[Norm Holland, 931103.2150]
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Permit me, as a new subscriber, to introduce myself. My name is
Norman Holland, and I am a professor of English at the University
of Florida (temporarily in New York City until the end of Novem-
ber). My specialty is, as it is called in my field, "literature-
and-psychology" or "psychological approaches to literature."
That is, I use psychology to study various literary questions,
notably why people write the kinds of things they do and why
people have the experiences they have when they read a story,
hear a poem, see a play, watch a movie, etc. In the latter mode,
my kind of work is called "reader-response criticism."
Gary Cziko alerted me to your LIST, when he found me citing Wil-
liam Powers in _The Brain of Robert Frost_ (1988). I can't
remember now how I got onto Powers' 1973 book, but it rang bells
for me when I did. (Probably that's because I'm one of the few
people in literary criticism whose first degree was in electrical
engineering. My colleagues wince when I talk about feedback.)
You'd find a much longer exposition of Powers in _The I_ (Yale,
1985). This is a much more ambitious book, attempting a model of
the human being that humanists and social scientists might use to
think about various problems. In it, I summarize Powers' 1973
book and refer to articles in _Science_ (1973) and _Psych. Rev._
(1978). At some point I also read a series he did for _Byte_.
The psychology I started with was psychoanalysis, and I still use
it for describing individual personalities. I posit an identity
(or, if you prefer, character or personality) at the top of
Powers' hierarchy of feedbacks. It seems to me that one can hook
psychoanalysis into cognitive psychology by means of Powers'
hierarchy. To me, the two make perfect sense and work powerfully
together as an explanatory combination, despite the differences
in methods.
Let me say that in a little more detail. In psychoanalytic
terms, one can formulate someone's identity as a theme and varia-
tions, much like a piece of music. That model of identity
enables me to talk about a style that permeates the hierarchies
Powers describes. I can explain why we all walk, talk, make
love, read stories, or behave toward one another somewhat dif-
ferently and somewhat the same. The sameness comes from the
feedback loops common to all of us. The difference comes from
that identity. Then, if you will allow me psychoanalytic
explanations, I can talk about where the differences come from in
childhood, conflict, and so on.
I was going to alert the group to two rather famous Chilean
biologists who should be (I think) in your bibliography: Humberto
Maturana and Francisco Varela. But I gather from Gary that some
of you already know about them. Their books--I'd recommend
_Autopoiesis_--seem to me to complement Powers'. That is, where
Powers' 1973 book develops a detailed hierarchical view of the
human psyche, M&V expand that view up and down the evolutionary
tree, from one-celled animals to human groups. They too develop
(in somewhat different language) a feedback model--it seems to me
the same as Powers'.
I am very impressed by the degree of activity I see on your
LIST--certainly much more than on the LIST I "own," PSYART, where
we have many more lurkers than talkers. I certainly plan to tune
in, although I'm not sure how much time I will have to con-
tribute. I had thought Powers' 1973 picture fairly complete, but
you obviously are adding all kinds of experiments, confirmations,
and refinements. Bravo.
That brings me to some questions. I am puzzled why you say (in
the introductory material Gary sent me) that PCT reearch "meets
resistance from all sides." Or "The phenomenon of control is
largely unrecognized in science today." My impression is that
the "constructivist" movement in psychology is now the dominant
paradigm. It has, startng in the 1970s, gradually replaced
behaviorism, and I would say it is exactly in accord with
Powers' view.
Is there a relation between this group and the cybernetics people
whom I associate with Sir Stafford Beers? I ask because I met
Beers at a party a couple of years ago, and he mentioned that he
had some psychoanalytic connections.
The fascinating discussion of feedforward and feedback reminded
me of a position taken by Ulric Neisser. Neisser moved from a
constructivist position in 1968 to J. J. Gibson's "information
processing" approach which seems to me suspiciously like
stimulus-reponse. Now Neisser suggests that we have two systems.
We use constructivist processing for most things, particularly
complicated things. We use "information processing" only for
spatial maneuvers (catching that baseball that Gibson made so
much of). This sounds to me faintly like what Hans Blom is
saying about feedback (constructivist) contrasted to feedforward
(inf. processing). Comment?
If any of you choose to reply to me off-LIST, please use the
Florida (UFL) e-mail address, not the CUNY. I look forward to
reading/hearing more of your fascinating discussions.
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Norm Holland Department of English |
University of Florida Gainesville FL 32611 Tel: (904) 377-0096 |
BITNET: nnh@nervm INTERNET: nnh@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu |
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