Question:
Is this closing down of those who don’t make it to the next
level widespread in our country today?
Dr.
Graves:
Let me answer you by starting this way. If you study, this
which we are looking at here, as a historical cultural phenomenon over
the long run of time, one of the things which will stand out is that
anytime a transition in man has taken place there has always been a
big upsurge in the use of drugs. One kind of drug at one time and
another kind of drug at another time, and this can pretty well be
traced down as to what drugs were used by what people and at what time
and in what transition they were in. Now, in other words, as one comes
to the end of a way of life which he has been living, comes to the end
of D-Q or E-R or F-S . . . and this way of life no longer is solving
the problems of existence that he has, he’s now thrown into a state
of crisis. In his attempts to solve it and move forward his first step
is a regressive step. He goes backward and then tries to find his way
forward from behind this anxiety producing situation. If in the course
of this movement he comes upon drugs, alcohol, any of the other means
we have at our disposals which are ready dissolvents of alcohol, he
will grasps them. You can get a person who turns to drugs in the D-Q
to E-R transition but most of the ones we’ve been running into
recently . . . where we’ve seen, as far as many people are
concerned, an alarming trend which tells you something about what the
values of our society are like. . . are turning up in the affluent
class, throwing off the materialism of their parents and trying to
make the E-R to F-S transition.
This is very important if someone is going to work with this
person. This determines just how you’re going to work with this
person. If we find, as my evidence does, that a person was in the D-Q
system, his history shows this . . . he’s gone into this transition,
and in the course of it he turned to drugs and now he has turned to
becoming a Jesus Freak. Using the typical everyday psychiatric
terminology there’s a problem of buttoning up the system – putting
this
person’s defenses in there – tightening it up and letting him stay
there . . . letting him settle down into becoming a Jesus Freak. . .or
putting it another way, he found out as he tried to go on, that the
problems created by going on were more than he could perceive himself.
He just can’t handle them . . . so he is running back.
Question:
How can we know, based on your theory, which therapeutic
approach we should use in a given transition or clinical situation –
at a given level?
Dr.
Graves:
It depends upon what you’re seeing with here in terms of
which transition. If one is working with an individual in attempting
to aid or to foster or even instigate a transition from the C-P to the
D-Q system, then my position is that you’d better know Skinner
backwards and forwards and you’d better stay right with the
principles of Skinner.
Yesterday,
I gave an instrument, which I’m working on, to my students, in which
I was testing to find out how many in the class group operated at the
level of human existence where they could work with a rough, tough,
nasty delinquent kid operating at the C-P level. There isn’t a
student in my room that I would hire in
Virginia
to do this job.
{Dr.
Graves was asked by the administrators of the Virginia State
Department of Corrections and Welfare in
Richmond
,
Virginia
in the late
1960s to come down and visit with them regarding his theory. They
told him that they had looked at a wide range of theories related to
working with prisoners in an effort to bring about successful change
in behavior. They told him that none of the theories that they had
reviewed had made that much sense to them . . . but that his theory
– Levels of Existence Theory - did make sense to them. He told us
(the
Graves
group meeting
in Washington, D. C. with Dr. Graves at that time) that this unique
group of administrators had given him a “blank check” to come
down to the
Virginia
prison system
and to do, in a sense, whatever he wanted to do put his theory into
practice. It was during this time in
Virginia
when he was
working with so many prisoners at the C-P level that he was able to
obtain many of his chemical insights.}