Question:
Do these people that you refer to come from a cross section
of the population or are they primarily college students?
Dr.
Graves:
We did a little bit on the middle-class side but remember
that I pointed out to you that one of the sources that I had was an
adult evening school in which the only specified requirement was
cross my palm with enough silver. . . just pay the tuition.
(Question: They were still motivated to learn, to do the work?) That
is correct. But some of them didn’t even do that. They came in and
sat down and stayed and never paid.
Question:
Did you have any ghetto people?
Dr.
Graves:
To the extent that the Appalachian people, the Chicanos, the
people out of the inner city are not in the C-P system and then you
run into the same thing. Now I’ve gotten a few of these. If you
get a description of the healthy personality in the C-P system, it
will not be more than a page. It may be typewritten and it will be
all four-letter words and in it he’s going to call you everything
in the book as he tells you what his conception is. And he’ll tell
you in the meantime that “If I didn’t like you, Doc, I
wouldn’t bother with it in the first place so why the hell did you
ask me?”
Question:
Do you have data related to child rearing on what anyone can
do about raising a child so that they grow into a particular level?
Dr.
Graves:
I would suggest again that some of my colleagues be turned to
for this information rather than myself for the simple reason that
I’ve been working more with the management of adults and the
management of organizations. I have limited data here. One of the
men I just mentioned is O. J. Harvey at the
University
of
Colorado
at
Boulder
. And the
other, you’ll have to make a phone call here in town, is David E.
Hunt. He’s gone to
Toronto
to some
organization up there. Call the American Psychological Association
here in town and they would know his address. David has worked
considerably in this area.
Now, there is a problem here. And this begins to happen as
any theoretical point of view begins to develop. Harvey, Hunt and
Schroder were a tirade of people who came out with their publication
about the same time as I did. They have systems I, II, III and IV as
the systems of behavior. The book in which this is basically
described and the child rearing material is basically presented is Conceptual
Systems and Personality Organization.
{Harvey,
O. J., Hunt, D. E., and Schroder, H. M., Conceptual
Systems and Personality Organization,
New York
: Wiley,
1961. – ISBN: 0598634290}
In
their book – their data on child rearing is about the same as
mine. The conceptual systems and personality organization - I, II,
III and IV are roughly equivalent, but not totally, to D-Q, E-R, F-S
and G-T. The reason that they are not totally equivalent is that as
the search has proceeded forward, David Hunt broke away from Harvey
and Schroder – because he said that the data doesn’t support
just four systems. So he had to enter in his work a Sub Roman
Numeral I system which is essentially the C-P system that I have. I
have not gone down the line with the Harvey, Hunt and Schroder group
on their basic assumption that the only differences are
quantitative. I’ve taken their own data and shown them that they
are wrong. So there is that little difference in there. If you let
these little internecine wars take care of themselves at the present
time . . .
Harvey
and Hunt are
the two that you can best turn to for information as to this way of
thinking and how child rearing practices can be used.
Question:
I wondered when you spoke about the therapist or a teacher
being one level above the person they are relating to – whether
that would carry over into the child rearing situation and if that
were the case then if the G-T mother has difficulty in raising the child at the lower level?