# Bowlby **URL:** \ **Category:** CSG1995\ **Created:** [October 12, 1995, 3:53pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bowlby/1935 "1995-10-12T15:53:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1

**Author:** ![Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bruce_Abbott)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 1995, 3:53pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bowlby/1935/1 "1995-10-12T15:53:29Z")

[From Bruce Abbott (951012.1050 EST)] > Bill Powers (951012.0530 MDT) -- > I find that the Bowlby book is available at Fort Lewis College; you > didn't tell me it was a 3-volume monster! I will get started on it > sooner than anticipated. There's a later book there, too. Yes, but Bowlby's beautiful descriptions of control to which I referred are found in the first volume, if memory serves. I read Bowlby first and later encountered Powers. Instant synergy! It's been a long time, though, since I last gazed upon those pages; perhaps a second read would be in order now. Bowlby was a British psychiatrist brought up on Freudian theory, which states that experiences very early in life strongly influence the course of psychological development. However, clinicians traditionally talked to adults and from these interviews attempted to reconstruct those early experiences that had presumably led to the development of certain aspects of the adult's personality. Bowlby thought a better strategy would be to study children directly, and this approach ultimately led him away from Freud and into the study of attachment and loss that led to his publication of these volumes, now considered classics in the field. Regards, Bruce ---

**Author:** ![William\_T\_Powers4](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/977dab/32.png) [@William\_T\_Powers4](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/William_T_Powers4)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 1995, 10:35pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bowlby/1935/2 "1995-10-25T22:35:25Z")

[From Bill Powers (951025.1435 MDT)] Bruce Abbott (951025.1045 EST) -- Bill, I hope you have not given up reading Bowlby; what you had to say thus far could have been extracted from Chapter 1, which simply sets up Bowlby's approach without getting into the real nitty- gritty of it. I was reflecting on why it is I find these materials so difficult to read. The answer I seem to get is that I am not really very interested in endless recitations of how people behave under various circumstances. This is a terrible thing for me to admit, seeing how adamant I am about experiments and demonstrations, but it probably accounts for some of our differences. A person like Bowlby is interested in control theory mainly as a launching-point for a broad survey of human behavior in all its richness and complexity, as it relates to the subjects of interest such as attachment and loss. A person like me, on the other hand, considers one example of behavior as good as another as a way of ferreting out theoretical principles, with no particular example being of much interest in itself. When you've seen one example of attachment, you've seem 'em all. This, of course, is very unsatisfactory to a person whose principal interest is in the phenomenon rather than the theory it illuminates. But to a person whose primary interest is in understanding the underlying organization of a system, the only reason for discussing surface phenomena would be if they suggest something new about the theory under construction. At one level, I appreciate Bowlby's discussions of attachment, loss, grief, mourning, and so forth simply as commentaries on life and as insights into my own life. But at another level, I find them excruciatingly repetitious and boring. To a theoretician like me, most of the text is like an endless desert, with occasional oases which, on closer inspection, turn out to be familiar territory and thus unrewarding to visit again. I keep wanting to say to the author, "Wait, stop here, you're skimming over something that could be important, you're rushing on without pausing to reflect on how this thing works." But of course authors can't hear such pleas from the reader; they press on toward whatever point they are trying to make, leaving only their camel-tracks on the spot where I would like to dig. As a theoretician, I judge Bowlby not on the quantity of his data but on the quality of his theory. Once you have the right theory, all the data become uninterestingly predictable. Bowlby certainly went farther than anyone else I have read toward a theory like PCT. He recognized the process of control as central to all behavior; he saw how control systems can come into conflict; he saw something of the hierarchical structure of behavioral control systems. But basically he didn't grasp how control really works, particularly the way it is organized around perception rather than action. He took his model from the TOTE unit. Here is how he summarizes on p. 18 of \_Attachment\_: In place of psychical energy and its discharge, the central concepts are those of behvioural systems and their control, of information, negative feedback, and a behavioral form of homeostasis. The more complex forms of instinctive behavior are regarded as resulting from the execution of plans that, depending on the species, are more or less flexible. Execution of a plan, it is supposed, is initiated on receipt of certain information (derived by the sense organs either from external sources or from internal sources, or from a combination of the two), and guided, and ultimately terminated, by the continuous reception of further sets of information that have their origin in \_the results of the action taken\_ (and derived, in the same way, by the sense organs from external, internal, or combined sources). His basic concept of control (the exact reference to which I can't find at the moment) is that one set of sensory inputs starts the behavior, and another set of sensory inputs, influenced in part by behavior, terminates the behavior. The concept of the \_closed causal loop\_ eluded him, as did the concept of controlling not behavior but perception. He, like many others, was seduced by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram into seeing control as a sequential process triggered on by one event and triggered off by some consequence of the behavior. We, of course, can see how close this idea comes to the essential organization of PCT, but we can also see how fatally far from PCT it remains. In \_A Secure Base\_ (I just found the reference) Bowlby says With supplies of physical energy available to them, these systems become active on receipt of certain sorts of signals and inactive on receipt of signals of other sorts. (p. 33) So it's clear that he missed the basic point, the way a control system reacts to deviations of its inputs from reference states by doing those things required to restore them to the reference states. This gets confused because (as in the passages you have just cited) he gets onto control processes which are specifically sequential, practically the only level of control that does more or less fit the TOTE model. So he confuses control of sequences of perceptions with the production of sequences of acts -- which, of course, do occur when perceptions are created in sequence. However, when disturbances occur, different actions are generally required to maintain the same sequence of perceptions, so if you fail to notice that it is perceptions that are under control, you may be misled by seeing a change in the sequence of actions. For example, if a bee fails to get the right perception in sequence, it may simply switch to another flower instead of continuing with the next behavior that would get it to the nectar on the same flower. But it's still trying to control the same sequence of \_perceptions\_. Often Bowlby seems to say things that come much closer to PCT, but that is an illusion, because while we can see their significance, he does not seem to do so -- he doesn't follow up the obvious deductions. He sees that the behavior of attachment has the effect of creating proximity to the object, but he doesn't see the obvious follow-up that there is a reference level for proximity, and the behavior we see is simply the result of the error. He didn't see proximity as simultaneously acting in the roles of cause and effect. When proximity already exists, he doesn't see the same mechanism working, simply because there is no error and thus no action required to correct it. Of course \_we\_ can see that, but Bowlby doesn't. He doesn't see the \_satisfied\_ control system as being the same as the \_unsatisfied\_ control system. His orientation is toward seeing behavioral \_events\_ following from environmental \_events\_. It is a deep-seated S-R orientation, very hard to get rid of. That's the appeal of the TOTE unit. When a child wants the mother to be near, the child is \_always\_ engaged in getting the mother to be near, \_even when the mother is in fact near\_. The presence of this control system isn't obvious when its error signal is very small, but all that is required is a disturbance to bring it to life again; in truth, it was always active. So when you know that this reference level exists, you also know how many different kinds of detailed situations will affect behavior -- all those situations that have the effect of creating a nearness error, by whatever means. The disturbances can take many forms, such as a stranger intervening or taking the child away, or the mother becoming occupied with some task having nothing to do with the child, or the child being distracted and losing track of the mother. These disturbances can look like very different environmental events, which makes the behavioral responses look different, too, but when you understand that nearness is under control at all times, you can see that all these different-looking responses are just the same control system doing the same thing by different means. This is what I mean by saying that when you've seen one example of attachment you've seem 'em all. The variety of environmental situations and the variety of behavioral "responses" to them is far greater than the variety of controlled variables and systems for controlling them. We're just seeing the same control process with different disturbances acting. Of course I'm saying that hypothetically, as if we have done the digging at the right spots and have actually found the variables that the child is controlling. But that is why I keep wanting the author to stop and dig, instead of going on to enumerate more disturbances and more behavioral responses to them. You don't need to enumerate every crosswind, every bump and tilt in the road, once you understand that the driver is keeping the car in its lane by turning the steering wheel \_as required\_. I think Bowlby came very close to inventing PCT. If he had been less of a clinician and more of a theoretician, he might have put it all together. Perhaps you're on the right track in using Bowlby as a bridge to conventional psychology and ethology; PCT is certainly much less of a break with his work than with most other work. > **···** > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Best, > > Bill P. ---

**Author:** ![Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bruce_Abbott)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 1995, 1:06am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bowlby/1935/3 "1995-10-26T01:06:39Z")

[From Bruce Abbott (951025.2005 EST)] > Bill Powers (951025.1435 MDT) > At one level, I appreciate Bowlby's discussions of attachment, loss, > grief, mourning, and so forth simply as commentaries on life and as > insights into my own life. But at another level, I find them > excruciatingly repetitious and boring. To a theoretician like me, most > of the text is like an endless desert, with occasional oases which, on > closer inspection, turn out to be familiar territory and thus > unrewarding to visit again. I keep wanting to say to the author, "Wait, > stop here, you're skimming over something that could be important, > you're rushing on without pausing to reflect on how this thing works." > But of course authors can't hear such pleas from the reader; they press > on toward whatever point they are trying to make, leaving only their > camel-tracks on the spot where I would like to dig. Although at one level I can appreciate your feeling, on another I can't help but think that you've skimmed over much of what Bowlby had to say in the middle chapters and that this is why you are offering vague generalities in the above paragraph--you could have said these things without reading anything at all. In particular you seemed to have missed some significant passages that might change your view of what Bowlby did and did not understand about control systems. You say: > His basic concept of control (the exact reference to which I can't find > at the moment) is that one set of sensory inputs starts the behavior, > and another set of sensory inputs, influenced in part by behavior, > terminates the behavior. The concept of the \_closed causal loop\_ eluded > him, as did the concept of controlling not behavior but perception. He, > like many others, was seduced by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram into > seeing control as a sequential process triggered on by one event and > triggered off by some consequence of the behavior. We, of course, can > see how close this idea comes to the essential organization of PCT, but > we can also see how fatally far from PCT it remains. Bowlby had indeed read Miller et al. and understood the theoretical importance of the hierarchically-organized plan. But he did not necessarily see the individual component systems of a plan as TOTEs. For example, Bowlby has this to say: Past discussions of instinctive behaviour have tended to concentrate on sequences that have a dramatic and time-limited outcome, and to neglect behaviour the outcome of which is an ongoing relationship, such as maintenance of a specified distance over a comparatively long period. There can be no doubt, however, that the latter sort of behaviour is of great frequency and vital importance in the life of most animals. Examples are brooding behaviour, in which proximity to eggs and nest is maintained over weeks, territorial behavior, in which location within a certain bit of the environment is maintained over months and sometimes over years, and alarm behaviour, in which a certain distance between an animal and a predator threatening it is maintained over minutes or hours. A main reason for past neglect of this sort of behaviour is that it cannot readily be understood in terms of such concepts as 'drive' or 'energy discharge.' When the present set of concepts is applied, on the other hand, possible solutions are not too difficult to see. Bowlby (1969, p. 72) On the next page, writing on the orientatin of behavior, he adds this: In the case of the peregrine's stoop and all other goal-corrected behavior in which the set-goal includes a specified part of the environment to or away from which the animal moves, orientation results from a continuous comparison of performance with set-goal. In those cases the system responsible is working on a 'homing' principle, as in the case of the homing missle. In other closely related cases the animal itself does not move, but either its whole body or some part of it, for example eyes, is turned towards an object in the environment. In the cases the system responsible may be working on a 'tracking' principle, as in the case of a radar receiver set to lock onto and track an aircraft. An example of tracking followed by an aimed movement is the way in which a toad catches a fly by shooting out its tongue towards the fly. Here orientation is achieved by the toad's turning its head towards the fly in a tracking movement. The tongue itself, on the other hand, does no more than extrude straight from the frog's mouth and is oriented in no other way. Systems responsible for this form of orientation are working on the same principle as a man-aimed gun. In each case the aim is a result of movement controlled by a goal-corrected tracking system, and the subsequent movements of tongue and bullet result from the action of a simple fixed-action type of system. None of these cases resembles the test-operate-test-exit program outlined by Miller et al.; all are examples of continuous error-corrected systems. Bowlby does offer a section at the start of Chapter 6 headed "Activation and termination of behavioural systems," which is followed by the subheading "Starting and Stopping: Classes of Causal Factor." Here he considers how behavioral systems are brought into play--in effect why, with the limited number effectors available, one system's set-goals are pursued at a given moment as opposed to another's, when both cannot be pursued at once. My own example would be the rat which is first observed to eat and then to drink, then to eat again, then to run in the running wheel. The rat cannot perform all these activities simultaneously; what determines which system will be "active" in the sense of having setting the reference levels for the lower-level systems? The fact that Bowlby concerns himself here with starting and stopping is not an indication that he views these systems as TOTEs. > In \_A Secure Base\_ (I just found the reference) Bowlby says > With supplies of physical energy available to them, these systems > become active on receipt of certain sorts of signals and inactive > on receipt of signals of other sorts. (p. 33) > So it's clear that he missed the basic point, the way a control system > reacts to deviations of its inputs from reference states by doing those > things required to restore them to the reference states. This gets > confused because (as in the passages you have just cited) he gets onto > control processes which are specifically sequential, practically the > only level of control that does more or less fit the TOTE model. So he > confuses control of sequences of perceptions with the production of > sequences of acts -- which, of course, do occur when perceptions are > created in sequence. However, when disturbances occur, different actions > are generally required to maintain the same sequence of perceptions, so > if you fail to notice that it is perceptions that are under control, you > may be misled by seeing a change in the sequence of actions. For > example, if a bee fails to get the right perception in sequence, it may > simply switch to another flower instead of continuing with the next > behavior that would get it to the nectar on the same flower. But it's > still trying to control the same sequence of \_perceptions\_. As I think I've demonstrated, Bowlby was more sophisticated in his understanding of control systems than this passage suggests. When he deals with sequential control processes, it is because he is attempting to account for sequential patterns of behavior, as in behavioral chains. I am not claiming that Bowlby had an engineer's understanding of control system dynamics, but I do believe, based on my reading of him, that he understood how such systems might be organized to produce the phenomena of attachment with which he was concerned. In developing his view, he considers a number of problems and observations that do not seem to me to be even raised, much less answered, by PCT. Regards, Bruce ---

**Author:** ![Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Bruce\_Abbott](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Bruce_Abbott)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 1995, 5:31pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/bowlby/1935/4 "1995-10-27T17:31:54Z")

[From Bruce Abbott (951027.1230 EST)] > Bill Powers (951026.0530 MDT) Before we discuss your interpretation of Bowlby's views on the relationship of biological function to controlled perceptions and their references, we should first introduce what Bowlby himself had to say. In \_Volume 1: Attachment\_, there is an entire chapter entitled "Function of Instinctive Behavior, from which the following is extracted: It has been emphasised in this chapter that the existence in an animal of a particular species of any one environmentally stable behavioural system comes about because the activity of that system commonly has a consequence that is of survival value to the species. Systems responsible for eating behaviour commonly have food-intake as a consequence. Systems responsible for mating behaviour commonly have reproduction as a consequence. Since the activities of these systems so commonly and so plainly fulfil a biological need, why then not term them 'need systems'? There are at least three good reasons for not doing so. First, in each instance the activity of the behavioural system in question may have consequences of quite other kinds. In a particular individual a system that is obviously connected with food-intake may have as its main consequence the sucking of a thumb or a pipe. In another individual a system obviously connected with mating may have as its main consequence sexual activities directed towards a fetish or an individual of the same sex. In such instances the activity of the system has no survival value whatever. To call such a system a need system is therefore confusing; and the confusion is only made worse if, to meet the difficulty, new needs, e.g., to suck, are postulated. Secondly, as already remarked, there are a number of species-characteristic behavioural systems the biological functions of which are still unclear. This fact is obscured when every behavioural system is termed a need system, because the term 'need' tends to imply that the usefulness of the system is self-evident. Finally, the term 'need system' can readily lead to an assumption that the need plays some sort of causal role in activating the system, the fallacy of teleology. A legitimate usage of the term 'need' is to restrict it to refer to the requirements of species survival. If the species is to survive, an animal can be said to need food, warmth, a nesting-site, a mate, and so on. Obviously none of these needs is a behavioural system, nor does any of them cause the activation of a behavioural system. On the other hand, many behavioural systems have the function of meeting one or another of these needs; and it is because, if that species is to survive, those functions have to be fulfilled that those particular behavioural systems have been evolved. Needs, therefore, are not the causes of instinctive behaviour. What they do is determine the functions that behavioural systems have to serve. Thus they constitute the selection pressures under which behavioural systems evolve. Bowlby (1969), Pp. 137-138. A couple of paragraphs later, Bowlby has this to say about the uses of the terms "purpose" and "aim": A difficulty about both 'purpose' and 'aim' is that each tends to carry overtones of teleological causation. A more serious difficulty about them, moreover, is that each is habitually used in ways that fail to distinguish between a system's predictable outcome and its function--a fatal confusion. For this reason neither is used in this work. Bowlby (1969), Pp. 138-139. For comparison, here are your remarks about Bowlby's views on this matter: > One important thesis is in the earlier books and the later one as well: > > The distinction I have drawn between the function served by a > certain form of behavior and our knowledge of, and our striving to > reach, the conditions that will terminate that behavior is one of > the criteria that distinguish the biological realm from the > psychological (A Secure Base, p. 64). > > Note that "the conditions that will terminate the behavior" is the same > as the PCT definition of a reference level, although there is no sign > that Bowlby took this idea any further. > > Here he distingushes between what I would call learned control systems > and intrinsic ones. However, he doesn't exactly make the distinction > that way. He is saying that when the behavioral systems seek a goal, the > effects of achieving it ("terminating the behavior") are to be judged in > terms of the biological function served by attaining that goal, not by > the goal itself. This is similar to my concept of a reorganizing system, > in that the reason for acquiring any behavioral control system is > ultimately to maintain certain internal critical variables near their > inherited reference levels. But it differs from my concept in a > fundamental way. > Bowlby does not cast the deeper reason in terms of more control systems; > he is saying that the reason for existence of a behavioral goal is its > biological function AS THE BIOLOGIST SEES IT. For example, we have the > goal of eating food containing vitamin D because without vitamin D we > will develop a vitamin deficiency disease and become less able to > reproduce ourselves. This puts the "because" into the realm of objective > facts about the organism, as observed from the viewpoint of an > independent observer, and throws the burden onto evolution, the catch- > all explanation > In PCT we don't use such "becauses;" what the external observer knows > about the organism has no influence on how it works. It may be true that > if the organism doesn't eat, it will die, but the organism doesn't know > that, and this fact about not eating is not what makes the organism eat. > What makes the organism eat is a reference signal for a state of > nutrition, being compared against a perception of the actual state of > nutrition, or something like that -- not an abstract fact. Organisms > lacking this intrinsic control system will not eat, and sure enough, > they will die. But if they eat, and live, it is not because they will > die if they don't eat, but because they contain this control system. > > The way biologists speak of functions bypasses the means by which these > functions are accomplished. This creates a very peculiar mode of > explanation, in which the consequences of a certain kind of behavior are > offered as a direct explanation for why that behavior occurs. The > biologist says that the goose pulls the egg back into its nest because > this improves the chances of survival of the species. That's the > functional explanation of this behavior. However, although it is true > that if geese do not pull stray eggs back into the nest the survival of > the species will be adversely affected to some degree, it is not true > that they retrieve the eggs \_because\_ doing so will promote survival. > They retrieve the eggs because of the operation of a specific control > process inside of them. As a consequence of the existence of this > control system, the species which commonly contains it will have a > better chance of survival; the effect on survival is a consequence of > the operation of this control system, not a cause. > > When future consequences of behavior are cited as causes of the behavior > that leads to them, one is really talking about a control process. But > one has to be careful that in doing so, one is not assigning the > consequence the role of a reference signal. The consequence follows from > behavior, but the reference signal does not. The reference signal is a > prerequisite for reaching the goal-state. > > Furthermore, as we have been saying recently on the net, not every > consequence of behavior that we can notice is necessarily a controlled > variable. Geese that control the positions of their eggs certainly > control the positions of their eggs, and that is a controlled > consequence of their behavior. But the same behavior has an uncontrolled > side-effect, which is to improve the chances that there will be a > hatchling from the egg, and as another consequence that the population > of geese will be higher than it would be if the position of the egg was > not controlled. Those side-effects are not under control by the goose at > any level of its organization. They are not \_reasons for\_ its control > behavior, but \_consequences of\_ its control behavior. > > So biological functional explanations are really not explanations at > all; they are simply observations of consequences. The wolf marks its > territory, and other wolves stay away (sometimes). The stickleback darts > at an object with a red mark on it, and the object moves away. The chick > begins to follow a large warm object, and follows that object to food or > water or safety. But as far as research can prove to date, the wolf does > not mark its territory IN ORDER TO drive other wolves away; the > stickleback does not dart at the red mark IN ORDER TO drive a rival > away; the chick does not follow the mother IN ORDER TO get food, water, > and safety. What follows "IN ORDER TO" is simply a consequence of the > observed behavior -- until we can establish that these consequences are > \_intended by the organism\_. With the Test, we can do that, or else prove > that the consequence is merely a side-effect of controlling something > else. > > The mistake that the functional explanation makes is to assume that ALL > important consequences of behavior are intended; that they all work like > reference signals. This is clearly not true, and can't be assumed \_a > priori\_. It is certainly true that maintaining a body temperature of 37 > C makes our biochemical processes run at a favorable rate, but it is not > true that we maintain this temperature \_because\_ it does this. As far as > I know, we have no sensors that can detect the rate of a biochemical > reaction, and no reference levels for such rates, either. > > So I disagree, on PCT grounds, with Bowlby's distinction. I say it's > control all the way down, and that functional analysis is irrelevant in > explanations of behavior. Bill, it seems to me that you have just repeated Bowlby's argument. I haven't read \_A Secure Base\_, perhaps by then he had changed his mind (or perhaps you have misunderstood his meaning), but he clearly was on the right track in \_Attachment\_. It's really a pity that you and he never got together. Regards, Bruce