So we get this mixture. In fact, the basic evidence that I have
is that, except when one begins to approach pathology, I have not as
yet, and others who have worked along this line have not yet,
in-so-far-as-I-know, found any persons in whom at least 50% of his
thinking is not centralized in a particular system . . . and then it
shades off in either direction to where he is going and where he has
come from.
Question:
At this point, I’m not sure that we want to get involved in the
chemistry of emotions. What do you see as the role of temperament?
Dr.
Graves:
The temperament factor may very well play a role. I just don’t
know enough about it at this date to say which role temperament may play
but the data says that temperament stays the same across systems. It is
consistent across the systems. And here, I might say, that I am sticking
with Sheldon’s work as far as temperament is concerned. –
Cerebrotonic, etc. If temperament does stay consistent across the
systems then it has got to fit in here somewhere. I just don’t know
what it is at this date.
I want to come back to the chemical side. (to the questioner) You
said that you feel we shouldn’t get involved in the chemical side. My
feeling is that we’ve got to get involved. We absolutely must do so,
in that we are already halfway across the bridge moving down the other
side. I already have a 3-4 page bibliography in support of my
conclusions, my position. The data already in the literature that the
chemical side is there. So let me pick up at this point. I conceive this
– that the dissonance that comes into the field . . . somehow or
another induces the brain to begin to synthesize that kind of organic
substance that causes the O system to take over dominance from the N
system. We will eventually be able to identify what this is and I’m
even ready to speculate on what chemical family it is in. Whatever the
brain is producing, it seems to produce it slowly in the beginning.
Then, when it reaches some kind of critical point, a quantum jump is
made as there is a shifting from the N system to the O system becoming
dominant as the controlling system in the brain. As this change takes
place in the brain the individual becomes a new psychological being. The
life of the individual now begins to run by new laws.
Question:
In response to new stimuli, in the sense of old problems solved
plus some dissonance coming in, and something in the brain responsive to
this stimuli, this amounts to a shift in a system – correct?
Dr.
Grave:
Yes . . . and now the individual learns in a new way and is
motivated in a new way. I think that I am ready to suggest, and I have
some evidence, that the individual has a new physiology . . . that this
is a new psychological being . . . a different psychological being
endocrinologically, I have sufficient evidence to indicate now that one
of the major differences between
the C-P and the D-Q systems is the ratio between noradrenaline and
adrenaline in the individual:
- In the C-P system – noradrenaline is higher than adrenaline.
- In the D-Q system – adrenaline is higher than noradrenaline.
This
ratio shifts. This is just one part of the chemistry of the systems. I
am suggesting that there is a very definite difference in the chemistry,
and that as the movement from the B-O to the C-P is made - then the
dissonance comes in and stimulates again, - that again the brain
produces, synthesizes, a chemical substance that causes the transition
to be made and that one of our tasks is, ultimately, to find out what
these chemical are. Does the brain of a person have the ability to
produce these chemicals? This needed research would further the work
that is being done by Kretch in California.
Kretch and his students have been able to produce at the animal level a
shift in animal behavior not unlike this shift that I have referred to.
By rearing rats in very bad conditions for rat existence and then
comparing these rats to rats that have been reared in good rat
conditions, the very best, - he then let them grow into adulthood. He
then assessed their behavioral potentials. He found that those rats who
were reared in the good conditions out performed, far in excess, the
rats who were reared in the poor conditions.