[Martin Taylor 970708 15:00]
A practical situation has arisen around my cottage up North, that seems
to have interesting theoretical implications. In a sentence: If a
person (P) is controlling to perceive himself in conflict with another
person (Q), what can Q do to alter the situation, assuming Q has a
reference not to perceive herself in conflict with anyone?
The obvious answer is "go up a level" and try to find out what P is
controlling for that generates the reference to perceive conflict.
Having gone up a level, Q might generate a disturbance to that
higher level perception, of a kind that cannot be compensated by
P's unwanted actions. But ordinarily, going up a level is easiest
with the cooperation of the other person, and in this situation,
by definition, the other person is non-cooperative.
The way I see the real situation, P has a general problem with controlling
his perceptions relating to social situations. (P is an adult, who
seems to be acting as one might expect an early adolescent to behave).
One way of effecting control is to exert what we technically call
"overwhelming force" against another person, and that cannot be done
unless there is a conflict. In the absence of conflict, P may be able
to control some perceptions, but not those that relate to ensuring that
he can get his way when dealing with other people. So P needs
to perceive the existence of conflict and the successful exertion
of power that overcomes the conflictual resistance.
If Q refuses to play, P's reference to perceive conflict at the lower level
is not satisfied, which puts P and Q into conflict in respect of P's
need to perceive conflict--a paradox. P is likely to escalate the
"annoying" behaviour until Q does fight back, allowing P to perceive
conflict, and then by overwhelming Q, to perceive control by the application
of force. But if Q does play, by objecting to P's actions, P can then
overwhelm Q directly. Either way is uncomfortable for Q, who is
unable to control some perception she had been controlling effectively.
I suppose Q could pretend to be controlling some perception that she
actually doesn't care about, and allow P the victory in that perception.
P seems to search for perceptions Q is controlling (where Q is, for this
sentence no specific person, but individual others in general). In other
words, P is a general nuisance. In the specific case I am thinking of,
only occasionally does this nuisance cross the line into illegal
behaviour (a minor stabbing, for instance). So it is impossible to
bring to bear any sanctioned social "overwhelming force" (i.e. police
action) against him. Since he ordinarily expects to perceive (and
does perceive) the disapproval of other people, the normal social
disturbance to a self-image perception cannot work. When P decides
on a particular person Q as a place to find the necessary conflict,
he is likely to search for disturbances that seem to matter to Q,
so that he can apply the overwhelming force.
This analysis could be quite wrong, and one would need to perform The
Test to check it out.
But to attempt The Test in this situation could be quite dangerous
to the Tester, and rather hard to do even if it were not dangerous--
because if the controlled perception is related to generically poor
control in the Tested situation, a disturbance is going to be resisted
in an ineffective way, leading to a result: "probably this is not the
controlled perception" when it actually is, but with marginal control
and much side-effect.
The situation is real, and potentially dangerous to an old lady. I'm not
at all sure how to go about dealing with it in the real situation. Nor am
I sure of my analysis of the theoretical situation within HPCT.
Perhaps Dick Robertson might have some view on the issue of self-image
control where the reference self-image might well be "bad-ass".
Martin