[From Rick Marken (2007.03.26.1200)]
Bruce Nevin ( 2007.03.26 13:32 EDT)
I changed the name of the subject line since this is really on a different topic.
Rick Marken (2007.03.26.1000) –
Certainly some “big time” psychologists control for preserving their privileges (or, more likely, status) and some may even maintain a belief in the controllability of others as a means of carrying out this control. But I don’t think this is a particularly prevalent view, even among the “swells” of the discipline.
Yes, I readily understand that, and it accords with my limited experience with the “high priests” of academic psychology.
I was thinking of their “customers,” for whom “human resources” are a lively concern, from command and control to fix him and make him productive again with minimum cost.
Yes, I agree. The problems that PCT suggests will arise from trying to control people do get in the way of its acceptance by potential “customers”.
Conversely, once accepted, PCT can be coopted in ways that would seem perverse to me and I think to many of us, exploiting an understanding of counter-control, for example, and adapting prior expertise in conditioning to the “shaping” of reorganization.
I don’t think so. I doubt, for example, that PCT could help expert counter-controllers (like terrorists) counter-control any better than they already can. Perhaps it could help people avoid being counter-controlled. But the people who are most easily counter-controlled (like Bush) are probably incapable of understanding PCT anyway.
As it says of God in the Good Book, “to the pure thou seemest pure and to the perverse thou seemest perverse”.
I guess I am one perverse guy. The God described in the “Good Book” condones genocide and the murder of innocent children, among other things. So now I know that the fact that I am appalled by this is because I am perverse. I think I just perversevere.
Best
Rick
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Richard S. Marken
rsmarken@gmail.com
marken@mindreadings.com