Question:
What do you think about Erickson’s hierarchy? How does this
fit with your theory?
Dr.
Graves:
There are many similarities between the Erickson material and
this one. I think that it is rather interesting, one that stands out
in my mind . . .that he had to go on to eight systems from Freud’s
original five systems. I had eight systems but in my mind Erickson
began making the “age old error” . . . the error that man is
made every time a new system of behavior has appeared and that is -
this is it. So . . . he has integrity as the ultimate and I think
that this too will disappear. But basically his systems and mine are
very
much
alike.
Question:
Would you carry on the discussion from what you said a minute
ago a bit further in regards to the F-S to G-T system transition as
to what the transition is and what is required to make the change?
Dr.
Graves:
This is where you begin to use your Rogerian types of
approach. . . going from the F-S to the G-T. The individual is
beginning to operate in a direction of self-expression and wants to
work it out himself. The Rogerian approach is a very fine one. I
think that it is interesting if you look back historically in that
the development of this institution, the
Washington
School of
Psychiatry, with its emphasis on interpersonal psychology ties in
with the time we saw the emergence of the F-S system in any
large number of human beings. Now I think this is or was the
direction that was meant to be and still is for many. Your
interpersonal psychiatries are primarily dealing with personality
E-R, to really get the F-S integrated and ready for the G-T.
Question:
You’ve spoken before, in the very beginning, about normal
psychology. You said a few minutes ago, if you get this you’ll
wind up with psychosis . . . you used the word anxiety and all. How
do you see this whole business or what do you call mental illness?
Dr.
Graves:
Closure . . . extreme closure. There are two basic kinds of
mental illness which I call the alterably closed personality and the
unalterably closed personality. Now, the unalterably closed does not
necessarily go into psychosis. It is very difficult for the
alterably closed not to go into psychosis. What I mean by the
unalterably closed personality is a person who is restricted in his
movement up the levels of existence or has been reduced to closure
from a much higher level because (a) he never had the higher level
structures in the brain in the first place as in the severely
mentally retarded. . . or (b) he had mechanical injury.
All the work done by Goldstein on the brain of the injured
during World War I. I don’t know how many of you know this but the
term that Goldstein coined – self-actualization – was the
reverse of what most people think of it as today. Goldstein’s term
- self-actualization – meant as the man loses potentiality he
actualizes himself at a lower level. He goes down and becomes a
whole person at that level. So that type of unalterably closed where
the brain tissue has been damaged by disease, senility,
malnutrition, etc. . . . is the unalterably closed. When an
individual is alterably closed he has become closed down because of
psychological conditions which restrict the degrees of behavioral
freedom and throw him into this channel of development and
that is the only way which he can develop and survive as an
organism. Now . . . that’s the basis of psychosis. Psychosis is
the behavior of the unalterably closed or the alterably closed under
stress. This is what the psychotic behavior is in this point of
view.