text:
The Structure of 'Impaired' Human Behavior
The two documents (Hilgartner, 1968, 1965) which served as "parent" to this series of papers presented a korzybskian doctrine of the structure of human psycho-dynamics. We made two claims for this doctrine: a) that it stems from assumptions more parsimonious than those in general use by students of behavior, and b) that the doctrine itself stands free of self-contradiction. In order to test these two claims, we devised a logical calculus of behavior (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a) which we deployed so as to show the structure of any mainly 'perceptual' encounter with an environmental object; and as an initial test of the adequacy of this model, we then used our notation to describe situations of physiological 'need' and satisfaction, of frustration, and of danger. As judged by its handling of these situations, our model appeared adequate. In the second paper of this series (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b), we used this rigorous language to examine the situation of finding a contradiction between what we expect and what we observe, and the consequent process of changing our premises. In order to explore the consequences of these altered premises, we then showed the structure of 'unimpaired' relations between a human organism and non-living environmental objects.
In order to specify the structure of 'impaired' subsets of Cs, we must extend our previous treatment of the topics of emergency, frustration, and danger. In the first paper of this series (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a), we specified the key relationships concerning the water balance of an organism (sentences 45-47), and then considered a situation of deficit of water followed by intake of water (Myth1
and the Drinking Fountain, ;sentences 48-52). Then we defined an emergency (Em) as any situation with a high probability that the sensitive (organism&environment) boundary B will get damaged or destroyed. An emergency in which the coenetic variables involve mainly the stimulation of interoceptors (or proprioceptors) we defined as a situation of frustration (Fr), which would include situations of starvation or illness. An emergency in which the coenetic variables involve mainly the stimulation of exteroceptors comprises danger (D). After quoting a passage from Perls, et al. (1951, pp. 261-2), which describes some of the behavioral mechanisms for healthily meeting emergencies, with the focal conditions of protecting the sensitive boundary, we then considered two classes of acute, severe (potentially fatal) emergencies, i.e. Frustration: Myth1 in the Desert (sentences 535-56), and Danger: Myth1 and the Hungry Tiger at the Water-Hole (sentences 57-58).
When we wrote these passages, we had in our notational language dealt only with encounters between a human organism and non-living or sub-human environmental objects. Now having extended our notational language so as to deal with inter-personal transactions, let us redefine these relations as operators, which we can then use to specify some of the subtleties of human behavior. As our notation becomes more succinct, it will become increasingly apparent that our formulations make up a branching chain of logical possibilities. At this point, first we shall state the revised definitions and the extensions of our previous formulations; second, we shall indicate how these operators serve as components of directive correlations; and finally, we shall present worked examples.
A. Definitions
a) Any interaction with an environmental object which in some way exceeds the physical-biological-social limits of the relevant parts of the field, so as to produce an alteration in the structure of the boundary, constitutes damage (Dm).
THERE FOLLOW 5 PAGES OF DEFINITIONS (ms pp. 4-8)
Continue on ms. p. 8
The topics of emergency, danger, and frustration stand intimately connected with the topic of so-called "aggressive" behavior. Perls, et al (1951, pp. 340-344) clearly make several distinctions which prove essential for our purposes:
LONG QUOTE (ms pp. 8-10)
DEFINITIONS CONTINUE FOR ANOTHER 2 PP (to p. 12)
ANOTHER LONG QUOTE (ms pp. 12-14)
DEFINITIONS CONTINUE FOR ANOTHER 3 PP (ms pp. 15-17)
B. Directively Correlated Sequences
To summarize some of our previous formulations from still another viewpoint, the situations presented as The Form of Any Encounter (sentences 25-42) and as Myth1 and the Drinking Fountain (sentences 48-52) constitute situations of the lowest degree of 'difficulty' consistent with the intake of new material and the consequent satisfaction of a 'need'. The encounters presented as Frustration: Myth1 in the Desert, and as Danger: Myth1 and the Hungry Tiger at the Water-Hole (sentences 53-56 and 57-58 respectively) constitute acute, sever emergencies with fatal outcomes, situations which proved so 'difficult' that our organism did not succeed in directively correlating his interactions with his environment so as to achieve his focal condition of preservation-and-growth. Most of the situations encountered by organisms lie somewhere between these two extremes of 'difficulty'. Now, before we can succeed in specifying the structure of 'impaired' subsets of Cs, we must examine at least one worked example showing the sequence of events which follow an intolerable emergency which resulted in damage to the boundary, in other words, showing the relation between Sv and Pr . Jackins (1964) lucidly describes the behavioral phenomena involved, under the rubric of The Recovery Process (pp. 75-81):
LONG QUOTE: WHICH I DO NOT MUCH WANT TO USE (ms pp. 18-21)
In order to translate one of the sequences described by Jackins into our notation, we need several new operators. We shall designate "the profound healing process of which the tears are the outward indication" by the generic term discharge (Dc), and we shall interpret this process as a special case of destroying, viz. Dc (subset) Ds . In the situation of sudden separation from the mothering person (Mo), as on a crowded street, the component acts which make up discharge include clinging to the mother, OCl(Mo) and crying, OCr . The performance of these acts in relation to the mothering 'person', as Jackins so clearly indicates, will constitute a non-verbal behavioral dialogue, of the same form as the encounter labelled Myth1 and the Stranger.
C. Notational Deployment
Initially, the organism shows a state of unhurried tranquillity in relation with the mothering 'person'.
"Let us suppose that he loses his mother in a crowded downtown street for about ten minutes...."
"Let us further suppose that Mother returns at the end of the ten minutes...."
In our previous works, by the dodge of positing "an adult time-binding organism with NO experience", whom we dubbed "Myth1, the man from Mars, who has just arrived here on Earth (never mind how)" (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, p. 313), we managed to avoid the complexities involved in explicit consideration of the phenomena of development; and as it turned out, this dodge proved acceptable, for the language we devised proved to be flexible and rigorous enough to do what we required: to depict the overall structure of adult experience. Now, however, in order to show the structure of 'impaired' subsets of Cs, we must keep the promise we made earlier (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, p. ); for we can most easily show the implications of our theory in the context of a systematic and explicit discussion of the phenomena of development.
A. Burrow's contribution
From the point of view of our theory, of twentieth-century students of behavior, Burrow (1913, 1964) first offered a correct interpretation of the nature and of the lifelong psycho-logical importance of prenatal and early infantile experience.
Because of the historical importance and the relevance of Burrow's contributions, we shall quote Ackerman's succinct summary of Burrow's views, which appeared in the Foreword to one of Burrow's posthumous books (Burrow, 1964, pp. vii-ix):
B. Intra-uterine and early infantile experience
For our purposes, the following formulations concerning intra-uterine and early infantile experience seem sufficient:
1. As we previously stated (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, p. ), for mammalian species, we consider the life of an organism to start with fertilization.
2. After the moment of fertilization, the zygote, presumably acting on chemically-mediated directive correlations, migrates down one of the Fallopian tubes, settles into the tissue-culture milieu of the uterus, and becomes implanted.
3. The fetal organism does not exist '\isolated' nor 'self-sufficient', but rather it develops 'deficits' and 'needs'; and under the conditions of intra-uterine life, it finds what it 'needs' and makes use of these nutrients for its own growth. (The periodicities the fetus shows include the process of pinocytosis (cell-drinking), and its responses to the periodicity of the maternal blood supply, on which gets superimposed its response to the periodicities of the mother's eating habits and schedule.) In accordance with our definition of the term organism, a fetus in utero shows contact-functions, experiences excitement (heightened energy-mobilization), develops some kind of 'present experience' or 'awareness', builds some kind of a 'picture of itself', and forms Gestalten; in other words, it undergoes growth. Although the details of the in utero setting, the nature of the 'deficit' or other coenetic variables, etc., obviously differ from those of the adult experiences we have already depicted, the situations of a fetus in utero show precisely the same form as the situations we have presented as The Form of Any Encounter (sentences 25-42) or Myth1 and the Drinking Fountain (sentences 45-52). (Otherwise, the would mean that a fetus showed 'impaired' behavior; but we have postulated special psycho-logical structures as prerequisites for 'impaired' behavior (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, pp. and ).)
4. Burrow's formulation of the strifeless "preconscious mode" we can render in our notation by stating explicitly the relationships of mother to fetus and fetus to mother.
a) Relationship of mother to fetus: The relationship of mother to fetus manifests itself on physical-biological levels by the hospitable tissue-culture milieu of her pre-gravid uterine endometrium; and (continuing to restrict our discussion to favorable situations) the psycho-logical and socio-cultural levels of this mother-to-fetus relationship we indicate by citing the future mother, once a zygote and fetus and newborn infant herself, now one partner in a growing marriage supported in the matrix of a particular culture, mating with her man and becoming impregnated. (As Hayes (1966) has pointed out, the reproductive act in humans consists not of a single act of copulation, but rather of randomly-spaced matings over a period of at least one ovarian cycle; or in other words, a prolonged association (So).) Considered from the future mother's point of view, these mating encounters would show precisely the same form as the encounter presented as Myth1 and the Stranger (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969c, pp. (sentences 131-144)), where instead of the presence of a stranger encountered under conditions of unhurried tranquillity (
On every level, the, this mother-to-fetus relationship meets the criteria for classification as a relation of fostering, Fo (subset) As d(intersect) So ; from our viewpoint, gestation comprises an inter-personal relationship, which for the future mother provides an opportunity to satisfy the focal conditions of a set of fundamental inter-personal directive correlations: specifically, one of her focal conditions gets satisfied iff her fetus remains able to satisfy his focal conditions.*
* The relationship of fostering remains in operation even under very unfavorable socio-cultural circumstances. For example, in our culture nowadays, an unwed pregnant teen-ager may make arrangements to give her baby up for adoption; such arrangements usually include care to see that she delivers under anaesthesis; and further care taken to protect her from sight or sound contact with her infant, which would otherwise serve as a coenetic variable to elicit fondling, nursing, etc. Unavoidably, she will experience grief at the termination of her relationship with her infant (as well as the unpleasant personal and social consequences of having transgressed against the mores of her tribe); but she will take comfort from her success as an incubator, hand from having arranged for her infant to have a chance at a better home environment in which to grow up than she could have provided. And these still constitute the attitudes and acts of a fostering organism.
Of course, at this stage we restrict our discussion to the fundamental psycho-biology; so far we make no pretense of dealing with the ways a woman may wish NOT to house a fetus in utero, or may find pregnancy or parturition a threat.
b) Relationship of fetus to mother: We just pointed out that a fetus in utero forms Gestalten. One aspect of these Gestalten would comprise the process of embryogenesis. But let us now take a closer look at other aspects of these Gestalten. The generalization formed under these conditions of life we could call faith: the non-verbal attitude that "My environment will support me." (But since something on the order of 10% of human zygotes do not survive to term, and at least some of these deaths result from developmental errors of the zygotes, we must not consider the processes which make up intra-uterine life and embryogenesis as 'automatic' or 'easy' for the fetus.)
As we already pointed out, the process of maintaining contact with one's environment, expecting to succeed in achieving the fundamental focal condition of preservation-and-growth through some finite period, constitutes "the effort to 'complete' a situation (a behavioral Gestalt or a Cs subset of the Self)" which we previously discussed (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, pp. 361-3, 365-7), and we indicated by the operator | (affirmation). We pointed out that | constitutes a definite mode of using the sensori-motor-and-secretory apparatus, which remains detectable by the organism, by means of proprioception.
Even though about 10% of human zygotes do not survive to term, we must regard the intra-uterine environment as very favorable: a fetus does not have to get its own air, food, or water, to do its own excreting, or to regulate its own temperature. These biological variables held constant for a fetus constitute a number of eF's , environmental 'forgotten factors', which a fetus does not have to take into account, yet. We have already seen, however, that the act of leaving out of account some eF's involves in the same act the leaving out of account those aspects of the operations of the Self involved in dealing with the ef's .
Furthermore, we have seen that this whole 'leaving out' operation proves psycho-logically equivalent to the act of assuming some kind of identity-mapping(s) on the environment, IE , which has (have) the effect of eliminating the variables involved from the organism's accounting.
Let us now designate any situation in which an organism forms a 'picture of himself-and-others' which includes some kind of identity-mapping(s) on the environment which get(s) assumed as the result of the fact that due to his developmental state he has never encountered situations in which the expectations based on this (these) identity-mapping(s) get contradicted by observations, as a situation of primary confluence, Co:
a) The first of these comprised the situation in which Myth1, as a joint consequence of his own structure and of encounters with rectangular environmental objects, Wr , infers the rectangular assumptions Gt1Gt2Gt3 . When Myth1 encounters the trapezoidal window display, WT , he finds a contradiction between what he expects and what he observes; and as a result of analyzing his own situation for himself, he takes into account some 'forgotten factors' of environment and Self, and thus eliminates from the operations of his Self at least one assumed identity-mapping on the environment, or, he changes his premises. Specifically, the variables eliminated by this identity-mapping comprise the interacting of the boundary, e.g. i) the physical functions F by which any environmental object gets mapped into the set of stimuli; and ii) the intra-organismic processes by which these stimuli produce activated states of sensory elements, which get integrated into sets of activated sensory states, which then get mapped successively into 'present experience', 'awareness', 'consciousness', expectations, etc. This assumed identity-mapping stands equivalent to the delusion that our 'perceptions' give rise to 'absolute certainties'; and the trapezoidal window display provides an opportunity for our organism to disconfirm this untenable generalization by presenting him with a situation in which, 'perceptually', Ai + Aj =/ O/ .
b) The second of these examples constituted the analysis of the phenomenon of 'aware projecting'. We discussed this phenomenon as a concealed implication of the new (korzybskian) premises which our organism chose to replace the Aristotelian premises underlying Gt1Gt2Gt3, after he had disconfirmed the latter as a result of the encounter with the WT. Specifically, the variables eliminated by this assumed identity-mapping comprise i) the unavoidable uncertainty inherent in 'perception', which requires that any organism which would use its 'perceptions' as a guide to behavior must engage in a "guessing game" concerning whether or not there exist any environmental objects which correspond to the presumed "objects" which the organism 'perceives'; and ii) conversely, the fundamentally self-correcting structure of organisms, which holds that any organism constitutes a mechanism for generating and testing hypotheses: if at any instant an organism uses its 'perceptions' as a guide to behavior, it has in effect made use of its 'perceptions' as hypotheses, and has put them to test by the act of using them as guides to behavior.
c) The third example of primary confluence constituted the analysis of the phenomenon of 'conscious projecting'. This too comprised a concealed implication of the new premises. We pointed out that in traditional Western viewpoints, this phenomenon gets selectively excluded from 'awareness'; therefore most readers of this theory will find the points made concerning 'conscious projecting' quite "unreal" until after they have eliminated from the operations of their own Selves the assumed identity-mapping under discussion (cf. Meyers, 1949). In this instance, the variables eliminated by the assumed identity-mapping include the phenomenon of multi-ordinality: the human capacity to regard the operations of one's own Self with which one orients himself in one's here-now situation as a part of the 'environment' in which he must operate.
Let us designate these three identity-mappings as BIE , PaIE , and PcIE respectively.
To make use of this terminology here, then, we assert that, in the situation of primary confluence in utero, a fetus cannot take into account, and therefore assumes an identity-mapping which eliminates, variables concerned with the existence of nutrients, oxygen, water, or waste-products, or the possibility of temperature-variations, as well as any of the operations of his Self which he would have had to make use of in handling or responding to these variables. We may designate this as UIE .
But our account of the relations of fetus to mother remains still painfully incomplete. If we regard the relationship of fetus to future mother as "all 'take' and no 'give'," we would have fallen into the trap of treating a fetus as an organism in 'isolation'. The act of expressing faith, e.g. the act of accepting nutrition, remains, by sentence (102A),
not only an affirmation of Self, but also an affirmation of the Other. In the act of accepting from the future mother the proffered nutrition, forming a behavioral Gestalt in the form of a subset of Cs , and thereby undergoing growth, a fetus indicates ('communicates') that his focal conditions do keep getting fulfilled. Since for the fetus to have his focal conditions fulfilled constitutes fulfillment of the relevant focal conditions of the future mother, and conversely, since by continuing to proffer nutrition the future mother indicates that her focal conditions do keep getting fulfilled, then it becomes unmistakably clear that the fundamental psycho-biology of gestation involves a relation between future mother and fetus characterized by mutual fostering.
At this point in our discussion of intra-uterine experience, we have outlined a far-reaching set of 'social' directive correlations characterized by mutual fostering: a growing marital relation supported in the matrix of a particular culture, and supporting that culture; the mutual fostering of the future mother and her mate; and the mutual fostering of future mother and fetus*.
* That this account of the 'social' matrix of reproduction remains incomplete we can briefly indicate by alluding to the relations of the current members of a tribe with their progenitors, the relations of current members of one tribe with current members of other tribes, the ecological relations between the human species and other organisms, etc.
We can now complete the job of specifying in our notation the structure of the strifeless "preconscious mode" described by Burrow, by defining one more operator, one which can function also as a relation. On several occasions, we have discussed a non-verbal attitude which an organism engaging in 'unimpaired' behavior displays, which we have termed faith:
The structure of 'aware projecting', then, is such that the organism is required 'consciously' to recognize the uncertainty inherent in 'perception'; and yet, in the face of this recognized uncertainty, the organism is required to make an affirmation to the effect that the 'awareness' is the product of contact with something 'real'. These requirements are equivalent to the requirement that the organism display unmistakable faith, the confidence that the operations of the Self will somehow serve as reliable guides to behavior, with the result that the organism will once more be able to achieve the focal condition of his own preservation-and-growth. (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, p. 362)
And earlier in the present paper (ms p. ( )), we characterized faith as "the non-verbal attitude that 'My environment will support me.'" This 'non-verbal attitude' we shall represent by the operator Re , the sense of relatedness-in-a-field. Then the 'requirement quoted above we can state in our notation as
We shall not retreat from the position that 'the sense of relatedness-in-a-field' constitutes a 'non-verbal attitude', or in other words a state of the organism; but as with other human activities, we can DESCRIBE it, or in other words, we can regard it as the non-verbal equivalent of a verbal statement. In brief, one shows a 'sense of relatedness-in-a-field' iff he acts as if both he and the various environments in which he finds himself comprise the products of several billion years of evolution. As Perls, et al. (1951, p. 440) put it,
In our view the body is full of inherited wisdom -- it is roughly adjusted to the environment from the beginning: it has the raw materials to make new wholes, and in its emotions it has a kind of knowledge of the environment as well as motivations of action; the body expresses itself in well-constructed purposive series and complexes of wishes.
Thus this new operator, Re , functions as a coenetic variable indicating a state of our organism; or, when the organism remains in contact with an environmental object X , this operator functions as a relation,
Xi Re Oi ,
our organism of time Ti continues relating, or exists related to, Xi (subset) E .
Furthermore, as a consequence of sentence (155), those operations which involve affirmation, e.g. emulating, fostering, and mutual fostering, can act iff we can characterize the state of the organism as Re .
At this point in our argument, the state of at least some of the readers who have seriously tried to understand our formulations must approach anguish. Before finishing off our discussion of intra-uterine and early infantile experience, let us turn and try to deal with at least one of the difficulties which we foresee as possibly involved. According to this theory, as a result of the fact that up to now, we humans have had only more or less 'demented' societies in which to get born and grow to adulthood, virtually every human alive today has learned how selectively to exclude from 'awareness' that mode of using his sensori-motor-and-secretory apparatus which we have designated as -| , affirmation; or, alternatively stated, each of us has learned how selectively to exclude from 'awareness' Re , his own sense of relatedness-in-a-field. Moreover, each one of can re-awaken 'awareness' of Re in himself iff in the process of re-awakening, he permits himself to experience and to tolerate the stark terror by which we anchor down our own 'impaired' functioning (cf. Hilgartner, 1965). In other words, the situation of discussing these formulations seems a bit like the situation of a person at least partially (but progressively) recovering from psychogenic blindness trying to discuss subtleties of the experience of seeing with other who do (or at least did) show psychogenic blindness. (And to make matters worse, here the 'discussion' takes place not in a face-to-face situation, but rather via printed pages.)
Thus, even though every possible reader of this theory, like its authors, did live in utero and did at that time form a 'picture of himself' characterized by the affirmations and which assumes the identity-mappings under discussion, it seems almost certain that virtually everyone will experience difficulties in imagining the 'picture of himself' elaborated by an organism who has no mode of operation but affirmation, and yet which has never experienced, and could not survive, these 'difficulties' under discussion.
And the psycho-logical difficulty which leads to this paralysis of imagining gets further compounded by the ponderous nature of logical analysis: Proceeding step-by-step, we have provided a picture of 'unimpaired' behavior, which constitutes that mode of behavior generally regarded as intolerably dangerous, viz., -| : but so far, we have reached only the very early stages of sketching out our picture of the contrasting actuality, the psycho-dynamically stabilized distortions of behavior which each of us has devised in the process of trying to survive a few minutes longer in the midst of a 'demented' society. Without this explicit contrast, the existing formulations remain incomplete, and therefore to some degree unintelligible.
Then the major aim of this paper comes into focus as an effort to show how, under unfavorable environmental conditions, an organism comes to distort its behavior into a form which no longer corresponds to -| , but rather to the divisive, conflictful, self-centered striving pattern which Burrow termed ditention, or which we term 'impaired' behavior.
5. Near term, a fetus finds itself in a deteriorating situation: The placenta has definite limits, for example, as an oxygen-exchanging unit; and, as the fetus grows larger, its oxygen demand increases as a function of its volume. Therefore, the fetus finds itself in an environment with an inexorably diminishing partial pressure of oxygen, such that, near term, its blood oxygen tension remains about like that of an adult, without special breathing apparatus, on top of Mt. Everest. Partly as a result of the special oxygen-transport characteristics of fetal hemoglobin, a fetus tolerates these conditions of low oxygen tension better than an adult would; but even so, it faces a crisis: It must get born, or die. Let us consider in detail the exact terms of the crisis:
a) The fetus has grown; it has no mechanism to do otherwise (and live);
b) It cannot stay in utero, continuing to grow, and live;
c) In the process of embryogenesis, it has built lungs, etc., which should allow it to stay alive outside the uterus;
d) But it cannot get born, by itself. (And yet we still do not understand the mechanism which initiates labor. Does normal labor get initiated by a stimulus from the fetus? If so, this would stand as the non-verbal equivalent of the verbal statement, "I have become ready to get born.")
6. Birth, then, shows the form of a re-education experience: after it emerges from the birth canal of its mother, a newborn infant finds it necessary to take into account sets of hitherto-neglected eF's, environmental 'forgotten factors', and in the same act, to take into account hitherto-neglected aspects of its Self. Thus the experience of getting born involves excitement, growth, and attendant unavoidable suffering: which means that it shows all the earmarks of an
Although we have known all the elements of this view of birth for a long time, most students of behavior have not regarded the process of getting born as an adventure, but rather, after Freud, have elaborated a distinctly paranoid formulation of "the birth trauma", which constitutes one aspect of the basic dichotomy of 'self' vs. 'external world'. Perls, et al. (1951, pp. 240-1) pointed out this dichotomy as a fundamental theoretical error:
"Self" and External World": this division is an article of faith uniformly throughout modern western science. It goes along with the "Body" vs. "Mind" split, but perhaps with more emphasis on threats of a political and inter-personal nature. Unfortunately, those who in the history of recent philosophy have shown the absurdity of this division have been infected with either a kind of mentalism or materialism.
Furthermore, they offered an interpretation of the psycho-dynamics of this dichotomy (ibid., pp. 270-1):
If we return to the psychoanalytic theory of Freud, we find that along with the body and the various kinds of "mental", he spoke of Reality, and then of the "reality-principle", which he contrasted with the "pleasure-principle" as the principle of painful self-adjustment to safe functioning. It can be shown, we think, that he conceived of reality in two different ways (and did not understand the relation between them). In one way, the mind and body are parts of the pleasure-system, and reality is primarily the social "External World" of other minds and bodies painfully constraining one's pleasures by deprivation or punishment. In the other way, he meant the "External World" given in perception, including one's own body, and opposed to the imaginary elements of hallucination and dream.
The social External World he thought of especially in connection with the so-called helplessness and delusional omnipotence of the human infant. The infant lies there isolated, has ideas of its own omnipotence, and yet is dependent for everything except the satisfactions of its own body.
But let us consider this picture in its total social context and it will be seen to be the projection of an adult situation: the repressed feelings of the adult are attributed to the child. For how is the infant essentially helpless or isolated? It is part of a field in which the mother is another part. The child's anguished cry is an adequate communication; the mother must respond to it; the infant needs fondling, she needs to fondle; and so with other functions. The delusions of omnipotence (to the extent that they exist and are not adult projections), and the rages and tantrums of infinite abandonment, are useful exhaustions of the surface-tension in periods of delay, in order that inter-functioning can proceed without past unfinished situations. And ideally considered, the growing apart of the infant and the mother, the disruption of the field into separate persons, is the same as the increase of the child in size and strength, his growing teeth and learning to chew (and the drying up of the milk, and the turning of the mother to other interests), and his learning to walk, talk, etc. That is, the child does not learn an alien reality, but discovers-and-invents his own increasing reality.
The bother, of course, is that the ideal condition does not obtain. But then we must say, not that the child is essentially isolated and helpless, but that he is soon made so, thrown into a chronic emergency, and eventually he conceives of an external social world. And what is the situation of the adult? In our societies that have no fraternal community, one exists in and grows deeper into this same isolation. Adults treat one another as enemies and their children as alternatively slaves or tyrants. Then, by projection, the infant is inevitably seen to be isolated and helpless and omnipotent. The safest condition is then seen, truly, to be a breaking, a disconnection, from the continuity with the original unitary field.
In a later publication ( ), we shall offer a mathematical representation of these fundamental errors of psycho-dynamic theory. Meanwhile, let us return to our argument.
7. Immediately upon emerging from the birth canal of his mother, the newborn infant encounters novel environmental conditions, e.g. drastically altered skin temperatures, contact with solid objects, a rapidly decreasing blood oxygen tension, and perhaps a spank on the bottom from the obstetrician or midwife. We have already discussed the phenomenon of surprise, Sp Ì Em, e.g. the experience of finding a contradiction between what one expects and what he observes, as a response observable throughout the animal kingdom; and we have pointed out that, in mammalian species, this response includes the startle reflex, and the motor act of deep inhalation (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, pp. (sentences 80-82)). (In the context of our previous discussion, our hypothetical organism found his encounter with the trapezoidal window non-dangerous, and he displayed well-developed behavioral techniques for handling the situation: he explored the trapezoidal window and the rectangular window with great thoroughness, and then set about constructing an intersection of all his observations. but the behavioral repertoire of a newborn remains very limited, and includes only such overt activities as breathing, sleeping, sucking, ingesting, excreting, 'aimless' sensory scanning, 'non-purposive' thrashing about, crying, etc.) ***SYNCHRONY-- [cf. Condon]
As the first concerted action of a newborn, he cries. This act has an obvious physiological role in the aeration of the lungs. But it also constitutes a cry of distress ('overstimulation'); and as such, it serves as a coenetic variable which ordinarily suffices to elicit maternal fostering acts, e.g. fondling, bathing, wrapping in a warm blanket, and perhaps suckling, from the mother or her attendants: acts which relieve the distress; and once the distress has gotten discharged (as Jackins (1964) points out) the infant becomes serenely alert. In the hundred or so deliveries in which I have taken part, I have repeatedly observed that newborn infants, warm and snuggled in their soft blankets, usually remain awake and in contact (I imagine it as tingling contact) with their new environments for some time before they first fall asleep.
This view of 'the birth experience' we could represent in our notation as a directive correlation which, from the point of view of the infant, consists of the temporally-ordered intersection of operators representing the 'awareness' of activated states of pressure receptors all over the body (related to uterine contractions), and the tactile 'awareness' related to getting moved thru the birth canal, and lack of head support upon emerging, and 'awareness' of the absence of the familiar intra-uterine sounds and of the presence of novel sounds, and 'awareness' of skin deformation from getting handled and then held up by the heels by the obstetrician, and 'awareness' of stimulation of cold-receptors in the skin, and of rapidly increasing deficit of oxygen, and tactile 'awareness' from a spank on the bottom, and surprise, and deep inhalation, and the motor act of forced exhalation against closed vocal cords (crying); and, after the discharge gets completed, unhurried tranquillity. (It seems unnecessary actually to write out this expression in the notation.)
As a consequence of the intrinsic rates of interchange with the environment of different essential substances, the first learned skill an infant develops, in his directively correlated efforts to stay alive a few moments longer, comprises the alternating muscular contracting and relaxing which makes up breathing. Perhaps by the time he first falls asleep, a healthy infant has already assimilated this process and made it habitual; in other words, he acts confident that he can depend on his environment and on himself to function so that the non-verbal 'need' for intake of oxygen and disposal of carbon dioxide will continually recur, and thru this assimilated skill of breathing, will get satisfied.
Later, the infant organism repeatedly (periodically) experiences the sequence of 'awareness' of some kind of deficit (e.g. hunger-thirst), and distress, and the act of crying, and visual-and-tactile 'awareness' of some environmental object X , and the act of suckling, and the act of intake, and 'awareness' of no deficit (satiety), and the act of falling asleep. (Again, it seems unnecessary to write out this expression in our notation.)
In these periodic sequences, the infant organism gradually becomes focally 'aware' of the environmental object X , which he gradually comes to 'recognize' as a mothering 'person'; and he becomes subsidiarily 'aware' of the 'needs', motor acts, and other operations of his Self by which he gets what he 'needs' from her.* These repeated _______________________________________________________________________
* For example, Polanyi (1964) cites the observation that children of deaf-mute parents at very early ages abandon the ineffectual audible cries of distress as means of obtaining parental attentions, and develop instead communicative actions which rove more effective, e.g. head-banging, or (later), stomping on the floor, etc.
encounters constitute a process of progressive discrimination-and-recognition (the development of 'meanings' to go with his sensory intake), which make up the infant organism's first (cumulative) experience of satisfaction of the fundamental 'social' focal conditions, As (intersection) So. (This formulation implies a transactional explanation for the phenomenon of early infantile autism, which we shall develop when the notation can deal with it.)
In terms of the fundamental psycho-biology, however, the environmental conditions of an infant human mammal remains potentially as favorable as the environmental conditions of a mammalian fetus in utero: Those things he initially cannot do for himself get done for him, until he "grows up" enough to learn by example how to do them for himself (Perls, 1967). Therefore, as an infant organism comes to recognize the existence of the other organisms which make up his 'social' environment, he necessarily 'places an exceptional degree of confidence' in those 'persons', and engages in the form of imitative behavior we have designated by the operator Et , emulating
By the time an infant can track moving objects with his eyes (at about two months of age), he has become able to attend to, and become focally 'aware' of, his own body-parts: this seems clearly apparent to anyone who has ever observed the fascination and delight with which an infant studies, wiggles, and tastes his own hands and feet (along with everything else in his environment which he can reach). And as he becomes able to develop focal 'awareness' of his own body parts, he therefore begins to manage to classify his experiences of distress into situations which involve danger and those which involve frustration. (Often even at very early ages, the parents of an infant distinguish differences of tempo, tone, and volume in the cries of their baby, and thus "get the message" of the child as clearly as if he could speak in words; and these 'differences' imply non-verbal classifying acts performed by the infant.)
XVIII. The Pathogenesis of 'Impaired' Behavior
At this point, we have before us sufficient resources to permit the specification of the structure of 'impaired' human behavior. But in order to make the best possible use of these resources, we shall again use as the nidus of our formulations an alleged "encounter", this time borrowed from Brock Chisholm (1957, pp. 40-42).
A. Verbal Model
I have been discussing the small child's need for love as a primary condition of his effective development. Any threat to love, any risk of loss of love, is for a child a nightmare, a threatening barrier between him and his continued exploration of life. Yet, very many children run into the threat of loss of love very early in life, sometimes even within the first year. Whenever a child behaves in ways that are not acceptable to the ideas, attitudes, and moral codes of his parents (particularly of his mother), he risks running into active disapproval. This is interpreted by the child as a threat of loss of love.
The very young child is not concerned at all with the local behavior customs of the natives; he is born not knowing anything about them. One can call him uncivilized, born in sin, or just not grown up; they are all the same thing. He is a "natural", born the way he is born. And, furthermore, there are no laws anywhere saying what a child one year old should be like; he is not in any danger whatever of coming into conflict with the laws of the land and being punished for it. All he is in danger of is running into the certainties or rigidities of his parents, but there is plenty of danger in that for most children.
Most parents have rather unbending ideas about what a small child should be like, how he should behave, what he should and should not do, even about when he should do it and when he should not. Most parents will not admit that these are really only matters of convenience for themselves or for the local customs of the natives, and that they have no real universal validity whatever. When a child first begins to explore his environment -- the world as he sees and feels it -- he doesn't know any rules. He has no taboos. He reaches out in all directions to find out what it's like. He tries to ingest everything because this is the primitive method of getting acquainted, but he finds some things can be ingested to his advantage and some things cannot. He learns to accept and reject, and his developing morality is based simply on what is pleasant and what is found to be unpleasant.
But even today, when very small children behave in various natural ways, parents disapprove violently. The form of behavior that gets almost certain disapproval lies in the sexual area. That is, a child, one or two years old, exploring his total environment, finds amongst everything else in his reality, his own genital area, and it still happens (though I hope and believe not as frequently as it used to) that his mother has extremely rigid ideas about genital areas, and when the child is caught engaging in such exploration, the mother expresses disapproval very emphatically.
The child should be exploring his total environment at that stage, and there should be no taboos placed upon such exploration. This is generally acceptable, but apparently many mothers haven't been told about it, or, if they have, they can't quite believe it because of the way they have been brought up themselves. Very many children meet violence for the first time in their lives from their mother at this stage of their development. It is still common for mothers to slap a child's hand and to say to him, "Dirty! Dirty! If you do that, Mother won't love you any more!"
This is a very damaging experience. The part of the child's physical equipment which is associated with basic intersex relationship has been made dirty and its existence associated with loss of love rather than the expression of love.
B. Extensions of notation
In order to examine the structure of the "damage" produced by encounters of this form, we must as usual define several new notational conventions, sets, or operators:
(alpha) Let Gn (subset) B stand for the genitals of our organism.
(beta) Let the subscript h placed to the right of an operator indicate the audible or heard; e.g. Ath , attending to the audible.
(gamma) Let the subscript w placed to the left of an operator indicate word-choice, e.g. wTh , threat via word-choice.
(delta) Let the subscript tv placed to the left of an operator indicate tone-of-voice, e.g. tvTh , threat via tone-of-voice.
(epsilon) We shall indicate a blow by the operator Bl . Thus we read MoBl(O)i as "a blow to the organism by the mothering 'person' at time ti ."
(zeta) We shall indicate the act of disapproving by the operator Dp .
(eta) We shall indicate tantrum by the operator Tt .
C. Expectations
In accordance with our custom, let us now specify the expectations held by our organism at the beginning of this encounter. We shall make the simplifying assumption that, prior to this encounter, our organism has sustained no psycho-logical damage, but rather that following previous emergencies, he managed to undergo discharge, and thus during his lifetime has operated only in the 'unimpaired' mode of behavior characterized by Re . Since in this passage we consider our organism as the logical equivalent of a child, much of his behavior remains tacit, or in other words, there exist assumed identity-mappings in the operations of his Self, which constitutes the situation of primary confluence. However, his expectations concerning the relations between his Self and non-living or living environmental objects we can specify by the use of the operator Re , 'the sense of relatedness-in-a-field' (or 'faith'), as a result of which he engages in emulating his parent-figures, even though both of these processes remain tacit. In his 'perceptual' expectations, the primary confluence (Cos) we can indicate by listing these expectations as Gt1Gt2Gt3 (and eliminating Gt4Gt5). In his inter-personal expectations, the primary confluence (Cope) we can indicate by showing him as expecting that his continued preservation-and-growth, or even his continued bare survival, remains dependent on the continuation of the association with his parent-figures. The variables eliminated by the assumed identity-mapping involved in this primary confluence include a) the 'aware projecting' and the 'conscious projecting' involved in classifying an environmental object as an element of the set of human beings (Pe) (sentence 126), and b) the 'aware projecting' and the 'conscious projecting' and the covert imitative movements involved in empathizing with a 'person' (Ez) (sentence 127); furthermore, c) since we represent our organism as never having operated in the 'impaired' mode of behavior, he necessarily cannot suspect the possibility that his parent-figure(s) might show 'impaired' behavior in relation with him, but rather must assume that their states, like his own, we can characterize by the operator Re .
D. Notational Deployment
Our organism's expectations we can represent as
Our organism's discovery of his own genital area we can represent as:
"It is still common for mothers to slap a child's hand and say to him,Dirty! Dirty! If you do that, Mother won't love you any more."
Furthermore, in this situation the mothering 'person' forbids our organism to undergo discharge.
Finally, at the point when our organism's fundamental affirmations stand utterly defeated and his behavioral "healing processes" remain blocked, the mothering 'person', showing in her facial-expressions-and-gestures an affect of triumph ', Tm , indicates to our organism the cessation of her disapproval, which stands equivalent to the proposition that if our organism refrains from further genital exploration, she will not terminate her association with him.
Our organism, as a perfect logical machine, can derive from this one encounter the 'correct' conclusion. (A real child might prove somewhat hardier, and decline drastically to modify the structure of his behavior as a result of a single 'traumatic' encounter; but even if that proved the case, unless the attitudes of the parent-figure(s) should change after the one encounter, our theory holds that a real child would go thru encounters of this form repeatedly, until he finally did modify his behavior.)
E. 'Consciousness'
The structure of the 'correct' conclusions to draw from this encounter we can show by specifying first the subset of Cs formed as a result of this encounter, and the first Cq correspondence (the Self-component) of this subset of Cs , and then by comparing these two sets with 'unimpaired' behavior. (When we state these two propositions in words, we shall int he same act give the verbal equivalents of some of our new notational expressions.)
This sentence says that the subset of 'consciousness', Cs18, formed as a result of this encounter, consists of the same elements as does the set of expectations described above, (sentence 157), at time t0 , and proprioceptive 'awareness' of the genitals at home t0 , and the impulse to approximate genitals and hand via touch and proprioception (viz. to approach the genitals with the hand and to approach the hand with the genitals) at time t1 , and tactile-and-proprioceptive exploration (Att,p) of genitals-and-hand and the organism's excitement at time t5 ,k and a blow from the mothering 'person' at time T6 , and interrupting of the tactile-and-proprioceptive approximating of genitals and hand and interrupting of the organism's excitement at time t8, and a state of emergency at time t10 , which consists of the same elements as does the act of empathizing with the mothering 'person' at time T10 , which in turn consists of the same elements as does the proposition that "the mothering 'person' at time t10 exists such that she shows facial-expressions-and-gestures of fierce white fury toward the organism, and by tone of voice and word choice she threatens to discontinue her association with the organism, at time t10 ," and blotting-out of genitals-and-hand at time t14 , and self-distracting (tactile-and-proprioceptive interest in the genitals and visual-and-auditory attending to non-genital objects) at time t14 , and the blocking of discharge at time t16 , and empathizing with the mothering 'person' at time t17 , which consists of the same elements as does the proposition that "The mothering 'person' at time t17 exists such that, by tone-of-voice and by word-choice she indicates her visual 'awareness' that the organism at time t14 has ceased exploring his genitals with his hand and that at time t16 the organism has blocked his discharge, and by facial-expression-and gestures she shows an affect of triumph at time t17 , and by tone-of-voice and word-choice she indicates cessation of her disapproval of the organism at time t17 , which consists of the same elements as does the proposition that if the organism, at any time ti , does not explore his genitals with his hand, then at the subsequent moment ti+1 , the mothering 'person' continues her association with the organism"; this whole expression comprises a subset of our organism's bare survival at time T17 , but not a subset of our organism's preservation-and-growth; and Cs18 does not stand equivalent to the empty set.
In presenting the first Cq correspondence of Cs18 , we shall not write out the step which shows a subset of Se such that these things happened in proper temporal order during the period covered by time-indices t0 thru t17 ; instead, we shall present a generalization of this encounter in which our organism predicts that, given similar starting-conditions, similar events will occur during any period with time-indices ti thru tk . The resulting expression shows the form "A; and if A precedes B (which constitutes a subset of C ), then D , which comprises a subset of E , which stands equivalent to F , which stands equivalent to G ; and if G precedes H (which comprises a subset of J ), then K , which comprises a subset of L , but not a subset of M ." We may understand this expression as an abbreviation of a proposition to the effect that "These things happened in proper temporal order this time, and given similar starting conditions, similar events will occur during any period with time-indices ti thru tk ."
This sentence says that the first Cq correspondence of Cs18 consists of the same elements as does a subset of the Self-component of 'consciousness', Se18 , such that there exists the set of expectations already described, at time t0 , and proprioceptive 'awareness' of the genitals, at time t0 , and the impulse to approximate genitals and hand (via touch and proprioception) at time t1 ; but if the impulse to approximate genitals and hand via touch and proprioception at any time ti precedes tactile-and-proprioceptive approximating (Apt,p) and exploring (Att,p) of genitals-and-hand and the organism's excitement, at time ti+1 (which comprises a subset of the organism's fundamental affirmations), then at time tj the mothering 'person' strikes the organism, shows facial-expressions-and-gestures of fierce white fury toward the organism, and via tone-of-voice and word-choice threatens to discontinue her association with the organism, which comprises a subset of the act of the mothering 'person' disapproving (Dp) of the organism, which consists of the same elements as does the expression that "The outcome (for the organism) at time tj does not comprise a subset of a tactile-and-proprioceptive 'consciousness' of genitals-and-hand, nor of the organism's preservation-and-growth, at time tj," which in turn consists of the same elements as does the expression that the 'consciousness' proves equivalent to the empty set; and if the recognition that the 'consciousness' proves equivalent to the empty set precedes blotting-out of genitals-and-hand, and self-distracting, and the blocking of discharge, all at time tj+2 (which constitutes a subset of our organism interrupting his fundamental affirmations) then at time tk , by tone-of-voice and by word-choice, the mothering 'person' indicates her 'awareness' that the organism has stopped exploring his genitals with his hand, and that he has blocked discharge, and, showing facial-expressions-and-gestures of triumph (Tm), she indicates by tone-of-voice and by word-choice the cessation of her disapproving of the organism; this outcome makes up a subset of our organism's bare survival, at time tk , but not a subset of our organism's preservation-and-growth.
F. The Dissociative Gestalt
As we indicated above, we are envisioning a situation in which the attitudes of the parent-figure(s) do not change as a consequence of this encounter: she (they) will permit neither genital exploration nor discharge of the frustration engendered by blocking genital exploration, ever, under (threatened) penalty of termination of the association with the parent-figure(s). In the act of recognizing the unchangingness of the attitudes of the parent-figure(s), which we have indicated by showing our organism as generalizing from the particulars of this one encounter to the assertion that, given similar starting conditions, similar events will occur at any time ti , our organism has "become desperate" (cf. Perls, et al., 1951, p. 432). Let us now try to gain perspective on the stages, the meaning, and the consequences of this desperation.
Since the outcome of this encounter did not prove fatal to our organism, we may speak of this as a low-grade emergency. As a consequence of the unchanging attitudes of the parent-figure(s) (and the blocking of discharge), the state of emergency has not ended at the end of this encounter, but rather remains as a chronic low-grade emergency. And it seems by now apparent that our child-organism at this point in his life has no technique for dealing with this chronic low-grade emergency other than to make sustained use of emergency-functions. Previously (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, p. ), we cited a passage from Perls, et al. (1951, p. 261) which pointed out that we may consider temporary use of these emergency-functions 'healthy' (in our terms, a subset of 'unimpaired' behavior). But the desperation of our organism involves at least two stages: first, the process of making sustained or chronic use of emergency-functions; and second, the recognition that he must make sustained use of emergency-functions. We assert that chronic utilization of emergency-functions stands as the first step in the elaboration of psycho-dynamically stabilized distortions of behavior. After Perls, et al. (1951, p. 361, 366), we designate the sustained use of emergency-functions as 'withdrawal of the self', OWd. And as we shall show below, this process of recognition of the necessity of OWd , 'withdrawal of the self', produces (or constitutes) the state of 'resignation', ORs .
Our notational definition of 'withdrawal of the self' constitutes an expression of the form, "A , and B , and C , which stands equivalent to the proposition 'If D (which makes up a subset of E ), then F '; therefore G ."
This sentence says that the operator 'withdrawal of the self' consists of the same elements as does a formulation to the effect that the coenetic variables for our organism (at time th ) consist of the same elements as do a deficit of physiological parameter A , such that there exists a 'present experience' of activated states of interoceptors sensitive to A (at time th ), and a visual 'awareness' of an environmental object x (epsilon) A (at time th+1 ), and the impulse to approach this environmental object x (epsilon) A and the organism's excitement (at time th+2), and that the focal condition for our organism (at time th) consists of the same elements as does the act of our organism intaking this environmental object x (epsilon) A such that there exists no deficit of physiological parameter A , and that (at time ti ) the outcome for our organism consists of the same elements as does the proposition that "If (at any time tp ) our organism approaches an environmental object x (epsilon) A and becomes excited (which constitutes a subset of his fundamental affirmations), then (at time tp+1 ) our organism's 'consciousness' proves equivalent to the empty set"; and therefore, at time tj , our organism exists such that he interrupts his own fundamental affirmations (at time tj ), which constitutes a subset of our organism's bare survival but not a subset of our organism's preservation-and-growth.
In other words, in sentences 157-168, we have sketched out a new set of contingencies, a special 'social' situation in which our organism must conclude that the operations of his Self (his fundamental affirmations) will NOT serve as reliable guides to behavior. This conclusion has a very curious structure:
1) A sequence such as that composed of all the terms in sentences 1257-160 bearing time-indices t0 thru t5 , which we may conveniently abbreviate as O(0-5) , constitues a subset of the fundamental affirmations of our organism, or in other words,
2) Moreover, we have already shown than an organism engages in the mode of affirmation iff we can characterize his state as ORe , 'the sense of relatedness-in-a-field' (sentence 155).
3) But in this 'social' situation, in the presence of these unaltered attitudes of the parent-figure(s) and these primary confluences of our organism, the fundamental affirmations of our organism inevitably lead to an outcome which in no sense comprises a subset of his focal conditions, as we showed in sentence (163) above:
4) For the 'consciousness' to remain equivalent to the empty set, of course, stands as the defining mark of an intolerable emergency, and serves as a coenetic variable to elicit emergency-functions such as blotting-out and self-distracting (or in general, the (temporary) interrupting of his fundamental affirmations), with the focal condition of OSv , bare survival. But in this chronic emergency situation on the level of 'social' relations, we have sketched out some important differences from the non-'social' emergency situations already considered:
a) In non'social' low-grade crisis-situations, the emergency would not prove chronic but would pass, after which our organism could relax his emergency-functions, undergo discharge, and then 'breathe freely again'; (sentences 150-153) and
b) In non-'social' emergencies, our organism would not already have engaged himself in defining his standards and his 'picture of himself' by emulating the environmental object which precipitated the emergency (sentence 157); and finally
c) In non-'social' emergencies, our organism would not feel that his preservation-and-growth, or even his bare survival, remained dependent on the continuation of his association with that environmental object (sentence 157).
As a consequence of these differences, the handling of a 'social' emergency will differ drastically from that of the non-'social' emergencies already considered.
5) Thus in this novel situation, we find that our organism, having concluded that the operations of his self will NOT serve as reliable guides to behavior, enters a novel state, which we shall designate as OR-e-, the sense of 'isolation'.
6) The set of expectations which underlies 'unimpaired' relations of our child-organism with his parent-figure(s) have undergone disconfirmation in this encounter (Cs123 = f ); and in the act of engaging in emergency-functions, our organism has already tentatively modified his premises: he has ceased to approach the environment in his efforts to satisfy his dominant focal conditions, and now expends his energies in efforts to make the crisis more manageable by blocking his own 'unimpaired' outgoing activities, thus in effect avoiding (seeking to annihilate) what he takes as the dangerous aspects of the environment and of his own Self (sentences 160-165). These altered activities imply new premises; and by the use of our logical calculus of behavior, we shall explore these new premises, make them explicit, and show their implications. This we can do by showing the immediate and later consequences of 'withdrawal of the self'.
7) The actions of our organism after time t12 led to an outcome at time t17 which did qualify as a subset of our organism's bare survival. This means that the new premises have undergone testing once without unequivocal disconfirmation.
a) But since the state of emergency has not ended, or in other words, since our organism did not manage to undergo the discharge by means of which he could destroy (de-structure) the events which make up this outcome, taking in and recombining these elements so as to form a behavioral Gestalt (which would serve to convert a subset of his bare survival into a subset of his preservation-and-growth), the affect of our organism remains one of at least low-grade distress and desperation. In other words, strictly speaking, this test of the new premises remains inconclusive.
b) Moreover, sustained use of retroflexion soon becomes painful, as anyone can demonstrate for himself by forcefully clenching his fist and keeping it clenched for even three minutes by the clock. Likewise, sustained very shallow breathing for a matter of minutes (which produces decreased oxygen tension in the blood, resulting in the classical symptoms of anxiety) becomes first uncomfortable, then frightening, then intolerable. In general, sustained use of emergency-functions (withdrawal of the self) remains intrinsically painful. Thus, a chronic 'unfinished situation' involves both chronic frustration and chronic danger, and the affects of pain, distress and desperation which accompany these.
8) Moreover, in this situation, since our organism has satisfied no focal condition beyond OSv , bare survival, he has taken in no new material. He has not altered the deficit of genital touch-contact, and therefore proprioceptive 'awareness' of the genitals and the impulse to approach and to explore genitals-and-hand via touch and proprioception will soon recur.
a) But we have shown our organism as expecting that his continued preservation-and-growth, or even his bare survival, depends on the continuation of his association with his parent-figure(s); ;and this expectation we have represented as a form of primary confluence, involving an identity-mapping which eliminates the operation of Gt4Gt5, Pe , and Ez from his account of self-and-others; and furthermore, which eliminates the possibility of 'impaired' functioning from his account of self-and-others.
b) Since the mothering 'person' has expressed her disapproval of our organism's genital explorations by means of the threat to discontinue her association with our organism, and since our organism lacks the psycho-logical tools with which to protect himself from these actions of his parent-figure(s), therefore if he should act upon this impulse, and thereby should allow his excitement to develop (in other words, if he should attempt to 'complete' this 'unfinished situation'), that act would reinstate the felt threat to survival.
c) And yet, as we have indicated, the genital 'awareness' and the impulse to explore do recur; but now our organism regards them as dangerous and they function as a source of pain, again eliciting 'withdrawal of the self' so as to prevent the catastrophic 'completion' of this 'unfinished situation'. This construct corresponds to the notion of 'reversal of affect' (Perls, et al., 1951, pp. 431-2). Thus 'withdrawal of the self' as a technique for handling a recurring chronic emergency of this type stands as the notational equivalent of the previous verbally-defined notion of "self-paralyzing activities" (Hilgartner, 1963, p. )
d) But the notion of "self-paralyzing activities", as exemplified by 'reversal of affect', as we shall show below, implies that our organism has "turned against his own need" (cf. Perls, et al., 1951, pp. 360-362; also Hilgartner, 1963, p. )
Although (strictly speaking) this test of the new premises remains inconclusive, the subset of Cs formed in this encounter does not stand equivalent to the empty set. And though we must regard the Gestalt formed under these circumstances as 'impaired', we can represent the deranged process of 'assimilation' of this encounter without modifying our formalism. In so doing, we take our argument one step further, and subsume the recurring nature of the chronic emergency situation. (Differences between the structure of the 'impaired' construct elaborated here and the structure of 'unimpaired' behavior we will specify below.) We refer to the generalization formed here as a subset of the dissociative Gestalt, Gd .
This sentence says that the mapping of Cs18 into the set of behavioral Gestalten consists of the same elements as does the proposition that the Self-component of 'consciousness' at any time ti exists such that proprioceptive 'awareness' of the genitals or the impulse to approximate genitals and hand via touch and proprioception such that the organism shows excitement (at any time ti ), a subset of the fundamental affirmations of our organism, makes up a subset of the dangerous subset of the environment; and therefore if at any time ti there exists proprioceptive 'awareness' of the genitals, or the impulse to approximate genitals and hand via touch and proprioception, with concurrent excitement, then the organism will engage in 'withdrawal of the Self'; and this proposition comprises a special case (subset) of the dissociative Gestalt.
This expression shows our organism as having classified a portion of the operations of his own Self as dangerous; more than that, he classifies them not as parts of the organism, but rather as portions of the dangerous subset of the environment. Formally speaking, by means of this operation, our organism has set up an identity-mapping with which symbolically to replace elements of the (O cross E) field by elements of an alleged (O cross O) or (E cross E) 'field'. In more humanly understandable terms, he has classified portions of his own Self as 'alien' to the rest of his Self.
In our discussion of the phenomena of multi-ordinality (Hilgartner & Randolph 1968a, pp 317-18) (sentences 43-44), and in the discussion of Korzybski's 'theory of sanity' and the operational basis for it (Hilgartner & Randolph 1969b, p. 363), we considered the ways that the recent past actions of our organism constitute a part of his here-now environmental situation; and we pointed out that
... an organism which, like Gt4(union)Myth1 , learns how adequately to take into account his own role in the situations in which he finds himself, will be able to achieve his focal conditions in situations in which he otherwise could not do so.
These manifestations of self-reflexiveness involved no solecism, for there we both represented and regarded the processes as composed of ordered relations, and these comprise proper elements of the
(O cross E) field.
But here, after sufficient exposure to a situation of chronic emergency, not only has our organism classified a portion of the operations of his own Self as a dangerous part of the environment (and thus has posited an (O cross O) or an (E cross E) 'field') but he has done so as if for all times, thus eliminating order from his accounting. In other words, as we said above, at this point our organism, in a chronic low-grade emergency, has "turned against his own 'need'", which constitutes the crucial operation in the syndrome of 'resignation', Rs. This amounts to the representing of his own Self as being split into two opposing factions ("safe" vs. "dangerous"): from this point on, we can regard our organism as "at war with himself."
Our notational definition of 'resignation' constitutes an expression of the form, "A, and B (which comprises a subset of C), and D (which proves equivalent to E, which in turn comprises a subset of F); and therefore G, such that if B (which constitutes a special case of H), then J; and this whole proposition turns out equivalent to K."
This sentence says that the operator 'resignation' (at any time ti ) consists of the same elements as does a lengthy formulation to the effect that (at time th ) the coenetic variables for our organism consist of the same elements as do a deficit of a physiological parameter A such that there exists a 'present experience' of activated states of interoceptors sensitive to A (at time th ), and a visual 'awareness' of an environmental object x (epsilon) A (at time th+1 ), and the impulse to approach this environmental object x (epsilon) A along with the organism's excitement (at time th+2 ); and that the expectations of our organism (at time th ) consist of the same elements as does the proposition that (at any time tp ) a visual 'awareness' of an environmental object x (epsilon) A , or the impulse to approach x (epsilon) A (at time tp+1 ), or the act of approaching x (epsilon) A , or the organism's excitement (at time tp+2 ), or the act of intaking x (epsilon) A such that there remains no deficit of A (at time tp+3 ) constitute a subset of the dangerous-to-our-organism subset of the environment; and the focal condition for our organism (at time th ) consists of the same elements as does the act of our organism avoiding the dangers, which stands equivalent to our organism not intaking x (epsilon) A , such that he does not relieve the deficit of A , which comprises a subset of our organism's bare survival Sv ; and therefore (at time ti ) our organism remains such that if (at time th ) there exists a visual 'awareness' of x (epsilon) A , or the impulse to approach x (epsilon) A (at time th+1 ), or the act of approaching x (epsilon) A ,or the organism's excitement (at time th+2 ), or the act of intaking x (epsilon) A (which, taken together, constitute a subset of our organism's fundamental affirmations), then (at time ti ) the organism engages in 'withdrawal fo the Self'; and this entire formulation stands equivalent to an assumed identity-mapping on the environment, rsIE , such that there exists the proposition, "The organism's fundamental affirmations imply the organism's not-preservation-and-growth, and moreover the organism will achieve the outcome of his own bare survival iff he maintains the intersection of a deficit of physiological parameter A such that he maintains a 'present experience' of activated states of interoceptors sensitive to A and the not-intaking of x (epsilon) A such that the deficit of A does not get relieved."
At this point in our argument, we have shown that the combination of chronic emergency with an affect of desperation, and chronic sustained use of emergency-functions with attendant intrinsic pain as a technique for handling chronic emergency, constitute mutually-reinforcing conditions which make OSv , bare survival, appear as the highest 'goal' our organism can hope to attain, and which make OWd , 'withdrawal of the self', appear as a necessary condition for our organism to achieve his own bare survival.
As long as the chronic emergency does in fact continue to exist, or as long as he believes it still exists (whether or not it does), there remains no mechanism by which our organism can disconfirm the assumptions which underlie these maneuvers. Thus at this point we have given a notational formulation which corresponds to the previous verbally-defined notion of "self-paralyzing, self-defending assumptions" (Hilgartner, 1963).
In the cited document, I pointed out that "self-paralyzing, self-defending" assumptions must include assumed logical constructs (here called identity-mappings) which serve to eliminate from our organism's accounting at least one crucial variable concerning our 'resigned' organism, and at least one crucial variable concerning his immediate environment; therefore these assumptions involve at least one solecism, and thus by logical criteria remain demonstrably untenable. We shall now proceed to make explicit these assumptions, and to show in just what sense we regard them as untenable. This we can do by giving an explicit notational definition of the 'dissociative Gestalt', and then by examining that construct in the light of our formulations concerning -| , affirmation.
The dissociative Gestalt comprises the conclusion that our organism cannot, by means of his fundamental affirmations, achieve the focal condition of his own preservation-and-growth, and that he will continue to achieve the focal condition of his own bare survival if and only if he maintains a stable state of self-paralysis, viz., if he manages in each encounter to interrupt his own fundamental affirmations.
G. The Structure of Affirmation and of the Dissociative Gestalt
We originally introduced the operator | , affirmation, in order to make explicit the "major revision of our theories of the structure of human psycho-dynamics" (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, p. 373) produced as a result of encounters with one of the Ames demonstrations, the trapezoidal window display, WT . We defined -| (ibid., pp. 361 and 365) as the process of making the inference that the organism's 'awareness' at a given moment ti tells not only about the state of the organism, but also about the state of 'environmental conditions', viz., that the 'awareness' resulted from contact with something 'real'. In particular, O-|i constitutes the process of taking the relation U(Sei) = Oei as representing not only a tautology concerning the state of the organism, but also, the process of taking the Gestalt Oei : xcs/g(E-x)|xcs = (yi)cs as equivalent to a composition-mapping from E into the second Cq correspondence of Cs , viz. Cq2(beta)(alpha)(rho)f(yi) .
Then, by contrast to sentences (82) and (103), which deal with the topic of an emergency situation in which our organism judges it necessary to interrupt his own ongoing activities so as to turn and deal with the emergency, we pointed out that
the effort to 'complete' a situation constitutes a mode of using the motor and secretory apparatus, which we have thus far indicated by the operator | ; and this too is detectable by the organism, by proprioception. This operator indicates a set of specific, observable, proprioceptable phenomena, which form an intrinsic part of every experience, and which give an autonomous criterion of the degree of 'completeness' of the subset of Cs involved. (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, p. 366)
Explicitly stated, the operator O|i , paraphrased as the effort to 'complete' a situation, proves equivalent to a simple conditional proposition:
Sentence (173) asserts that the operator O|i , our organism's 'affirmation' at any instant ti , consists of the same elements as does the organism's proposition (at any instant ti ) that "The (organism (cross) environment) field exists such that if at any instant tp coenetic variables operate and at subsequent instants tq the organism orients himself and forms an 'awareness' and attends and shows 'interest' and becomes excited and (at subsequent instants tr ) uses his motor operators, then the outcome for the organism at some subsequent moments ts will comprise a subset of the organism's initial focal conditions, which in turn will comprise a subset of the organism's preservation-and-growth"; and this entire proposition, which stands equivalent to our organism's trusting the (organism (cross) environment) field (at any instant ti ), comprises a subset of the organism's 'consciousness of his own consciousness', which in turn comprises a subset of Cs .
Since O-|i (subset) Cs , we can resolve O-|i into its first or second Cp or Cq correspondences. As Perls, et al. (1951, p. 189) point out,
Both as an organism and as a personality one grows by assimilating new material. To compare the acquisition of habits, attitudes, beliefs, or ideals to the process of taking physical food into the organism strikes one at first as merely a crude analogy, but the more one examines the detailed sequence of each, the more one realizes their functional identity.
Thus in order to show these Cq correspondences, I shall indicate these aspects of the coenetic variables OCV which refer to our organism's 'need' (as previously) by the symbolism O[Df(A):"Ica*"]i , and shall indicate an outcome OOc which satisfies the 'need' by O[It(x (epsilon) A):D-f-(A)]i (subset) OFC . Then
Sentence (174) asserts that the first Cq correspondence of the operator O-|i , affirmation (at any time ti ), consists of the same elements as does a subset of the 'self'-component of 'consciousness' (at time ti ) such that there exists the proposition (at time ti ), "if (at any time tp ) the organism shows a deficit of a physiological parameter A such that he develops a 'present experience' of activated states of interoceptors sensitive to deficit of A , then (at subsequent moments Tq ) the organism will orient himself and will attend to and show 'interest' in matters related to physiological parameter A , and will become excited, and if (at some time tq ) the organism becomes 'aware' of an environmental object x (epsilon) A , and (at times tr ) intakes that environmental object, then (at times ts ) the organism will show a not-deficit of physiological parameter A , which comprises a subset of his focal conditions."
Sentence (174) further asserts that the second Cq correspondence of the operator O-|i , affirmation (at any time ti ), consists of the same elements as does a subset of the 'other'-component of 'consciousness' (or a subset of the organism's 'consciousness'-Gestalt) (at time ti ) such that there exists the proposition (at time ti ), "The organism affirms that there exists (at any time tp ) at least one element x (epsilon) A (subset) E such that the composition mapping from E into the visual second Cp correspondence consists of the same elements as does a visual image of x (epsilon) A (at time tp ), and if (at time tp ) the organism shows a deficit of physiological parameter A such that he develops a 'present experience' of activated states of interoceptors sensitive to deficit of A (at time tp ), followed by the intaking of x (epsilon) A (at some subsequent time tr ), then (at time ts ) the organism experiences a not-deficit of physiological parameter A , which comprises a subset of his focal conditions."
Since this sentence asserts that our organism regards the environment as containing at least one element x (epsilon) A (subset) E visually detectable by the organism and capable of satisfying the organism's 'need', we must conclude that here our organism has explicitly distinguished between the structure of environmental objects x (epsilon) E (which in principle remains unknown to him) and the subsets of his Self, such as his 'needs' O[Df(A):"Ica*"]i , or his own 'pictures' of environmental objects Cq2(beta)(alpha)(rho)f(xi) = Oei ; thus by no stretch of the imagination could this formulation remain indistinguishable from an identity-mapping on the environment. Therefore 'affirmation' explicitly assumes-and-implies the non-aristotelian premises:
To summarize in words, the operator -| , 'affirmation' (which I might verbally translate as "I affirm that" or "I take a stand that" or "I commit myself that"), expresses that 'picture' of (set of expectations concerning) the ordered relations between organism and environment held by our organism during those moments when he bases his actions on the korzybskian premises: viz., when he acts as if the satisfaction of his 'needs' remains possible.
We first used the operator -| in sentences (100) and (102). We translated the conditional clause of sentence (102) into words as, "I recognize the existence of a subset of my Self, and affirm that there exists in the environment an object yi (epsilon) E which corresponds to this subset of my Self." (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, p. 365). Then, in order to facilitate the mutual translation between the notation, the words, and personal experience, we introduced a pair of operators to correspond to the two halves of the verbal sentence: For the verbal expression, "I affirm that there exists in the environment an object yi (epsilon) E which corresponds to this subset of my Self," I substitute the symbolism |Oei , where
(Unnumbered expression, p. 73)
Likewise, for the verbal expression, "I recognize a subset of my Self (and affirm, etc.)," I substitute the symbolism -|Seit , where
(Unnumbered expression, p. 73)
By the postulate of Self-reflexiveness, the relations between these two expressions stands as
where Cq1-1(|Sei) = Cq2-1(|Oei) = |Csi (subset) Cs .
We defined the union of these two relations, (|Sei (union) |Oei) , as the 'fundamental affirmations' of our organism.
Considered in the "larger context" of directively correlated activities: Since by sentences (17) or (20) we can resolve any subset of Aw or Cs into a 'self' component (Cq1(Cs_ = Se) and an 'other' component (Cq2(Cs) = Oe); and since | designates 'the effort to 'complete' a situation': then we may regard the 'fundamental affirmations' O(|Oei (union) |Sei) as our organism's efforts to 'complete' his situation by the use of the 'operations of the Self', where |Oei represents his efforts to 'complete' his situation 'externally' (with relation to the environment), and |Sei represents his efforts to 'complete' his situation 'internally' (with relation to himself).
Previously we showed (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969ag, p. 321) that (at least in the context of 'unimpaired' behavior) the 'operations of the Self' prove synonymous with the 'structure of growth'. The above considerations indicate that the 'fundamental affirmations' (at least in the context of 'unimpaired' behavior) also prove synonymous with these two synonymous constructs.
Also, we showed the fundamental role of 'excitement' in the structure of growth (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1060a, p. 320):
In a situation in which the organism is vitally involved, in which its survival is in some way or other at risk, the organism is to some degree or other excited; and each alternative it faces promises to increase or decrease the excitement. Furthermore, its own state of excitement is apparent to the organism, by proprioception. And finally, each choice it makes which brings it nearer to the achievement of its focal condition serves to increase the level of excitement, up to the climax of the experience. Excitement, then, comprises a feedback-process without which directively correlated activities in principle could not achieve the focal condition, i.e.d. could not exist.
Finally, in the present paper (supra, pp. 34ff) we showed that | , affirmation (and therefore O(|Oei (union) |Sei) , the fundamental affirmations) depend upon the
... unmistakable faith, the confidence that the operations of the Self will somehow serve as reliable guides to behavior, with the result that the organism will once more be able to achieve the focal condition of his own preservation-and-growth. (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, p. 362),
which w4e showed constitutes a state of the organism, and which we designate as ORei , the sense of relatedness-in-a-field. We expressed this requirement in our notation by showing that our organism engages in affirmation iff his state constitutes the sense of relatedness-in-a-field:
To summarize, in this logical calculus of behavior which we claim shows similarity of structure to the non-verbal phenomena which we refer to as 'the behavior-and-experience of human organisms', we both regard and symbolize the 'operations of the self' (the 'processes of growth', also referred to as the 'fundamental affirmations' of our organism) as non-aristotelian in structure; and we understand the operator ORei , the sense of relatedness-in-a-field, as the state of our hypothetical organism when his 'picture of himself', Se , implies-and-assumes the non-aristotelian premises of Korzybski, so that his actions remain consistent with the non-verbal, phylogenetically-evolved requirements, the conservative "wisdom of the body".
In contrast, we showed in the present paper that in a chronic low-grade emergency, our organism elaborates the so-called 'dissociative Gestalt', Gtd , which holds that the organism's "fundamental affirmations will NOT serve as reliable guides to behavior" (supra, p. 58) (specifically, it holds that they will lead to OP-r-, his not-preservation-and-growth); and that if he would attain even OSv , his own 'bare survival' (with attendant pain, distress, and desperation), which under these conditions seems "the highest 'goal' our organism can hope to attain" (supra, p. 68), then in every relevant situation he must interrupt his own fundamental affirmations.
In order correctly to interpret the dissociative Gestalt, we must recall the significance of OP-r- (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, p. 311:
When an organism finally fails to preserve itself, and its integrated set opf directive correlations breaks down, then: (i) its part-processes, no longer integrated together for the preservation of the organism, lead to the destruction of the fine-structure of the form; (ii) its composition is such that it represents a rich local concentration of the raw materials from which living things can be constructed; and so its form is also destroyed by other living creatures, and its raw materials are utilized for the growth of these other creatures.
Likewise, we must recall our rigorously-defined terminology of emergency, frustration, danger, etc. (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, pp. 322-3; supra, pp. 5-8 and sentences (145) thru (147)). OSv designates the focal condition of 'bare survival', such as the living thru of an 'intolerable' emergency by means of
... the behavioral mechanisms described in the passage quoted from Perls, et al. (1951, pp. 261-2), viz., the subactive devices (panic "mindless" flight, shock, anesthesia, fainting, playing dead, blotting out a part, amnesia, etc.), which relate to danger, and the superactive devices (hallucination and dream, lively imagination, obsessive thought, brooding, motor restlessness, etc.), which relate to frustration.... (supra, p.6)
As we point out (supra, pp. 7-8),
The operator Sv , bare survival, comprises a non-terminal stage of an encounter, a partial focal condition. In order to 'complete' a situation, an organism must (after the emergency has passed) perform further operations, which we discuss on pp. 18ff, in order to convert an outcome which comprises a subset of Sv , bare survival, into an outcome which qualifies as a subset of Pr , his own preservation-and-growth. If our organism does not do this or cannot do this, then the encounter remains what Perls, et al. (1951) refer to as an 'unfinished situation' (in our terminology, an 'impaired' subset of Cs ).
Thus it becomes apparent that, in direct contrast to O|i , Gtd asserts that the 'completion' of our organism's situation would lead to his total destruction, and that if our organism would attain even the uncomfortable outcome of his own bare survival, he must (in every relevant encounter) somehow succeed in interrupting his own efforts to 'complete' his situation.
Gt comprises a behavioral Gestalt,
thus in subsequent encounters it will function as an expectation,
But we can resolve any expectation into its first and second Cp or Cq correspondences, the 'self-component' and the 'other-component'. In interpreting the correspondences of Gtd , we must remember that the proposition O(|Se (union) |Oe)i (arrow) OP-r-j stands as an abbreviation for a somewhat longer proposition,
(Unnumbered sentence, p. 77).
Further, we must remember that if there exists the intersection of the deficit term with one or more of the terms connected by union signs, then the organism will experience the affect of Ec , increasing excitement:
(Unnumbered sentence, p. 77)
So as his primary strategy for interrupting this fundamental affirmations, our organism will strive to block his own increasing excitement. Then
Sentence (176) asserts that the first Cq correspondence of the operator Gtj , the dissociative Gestalt (at any time tj ) consists of the same elements as does a subset of the 'self'-component of 'consciousness' (at time tj ) such that there exists the proposition (at time tj ) such that there exists the proposition (at time tj ), "If (at any time tp ) the organism shows a deficit of a physiological parameter A such that he develops a 'present experience' of activated states of interoceptors sensitive to deficit of A , and propriocepts his own state of excitement (at time tp ), which (taken together) comprises a subset of his fundamental affirmations, then (at time tp ) the (organism (cross) environment) field exists such that the organism stands in danger of total destruction; and if (at time tj ) the organism stands in danger of total destruction, then (at time tj+1 ) the organism will avoid the danger, which stands equivalent to interrupting his fundamental affirmations, such that (at time tj+2 ) he will propriocept his own deficit (such that he shows a 'present experience' of activated states of interoceptors sensitive to deficit of A ) and will also propriocept his own interrupting of his own fundamental affirmations (at time tj+2 )."
Sentence (176) further asserts that the second Cq correspondence of the operator Gtdj , the dissociative Gestalt (at time tj ) consists of the same elements as does a subset of the 'other'-component of 'consciousness' (or a subset of the organism's 'consciousness'-Gestalt) (at time tj ) such that there exists a proposition (at time tj ) composed of the same elements as those which make up the proposition equivalent to the first Cq correspondence of this operator.
This result, that Cq1(Gtdj) = Cq2(Gtdj) , may at first seem astonishing. But when we recall that the notion of 'danger' refers to "an emergency in which the coenetic variable involve mainly the stimulation of exteroceptors (e.g. vision)" (supra, p. 5), viz., to a condition of the (O (cross) E) field such that there exists at least one environmental object X such that if our organism interacts with that X , then damage to the boundary will follow:
and further, when we take stock of the fact that the holding of Gtd means that our organism has concluded that an intra-organismic condition, the intersection of a 'need' term (a subset of OCV ) and a state of heightened excitement (a subset of OCs ), implies that in the (O (cross) E) field at that moment our organism stands in danger of total destruction (or in other words, that our organism takes an intra-organismic condition as reliable evidence that there exists in the environment at that moment an environmental object which threatens totally to destroy the boundary); then we must conclude that our organism has failed to distinguish between the structure of environmental objects yi (epsilon) E and the subsets of his own Self. Therefore Gtd demonstrably implies-and-assumes the Aristotelian premises.
In our previous statements of premises (viz., the non-aristotelian postulates of Korzybski (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, pp. 295-7) and the "Laws of Thought" of Aristotle, which when stated in our notation of the interacting (organism (cross) environment) field become the postulates of Identity, Allness, and Linearity (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969b, pp. 354-6)), we make use of several different sets of conventions. In order to complete the proof that Gtd implies-and-assumes the Aristotelian premises, I must now reconcile these various sets of conventions.
In one lexicon, we let Y stand for the set of characteristics of the 'territory', the environmental object yi (epsilon) E ; and we let (beta)(alpha)(rho)f(yi) = Z stand for the set of characteristics of our organism's 'picture' of yi (epsilon) E . Then the contrasting postulates of Non-identity and Identity become
Non-identity: No "thing" exists identical with any other "thing"; a 'map' does not consist of the same elements as does the 'territory' which it represents.
(Premise 1) (p. 80)
Or, alternatively stated,
Identity: (Aristotle does not explicitly distinguish 'name' (or 'map') from 'thing named' (or 'territory').
Stated in words, the postulate of Identity asserts that the symmetric difference between the set of characteristics of 'territory' (Y) and that of 'map' (Z) remains negligible (subliminal, so small as to escape detection).
In a slightly different lexicon, we defined a mapping from Y onto Z (as in Premise 2) or sentence (90)), viz.
in terms of which we defined two difference relations, Y - (rho)-1(Z) and Z - (rho)(Q) . The the contrasting postulates of Non-allness and Allness became
Non-allness: No 'map' can show all the characteristics of the 'territory' which it represents; no 'map' remains free of elements extrinsic to the 'territory' which it represents.
(Premise 3)
(Premise 4)
Allness: (Since Aristotle did not explicitly distinguish between 'name' and 'thing named', he also failed to take into account the concurrent and related problems of the 'incompleteness' of 'maps' and of the inclusion in 'maps' of elements extrinsic to the 'territory'.)
We used a third lexicon in stating the postulate of Self-reflexiveness, and yet another in stating the contrasting postulate of Linearity. Possibly, this difference of notation serves to conceal or at least obscure the contrast between these two directly contradictory postulates; thus I shall proceed to make this contrast explicit.
Originally, we stated the postulate of Self-reflexiveness in terms of Aw (sentences (16) thru (18)):
Self-reflexiveness: No action or utterance of any organism exists free of self-reference.
(Premise 5)
Stated in words, the postulate of Self-reflexiveness asserts, "Gestalt if and only if subsidiary 'awareness' of the intra-organismic processes by which our organism puts together his Gestalt." (Here the term 'Gestalt' refers to a structure composed of a figure of focal interest to our organism (in sensory modality i ) bounded by a ground or context more or less empty of interest.)
Now, using the relations involving Cs given in sentence (20), I can reconcile the sets of conventions displayed so far.
If we paraphrase in terms of Cs , the postulate of Self-reflexiveness becomes
or paraphrasing in terms of the mapping (rho),
From these formulations emerge some implications which illuminate the contrast between Aristotelian and non-aristotelian premises. For example, in terms of our mapping (rho),
According to the postulate of Allness,
from which it follows that
or, stated in words, the symmetric difference between the (sub-)set of characteristics of the 'territory' which our organism can in principle detect by means of his unaided sensory receptors (Q) and the entire set of characteristics of the 'territory' (Y) remains negligible (subliminal).
Also, from sentence (178), Cq2(Z) = Oe = [(rho)(Q)] . But according to the postulate of Allness,
from which it follows that
Thus, stated in terms of symmetric differences, the postulate of Allness becomes
But if sentences (92a) and (93) hold, viz. if the 'territory' includes practically no elements undetectable by the unaided sensory receptors of our organism and if our organism's 'picture' of the 'territory' includes practically no extrinsic elements, then at the very least the relation between Y and Z approximates a 1-to-1 (and onto) function (cf. Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, Appendix, 6, sentences (1), p. 335)
Or, regarding (rho)-1 (composition) (rho) as a set,
But a 1-to-1 (and onto) function implies an identity-function (identity-mapping),
Then we could interpret an identity-mapping on the environment, IE(Y) , as specifying a "point-for-point perfect replica of" Y .
But if the postulate of Allness ((91) (intersection) (92)) held, so that (rho) specified a 1-to-1 and onto function, which maps from a 'territory' practically devoid of "undetectable" elements into a 'picture' practically devoid of extrinsic elements, then in effect our organism's 'picture' of the 'territory' (Z) would prove indistinguishable from an identity-mapping on the environment:
In other words, the postulate of Allness implies-and-assumes the postulate of Identity: (91) (intersection) (92) (iff) (89) .
Otherwise stated, according to the postulate of Allness, our organism's 'picture' of the 'territory' constitutes a "point-for-point perfect replica of" the 'territory' -- a very curious conclusion (or premise).
Furthermore, according to sentence (178),
[Z - (rho)(Q)] = Se = Cq1(Z) .
But according to the postulate of Allness,
or, stated in words, the 'self'-component of 'consciousness', Se , remains negligible (subliminal). This leads to another very curious conclusion: The operator U designates the section over Se (cf. sentences (2) and (20)), viz.,
Obviously, as defined, U comprises a relation rather than a 1-to-1 function, since U(sei) designates a set of elements, {oei} . But if we grant the postulate of Allness, and thus of Identity, then we must regard U as a 1-to-1 and onto function, which implies an identity-mapping on the 'other'-component of Cs :
Then the section over Se , which we may interpret as the set of activities by which our organism puts together his Gestalt, becomes indistinguishable from an identity-mapping on Oe :
We still need one more detail: We have already shown that, according to the postulate of Allness, the symmetric difference between Z and Oe remains negligible (sentence (92a)), and that Z itself proves indistinguishable from an identity-mapping on the environment (sentence (185)). Thus (granting the postulates of Identity and Allness) there remains no way to distinguish an identity-mapping on the environment from an identity-mapping on Oe :
As originally stated, the postulate of Self-Reflexiveness refers to the structure of intra-organismic relations (Hilgartner & Randolph, 1969a, p. 297). But to mention 'intra-organismic relations' presumes first that we distinguish between 'name' and 'thing named'. Thus we can see that this postulate states the dual requirement that we distinguish between 'name' and 'thing named', and that we distinguish between our organism's Gestalt and the intra-organismic processes by which he puts together his Gestalt. Putting these requirements into notational form, I could paraphrase the postulate as
which obviously implies-and-assumes Non-identity.
If, however, we admit the postulate of Identity, then we transform our account of the structure of the transactions of an organism-as-a-whole-with-his-environment-at-a-date in such a way that
a) our organism's 'name' or 'map' or 'gross perception' constitutes a "point-for-point perfect replica of the 'thing named' or the 'territory' or the 'thing perceived', and
b) the activities by which our organism puts together his Gestalt constitute a "point-for-point perfect replica of" his Gestalt.
Then the postulate of Linearity becomes
Thus this reconciliation of notation makes apparent the direct contrast between the postulates of Self-reflexiveness and of Linearity.
It also serves to make immediately apparent the significance of the finding that Cq1(Gtd) = Cq2(Gtd) . For, granting non-aristotelian premises, this finding expresses a solecism, which contradicts the postulate of Self-reflexiveness. But if, in accordance with the postulate of Allness, we regard U as a 1-to-1 and onto function, this implies also an identity-mapping on the 'self'-component of Cs :
And by reasoning similar to that set forth in sentence (189), if we grant the postulates of Identity and Allness, then there remains no way to distinguish an identity-mapping on the environment from an identity-mapping on Se :
` (192)
Furthermore, in the present paper we showed that in a chronic low-grade emergency, our organism, having concluded that the operations of his Self will NOT serve as reliable guides to behavior, enters a novel state, designated OR-e-i , the sense of 'isolation'. In the previous sections (supra, pp. 589-68), we showed that when we can characterize his state as OR-e-i , our organism comes to act on Gtd as his expectation, viz., that his fundamental affirmations will lead only to his total destruction, and that if he would attain even the uncomfortable outcome of his own bare survival, then he must somehow manage to interrupt his own fundamental affirmations.
To summarize, then, we may understand the operator OR-e-i , the sense of 'isolation', as the state of our organism when his 'picture of himself', Se , implies-and-assumes the Aristotelian premises, so that his actions contradict, and thus produce continual conflict with, the conservative "wisdom of the body."
Thus in the phrase "'impaired' behavior", the term 'impaired' refers to a disorder of the organism's growing.