We
are just chasing a will-o-the-wisp whenever we’re trying to produce a
healthy personality because as soon as we produce a person who functions
well in one system . . . .the last thing he wants to be is that kind of
a human being any longer. It bores the hell out of him. He wants to
start behaving in some other new and different way. We have to learn the
process to know where he is going so we can keep up with him as he
moves.
You see, at this point . . . I’ve got the N, O, P, Q, R, S
systems and I’ve got the conditions that seem to change but I don’t
have any clear relationships between them. I’ve just got two things. .
. the systems and the conditions. What is going to bring about the
interrelationships?
Now, then, remember my data indicated that no one changed unless
he had a reason to change. He didn’t . . . just change! He had
something that pushed him. The data also indicated that there is a
factor of improved conditions for existence involved in the element of
change. I had to hypothesize this if I was going to have a conception of
personality that dealt with the facts as we know them in psychology
today that some people do not have systems O P Q R S in them. We have
encephalic monsters, micro-encephalics, whose cortex is arrested and
they don’t have the same structures.
I had to hypothesize that if the person has potential, that is,
the higher level structures are present in the brain, that is the
first factor required in change to a higher system of behavior. The
second factor is the solution of the existential problems with
which he is faced. But this is still not enough to bring about change.
What brought about the change? Additional studies showed that if a
person seemed to have what he thought were problems of existence solved
and then something came along that loused up his solution – that this
was absolutely necessary for change to occur. This is the old business
of dissonance. Cognitive dissonance must come . . . noise must
come into the field. Some knowledge must come into the field. Something
must come in and stir this thing up when it is in a nice state of
equilibrium.
My data indicated that this still did not produce the change.
What it caused was that the person had to go back and try out his old
solutions. He did not go forward. He went in a search for some other
way, something that had worked before and might work again. He didn’t
find it. Then the student would get an idea. I had many experiments in
which the student would report in the course of going over their
modification the sort of – “Ah ha! – I’m starting to see this a
little different. There is something here that I didn’t see before.”
In other words, the student got insight.
But what has all this to do with the movement from the condition
under which the N system is dominating the behavior of the person and
the O system takes over dominating the behavior of the person? There has
got to be something else in the brain. There has got to be some kind of
switching operating mechanism. Something has to be going on that
switches the dominant system in the brain from N to O and thus into P.
Well, I tried out a number of different ideas.
Could it be that cells are in the way and then they atrophied and
got out of the way? This might be the mechanism – using the model of
the Thymus gland that you see and then it disappears. I tried mechanical
ideas and other ideas but none of them would handle the problem of
regression - - - - wouldn’t handle it at all. So I said that the only
thing I can get a hold of here is a reversible chemical process.
The brain, therefore, has to be a producer of chemicals.