Question:
I am with you about bio-chemical brain activities that are
correlates of all psychological activities. I’m not biased against
trying to tie the two together. I feel we are not at the point yet. We
have to independently work and hope that at some later time the
correlates will show up. I feel that when you come up against a
psychological problem and your
turn to an explanation in terms of brain activities – that you can’t
give an explanation, that it’s bound to be a model, a
pseudo-explanation in terms of the psychological side of it. With this
as a way of introduction what I was going to ask about, on psychological
grounds in terms of this change from one level of existence to another
level and the dissonance and the solving of problems . . .
do you conceptualize something about activity-passivity? What is
the difference in the person who dissonance befalls him and he’s
pushed into something as compared with the person – for whatever
reason – who can turn toward a new problem somewhat autonomously?
Dr.
Graves:
The first thing that I seem to have is this. It depends upon
which system he is
going from to the next system. If he is going from an expressive system
to an adjustive system, that is a very different thing than if he is
going from an adjustive system to an expressive
system. If he is going from an adjustive system to an expressive system
you always get the guy here pulling so that it looks as if it is coming
from within. And . . .if he is
going from an expressive system to an adjustive system it appears that
your impetus is coming
from without. Now . . . I will offer evidence to this effect when I show
you what some of the specific agents are according to my data as you
move from one system to another.
For example: suppose we have a person in what I ultimately call
the C-P existential state.
To affect change in this person you must have an outside benevolent
authority who figuratively creates a Skinner Box for the human being and
says to this human being: “These are your degrees of freedom. You
cannot move beyond here but if you move in here you’ll stay alive.
I’ll see to it. I’ll take care of you.” You set up this kind of
situation with the outside force and the person appears to be the system
where he is psychic, but the peculiar thing is that what is depicting is
passivity. He seems to be drawn into a world where, if you want to use
the other words, “he has to be different.” This person is seeking to
be different.
Where . . . if you have a person on the other hand – where the
next step up the ladder is moving out of the D-Q system into the E-R
system – your change agent has to be one
that can stimulate him to break away from the Skinner Box and run to
stay ahead of him as he gets there. I’ll describe him more as we get
on with it. There are ways he has to behave. So it depends upon where he
is going.
Comment-Question:
I’m thinking that the individual functions on different levels
at the same time? And I have the feeling that an aggressive person,
basically, maybe goes from one level of
aggression to the next level of aggression without having to go through
all of this?
Statement:
Let me illustrate this by a comment I remember when the biologist
Walden said
in response to Skinner’s words about conditioning a person when
Skinner said “You give me the prescription and I’ll give you the
man.” Walden replied, “Not if I shoot you first.” Would that be a
radical jump in levels?
Dr.
Graves:
In trying to answer the first part of your question – so
let’s take a look at Figure 2. I’m trying to express something and
maybe I’m getting a little over-simplified. Movement
is not necessarily from one system to the next system. It is a
subordination of the
earlier system by the later system. When the B-O system takes over, the
A-N system is still there. The A-N system is merely subordinated within
the B-O system. A problems are plural problems and the B problems are
plural problems. We can solve some of the problems at the A level but
not all the problems.