Part
II The
following information consists of some notes and the reorganized
transcription from audio tapes –
made by William R. Lee – recorded at The Washington School of
Psychiatry on October
16-18, 1971, when Dr. Clare W. Graves presented a
Seminar on Levels of Human Existence.
_____________________________________________________________________________
{Although
it was October in 1971, it was a very warm weekend when Dr. Graves made
this presentation in a 2-1/2 day seminar in an old red brick townhouse
type of building close to downtown Washington, D. C. The air
conditioning had been turned off in the old building and we had to open
the windows. As Dr. Graves talked, we tried to tape his presentation and
the sounds of the city, the street noises of cars and trucks, made it
difficult at times to hear some of the questions.
I have taken the liberty of reconstructing some of the questions from
the audience that
were not clear on the tape recording.}
Dr.
Graves:
I have been working on a systems conception of personality –
and the values paper – {An Open System Theory of Values, Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, Fall 1970, No. 2} - - is an offshoot as are other
articles which have been published- simply offshoots of the basic
theoretical point of view. So I think that the best thing that we can do
to give you a comprehension of just what I am doing and why I am doing
it, is to drop back nineteen years when
I started this work. And to see what it was that I was concerned with at
that time; how I proceeded
forward; what I did in the way of data collection; what I ran into when
the data started to come in; and what eventually arose out of it in the
way of a conception of human behavior and then go on from there to find
out what some of the ramifications of this point of view are. Now the
ramifications, which we can get to this afternoon, involve considerable
more in
the matter of the simple application of the theoretical point of view to
the understanding and possible
solution of some of our human problems because it has turned out with
time that this vehicle
which I have developed may have the capability of integrating within it
almost all that has been put down in the literature about psychological
behavior.
One of the things I came to, with time, as you will see, is, that
in my mind, we do not have
any argument, what-so-ever, as to whose theory of human behavior is
correct or is the best. The vehicle that we are going to look at will
say to you that all of them are correct and the thing that is important
is to see how they are all correct and what their relationship is to one
another. And – the other thing about it is, at least I have found and
others who have been working
with me, that the vehicle does have a capacity of taking the tremendous
amount of confusing and contradictory information that we have in the
field of the behavioral sciences and removing the confusion and
contradiction. So that is why I want to start this morning with
the
reason for the research and the areas of research concern – the basic
research problem and
the like.
I.
The Beginning – The Reason for the Research:
When I entered into this research I had about had it with the
profession of which I am a part. I had gotten sick and tired of going
into the classroom and having to referee the argument
as to whose research was right or whose theory was right. I had just
gotten to the point
where in the summer of 1952 I was really seriously considering that
there must be some other
way a man can make a living. And – I didn’t want to go back into the
classroom again. Even though I love the classroom setting I was just so
sick to my stomach and the like, that I didn’t want to go back into it
again, and I said to myself: I just can’t go back in there unless in
some manner or another I can at least think that I am attempting to get
this situation, that is confronting me, in hand.