[From Bill Powers (981123 MST)]
Bruce Gregory (981122.1640 EDT)--
What would you say are the greatest differences between MOL and Freud's
method free association? From what I have been reading, I am unable to
identify the distinctive elements of MOL. (I am also unable to discern the
relationship between MOL and PCT, but this is a separate question.)
I don't know what the "greatest differences" are, or even if there are any
differences. I suppose that to answer your question, one would have to
consult experts who have used both methods. I know only about the method of
levels, in the roles of guide and explorer.
The MOL began in the 1950s as mere curiosity about a phenomenon: the
observation that one can, at the same time, attend to and discuss a
foreground topic and also have background thoughts, feelings, or attitudes
_about_ what one is saying or thinking. Kirk Sattley and I were discussing
this, and one of us wondered how many times in a row one could detect a
background thought, move it to the foreground for discussion, detect
another background thought, move it to the foreground, and so on. Would
this process peter out after a step or two? Would it go in circles? Would
it just wander on and on forever like free association?
We found that it doesn't just "peter out," nor does it go in circles or
wander on forever. It's a finite process that leads one into an interesting
(in restrospect) quiet state of mind which has a resemblance to what others
have described with words like meditation, insight, nirvana, and other such
terms. It's possible to do alone, but much more effective when there is
another person to remind one repeatedly to look for or recognize the
background thought.
Perhaps what is unique about the MOL is the emphasis on levels: the idea
that one thought does not just remind one of something else, but that the
foreground thought is subordinate to the background thought in some way.
The background thought is _about_ the discussion itself, the discussion of
the foreground topic. Thus if I'm describing a conversation with someone, I
might introject something like "I'm not telling this very well -- you had
to be there." So that's a background comment about the very action of
describing the conversation. In this case, it's as if there is some
superordinate watcher who is perceiving and trying to control what is going
on in terms of how well one is conveying an experience in words. In
psychiatry, I think it's called "dissociation." In PCT we just call it a
higher-level system.
An experienced person acting as guide would recognize such a statement as
originating at a level above the level of the foreground narration, and
would call attention to it by asking about it: "Are you making a judgment
about how well you're telling this story?" or something like that. The
person doing the exploration, after a little experience with this method,
would recognize the question as a request to turn attention onto the act of
judging how well the communication is going, and to say more about that
(new) subject. That discussion would go on until some new background
thought manifested itself: "I always seem to be wondering if I'm doing
things right," for example. That would be a signal to the guide to direct
attention to that topic.
And so on, as many times as possible. In the pure MOL, the guide's only
objective is to keep this process going as long as possible. The session
ends when there is resistance, or when the explorer indicates that it's
finished. The guide does not try to steer attention toward "significant"
topics, or to have insights for the explorer, or to give advice.
Rules of thumb like these have come mainly from experience. When the guide
starts getting too interested or involved in the subject matter, he or she
fails to recognize "up-a-level" comments, and the process bogs down. When
the guide gives advice the process stops dead. When the guide starts
arguing with the explorer, or suggesting topics that seem important, or in
any way tries to help the explorer attain insight, the process stops
working. It's almost as though the guide can't even care whether this
process helps or not (at least during a session).
The relation of this method to HPCT (as Rick points out today) is through
the concept of levels of organization, with higher levels being concerned
with variables that are functions of (and thus "about") sets of lower-level
variables. I strongly advise people learning to use this method to ignore
the 11 levels I have tentatively defined, and think strictly in terms of
_relative_ levels. When we have transcripts of 10,000 hours of people going
through the MOL, we can start trying to see if there are any discernible
levels that people have in common. It could be that the levels we address
in the MOL are subsets of just a few of the higher levels in the HPCT
model. It could be that they are different in each individual.
The other main theoretical topic here is the role of awareness in the
operation of the brain. It's well-known that awareness can become
associated with the operation of different parts of the brain, creating the
phenomena we know as consciousness or attention. In the MOL, awareness is
associated first with one level, then with a higher level, and so on -- or
that's one interpretation. The apparent rule is that awareness can take on
the point of view of any of several existing levels (maybe any at all), but
while it is associated with one level, the person is conscious only of
lower levels of perception: not the level the person is aware from, or any
higher level. The procedure of transferring attention to the background
thought can thus be interpreted as moving the locus of awareness up a level
in the perceptual control hierarchy. My conjecture is that this also moves
the locus of reorganization up a level, which is how this random process
gets directed at least to the levels where it can resolve problems, and
perhaps to the specific systems that are having control difficulties.
Perhaps Freud had some similar mental model of what went on during free
association. I know that in his book on the interpretation of dreams, he
describes a hierarchical model of perception, in which each level is
thought of as a camera focused on the viewscreen of a camera below it, in
turn providing an image for a higher-level camera to see. While he went in
more for hydraulic engineering than cybernetics (understandably), we can
assume he was trying to model the same organization we are trying to model,
and that he noticed many of the same phenomena.
Best,
Bill P.