Now,
let’s consider that person who is asking questions and behaving.
When we are looking at an individual human being we are not asking
the question, at least as I see it, what is this person’s level of
operation? The question we are asking is: at what level is his
thinking in relation to this issue? How does he think in relation to
this or that issue? Then, if it ends up that he is a closed
personality, what we find is that he tends to think essentially at
the same level in respect to all issues. So, when I want to point
out at what level the individual is operating, I try to get a
picture of his thinking in respect to certain vital issues in human
existence. And, this is what others of my colleagues are doing. For
example, here is one that David Hunt and I have been working on. We
are trying to get a picture of the operation of the thinking of
children in respect to certain issues. What do you think about
rules? What do you think about when you are criticized?
You get an all or none response from the C-Ps. When I am
criticized I knock people in their mouth. Or – sometimes they just
go on and say – I don’t care – I just ignore them or I slug
them.
Now, your gamesmanship system is your E-R system. If you are
down the line in the D-Q system you are probably a hard shell
Baptist or an orthodox Jew. The reason we see so much of it, at
least from this perceptual framework, is that we have an awful lot
of people with E-R thinking.
We are asking the children – what about parents? What do
you think about parents?
What do you do when someone disagrees with you?
What do you do when you are told to do something?
We find that we get a number of different answers and
research seems to indicate that you can, with about six fairly
disparate issues, get pretty much of a flavor of the individual’s
thinking. If you can get two or three statements from that person as
to what he thinks about a number of things – rules, being
criticized, parents, etc. Then you find out what level he is
operating from . . . and you go on from there.
Question:
I’ve got some data from another source including research
at St. Elizabeth on suicide attempters. There is quite a large range
of science. It seems that as this data starts grouping itself into
different categories. In fact, I was looking for different types. I
set out because most of the data on suicide is like what you came up
with. The three types that I came up with – quite strikingly –
corresponded to levels 3, 4 and 5. I find that with the level 3
types, the main defense mechanisms were turning against others and
projection defenses. The types of defenses most employed by level 4
were the denial- an effort to cover up and not risk separation from
the important other – the authority figure. And quite
characteristically and this is not surprise – the defense
mechanism employed by level 5 is an intellectual base with
rationalization, keeping one’s self-esteem and performance skills
intact and such. I see links to what you are talking about with the
levels.
Dr.
Graves:
Once you begin to get this field, it is amazing how many
studies, how many things we have in the literature that fall into
place when this framework exists. I found just a very large number
of them that support what you said and that is that the data in
study after study tends to fall into the levels systems.
Question:
What is your recommendation so far as working with young
individuals in the age bracket of, say, 16 to 25 who have been on
drugs, probably heavy drug users – heroin or something similar . .
. and if you were going to work with them in an educational process
or order to, say, teach them basic reading skills, some math, to
where they would get to the point to satisfactorily pass a general
equivalency diploma. What would be your recommendation in regard to
this?