[From Bill Powers (2009.08.15.1438 MDT)]
David Goldstein (2009.08.15.14:20 EDT) –
DG: I do believe that we can
learn from each other by talking just like we are doing
now.
BP: So we can. But we can’t reorganize from it. Reorganization is not
passed from one person to another. You can’t digest my food for me and
you can’t reorganize for me. You can’t tell me how to digest my food and
you can’t tell me how to reorganize.
BP earlier: The abuse is not
causing the reoganization, but the internal errors thatresult from the
abuse are causing it.
DG: This seems to be playing with words. Without the abuse, there would
be no internal errors.
BP: There might be fewer internal errors. But there is no connection
between the kind of thing that causes the errors and the changes that are
produced by reorganization. It could be that the abuse results in
reorganization. But the process of reorganizing is random; it is not
related to the kind of abuse or even the effects of the abuse. It is
RANDOM. If the random reorganization results in lowering the error
produced by the abuse (or by anything else), the reorganization slows
down or stops. That leaves you with a new organization of behavior which
happens to have the side-effect of reducing the errors caused by the
abuse. If the abuse goes away, you are still left with that new
organization; it has become part of you.
DG: Your example involving a
backhand in tennis was really good for me. Itis involving
perceptual/motor learning. Don’t you think that this happens with
talking, just like we are doing now, or just like might take place
intherapy?
BP: Are you sure you understood all of that example? I said that I could
change your behavior by serving to your backhand instead of your
forehand. But that did not reorganize you; it simply disturbed another
control system that you already had. You didn’t need to change anything
about the way you were hooked up inside to switch from one behavior to
the other. Similarly, in talking back and forth here or in therapy, you
don’t need to learn anything new to carry on the conversation. Where
reorganization was involved in that example was when I supposed you would
get fed up with being beaten on the backhand side and out of despair,
start reorganizing. Then you would start acting differently under the
same circumstances.
When reorganization does happen, it happens from inside the person who is
reorganizing. Something perceived one way is suddenly perceived
differently. Some action formerly used to counteract disturbances drops
out and a new action replaces it. The situation hasn’t changed; you have
changed.
BP: An abused child has not been
“damaged” except in the physical sense.But the reorganizations
that the child’s system has generated have greatly changed the
child.
DG: You should spend some time
at the residential center where I work. You would see the negative impact
of the abuse and neglect they have experienced. The way you put it could
be misinterpreted to mean that you are blaming the
child.
BP: But that would be a misinterpretation, wouldn’t it? If I were
at your residential center I would see the same unhappiness and social
friction that you see, but I would see it as the organization of defenses
that the child had learned to use because in some way they limited the
damage. Wasn’t that Freud’s view, too?
I don’t “blame the child” for the damage, but I do bring the
encouraging news that the changes in the child were not caused by the
abuse or the damage, so they are not permanent and the mechanism for
undoing the problems is available to the child and can still be used.
What the child accomplished by reorganizing is no longer needed and can
be undone by reorganizing. When you say that the current state of the
child was caused by previous abuse, you are hinting that it’s the same as
seeing a child paralyzed for life by a crash with a drunken driver. There
is no undoing that kind of damage; all you can do is try to make life a
little better. I think you can do better than that for a child who is
only rebellious or hostile.
It seems to me that the ones who “blame the child” are the ones
who take what the child does personally, and punish the child for doing
what he or she learned to do as a way of fending off the abuse suffered
somewhere else. The blamers are the ones who are offended by a child’s
bad language, or refusal to do what is ordered, or by a child showing
disrespect for the staff or breaking the rules of the institution. In my
view, that sort of blaming is unprofessional conduct.
BP: Don’t forget that when you
speak of studies that discover facts about behavior, you mean
psychological facts, not real facts. Unlike most other facts,
psychological facts don’t have to be true all of the
time.
DG: I forgot one of WTP
Commandments, sorry.
BP: I see you have chosen to think of my views on facts as something
trivial that can be dismissed with a trivial comment. Of course they can
be dismissed that way; you just proved it. But how about giving a serious
comment on that subject? It seems to me that you’ve pretty much avoided
giving any measured thought to the low quality of psychological facts.
How do you explain the behavior of the large numbers of people who behave
contrary to those facts?
DG: It seems that the ideas of
Reorganization are not taking into account the result of cultural
transmission. I don’t need to Reorganize as if I were a caveman. I can
build on what other people have done which has beentransmitted to me in
school and my culture…
BP: Not without reorganizing, you can’t. You are not an empty receptacle
that is filled from the gushing cornucopia of culture. People who do
learn that way don’t learn much. They learn how to shake hands but they
don’t see the advantages of politeness. Nothing comes out of them that
wasn’t put in. If you don’t reorganize in school, how can you change your
beliefs or goals or understanding? How can you learn anything new? If
school only validates what you already believed, have you learned
anything of importance?
I guess I shouldn’t argue back about these issues, but if I take another
approach I could be accused of starting an MOL session without
permission. Actually, my arguing back makes it harder to take an MOL
attitude toward the discussion, on either side.
Best,
Bill P.