analysis I am indebted for one of the formative ideas upon which this paper is based. They insist that any learning context can be described in terms of any theory of learning, if we are willing to stretch and overemphasize certain aspects of the context to fit onto the Procrustean bed of the theory. I have taken this notion as a cornerstone of my thinking, substituting “apperceptive habits” for “theories of learning,” and arguing that almost any sequence of events can be stretched and warped and punctuated to fit in with any type of apperceptive habit. (We may suppose that experimental neurosis is what happens when the subject fails to achieve this assimilation.)

I am also indebted to Lewin's topological analysis of the contexts of reward and punishment. (K. Lewin, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1936.)

7. Many people feel that the contexts of experimental learning are so oversimplified as to have no bearing upon the phenomena of the real world. Actually, expansion of this classification will give means of defining systematically many hundreds of possible contexts of learning with their associated apperceptive habits. The scheme may be expanded in the following ways:

a. Inclusion of contexts of negative learning (inhibition).

b. Inclusion of mixed types (e.g., cases in which salivation, with its physiological relevance to meat powder, is also instrumental in obtaining the meat powder).

c. Inclusion of the cases in which the subject is able to deduce some sort of relevance (other than the physiological) between some two or more elements in the sequence. For this to be true, the subject must have experience of contexts differing systematically one from another, e.g., contexts in which some type of change in one element is constantly accompanied by a constant type of change in another element. These cases can be spread out on a lattice of possibilities, according to which pair of elements the subject sees as interrelated. There are only five elements (conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, reward or punishment, and two time intervals), but any pair of these may be interrelated, and of the interrelated pair, either may be seen by the subject as determining the other. These possibilities, multiplied for our four basic contexts, give forty-eight types.

d. The list of basic types may be extended by including those cases (not as yet investigated in learning experiments but common in interpersonal relationships) in which the roles of subject and experimenter are reversed. In these, the learning partner provides the initial and final elements, while some other person (or circumstance) provides the middle term. In these types, we see the buzzer and the meat powder as the behavior of a person and ask: “What does this person learn?” A great part of the gamut of apperceptive habits associated with authority and parenthood is based on contexts o f this general type.


8. Dorothy Lee, “A Primitive System of Values,” Journal Philos. of Science, 1940, 7: 355-78.

9. A It is possible that semi-Pavlovian phrasings of the stream of events tend, like the experiments which are their prototypes, to hinge particularly upon autonomic reactions—that those who see events in these terms tend to see these reactions, which are only partially subject to voluntary control, as peculiarly effective and powerful causes of outside events. There may be some ironical logic in Pavlovian fatalism which predisposes us to believe that we can alter the course of events only by means of those behaviors which we are least able to control.

10. The Balinese material collected by Dr. Mead and myself has not yet been published in extenso, but a brief outline of the theory here suggested is available—cf. G. Bateson, “The Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis and Culture,” Psychological Review, 1941, 48: 350-55.

11. This essay was read (by Jay Haley) at the A.P.A. Regional Research Conference in Mexico City, March 11, 1954. It is here reprinted from A.P.A. Psychiatric Research Reports, II, 1955, by permission of the American Psychiatric Association.

12. A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, 3 vols., 2nd ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1910-13.

13. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London, Harcourt Brace, 1922.

14. R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1937.

15. B. L. Whorf, “Science and Linguistics,” Technology Review, 1940, 44: 229-48.

16. J. Ruesch and G. Bateson, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, New York, Norton, 1951.

17. A. Korzybski, Science and Sanity, New York, Science Press, 1941.

18. The verbalization of these metalinguistic rules is a much later achievement which can only occur after the evolution of a nonverbalized meta-metalinguistics.

19. N. Tinbergen, Social Behavior in Animals with Special Reference to Vertebrates, London, Methuen, 1953.

20. K. Z. Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring, New York, Crowell, 1952.

21. Ibid.

22. C. R. Carpenter, “A Field Study of the Behavior and Social Relations of Howling Monkeys,” Comp. Psychol. Monogr., 1934, 10: 1-168.

23. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1922.

24. W. S. McCulloch, “A Heterarchy of Values, etc.,” Bulletin of Math. Biophys., 1945, 7: 89-93.

25. Whitehead and Russell, op. cit.

26. This is an edited version of a talk, “How the Deviant Sees His Society,” given in May, 1955, at a conference on “The Epidemiology of Mental Health” held at Brighton, Utah, sponsored by the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology of the University of Utah, and the Veterans Administration Hospital, Fort Douglas Division, of Salt Lake City, Utah. A rough transcript of the talks at this conference was mimeographed and circulated by the organizers.

27. This paper by Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and. John H. Weakland is here reproduced from Behavioral Science, Vol. I, No. 4, 1956, by permission of Behavioral Science.

28. This paper derives from hypotheses first developed in a research project financed by the Rockfeller Foundation from 1952-54, administered by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Stanford University and directed by Gregory Bateson. Since 1954 the project has financed by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. To Jay Haley is due credit for recognizing that the symptoms of schizophrenia are suggestive of an inability to discriminate the Logical Types, and this was amplified by Bateson, who added the notion that the symptoms and etiology could be formally described in terms of a double bind hypothesis. The hypothesis was communicated to D. D. Jackson and found to fit closely with his ideas of family homeostasis. Since then Dr. Jackson has worked closely with the project. The study of the formal analogies between hypnosis and schizophrenia has been the work of John H. Weakland and Jay Haley.

29. A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1910.

30. G. Bateson, “A Theory of Play and Fantasy,” Psychiatric Research Reports, 1955, 2: 39-51.

31. A film prepared by this project, “The Nature of Play; Part I, River Otters,” is available.

32. C. R. Carpenter, “A Field Study of the Behavior and Social Relations of Howling Monkeys,” Comp. Psychol. Monogr., 1934, 10: 1–168; also K. Z. Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring, New York, Crowell, 1952.

33. G. Bateson, “Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning,” Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium, New York, Harper, 1942. (See above, p. 159) ; also H. F. Harlow, “The Formation of Learning Sets,” Psychol. Review, 1949, 56: 51–65; also C. L. Hull, et al., Mathematico-deductive Theory of Rote Learning, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1940.

34. E. von Domarus, “The Specific Laws of Logic in Schizophrenia,” Language and Thought in Schizophrenia, J. S. Kasanin, ed., Berkeley, University of California Press, 1944.

35. Our concept of punishment is being refined at present. It appears to us to involve perceptual experience in a way that cannot be encompassed by the notion of “trauma.”

36. J. Perceval, A Narrative of the Treatment Experienced by a Gentleman During a State of Mental Derangement, Designed to Explain the Causes and Nature of Insanity, etc., London, Effingham Wilson, 1836 and 1840. (See bibliographic item, 1961 a.)

37. R. Hilgard, “Anniversary Reactions in Parents Precipitated by Children,” Psychiatry, 1953, 16: 73-80.

38. G. Bateson, “. . . Play and Fantasy,” op. cit.

39. D. D. Jackson, “The Question of Family Homeostasis,” presented at the American Psychiatric Association Meeting, St. Louis, May 7, 1954; also Jackson, “Some Factors Influencing the Oedipus Complex,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1954, 23: 566-81.

40. D. D. Jackson, “An Episode of Sleepwalking,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1954, 2: 503—508; also Jackson, “Some Factors . . . ,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1954, 23: 566—581.

41. Bateson, “ A Theory of Play …” op. cit.

42. M. H. Erickson, Personal communication, 1955.

43. F. Fromm-Reichmann, Personal communication, 1956.

44. The ideas in this lecture represent the combined thinking of the staff of The Project for the Study of Schizophrenic Communication. The staff consisted of Gregory Bateson, Jay Haley, John H. Weakland, Don D. Jackson, M.D., and William F. Fry, M.D

The article is reprinted from Chronic Schizophrenia: Explorations in Theory and Treatment, edited by L. Appleby, J. M. Scher, and J. Cumming, The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1960; reprinted by permission.

45. R. L. Stevenson, “The Poor Thing,” Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vol. 20, New York, Scribners, 1918, pp. 496-502.

46. D . W. Thompson, On Growth and Form, Vol. 2, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1952.

47. Beatrice C. Bateson, William Bateson, Naturalist, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1928.

48. G. Bateson, D. D. Jackson, J. Haley, and J. H. Weakland, “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” Behavioral Science, 1956, 1: 251–64; also G. Bateson, “Language and Psychotherapy, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann's Last Project,” Psychiatry, 1958, 21: 96–100; also G. Bateson (moderator), “Schizophrenic Distortions of Communication,” Psychotherapy of Chronic Schizophrenic Patients, C. A. Whitacker, ed., Boston and Toronto, Little, Brown and Co., 1958, pp. 31– 56; also G. Bateson, “Analysis of Group Therapy in an Admission Ward, United States Naval Hospital, Oakland, California,” Social Psychiatry in Action, H. A. Wilmer, Springfield, Ill., Charles C. Thomas, 1958, pp. 334–49; also J. Haley, “The Art of Psychoanalysis,” etc., 1958, .15: 190–200; also J. Haley, “An Interactional Explanation of Hypnosis,” American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 1958, 1: 41–57; also J. H. Weakland and D. D. Jackson, “Patient and Therapist Observations on the Circumstances of a Schizophrenic Episode,” AMA Archives of Neurological Psychiatry, 1958, 79: 554– 74.

49. H. F. Jones, Samuel Butler: A Memoir, Vol. 1, London, Macmillan, 1919.

50. J. Von Neumann and O. Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1944.

51. Second Annual Albert D. Lasker Memorial Lecture, delivered at the Institute for Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Research and Training of the Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, April 7, 1959. This lecture is here reprinted by permission of the A.M.A. Archives of General Psychiatry where it appeared in 1960, Vol. 2, pp. 477-491.

52. 1971. In my final version of this hierarchy of orders of learning, published in this volume as “The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication,” (see p. 283) I have used a different system of numbering. The receipt of a signal is there called “Zero Learning”; changes in Zero Learning are called Learning I; “deuterolearning” is called Learning II, etc.

53. C. L. Hull, et al., Mathematico-deductive Theory of Rote Learning: A Study in Scientific Methodology, (Yale University Institute of Human Relations), New Haven, Yale University Press, 1940; also H. F. Harlow, “The Formation of Learning Sets,” Psychol. Review, 1949, 56: 51-65.

54. In this sense, of course, all the theories of change assume that the next change is in some degree prefigured in the system which is to undergo that change.

55. These considerations alter somewhat the old problem of the evolutionary effect of use and disuse. Orthodox theory could only suggest that a mutation reducing the (potential) size of a disused organ had survival value in terms of the resulting economy of tissue. The present theory would suggest that atrophy of an organ, occurring at the somatic level, may constitute a drain upon the total available adaptability of the organism, and that this waste of adaptability might be saved if reduction of the organ could be achieved more directly by genetic determinants.

56. The name of Newton certainly belongs in this list. But the man himself was of a different kidney. His mystical preoccupation with alchemy and apocalyptic writings, and his secret theological monism indicate that he was not the first objective scientist but, rather, the “last of the magicians” (see J. M. Keynes, “Newton, the Man,” Tercentenary Celebrations, London, Cambridge University Press, 1947, pp. 27-34). Newton and Blake were alike in devoting much time and thought to the mystical works of Jacob Boehme.

57. This paper was given in August, 1969, at a Symposium on the Double Bind; Chairman, Dr. Robert Ryder; sponsored by the American Psychological Association. It was prepared under Career Development Award (MH-21,931) of the National Institute of Mental Health.

58. What is important, however, is that the proposition be constantly true, rather than that it be abstract. It just so happens—coincidentally—that abstractions, if well chosen, have a constancy of truth. For human beings it is rather constantly true that air is present around the nose; the reflexes which control respiration can therefore be hard-programmed in the medulla. For the porpoise, the proposition “air around the blowhole” is only intermittently true, and therefore respiration must be controlled in a more flexible manner from some higher center.

59. Formally correct because morphogenesis, like behavior, is surely a matter of messages in contexts. (See G. Bateson, “A Re-examination of 'Bateson's Rule,'“ Journal of Genetics, in press.)

60. K. Pryor, R. Haag, and J. O'Rielly, “Deutero-Learning in a Roughtooth Porpoise (Steno bredanensis),” U. S. Naval Ordinance Test Station, China Lake, NOTS TP 4270

61. This essay was written in 1964 while the author was employed by the Communications Research Institute, under a Career Development Award (K3-NH-21, 931) from the National Institute of Mental Health. It was submitted as a position paper to the “Conference on World Views” sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, August 2-11, 1968. The section on “Learning III” was added in 1971.

62. A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, 3 vols., 2nd ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1910-13.

63. It is conceivable that the same words might be used in describing both a class and its members and be true in both cases. The word “wave” is the name of a class of movements of particles. We can also say that the wave itself “moves,” but we shall be referring to a movement of a class of movements. Under friction, this metamovement will not lose velocity as would the movement of a particle.

64. The Newtonian equations which describe the motions of a “particle” stop at the level of “acceleration.” Change of acceleration can only happen with deformation of the moving body, but the Newtonian “particle” was not made up of “parts” and was therefore (logically) incapable of deformation or any other internal change. It was therefore not subject to rate of change of acceleration.

65. G. Bateson, “Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning,” Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium, New York, Harper, 1942.

66. H. E. Harlow, “The Formation of Learning Sets,” Psycho!. Review, 1949, 56: 51-65.

67. E. L. Hull, et al., Mathematico-deductive Theory of Rote Learning, New Haven, Yale University, Institute of Human Relations, 1940

68. H . S. Liddell, “Reflex Method and Experimental Neurosis,” Personality and Behavior Disorders, New York, Ronald Press, 1944

69. G. Bateson, et al., “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” Behavioral Science, 1956, 1: 251-64.

70. J. Ruesch and G. Bateson, Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, New York, Norton, 1951.

71. This article appeared in Psychiatry, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 1-18, 1971. Copyright © 1971 by the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation. Reprinted by permission of Psychiatry.

72. [Alcoholics Anonymous], Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, New York, Harper, 1957, p. 279. (Italics added.)

73. This phrase is used by AA in derision of the alcoholic who tries to use will power against the bottle. The quotation, along with the line, “My head is bloody but unbowed,” comes from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, who was a cripple but not an alcoholic. The use of the will to conquer pain and physical disability is probably not comparable to the alcoholic's use of will.

74. [Alcoholics Anonymous], Alcoholics Anonymous, New York, Works Publishing, 1939.

75. J. Ruesch and G. Bateson, Communications: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, New York, Norton, 1951.

76. “ R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1945.

77. “ G. Bateson, “A Social Scientist Views the Emotions,” Expression of the Emotions in Man, P. Knapp, ed., International University Press, 1963.

78. This use of formal contextual structure as a descriptive device does not necessarily assume that the principle discussed is wholly or in part actually learned in contexts having the appropriate formal structure. The principle could have been genetically determined, and it might still follow that the principle is best described by the formal delineation of the contexts in which it is exemplified. It is precisely this fitting of behavior to context that makes it difficult or impossible to determine whether a principle of behavior was genetically determined or learned in that context; see G. Bateson, “Social Planning and the Concept of Deutero-Learning,” Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Second Symposium, New York, Harper, 1942.

79. See Bill's Story, Alcoholics Anonymous, op. cit.

80. G. Bateson, Naven, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1936.

81. Ibid.

82. G. Bateson, “The Pattern of an Armaments Race–Part I: An Anthropological Approach,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 1946, 2(5): 10–11: also L. F. Richardson, “Generalized Foreign Politics,” British Journal of Psychology, Monograph Supplements, 1939.

83. E. H. Erikson, “Configurations in Play—Clinical Notes,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1937, 6: 139–214.

84. 13 K. Z. Lorenz, On Aggression, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966.

85. G. Bateson, “Metalogue: What Is an Instinct?,” Aproaches to Animal Communication, T. Sebeok, Hague, Mouton, 1969.

86. B. O'Brien, Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic, Cambridge, Mass., Arlington Books, 1958.

87. G. Bateson, ed., Perceval's Narrative, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1961, Introduction.

88. Personal communication from a member.

89. Alcoholics Anonymous, op. cit., p. 43.

90. Bateson, et al., “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” Behavioral Science, 1956, 1: 251-64.

91. A A Comes of Age, op. cit., p. vii.

92. Ibid., p. 13. (Italics in the original)

93. This diversity in styles of integration could account for the fact that some persons become alcoholic while others do not.

94. AA Comes of Age, op. cit. 24 Ibid., p. 288. 25 Ibid., pp. 286-94.

95. Ibid, p. 288.

96. Ibid, pp.286-294

97. Ibid.

98. M. C. Bateson, ed., Our Own Metaphor, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Conference on the Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation, 1968; New York, Knopf, in press.

99. This was not originally an AA document and its authorship is unknown. Small variations in the text occur. I have quoted the form which I personally prefer from AA Comes of Age, op. cit., p. 196.

100. Bateson, Perceval . . . , op. cit.
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