[From: Bruce Nevin (Thu 93122 10:49:28 EST)]
( Bill Powers (931201.1830 MST) ) --
There are individual control systems. And there are patterns observable
in their interactions. A claim of PCT is that such patterns are entirely
byproducts of individual control systems controlling their perceptions
autonomously, and the modelling of rings and arcs in crowd behavior
supports this claim. It seems evident that no one learns to form a ring
or arc around a shared point of interest, and that cultural differences
in the characteristics of rings and arcs are not due to learning to form
a ring with such and such spacing between individuals, but rather to all
the participating individuals each autonomously controlling a perception
of optimal interpersonal distance and a perception of optimal access to
the shared point of interest.
The double bind hypothesis is a generalization not about people but about
observed, repeated patterns of communication in families with a member
diagnosed as being scizophrenic. I was attempting to show how so complex
a pattern might also plausibly arise as a byproduct of participating
individuals each autonomously controlling their perceptions. Their
controlled perceptions of the participants, including themselves, include
more than just their interpersonal distance.
Gregory Bateson, the originator of the double bind hypothesis, argued
that the double bind does not at all always result in dysfunction, and
that it is much more widespread than families of schizophrenics. He said
that the double bind forces one to reach into the random for some
unforeseeable alternative, and that this is the basis for learning, for
evolution, for creativity. Plainly, he was talking about conflict and
reorganization, but conflict of a particular kind, involving confusion of
logical types (such as map and territory) and resulting paradox. The
difference with schizophrenia appears to be that creative results of
reorganization are interpreted as falling within the paradox.
Reorganization then cannot ever reduce the conflict within the individual
who has reorganized. What needs to change is the pattern of
communication in which the outcome of the sick person's reorganization is
further evidence of her sickness. In family systems work, the patient is
understood as being the symptom-bearer for the family. They don't know
how to be a family in any other way. But they can be taught.
In broadest terms, what is involved appears to be voluntary
interdependence of autonomous control systems. The outcomes are
reference values for control of perceptions in participating individuals,
which may be ad hoc and temporary, as in cooperatively moving a table, or
they may be lasting, as in norms for interpersonal distance, as in
expectations of family members, as in language.
What appears to be generalizations about people in my account of Annie
and her family, in my account of an alcoholic family, etc., are attempts
to show that a PCT account of how such patterns might arise from
voluntary interdependence of autonomous control systems is plausible.
The claim is not that individuals fall into categories from which their
behavior can be predicted, but that individuals participate in patterns
of relating and interacting. Such patterns take shape as outcomes of
autonomous individuals controlling their perceptions. But the prior
existence of a pattern in the interactions of members of a family or
other social system establishes CEVs in the environment shared by
participants and a child or other newcomer, and this influences what
perceptions the child learns to control and with what reference values.
Particularly important are the interpretations and attributions that
other participants make, and their responses to the child's
interpretations and attributions.
My friend on tour went first to Israel, where (she said) people
aggressively crowd the door of the bus to get on; thence she flew to
London, where her push for the door was met with cold stares and curt
instruction to wait at the back of the queue. Recalibration of norms is
seldom due to such explicit indications from others. But a newcomer to a
culture with different norms of interpersonal space does not continue to
chase his host around the room (or back away), each seeking the distance
that feels right for comfortable conversation, but over time recalibrates
what is normal. If people forming a ring around a speaker edge away from
the foreigner "crowding" between two of them, with the result that she is
isolated in front of them and closer to the speaker, she notices.
Perhaps there is conflict then between her control of a perception of
acceptable distance and her control of a perception of not standing out
as a foreigner, or of a perception of being especially singled out by the
speaker (who is controlling a perception of audience interest). The
interpretations and attributions that matter by others are those that are
attributed to those others in imagination by the individual; only
exceptionally are they in explicit verbal form, which makes them more
reliably interpretations and attributions that those others actually
made, although as we know language is far from foolproof.
It appears to be a generalization about people to say "in Israel, the
norm for getting on a bus is to crowd the door, but in London people form
a strict queue to board the bus." It is a statement about expectations
or norms learned by people who live in those places (or who lived in
those places in about 1967). Similarly, statements about observed
patterns of communication are not generalizations about the people
participating in those patterns. An individual may choose to participate
or not, the pattern does not predict his behavior. Unless he does chose
to participate. Then it does, or else he isn't. And if he doesn't, then
it may be more difficult for him to control a perception of others
cooperating with him. The lifestyle of the man in the high castle can
work if at all only for a small number of people, and that only by
arranging to conceal their interdependencies with others.
I will stop here. This sort of thing appears to be beyond our present
capacity to model human behavior. That means that language is also --
for language is patterned social interaction, not something private to an
autonomous control system for providing category labels. And I am
certainly not foreseeably going to be writing PCT programs, despite my
good intentions and sporadic efforts. More crucially, my involvement in
this net, much as I love it and the participants, is I fear on a
collision course with my continuing to be employed. Two perceptions
controlled with high gain, and for now one has to give. I hope to check
in again sometime in the future.
Be well,
Bruce