So . . . apparently, if we think of this as a chemical
switching mechanism, somehow or another you either have to have more
than one, or you have to have a particular capacity to dampen out the
one as the other comes on. Now, at this point my knowledge of
chemistry begins to run out and I’d better shut up. I can only
hypothesize what I think it is.
Question:
What you describe suggests to me that you have found lower
level systems become automatic . . . as though they were laid out and
no one had to keep putting on the power so you could go to the next
level.
Dr.
Graves:
Which is in line with our everyday theory of knowledge that we
don’t think about doing lower level things . . . we just do them.
Question:
Do you feel this would vary between tasks or environments? What
I’m trying to get at here is that there are certain things about my
own perception – things that I feel comfortable with, certain things
that I don’t feel comfortable with. Maybe with this bit, I would
function comfortable on one level – my relationship to it – so
that I could see myself
accomplishing
this as an end result even before I started it . . . that I am not
comfortable with at this time, this mechanical process. It becomes
work.
Dr.
Graves:
I think definitely . . . yes . . . and I do bring this out in
my work on managerial psychology, that actually if you are trying to
use this point of view to organize a business or a classroom or
something like that, the first things you ask is – what is the work
you are going to do? The task is the important determinate. And from
there you go on and derive your organizational principles and the
like.
Question:
Under Figure 1, it suggest a 1-1 relationship but, according to
our discussion now, it seems to indicate that there isn’t always
this 1-1 relationship . . . some problems get solved and other
problems don’t get solved.
Dr.
Graves:
There are so many things here that I have never been able to
conceive of any one pictogram that could possible show the various
variables that are present. This is why I have this different series
to try and show that one system is nestled within another system.
{Figure 2} - I have that
one which can not be seen from this diagram you see to show the
progressive-regressive aspects of it in this diagram here. {Figure 3}
– So if you think, as I understand you to say, while a man is in
process of moving from A-N to the B-O system in respect to problem A,
sub 1, he might be regressing in respect to problem A, sub 1, he might
be progressing in respect to problem A, sub 2, and he might be holding
fast in respect to problem a, sub 3. This is included in this part, I
would believe. I have no intention of showing a
1-1 relationship because there is just too much complexity in here.
I’m trying to depict the process . . . what the process is like.
- In referring to the question you brought up earlier, at any
moment in time at least three systems are very important in the
behavior of a person.
a.
the
system that is dominating
b.
the
system that is coming up
a.
and
the system that is going down.
I just can’t find a way of representing this all at once.
Question:
One of the assumptions that seems to be throughout your
explanation of this model of human behavior which I think was in the
question by Dr. Smith . . . and this is a new way of looking at these
phenomenon, that you are laboring quite a bit under the experiences of
Descartes . . .- with that in the back of our minds - - - it is quite
valid to say, as in Freud for example, where you are trying to
construct a theory of human behavior – that where Freud is observing
say, the Oedipal phenomenon, and he comes to a point at which his
system, his psychology, no longer explains the change in the child’s
behavior, as when all of a sudden the child is no longer clinging to
his mother and he starts acting out with the father – so Freud says, well, it must have
been a change in his brain chemistry.