We picked up that part of the data that some systems respond to
one kind of authority and
another system responds to another kind of authority. But . . . they
always respond to authority
if they are even numbered systems with this representation.
My data also said, and this is very important, that the degrees
of behavioral freedom of the
human being increase as he moves up the levels of human existence, that
he has more choices.
At the lowest levels of human existence the choices he can make are very
limited. The reason
that this is important is that if you believe, as I do, that behavior
must ultimately be benched
in the brain, than I’ve got to have some way of accounting for the
fact that in the brain of
man the choices are limited at the lowest level of human existence.
Each system is increasing in size as we move up the levels of
human existence. In Figure
1, the seventh system isn’t drawn properly in terms of size. If this
system were drawn properly
its represented size would be more than all the space in systems
1-2-3-4-5-6 – all together
– in order to account for this tremendous jump, tremendous change in
behavior that I
ran into when I put the express self with concern for others
persons in the problem solving situations.
I’m not going to go into the detail of this. Anyhow, I tried to
represent here the basic change
in the data that were dictated to me as some kind of a pictographic
story of what personality
is like. And I tried to show, that on the base line, these changes take
place as the person
has less and less vital problems to deal with. A – represents the most
vital problem of
the human being. B – C – D – E – F – G – H are less vital,
in a sense, because they represent
different existential problems.
I had to say that this is based in the brain. Remember that I was
working back in time.
I hypothesized that the brain of man must be structured someway or
another, probably functionally
not physically, into a series of hierarchically ordered dynamic
neurological systems.
Someone ought to be able to identify this system of the brain that runs
man when the
A conditions are the important thing to do.
When man has solved the problems in the A condition there ought
to be identifiable in,
the brain of man, the O system which man operates under when he is
trying to solve the B
problems. And there should be in the brain the P system which somehow or
another takes over
and organizes the behavior of the organism after he has solved the B
problems and when
he is dealing with the C problems of existence.
I now define the A problems as those problems involving the
operation of the imperative
periodic physiological needs of the organism. And I further hypothesize
that there
is a functional system in the brain that specifically relates to the
task of running the vital
processes, periodic in nature, in the organism. The B problems I now
define as those problems involving the physiology of the organism that
do not have the characteristic of periodicity in them, in other words,
the problems of shelter and that sort of thing. These are the
problems the human being is attempting to solve at this time. This gives
something distinct, demonstrably distinct about the N system, that it
would be different not only in its structure or its
network in the brain but it would also be different in terms of the
stimuli which will activate it. Only certain stimuli will cause the N
system to run. The N system is alert to certain or as I put it
in my latest writing . . . “we are equipped by
nature with certain information processing devices
and certain decision making equipment to handle in an hierarchically
ordered way a series of problems of human existence.”
The N system can be demonstrated as to be distinct and I say that
you can set up an experiment
which will show that if you use one kind of stimulation you don’t
activate that system. We
have the methodology for doing this. We have the methodology for showing
that if you use another
kind of stimuli you can activate the O system but you won’t activate
the N system and you won’t activate the P system.