This is a belated reply to messages sent me by Bill Powers and Rick Marken.
Ye gods! you people write a lot! I thought literary types were talky, but
they haven't seen nuthin' yet. When do you work?
Anyway, Bill sets forth his conception of Freud with which, inevitably, I
disagree. Why don't we just say that there are lots of conceptions of
Freud, he is a multifaceted figure about whom people have many different
views, and he is badly taught in psychology departments, leading to even
more misconceptions. Something useful to keep in mind: according to a
psychoanalyst friend, only about 20% of contemporary psychoanalysis is
"Freud," so it's good to distinguish "psychoanalysis" from "Freud."
Bill gives his conception of psychotherapy, and that tells me more about
Bill than psychotherapy. Surely a big part of your identity theme, Bill,
is "control." (Identity theme is post-Freud, but central in my own think-
ing.) But we needed no psychoanalyst to tell us that, did we?
Rick Marken updates my knowledge of what psychology does with feedback and
control. What you say, Rick, makes sense. Reminds me of a psych. textbook
I once checked on, because it made a big point of bringing feedback into
its account of psychology. But the feedback was just an output feeding back
to an input--no reference signal. Your account of cognitivism looks like
that, and I expect you're right about it's not paying heed to control theory.
Incidentally, is "HPCT" Hierarchical Perceptual Control Theory?
With respect to the feedforward and feedback discussion, is it possible to
reformulate Hans' "ballistic" and "feedforward" as feedbacks in which the
reference signal is a prediction? That would make walking across the
darkened bedroom floor a higher, slower function than walking across the
lit floor, which fits my experience. I have to think in the dark; I don't
pay it any mind in the light. Best,
ยทยทยท
+===================================================================+
Norm Holland Department of English |
University of Florida Gainesville FL 32611 Tel: (904) 377-0096 |
BITNET: nnh@nervm INTERNET: nnh@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu |
+===================================================================+