[From Bruce Abbott (951016.1750 EST)]
Below is the rest of the private exchange between Bill Powers and I, which
we are now making public.
···
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[From Bruce Abbott (951016.2115 EST)] Subject: Re: Bowlby
Hi Bill,
I've just read your private post on Bowlby, having spent the afternoon
driving to Defiance, OH and back (to photograph the tombstones of two of
Steph's great-great-great grandparents we located there, for our
geneological files). I'm glad you found much to appreciate in Bowlby's
approach, as did I, lo those many years ago. It is indeed a pity you and he
couldn't have crossed paths; perhaps both attachment research and PCT would
be at very different stages today than they currently are.
I'll comment more on the net. For now, my reading confirms the general
impression I've been trying to communicate, which is that the
observations and theorizing in this field are at a different level from
what I would like to see going on in PCT. Just consider one basic
concept, separation anxiety. How do we know what this term means?
"Separation" is easy, but how about "anxiety?" Our only referent for
this term is in our own experience, and we don't understand anxiety in
ourselves any better than we understand it vicariously in someone else.
Bowlby's main concern is not to understand anxiety, but to describe the
conditions under which it occurs and goes away, and the possible
evolutionary reasons for its existence. He never tackles the basic (to
me) question, which is WHAT IS ANXIETY?
I very much appreciate this discussion -- very helpful.
In general, this seems to be how all the mental and emotional conditions
of which he speaks are treated. In a PCT approach, I would ask different
questions and look for different answers. The concept of negative
emotions that I have proposed is that the feeling component comes from
error signals in the behavioral hierarchy which reset physiological
reference signals to back up the actions which the same error signals
normally call for. The changes in physiological state that result are
sensed, and in conjuction with the other perceptions that are being
controlled are perceived as what we call an emotional state. The
perceived emotional state has a somatic and a cognitive component. Any
severe emotional state, I have proposed, results from uncorrected error,
produced by an internal or external conflict or some other failure to
control.
Yes, that's the way I see it, too, although I would add that the core
systems involved in emotion are innate components which evolved over the
eons to deal with specific classes of disturbance, such as threats of
various kinds. These disturbances initiate changes reference levels, gain,
and so on in a number of systems in a pattern that tends to help counteract
the threat in various ways. (I can provide more detail if you like.) In
stating that the "core systems" are innate, I do not mean to imply that
learning is either uninvolved or unimportant.
When we see anxiety this way, the primary question is no longer how it
feels, because how it feels is simply a consequence of the error
resetting somatic reference signals. The basic question is, what is the
error? In separation anxiety, the error would result from the inability
to prevent the separation, and we can conclude that separation entails a
deviation of some perceptions from their reference levels. And what are
those perceptions? That becomes the question that a PCT approach would
then try to answer.
This reminds me: remember the psychotherapy case David Goldstein reported
on? Here, it seems to me, was a case of pathology in the control system
"designed" to keep child close to its protective parents. One of the more
interesting observations on attachment is that abuse from the parents
actually exacerbates the child's anxiety, leading to increasingly strong
attempts on the part of the child to receive comfort from the parents. So
you have the image of the parent pushing the clinging child away using
increasingly extreme measures and as a result, the child becoming
increasingly persistent in attempting to approach and cling to the parent.
Talk about conflicting control systems! I don't know what is going on in
the case David described (which could be characterized as involving
excessive gain, I suppose), but thinking about it in terms of this
biologically-given separation-control system certainly suggests a number of
good possibilities.
You'll notice that in this approach it simply doesn't matter WHY these
perceptions are under control; whether because of instincts or learning
or evolution. Those are side-issues. It doesn't matter what previous
experiences prevented learning how to control the perceptions. The
primary issue is what is being controlled here, and what is preventing
success. When we understand that, we will understand what the problem
is, and we will also understand anxiety. We won't have to define
separation anxiety strictly with reference to our own experience of it.
In fact, we will understand our own experience better, too.
They may be side issues for PCT, but they are not unimportant. Evolution is
the process by which these brain structures came to be; therefore, one can
expect that the system as a whole, when operating properly in its normal
environment, will produce actions that are usually adaptive, i.e., tending
to promote the well-being of its owner. Special control mechanisms may be
provided to serve specific functions; those that produce "attachment," for
example, appear to promote survival of the young in obvious ways. These
systems may become most active at specific times in the life of the
individual and then relinquish their control when no longer needed. In
pathological cases such systems may fail to develop, may select the "wrong"
perceptions to control (as in the duckling's being imprinted to a watering
can, or, to take a different system, to a man's being attracted to women's
apparel rather than to women themselves), or may fail to deactivate at the
proper time, among many other possibilities. Thus, gaining a really deep
understanding of the human hierarchical control system, it seems to me, will
require us to identify what specific control systems are "hard-wired" into
the brain, what functions they serve, and during what periods of life they
normally come into play. (Developmental PCT?)
Thus, knowing that Goldstein's client is strongly controlling his proximity
to his parents may not be sufficient for clinical application of PCT. It
may also require knowing that the system involved is a specific "attachment"
system whose multiple actions and specific function are understood. If it
is known that the gain on this system decreases dramatically in normal
children by a certain age (and yet is still extremely high in this child,
who is beyond that age), then this finding may suggest a different direction
for therapy than might otherwise be pursued. For example, if the child is
still too young for the gain to start lowering spontaneously, it might be
sufficient to recommend to the parents that they simply put up with the
child's demand to remain in close proximity for the time being, on the
theory that the problem will correct itself when the gain declines. If the
child is already far past that point, this suggests a pathology in the
normal mechanism controlling the gain, which may lead to a different
recommendation.
All this is not meant to suggest that the program you outline--identifying
the controlled perceptions--should not be pursued; to the contrary this is
precisely what needs to be done. I'm just emphasizing that a functional
analysis such as Bowlby provides for attachment phenomena may prove
essential for fully understanding why certain perceptions become controlled,
why a specific collection of perceptual references are changed in a
coordinated fashion, and why these perceptions are strongly controlled
during one time or phase of life and little or not at all at some other.
The first step toward answering such questions is to determine what is
controlled (in all its multifaceted ways) and when.
Regards,
Bruce
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[From Bill Powers (951016.1008 MDT)] Subject: Re: Bowlby
Hi, Bruce --
There are people on the net would be furious if they knew we were having
this interesting discussion off-line. Want to post some summary clips
and go live?
Any
severe emotional state, I have proposed, results from uncorrected
error, produced by an internal or external conflict or some other
failure to control.
[I should have added that I'm not the only or the first one to identify
emotions in this way.]
Yes, that's the way I see it, too, although I would add that the
core systems involved in emotion are innate components which
evolved over the eons to deal with specific classes of disturbance,
such as threats of various kinds.
I call these core systems, collectively, the reorganizing system. They
have evolved to monitor certain system variables; there are inherited
reference levels for these variables, variously implemented (some are
neural or chemical signals, some are thresholds of firing of neurons or
thresholds of reaction for chemical systems, some -- like the reference
level for pain signals -- are zero and require no literal reference
signal). It is probably not too risky to propose that all the overt
behaviors involved come from control systems that are very rapidly
learned, some in the womb and some in the first minutes, hours, days,
weeks, or years of life. All the potential conflicts among control
systems involving major muscle groups, for example, have been resolved
before birth (or for chicks, before hatching).
I propose that the somatic systems involved in emotion are simply the
biochemical control systems of the body, a hierarchy involving the organ
systems at one level, the immune system a few levels down, and the
intracellular mechanisms (including the operation of DNA and RNA) a few
levels still further down.
It's possible that there are a few intrinsic variables that represent
some aspects of sensory information. These variables must be very dim,
broad, and vague, because the sensory system is crude at birth and
undergoes continual reorganization as it builds toward the adult forms
of perception in an individual. There is simply no way for evolution to
predict the details of the complex environment which an individual will
encounter.
The "threats" of which you speak can't be perceived by the neonate the
way an adult human being would perceive them. A sudden expansion of
patterns in the visual field might be detectable, but not the sudden
"approach of an object". The presence of a large object might be
detectable, but not "proximity." A sense of growing discomfort might be
detectable, but not "hunger." And so on. For the neonate, any intrinsic
variables associated with sensory perception have to be defined in terms
of mostly unorganized perceptions. And aside from a few generalized
reactions that might be built in (or that might have been learned before
birth) all reactions must be in the nature of side-effects of
reorganization, not coordinated attempts to correct errors.
This reminds me: remember the psychotherapy case David Goldstein
reported on? Here, it seems to me, was a case of pathology in the
control system "designed" to keep child close to its protective
parents. One of the more interesting observations on attachment is
that abuse from the parents actually exacerbates the child's
anxiety, leading to increasingly strong attempts on the part of the
child to receive comfort from the parents.
This was a very old child, and trying to read innate systems into his
behavior would be a mistake. Too much learning has happened. The innate
systems can't possibly be designed to keep a child close to its
protective parents. Such concepts don't emerge for a long time after
birth, and by the time they do, learned perceptions and control systems
dominate behavior. The innate systems can only bias the situation in a
way that tends to keep child and parents near each other; what happens
next depends on the ensuing interactions. The child has certain basic
needs, and must reorganize to achieve them in the presence of the
highly-organized parents that already exist, whatever their
characteristics might be.
By the time a child is capable of organized behavior, the control
systems that exist have already adapted to the existing environment.
Warm, caring parents give the child control of its own comfort with a
minimum of effort, because the child doesn't need to produce extremes of
action to be fed, changed, doctored, or kept warm. Cold or indifferent
parents require large disturbances to be prodded into action. Bowlby
sees this as a course of development, but I don't think he fully
realized that this course is not a foreordained sequence. Deviations
from the norm are not necessarily "pathological" -- they are more likely
to be quite logical and necessary, given the environment. Of course this
_is_ a _process_ of development, because what the child becomes in later
life is dictated by what the child had to learn at each successive level
of organization in order to satisfy its own intrinsic needs.
You'll notice that in this approach it simply doesn't matter WHY these
perceptions are under control; whether because of instincts or
learning or evolution.
They may be side issues for PCT, but they are not unimportant.
Evolution is the process by which these brain structures came to
be; therefore, one can expect that the system as a whole, when
operating properly in its normal environment, will produce actions
that are usually adaptive, i.e., tending to promote the well-being
of its owner.
But the history of these organizations has no bearing on how they work
NOW. It may be of some interest to know whether a bottle cap was formed
by a stamping machine, with a hammer and forming tool, or by being cast
into shape -- but the bottle cap, now, functions as it does regardless
of how it was formed. All we can really know about behavior is how it is
organized right now, and if we want to understand how it works, that is
what we have to study. Our expectations about the functions that it is
supposed to perform are only speculations and idealizations that add
nothing to our ability to analyze what is happening now; indeed, they
are just as likely to throw us off the track as to be useful, because
they are simply guesses.
In pathological cases such systems may fail to develop, may select
the "wrong" perceptions to control (as in the duckling's being
imprinted to a watering can, or, to take a different system, to a
man's being attracted to women's apparel rather than to women
themselves), or may fail to deactivate at the proper time, among
many other possibilities. Thus, gaining a really deep
understanding of the human hierarchical control system, it seems to
me, will require us to identify what specific control systems are
"hard-wired" into the brain, what functions they serve, and during
what periods of life they normally come into play. (Developmental
PCT?)
I believe that there are few hard-wired control systems, and that what
few there are are simple and not very competent. If the imprinting
process were clever and reliable, it would never mistake a watering can
for its mommy. All these basic inherited systems can do is give us a
little push in the right direction; there's no guarantee that
reorganization will carry on in only one way.
I think that developmental PCT needs only a few basic assumptions. One
is that the levels develop from lowest to highest, not in an orderly
sequence (because we often return to reorganize lower levels as a way of
filling in functions that higher systems need), but as a general
progression, with the possibility of organizing the highest systems
coming generally later in life. As the body matures, the brain is faced
with new problems, problems due to increasing size, weight, and
strength, increasing ability to perceive, and changes in body chemistry
such as those that occur at puberty. Some things feel good and some
things feel bad; how to maintain or repeat those that feel good and
avoid those that feel bad has to be learned through reorganization, in
interaction with the world that already exists, including the individual
properties of other people and the customs of the whole social system.
Thus, knowing that Goldstein's client is strongly controlling his
proximity to his parents may not be sufficient for clinical
application of PCT. It may also require knowing that the system
involved is a specific "attachment" system whose multiple actions
and specific function are understood.
I don't think that is a sufficient explanation. Attachment is not sought
for its own sake, after the initial period. It makes a great deal of
difference what maintaining proximity accomplishes for the child. The
initial urge to remain in the vicinity of a large object is really of
little use unless it results in an ability to control the variables
essential to survival. Once those variables have come under control,
they become the primary issue, replacing mere proximity with much more
specific and useful goals. Proximity by itself doesn't satisfy any
important intrinsic needs. It's what proximity makes possible that is
important. You can't get fed if the mother isn't near; you can't make
love if the object of affection or lust isn't near. Proximity, I would
guess, soon becomes merely a means to more interesting and important
ends. It's important only when there are no more important goals.
The experiments showing that proximity is an end in itself are valid
only before other goals have taken precedence. As all parents eventually
learn, a child will prefer a bottle to the presence of the parents if it
gets hungry enough. Of course the toddler does acquire reference levels
for contact, for verbal interaction, and for lots of other things. These
reference levels soon elaborate and become far more important than the
initial urge for proximity in itself. What the desire for proximity does
is to make it likely that interactions will occur, but out of these
interactions there soon grow new goals of much greater interest. In
achieving those goals, proximity may be a necessary ingredient, but it
is no longer the top-level goal.
As to control systems "relinquishing control" after a certain stage of
development, I don't believe that this is something a control system can
decide to do. Some other system has to decide to turn off the control
system, or reorganize it out of existence. A more likely scenario is
that a crude control system, which detects only large errors, has fuzzy
perceptions, and only weak forms of action, is supplanted by more
competent learned control systems that happen, as a side-effect, to keep
the error in the crude control system too small to activate the output
of that system. We see hints about this possibility in the phenomenon of
regression. When complex control systems come into conflict, they lose
the ability to keep their errors small. When the errors start to grow,
earlier control systems, which have never gone away, experience enough
error to begin to act, and of course when they act they use the means
that they used before, typical of an earlier and less effective mode of
control. So the soldier on the battlefield, paralyzed by a conflict
between wanting to be brave and wanting to be safe, cries out "Mama!"
Beside developmental PCT, another field of interest is comparative PCT.
From the bug to the human being there is a scale of preorganization,
with the bug relying mostly on wired-in control systems and the human
being relying primarily on reorganization for its control of what
happens to it. The organisms that have less preorganization do not need
specific control systems at birth; what they need are the specific
minimal control systems that will allow the process of reorganization to
take over and produce a learned control hierarchy. Once that learning
process is underway, the influence of the initial organization becomes
less and less important, and only the most generalized, or the most
physiological, goals retain a shaping influence.
This is more or less my vision of how PCT will develop. I don't know
how the questions you have raised will ultimately be resolved, but I
think we have to be cautious about making assumptions that limit the
possibilities.
Bill