The Intentionality Model Diagrammed and Defined in Relation
to the Duplex Pyramids
1.
The intentionality model diagrammed on the next two slides represent
structures and processes that have been gradually built up from the infant’s more
simple elements to the full blown structure and process elements common to most
adults. The structural elements and paths of the processes are present in the neonate in
rudimentary form but become more differentiated and content laden as the child
develops. In other words, if one were to think of the dynamics of the model as
somewhat like a feedback loop that is constantly and rapidly cycling through each stage,
the model would be representing this loop as a flow chart.
2.
Researchers studying the processes of the mind should eventually find that
brain activity that is recorded and plotted in a way that conforms to consecutive flow
that is depicted by the consecutive stages in the model or flow chart. The researcher
should find that cycling through the stages is typically extremely fast, in milliseconds.
The recruitment of neurons and electrical activity at each stage should ebb and flow,
sometimes spreading within a stage and sometimes narrowing, but the flow through the
processes should remain the same. As can be seen in the model, some stages have
mini-loops and sub-structures of their own so that the flow in the instrumentally enabled
observation of the brain may not seem so fixed and mechanical.
3.
An intriguing question that remains open for me is whether the flow is always
basically unidirectional or is it possible that there can be rapid reversals to a prior stage
before proceeding through the loop?
4.
If one thinks, with the help of the model, of what the mind must contain and
what it must do to interact quickly and spontaneously to stimuli in world on some
occasions and on other occasions must step back and engage in complex reflection,
then the model may help in formulating experiments of a cognitive nature that address a
wide variety of questions about the nature of mind and mental activity on varying levels
of complexity.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
1
Model of the Duplex Pyramids
and their Interacting Structures, Systems, and Processes
Encompassing Environments
INTENTIONAL PROCESSES
ORGANIZING ASPECTS OF
THE INTERNAL AND
EXTERNAL WORLDS
INTENTIONAL PROCESSES
ORGANIZING ASPECTS OF THE WORLD
Institution or Organization
External
Structures
and
Systems
Settings within Institution
Situations
Situational Identities
Dyadic
emiT
Relationships
Roles
Time
Surface and Observable
Interaction
Self-concept
Physical/Verbal Behavior
Cognition
Internal
Structures
and
Processes
Emotion/Feelings
EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

CONSTRAINTS and SETTINGS

SITUATIONS
Dyadic Interaction
Perception
Background: Prior Schemata and Schemes/Species Genetic History

A
C
C
O
M
M
O
D
A
T
I
O
N
PERCEPTION
RECEPTION
RETRIEVAL
INTERNAL REPRESENTATION
of ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXTS
and SCHEMATA
for SOCIAL SETTINGS
ASSIMILATION vs. ACCOMMODATION
The content of the Intentionality Model’s
representational structures to the left
can be conceptualized as consisting of
the categories represented by the
Duplex Pyramids above.
MEMORY PATTERN READINESS for PRIOR
SCHEMATA and PRIOR SCHEMES
of COMPLETED vs. INCOMPLETE GOALS
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
2
Model of the Duplex Pyramids and
the Dimensions of the Arena of Your Mind
Encompassing Environments
INTENTIONAL PROCESSES
ORGANIZING ASPECTS OF THE WORLD
Institution or Organization
INTENTIONAL PROCESSES
ORGANIZING ASPECTS OF THE WORLD
EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

CONSTRAINTS and SETTINGS

SITUATIONS
Dyadic Interaction
Settings within Institution
Situationsof your
The Arena
Situational Identities
mind
may range
Dyadic
from
emiTbroad,
Time
deep,
Roles and
temporally
Interaction
expansive
Relationships
Surface and Observable
to
narrow,
surface
Physical/Verbal
Behavior
and Cognition
temporally
immediate.
Emotion/Feelings
Self-concept
Perception
Background: Prior Schemata and Schemes/Species Genetic History

A
C
C
O
M
M
O
D
A
T
I
O
N
PERCEPTION
RECEPTION
RETRIEVAL
INTERNAL REPRESENTATION
of ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXTS
and SCHEMATA
for SOCIAL SETTINGS
ASSIMILATION vs. ACCOMMODATION
The content of the Intentionality Model’s
representational structures to the left
can be conceptualized as consisting of
the categories represented by the
Duplex Pyramids above.
MEMORY PATTERN READINESS for PRIOR
SCHEMATA and PRIOR SCHEMES
of COMPLETED vs. INCOMPLETE GOALS
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
The Arena of your
mind may range
from
broad, deep, and
temporally
expansive
to
narrow, surface
and temporally
immediate.
3
Dynamic Interaction between Levels of Internal Processes and External Structures
Settings and Situations
Roles
Identity
Dyadic Interaction
Most Immediate and Transient and Directly Observed and Influential
Physical
Verbal Behavior
Self-concept
Cognition
Emotion/Feelings
Perception
Background: Prior Schemata and Schemes/Species Genetic History
Most Indirectly Observed and Most Pervasively and Enduringly, Influential
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4
EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

CONSTRAINTS and SETTINGS

SITUATIONS

Roles

Dyadic Interaction

PARAMETERS OF AWARENESS
PERCEPTION, RECEPTION, RETRIEVAL
S
t
o
r
a
g
e
INTERNAL REPRESENTATION
of ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXTS
and SCHEMATA
for SOCIAL SETTINGS
ENVISIONING
ASPECTS
CRITERIA
FOR
FULFILLMENT
TRANSCENDENCE
and
REORGANIZATION
REVISING
GOAL
MASTERING
ASSIMILATION vs. ACCOMMODATION
MEMORY PATTERN READINESS for PRIOR
SCHEMATA and PRIOR SCHEMES
of COMPLETED vs. INCOMPLETE GOALS
DISENGAGE
A
C
C
O
M
M
O
D
A
T
I
O
N
Dialectical Reasoning
MODEL
of the
INTENTIONAL
PROCESSES
FORSHADOWING
CRITERIA FOR FULFILLMENT
GOAL
SETTING
DECIDING
MENTAL
ASSESSMENT
LEVELS
EXTROCEPTION
EXTEROCEPTION
INTEROCEPTION
INTROCEPTION
INTROSPECTION
PLEASURE +++
PLEASURE ++
PLEASURE +
PAIN +
PAIN ++
PAIN +++
STATE TRANSFORMATIONS
IMPLICIT OTHER EFFECTS
EXTROSPECTION
INDIVIDUATION
PHYSICAL, COGNITIVE, SOCIAL
HEDONIC TONE DEGREES
INCORPORATION
STATES
ENVISIONING
ASPECTS
INCORPORATION
IMPLICIT OTHER EFFECTS
BODY EXPERIENCE
PSEUDO-DIS-INCORPORATION
ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS
TEMPORAL EXPERIENCE
HEURISTIC-DIS-INCORPORATION
LEVEL PERSPECTIVE 
HEURISTIC-INCORPORATION
PSEUDO-INCORPORATION
<<<TIME PERSPECTIVE>>>
DIS-INCORPORATION
DYS-CORPORATION
PSEUDO-DYS-CORPORATION
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ADVENTURING
ASPECTS
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
TIMING
EMOTIONAL BY-PRODUCTS
STRATEGY: COGNITIVE
OPERATIONS
5
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
• External Environmental Context, Constraints, Settings, Roles, and Situations.
The world, or reality, is in constant flux. Your mind actively or passively
accommodates to these changes. Your mind is exquisitely attuned to even the most
subtle change. Typically, the global, external environmental context remains fairly
constant. On the other hand, you constantly move from one setting to another.
Settings, for the most part, stay the same yet with minor changes. However, sometimes
there can be dramatic changes in a Setting. Settings are typically structured in ways
that evoke or allow for a limited range of situations and behaviors. One stabilizing
factor for settings is the fact that most or many involve formal ‘roles’ for the people
present and/or participating. Roles are typically either individual-specific or Settingspecific. Setting-specific roles can be inhabited by different individuals. Individuals
can each rotate through a Setting-specific role, making the role itself remain relatively
constant in spite of the change in occupants. There can also be Setting-specific ‘sets
of situations’ that typically change rapidly. A situation can suddenly develop and evoke
a situation-specific range of behaviors. Among this range of behaviors, or repertoire,
some exhibited by certain individuals can be identified as characteristic for that
individual, but which are modified, or tempered, mainly by the presence of Settingspecific roles. However, the behaviors exhibited or selected by a group of individuals
can often seem somewhat kaleidoscopic if one has only a small sample to draw from.
As samples accumulate, patterns emerge. Consequently, the selectivity of Setting and
Situation Specific behaviors exhibits an exquisite sensitivity. This sensitivity is
illustrated by the individual instantly and accurately sensing what has changed at each
level, from the global environment down to the idiosyncratic behavior of members of a
group in a Setting as its Setting-specific Situations arise and Situation-specific
behaviors evoked. Sensing the change in the structure of their environment, the
individual typically accommodates appropriately. The un-orchestrated, Setting and
Situation Specific, choreography of behaviors flows and no one stops to notice the
exquisite sensitivity of even the most disturbed participants.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
External Structures
External Environmental Context, Constraints, Settings, Roles, and Situations (Cont.).
a) Now, given the above definitions and descriptions of functions, the task for you is to learn how to
become conscious of these levels of external contexts; to understand how they influence you; and
to understand how they cause you to make conscious decisions either to immunize yourself against
their effects; to selectively change aspects of the context; or to creatively adjust your own behavior
so as to optimize success in reaching your goals within a context.
b) If your focus is on or your concern is about relationships, then the task becomes trying to assess
and understand the significant aspects of the various levels of the external, environmental contexts
and what kinds of influences these significant aspects are having on the relationship. Once you
have a tentative understanding of these influencing aspects, your interpretation of the interactions in
the relationship can shift from attributing to personalities or the motives of the inner person to
attributing causality to structural influences. Finally, you and the ‘other’ in the relationship can
begin to approach the structure using the alternatives in a).
c) If your focus is on an intellectual project, then the task becomes trying to assess what it is about the
structure of the context that is influencing your choices, plans, and conduct with respect to your
project. You could ask if there are roles of persons vis-à-vis you in the relevant setting or context
that potentially could influence the way you choose, plan, and conduct your project? If so, are they
diverting you from what you truly want or are inspired to do? Are you imagining or exaggerating the
degree of influence they are exerting? Could their suggestions actually be a positive influence?
You could ask if other structural factors are influencing you, such as other types of requirements:
temporal aspects; specified audience; types of resources available; the purpose or significance of
the project; who will evaluate and how will be the project evaluated; possible comparisons with
others conducting such projects; personal conflicts in this context; and possible constraints and
official requirements concerning the project itself, for example? Are there other types of
relationships that might be exerting an influence? Furthermore, are there personal factors such as
preparedness for this type of project; emotional or health factors; relevant skills; long range
personal goals; personal or family relationship factors; economic factors, and the like? Once you
have assessed these structural factors you can use the same strategies mentioned in a) again to
help you deal with them.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
7
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Perception and Memory
•Perception, Reception, Retrieval: As was mentioned above, people have an exquisite sensitivity to
their environment. Your senses are perceiving this world. Yet, you are constantly ‘not’ noticing parts of
your world. This may sound like a contradiction. The reason it is not a contradiction is that while you
are exquisitely perceiving, you are also ‘selectively’ receiving what you perceive. You are aware, I am
sure, of the fact that while you are focused on some task or event, you have been oblivious to most
other things in your world. This selective noticing and not noticing what your senses are perceiving is
going on all of the time. Without knowing it, you have established patterns of ‘not noticing’ huge
segments of your world. The status of these ‘deselected’ items is that they simply do not exist for you.
This is true not only for you but also for everyone else in your world. On the other hand, the seemingly
non-existent world may contain factors or information that could possibly be of vital or enormously
significant importance to you, especially as you approach some new project or task.
To grasp the significance of this fact, or process, to you, you could examine, or attend to,
the processes of perception operating in your self or in some other single individual to try to understand
or assess how you or they tend to uniquely perceive the world. Try detecting what you screen out.
Probe others to see what they may be screening out. Things of great significance are typically there and
going through changes that could be important to you but you cannot react to them if, for you, they are
‘not there’. Each individual is sensing these changes in their external world, or perceiving them, and as
they do, they each react with varying degrees of receptivity.
So, perception, reception, and retrieval are important in two ways. First, for the ‘other’,
receptivity means that that individual is focused and as such begins to retrieve memories related to their
focus. This happens very rapidly and is rarely detectable by other people. The memories they are
retrieving are a result of their unique life history and history of exposure to the object of focus.
Consequently, you may need to determine what it is in the world that the ‘other’ is not receiving, or, if
they are perceiving and retrieving what you expect or want, then the task is to determine what they
might be retrieving from ‘their’ memory bank that is distinctly different from what ‘you’ would retrieve.
Second, you need to make this same kind of analysis with respect to yourself. The way you approach
new situations and new projects may be decidedly uncreative if you cannot break out of this kind of
solipsism. If you are not taking this possibility into consideration with respect to the other or your
audience, you will not be successful in getting them to enter the world of novel insights you are
creating.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
8
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Internal Representation of External Structures
•Internal Representation of Environmental Contexts and Schemata for Social Settings: Internal memories
in the present awareness tend to be for the immediate objects of focus. Our senses perceive an enormous plethora of
stimuli and from that an extremely limited amount is received. What is received has meaning which is derived from past
experiences and starts a spreading to related past experiences or memories, a process referred to here as retrieval.
These memories are in the form of Internal Representations of the Environment so that whatever is received and retrieved
is within a context that is supplied by the way our unique history has constructed a world, your world.
From the beginning of people’s lives these representations build upon one another. Our constructed
world becomes more elaborated and coherent. These representations of environmental contexts expand and become
increasingly differentiated. Each representation gradually begins to have a structure that consists of levels as mentioned
in the section on Duplex Pyramids. The parts of that stratified external world have a coherence which, as a type, is
unique to each individual. The stratified external world can be taught and learned so that, in spite of our uniqueness,
there evolves a commonality and language that makes it possible for people to communicate about the types and
relations and other attributes when perceiving the same things. We can call the shared commonality when perceiving or
relating to the same thing a Schema. One could examine the unique way each person retrieves, learns, shares, etc., such
Schemata. One could also examine Schemata themselves. For example, some schemata are for social situations like a
game in sports, or educational classrooms, for example.
The main point to consider in this context is that the structure of the levels of the external world is being
differentiated from one’s internal representation of that world. In one case you look outward and in the other you look
inward. When you begin your intellectual project it is important to keep this distinction in mind. The question to ask
yourself is, in what sense or degree is your internal representation of the world, especially the extremely small part of the
world, similar to that of other persons? How communicable to others is what is in your head; the small part of the world
upon which you are focused; the perspective you have on it; the way you see it situated within and between the levels of
structure of the external world or representations thereof; the question or insight about it that you wish to communicate
to interested persons; and the significance of the way you plan to go about studying it? How do you bridge these subtle
and complex distinctions from your mind to the mind of the interested others?
If you assume there is an automatic, one to one, exact transmission of what is going on in your head to
that of another to or with whom you are communicating, you practically guarantee that they will be conceiving something
far wide of the mark and you will get back from them remarks that can make you quite frustrated. The frustration will
most likely be mutual and will cause further disappointment and sense of being misunderstood. Once you have a clear
understanding of this dynamic, it should help motivate you to attend to ways you can bridge the ‘natural’ communication
gap. This will be one of your major challenges.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
9
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Learning and Accommodation
•Assimilation vs. Accommodation: As the person encounters a setting and its situations, if there has
been little change, their retrieval will be in the form of assimilating it to familiar Schemata. If there is
radical change, the familiar Schemata will not work. Now they have to accommodate, or change, their
Schemata so that it faithfully and accurately matches the changed reality. Accommodation requires
mental effort and often emotional adjustment as well. A person’s ego can be involved with the original
Schemata, or the person’s reference group may insist on their own rendition of the Schemata, resulting
in inner conflict between what they are confronting in this new, radically changed situation and these
tendencies to maintain their original Schemata, their reference group’s version, or their own rendition of
its revision. If your project or experiment happens to present subjects with information that is
inconsistent with their current knowledge and beliefs, you may need a way to detect this and to induce
accommodation.
•Schemata and Schemes, Though Intertwined, Involve Two Different Kinds of Learning. A schema is a
set of concepts that go together is such a way that perceiving one member of the set will result in calling
the whole set into play. For instance, hearing a baseball play over the radio should automatically call into
play schemata of ballparks, bases, players, rules, etc. A scheme is a set of behaviors that are bound up
with a schema such that perceiving one member of a schema’s set will also call into play a readiness to
enact the scheme’s set of behaviors as appropriate. For instance, if called upon to play ball and assume
a position on the field, one could grab a mitt, run to the position and be ready to play. One can learn a
schema without learning the scheme but not vice versa. When a schema is learned, its recall will be
greatly enhanced if the related scheme is learned, the latter, however, requiring considerable more time
to be learned with proficiency. For example, it is difficult to learn the schema for the game of baseball.
Learning this schema is made easier and more thorough if the schemes are learned as well. This type of
memory is more enduring and more easily recalled as well. If a couple is taking a class on
communication effectiveness in an intimate relationship, learning to enact the related skills makes
learning the concepts more thorough, works out the bugs, results in much better transfer to the home
situation, and more resistant to fading over time. In a test of some types of knowledge a subject with
relevant knowledge and experience should do much better than a with only knowledge. Might gender,
etc., be sources of such differences. Would this difference, if not taken into consideration, skew your
results and their interpretation? In conducting an experiment on human behavior it might help to keep
this distinction in mind. Also, in another vein, in designing a study, or experiment, it might help to make
a trial run since enactment of the behaviors related to conducting the experiment is likely to reveal any
bugs or mistakes in the planned execution of the design, but also increase proficiency in conducting the
experiment.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Response: Schemata plus Schemes
•Memory Pattern Readiness for Prior Schemata and Prior Schemes of Completed vs. Incomplete Goals: The internal
representations of settings and situations, or Schemata, are accompanied by patterns of behavioral response. We can call
these patterns of readiness-to-respond-Schemes. Schemes are bound to Schemata so that when Schemata require
accommodation, their Schemes must also accommodate and new patterns of readiness to respond have to be learned.
These revised schemes also tend to be relatively intransigent. Both Schemata and Schemes are in the mind. At this point
our analysis is only about what is in the mind and not about the actual interaction with the world. For example, if you have
a new project that involves writing, you approach the writing assignment or project using assimilation of what this means
in this instance to your familiar Schemata and Schemes. For creativity to occur, you may have to detect your assimilative
retrieval process and prepare yourself to break out of the pattern, or accommodate. While the situation or requirement may
not demand it, nevertheless your new, self-imposed criteria to be creative may require it.
Schemes bound to schemata are in the mind but the schemes get there as a result of behavior, acts that are
required for interaction with the world and other people when schemata are in play. The behavior may be verbal in the
forms of writing, speech, or reading behaviors that communicate or use the schemata correctly in interaction with the
world. The behavior may be acts that have an impact on both the physical or personal worlds. If a couple is speaking of
their love for one another, they each have schemata for the concept ‘love’ with love related behaviors bound up with it. If
the love schemes of one do not match the partner’s schema and schemes for love, interaction between them will not flow
smoothly and feelings will have a sense of pretense, fakeness, or lack of authenticity that is vexing and perplexing rather
than the expected sensuous, almost melodic, confluence of love. With divergence, the ecstasy of romance fades into a
sense to struggle to accommodate, please, and to make it work.
Let us say that you were given a clearly delineated idea of what a certain writing project was to look like and you
find yourself immersed in the project and creative insights begin to emerge. These emergent insights seem to need a
format that differs from the one prescribed. The format prescribed, and the format needed if it is to be tailored for the
emerging creative insight, begin to feel like they do not harmonize. The conflict reveals itself in the writing schemes as
tension, paralysis, or an emotional seizure. One could mistakenly label the interrupted flow as writer’s block but perhaps
we should reserve that term for the earliest or prewriting stage. If one chooses to continue to comply with the prescribed
format, performance of the task will feel arduous and time will feel heavy and dragging. Pleasure that accompanies
unfettered creativity is transformed into drudgery.
Upon official completion of the project, one path will lead to a sense of fulfillment and the other will lead to a sense
of doubt as to whether it was really worth all of the effort. In the love relationship, a time will come when there is a feeling
it has been a one-sided matter of doing all the giving, emptiness, resignation, smoldering upheaval, or rage and rejection.
A delicate attention to the way schemes are unfolding, usually unneeded if not impossible if things are clicking, should
clue you into the acknowledgement of a mismatch inhibiting creativity and one must disengage and work on finding a
satisfying revision of the project or some major aspect of it, if fulfillment is to be possible.
Designing, practicing, executing are all stages that may require detection of this inner sense of disharmony and
struggle in order to make revisions that can maintain the creative fire that produces a higher quality of work.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
11
A. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Assessment through Interaction with Schemata
A.Mental Assessment Levels:
This topic refers to an examination of the way persons tend to assess the relevant
levels of the world from the perspective of their schemata of the external world and human internal worlds.
As you begin to consider possibilities for the subject of your project, consider also how each possibility will be
situated within the complex of all of the related disciplines with which you are familiar and re-examine their domains of
focus and levels of structure.
The various disciplines of arts and sciences, technology, fine arts, and humanities exist within hierarchies. There are
those that address very large domains and extended temporal perspectives and from this global level disciplines descend
through narrowing levels of scope down to those with a microscopic and immediate focus. In some way all disciplines can
be seen as related. From a different perspective the non-academic domains of government, business and industry, the
professions, education, non-governmental organizations, religious institutions and the like also exist within hierarchies.
Considering the various degrees of scope and temporal perspectives of each of these domains one can discern their levels
from the broadest and temporally expansive to the most local and present oriented. If you were to draw a multidimensional
map representing all of the above domains and then pinpoint where your study or project lies within the multidimensional,
conceptual space, how would this affect your perspective on your project? For example, try to imagine where yours would
fit if you include the rest of the nations and cultures in the world in your assessment? Astronomy? Molecular biology?
On the other hand, returning from imagination to reality, restrict your focus to your own discipline and contemplate
its nature. What is it about? What kinds of research are done in your discipline? What is the range of topics typically
studied? What are the typical types of research designs? Where does your project fit within the range of topics and
experiments? What is the history of studies related to your topic? What do you think is the significance of strain of
studies that are related to your subject? What significance do you think your study will contribute to this line of research?
Slipping back into imagination and stepping outside of your discipline and line of research, how might your study’s
results relate to its counterpart in the real world, that part of the real world that is most relevant to your study. How might
your results contribute to that segment of the real world? Is yours designed to support what is already validated and in
vogue, add to it, raise questions about it, or does it set forth more viable alternatives to it?
Once you feel you have a reasonably clear perspective on the significance of your study, begin to consider what
effects your results, if employed, could possibly have on the structure and systems encompassing the real world arena to
which your study is relevant. Remember that structures and systems of organizations are notoriously difficult to change.
Typically, when there is a problem in an organization, the participants tend single out an individual(s) as the source of the
problem. If teachers have a problem student, it seldom occurs to them that the source could be in the structure rather than
the individual. The structure is sacrosanct and therefore the teaching and classroom management techniques which are a
part of that structure are also. To suggest the methods, or other structural aspects, should be changed could be met with
the same reception as would an escaped convict crashing a formal, exclusive, socialite party. Consequently, it should be a
definite prerequisite to have an extensive familiarity with the context within which you are recommending the results of
your study be employed.
To make the kind of assessment recommended above one must first have some degree of understanding of the
meaning and nature of structures and systems. This will be introduced in the following slides.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
12
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Relating to External Structures
A.Mental Assessment Levels: The Concept of Structure
Accommodating to a new paradigm, such as Structuralism, requires intense mental labor. People do not follow that road
without great trepidation, frustration, and even resentment. Before the journey, it just looks full of uncertainty and potential
danger. When they 'do' go up that road, they may reach a pinnacle and look down to a vast new view that is clear,
refreshing, and rewarding. One gets that great 'Aha' feeling that comes so rarely. Do you think is it possible to induce this
kind of accommodation and, if so, what approaches might have the greatest possibility for success?
The key concept to look 'for' and 'at' here is the concept of structure. It is necessary yet difficult to communicate the
total, novel idea of Structuralism. As mentioned above, it is often hard to accommodate to any different paradigm of the
world. The natural tendency is to try to fit the new into familiar concepts, or assimilate. In the case of Structuralism, you
are being asked to step back and decommission the familiar and look as though you are seeing and learning for the first
time. Though difficult, could it be rewarding to train oneself to think in terms of structures?
When a paradigm or conception of the world changes radically, it can shake up a person mentally and even physically.
Everything in the mind that is related to the new concept has to be re-organized. Many things that were thought to be true
and valuable may now come to be seen as useless or even counter-productive. People hold their beliefs and conceptions
dearly and take them personally, of course. Letting go is mentally hard but even harder emotionally.
As you read further about structure, see if you think it is possible to test people’s reactions to the structuralism thesis.
What methods might be used to successfully reorient people to heuristically adopting the Structuralist approach? If
subjected to an experiment to bring about a change in perspective with regard to Structuralism, is it possible to measure
what people who have changed versus those who have not do? Could it be possible to have them report on the thought
processes involved in making the change in perspective?
What is Structure? Structure is a perspective, a way of looking at the world and at organizations. Structures consist
of aspects, or components, of an organization and the way those aspects or arranged. The hierarchy of authority is an
aspect of structure. Schedules, formal roles, location, the arrangement of seating in a setting, whether activities are
monitored or measured, rules of conduct, modes of communication, equipment, purpose of activities, and all of those
aspects or factors that are influencing the ongoing processes and their outcomes can be included in your analysis of a
structure. Even the history of an organization or activity that is a part of that organization can be included in your
construction of a structural perspective.
Structures determine the kinds of 'situations' that develop and the kinds of "interactions between people" that take place
during these situations. Therefore when problems arise that cause us to focus on one or more problem individuals, with
the structural approach we have to ‘reverse figure and ground’ in the Gestalt. In this structural approach, the individual
personalities are not considered to be the cause, the structure is the cause. Individual personalities, like genetics,
contribute only a small percentage as a cause of behavior. To many this is likely to seem counterintuitive, contrary to a
long and hallowed tradition, and without confirming evidence. To test this assertion, one could find two instances each
with a person who is thought to be emotionally disturbed and in one case analyze the structure and try making changes
that should ameliorate the symptoms and a second case in which counseling or other treatment alternatives are tried and
compare the results of each.
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A.Mental Assessment Levels: The Concept of Structure (Cont.)
Looking through the lens of structuralism versus individualism is like going from using our natural
eyesight and looking at the immediate, close at hand, environment to mapping terrain from high in the
atmosphere with satellites and powerful telescopes. From the perspective of outer space, metaphorically
speaking, you see relations and understand patterns and causes as never before and are astounded.
However, from this perspective, you now understand the complex web of relations and now know what to
do as never before. Learning to analyze and change structures requires this kind of new way of thinking,
but gives you a very powerful tool for good. What kind of experience could you set up so that people
could take this kind of perspective with respect to something like a school or institution? How could you
find out what insights the subjects might have gained about structuralism versus individualism? What
suggestions might they come with up to alter and improve a particular structure like that of a public school
or even a single classroom? What variables in the person would they be attempting to influence and what
results would they hope to achieve? What other settings or organizations could be used for such an
experiment?
When the members of an organization are assisted to get this perspective, they begin to have a sense of
empowerment and to share a positive vision. As they work from a holistic vision they are likely to feel a
deep sense of ownership and profound sense of satisfaction with their individual contributions and the
achievements of their group and the total institution. What effect on their product could such an
incorporated holistic vision have?
Descending from the view from outer space the levels of structure can emerge. The levels of structure
can correspond to levels of academic disciplines from macro disciplines like economics, political science,
or environmental sciences down to sociology to social psychology to personality to cognition and
emotion, to physiology and genetics. A similar descent is possible from the macro to micro in the applied
disciplines like management and education. In the non-academic, real, world this kind of descent is not
represented by an organization’s hierarchy, but rather by a movement, from the perspective of external
structures, from encompassing structures like the total organization to settings to situations and to the
immediately observable interactions between individuals. While from the perspective of internal
structures the descent is from the immediate and observable to the unobservable, historical, extremely
and only indirectly divined, but stored, life history and specie’s genetic history. Could a project combine
relevant academic, applied, and real world levels as an interdisciplinary study?
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A. Mental Assessment Levels: The Concept of Structure (Cont.)
Structures are not things. Structures are the way we conceive of things, our perspectives on things.
There can be an infinite variety of conceptions of structures. Taking perspectives and conceiving of
structures with respect to any phenomena is an art. Typically, people see what is immediately
present. It is possible to see the same entity or group of entities or parts from the perspective of
history or histories. It is also possible to see the same group from the perspective of its place within
encompassing structures, in the midst of coextensive or related groups or parts, or as a structure that
itself encompasses substructures. You can create and choose the components and systems of the
structure as well as the perspective you will take on them. Once created, you can change them again.
You can change both the conceptions of structures and the perspectives you will take on them. They
are there merely to help you analyze and solve problems more effectively.
Each time a structure is conceived, it is then possible to observe and analyze the interrelations of its
components. One can examine the structure of a poem, a game, a machine, a tree, a body of water, or
anything. After deciding upon your units of analysis and isolating particular units in a structure or in
systems, you can observe how these units influence one another. At first it may appear that one unit
is the cause of the behavior of another unit. However, when taking a structural perspective, it could
become the unit or units are a long standing part of the history of the organization. Historically it has
its place within the arrangement of numerous units with a more encompassing structure. By
continuing to experiment with structural perspective taking, a more comprehensive understanding of
the organization may emerge. Such insights might even suggest more effective strategies for
rearranging units and aspects of an organization. At the same time, from this structural perspective, it
may become possible to see and understand why prior strategies have not worked or worked only
briefly. In fact, it could become apparent that some solutions that were successful for one component
of an organization, ironically, contributed to dysfunction in other components. Occasionally success
is achieved for the short term but promotes dysfunction later on.
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Relating to Systems within Structures
A. Mental Assessment Levels: Systems within Structures (Cont.)
Structure and the Duplex Pyramids
The Matrix of Systems
An essential part of structure is the concept of systems. 'Structures' predetermine 'systems' and systems
consist of patterns that are shaped and constrained by structures.
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Learning to Create a Taxonomy of Systems
Mental Assessment Levels:
Creating a Taxonomy of Systems
When examining the way components are interrelated or affect one another physically,
temporally, or psychologically, we are examining the systems within structures. Once
again, it is possible to take multiple perspectives on systems and examine their
interrelations and interactions. The important point to weigh here is that it is the taking of
multiple perspectives on structures and on how structures are encompassing systems and
then on the systems themselves. This approach yields the most powerful results. When
attempting to restructure structures and systems, the advance work done by taking different
perspectives is likely to yield the most effective and enduring results.
I have listed below nine systems that I have found valuable when analyzing and
troubleshooting organizations. These are arbitrary categories and other categories that
someone else might find more useful could be substituted for them.
Whatever categories you choose to use, they can best be developed when working
within each organization rather than from the outside. An initial analysis will yield data that
seem to be related. As you progress in your analysis, your data will represent factors that
begin to group themselves into clusters which have an interlocking nature. These factors
are prone to have more connection with and influence upon one another than other factors.
If extracting all other factors but those in your cluster does not essentially disturb the inner
coherence of these clusters of factors, you probably have constructed a ‘system’. Likewise,
you should find that adding other extraneous factors also has little effect on the cluster.
Yet, removing a cluster’s factor does essentially alter all others in the cluster. Using this
analytical method you can arrive at a set of very useful systems.
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Mental Assessment Levels:
Creating a Taxonomy of Systems
I started referring to these clusters of factors as Systems. It seemed to help if I
looked at everything in a cluster as a System in which all parts were integrally
related and all parts maintained the pattern of the total System even in the face of
concerted efforts by top administration, or any other authority with the power to
do so, to change one or another part of a System. In other words, the parts of a
System maintained each other and changes to one part resulted in eventual
pressures by the other parts to return the whole system from the change back to
the status quo of that System.
Systems
Below is a set of systems that have proven helpful in the past.
1. Vertical Systems or Hierarchies
2. Horizontal Systems: Locations, Layouts, and Distribution of Functions
3. Performance Systems: Job Requirement, Evaluations, and Measures of
Results
4. Financial and Compensation Systems
5. Communication Systems
6. Temporal and Longitudinal Systems
7. Social Systems: Organizations, Informal Associations, and Families
8. Educational, Training, and Development Systems
9. Histories and Descriptions of Entities within Levels of External
Structures
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A. Mental Assessment Levels: Interactions between Systems
While all of the Systems seem to be relatively independent of each other, nevertheless each interacts
with one another to exert pressure toward maintaining the status quo of the whole.
When analyzing an organization, it is effective to take each system, examine it, and try to determine the
way it works within the whole and grasp its essence. If problems in the organization have previously been
noted, then using a systematic method of looking at each system and trying to assess whether and, if so,
which, aspects of that system might possibly be contributing to each of the cited problems should yield
useful results. This method usually yields information that can lead to corrective actions that can be
included in eventual restructuring plans.
However, the analysis must be taken a step further. Typically, there are interactions between two or
more systems that could be causing problems that become evident during this process. For example,
taking from the list below, Vertical Systems, Performance Systems, and Financial and Compensation
Systems could be interacting in such a way as to prevent a recommended reform from being enacted.
Certain persons in the organization become oppositional and therefore designated as ‘people with
problems’. Yet, when the problem with these systems are corrected, both the initially cited problems and
the ‘people with problems’ dissolve and a well functioning and productive organization emerges once
again.
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A. Mental Assessment Levels: Restructuring Using Structures, Processes, and Systems
It occurred to me that, if one were to implement a new program successfully, and one that would endure
over time, it would be necessary to work with the entire institution and all of its Systems simultaneously
and not just try to implement a single program by itself. While it is impossible to work on everything at
once, it is possible to have a blueprint of the totality in advance and to address individual parts as they
arose, in their own time. A change in any part would be addressed from the perspective of the whole
blueprint. Pilot projects restricted to an insulated program or department would be doomed to eventual
regression the status quo. The whole organization and all members or employees would participate in the
change of each part of the organization. This would result in each person being involved in, having
intimate knowledge of, and incorporating each step toward the restructuring of the whole.
With participation and input from everyone, a wide range of different perspectives are aired and shared,
contributions acknowledged, and implications examined. From these insights and suggestions coming
out of the whole organization it is possible to devise a comprehensive, integrated set of strategies
designed to solve problems within structures and systems.
TAKING THE TEMPORAL PERSPECTIVE
When working with a large institution or organization, it is important to consider the past, present, and
future of the multidimensional interaction of levels of external structures and systems with the current
internal structures and processes of participants. It is important to include in the restructuring
discussions both the history of the institution and the histories that individuals have had with the
institution. The institution’s history is a foundation for understanding its present status as well as a
foundation upon which to devise future plans and goals and implement restructuring strategies.
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A. Mental Assessment Levels: External Structures and Systems Can Selectively Affect Internal Structures and
Processes. In the slides that follow we will examine structures and systems in some detail and attempt to show that
selected aspects of structures and systems can cause selective effects in the internal structures and processes of an
institution’s client population. Since one cannot see structures and systems per se as they are a matter of the
perspective you take, you have to imagine an aspect of a structure or of systems within the context of the whole and
then try to imagine changes and how each or all of the changes might selectively affect internal structures and
processes. Below are some guidelines for undertaking this exercise.
The Implications of Choices between Approaches to the Planning and Implementation
of Structural Changes in the Institution.
With respect to institutions for youth and related types of institutions, whenever someone proposes some change of
policies or the way the institution is organized, the question to ask is: “What traits or qualities are likely to be called
out from the client population as a result of these changes?”
What institutional people tend to ask is:
1. “What changes in policies or organization are likely to make the institution most efficient as far as the work of the
staff is concerned?”
What the administration and staff should ask is:
2. “How might these changes in the client population affect the way they adjust to their home community, family, and
free organizations like school and sports or clubs, after they are discharged from the institution?”
Ironically, 1. typically seems like it will be more efficient before the proposal is implemented, but, after implementation, the
efficiency of the staff decreases and the behavior of the youth in the institution and post release becomes more
negative. The decrease in positive behavior is typically blamed on the fact that the institution is receiving a more
negative client population.
Ironically, 2. typically seems like it will be more inefficient before the proposal is implemented because it is initially more
demanding of the staff and less harsh with the youth. However, after implementation, the efficiency of the staff
eventually begins to increase and there is a marked increase in the youths’ positive behavior both in the institution
and post release. This increase tends to be attributed to the fact that the institution is receiving a better quality of
client population.
Using Counterfactuals in Making Your Decision
Imagine what it would be like if certain elements or aspects of your institution and its program did not exist.
Imagine what it would be like if certain elements or aspects that are not present were introduced.
Imagine that you had the freedom and authority to experiment with subtracting or adding elements or aspects and if
they worked or there was no harm you could repeat the process and build changes on top of one another.
Imagine that you could experiment with and use any strategies for making changes that you chose.
Do you think you could find a way to restructure your institution
so that it would produce optimal results and reduce or eliminate negative results?
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A. External Mental Assessment Levels:
1. Extrospective: This Level refers to the characteristics of the larger context, the organization, building, profession,
neighborhood, or even current events that could be having a prominent or subtle effect on the receptivity or involvement
of the subject. You can also choose any size environmental context you think is meaningful for your analysis. You
could choose your or any other decade, era, millennium, country, culture, or whatever. You can choose the
Extrospective Level or dimension that is currently encompassing your study, but you could also select a comparable
one from a different time in history or place on the globe for comparative purposes. The point is to consider that your
immediate context may restrict the possibilities for generalization for claim of universality. Your perspective on this
consideration is of paramount importance, as we shall see.
2. Extroceptive: This Level refers to the visible room, location, or setting for the experiment or type of activity.
Extroceptive means how you or the other perceives the immediate, observable setting. What perspective is being taken
on this level of the external world. Each setting has its own characteristics. For example, characteristics could consist
of the activity taking place in the setting; the purpose; the schedule or other temporal factors; the roles typically in play
in the activity; the nature and characteristics of the participants; the types of relationships that might exist between
participants; the furniture and decor; the rules or customs in play; how it is viewed from the point of view of outsiders;
what significance or impact it may have on participants’ lives; and, of course particularly, the agenda. Any of these
salient characteristics of a setting could be creating an effect or making an impression on the subject and evoking
unwanted or unaccountable mental or emotional attitudes toward the transactions and purpose of the experiment or
activity. Another important consideration is how the external levels above and below are each, in turn, influencing the
mind set and intentional processes of the participants. These characteristics can be varied and measured to attempt to
determine how they influence the outcomes you are interested in.
3. Exteroceptive: This Level refers to the immediate contact with objects and persons. If you observe and listen to how
participants or subjects behave in a setting, you, as well as the participants, can notice how formal roles are being
assumed and enacted. You can notice what informal roles persons are taking and how they express themselves in these
roles: their facial expressions; how and where eyes are focused; voice characteristics; who is relating to whom; who is
relating to and listening and talking to whom; characteristics of the group’s communication and vocabulary; whether
they direct their communications to the topics of the unfolding agenda; whether they attend to the focus group
members; their body language; whether persons are acting with appropriate timing in harmony with the ongoing activity;
whether they are adhering to instructions, suggestions, requests, and positive or negative feedback. You can compare
how their behavior changes as and after they enter, during the activity, and as the program or activity is drawing to a
close. You can select any of these characteristics you wish for measurement so as to determine how features of the
program or activity and/or factors from the Extroceptive and Extrospective Levels are influencing the group and selected
types of participants. Having this information can lead to experimenting with the aforementioned features and changing,
extracting, or adding features according to your hunches as to what will produce the kinds of effects you want or your
purpose requires. If you decide to move to a consideration of the Internal world of your subjects, clients, or participants,
you now have information that can assist you in assessing what has been referred to as persons’ exquisite sensitivity to
their world and its effect on their intentional processes.
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B. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
B.Internal Mental Assessment Levels: This topic refers to the basic and most elementary processes
of self perception and self examination. This involves not only self examination but also examining how
other persons tend to assess themselves. An assumption is made that this process begins early in life
and becomes increasing more elaborate throughout the person’s life. It is also assumed that people learn
from their own experience and from the feedback of others to examine themselves in terms of
differentiated levels of self awareness and self knowledge.
The first and most primitive level is sensory experience. The second and third levels are derived
from interaction and feedback from others with respect to all three of the relevant levels of their internal
world. The internal levels are built up from perceptual experience and social interaction that is embedded
in the three levels of the structure of the external world. This knowledge is interpreted from the
perspective of the person’s combined a) schemata of their external world and their schemes that are
bound up with the schemata and the b) schemata and schemes of their internal world. While we see and
talk about self schemata as belonging to and referring to us and world schemata as belonging to the
world, actually, the two are inextricably bound together. A project studying selves or personality,
therefore, is based on a false but necessary division of self from world.
The converse is also true since, for humans, the external world, whether material or social, is
cultural and the basis of ‘cultural’ is that characteristic of humans we call memory. Metaphorically
speaking, humans carry around a sketch of the small amount of the world they have seen, experienced,
and learned or been taught. Culture exists because we all carry around our tiny, idiosyncratic sketches,
each sketch having some few little brush strokes we share in common with some others’ sketches, some
having more in common than others. We find strokes that allow us to hook onto these brush strokes of
others and try to create little shared pictures that make us feel like we see the world in the same way or
are seeing the same world.
The inner and outer are not exactly different sides of the same coin or mirror images since the inner
is such a tiny reflection of the totality of the external world. Whether we like it or not, the division between
self and world is true in a sense. When studying individuals, we never see their sketch. It is our words
that guide us by trial and error toward a consensus that we are seeing or talking about the same thing. If
this leads to effective, cooperative action, then, in a pragmatic sense, the consensus is ‘good enough’.
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B.Mental Assessment Levels (Cont.): Often there are problems and the cooperative action is not
effective. Then we may try to learn more about the other’s sketch but also the one doing the sketching. In
other words, we want to find out what this other is like, discover their attributes and traits. We may even
go so far as to try to discover how they got that way. If feedback suggests ‘we’ are the problem, then we
turn this probing in upon ourselves and we call this introspection.
Therefore, in the final analysis, paradoxically, the distinction between the external and the internal is,
after all, only a needed pragmatic distinction and the assumption of realism that everyone sees the same
world, or has the same inner sketch, is also a pragmatic necessity.
As you get deeper into designing, executing, and writing about your experiment or project, there are
likely to come phases or points at which you will want to back off and examine how you have been
relating to your project. Your perspective does not come with a guarantee of correctness. How has your
mind been oriented and how has ‘it’ been attacking the various stages and tasks of the project. Should
you question your assumptions? As this perspective takes shape in your imagination, you can mull over
and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your progress and consider possible alternatives and their
merits. You may get ideas for changes you might want to make at these junctures and sketch out your
revisions before reengaging in the project itself.
Similarly, you may want to examine what has been, and is, going on with the subjects of your
experiment. If yours is not an experiment but rather some other kind of intellectual project, your
experience so far may cause you to want to step back and delve deeper into what the interior world of
your subjects might be like and get a deeper feel for how they might be feeling about, seeing, and relating
to themselves, to you, and the various levels of the external world. You might want to get a deeper feel for
differences among individuals you are studying or differences among types of persons in your
population. How do you go about assessing these and other relevant issues and assumptions
concerning your population or populations? How might they seem when looked at from the point of view
comparison populations? Is there a way of getting a closer approximation to an understanding of your
subjects and how to go about structuring your study?
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B.Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.)
4.Interoceptive: First, this Level is the point where you are directly in sensory contact with the
physical and personal aspects of your experiment and its subjects. Putting yourself in their place, you
can attempt to sense how each of the different physical aspects of the setting might be affecting them.
Second, this is the point where you try to get inside what your subjects’ are sensing in this setting as
subjects of the experiment. You can ask yourself about each stage of your experiment and how your
subjects might be feeling about the immediate situation, the surroundings, the immediate task, and
how they might perceive these elements. As subjects, their reactions might be quite different from
your own. If you decide to ask what their reactions are, then, of course, if this is an experiment, you
run the risk of contaminating the experiment. If you plan to run the experiment again, you can ask
these questions, using a non-threatening technique, when the experiment is over.
When you ‘look’ at your, or the, setting and its subjects and constituent objects, your
‘looking’ is automatic or second nature and you can readily describe objects and surface
characteristics. However, if you step back and ‘regard’ how you are looking and what you are seeing
and how your perspective may be idiosyncratic or unique due to your purposes and possibly not
shared by everyone, this is a quite different way of looking. If someone were to ask you to run your
fingers across a fabric and describe what it is like, you might, if it silk, say that it feels like silk. Doing
the same with burlap, you would say it feels like burlap. However, if you are next asked to describe the
sensations in your fingers, especially if you close your eyes, you might say of silk that it is smooth,
pliable, and cool, whereas the burlap sensation is rough, grainy, and coarse or inflexible.
With respect to subjects, you could observe that they are or are not assuming the desired
role of subject, doing well, compliant, progressing in a timely fashion and so on. On the other hand, if
you are asked to imagine that you are one or another of your subjects and imagine how they are seeing
the current situation, how they feel about and relate to you, how they feel about the task and how they
are relating to it at some particular moment; you have to get outside of yourself. At this point you
might sense or discover that how you had been seeing them and what their inner experience might
really be like could be vastly different. You might even realize that you do not know and perhaps had
better set up an extremely non-threatening situation in which you could elicit that kind of inner,
personal information from them. Yet, if you are conducting a controlled experiment, the only way you
could use this kind of information for altering the experiment would be to simply start over. Your
experiment would probably be rejected if you changed conditions or controls midstream. Experience
is a good teacher for the next experiment.
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B.Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) Introceptive: This Level has to do with current self knowledge: what one is feeling;
what one likes; the nature of one’s desires; one’s self concept as opposed to one’s generalized identity and specific
situational identities; how one’s public persona differs from one’s private self and how this difference affects one’s
feelings and moods and way of relating to others; the degree to which a person is transparent and authentic and the
degree to which one is empathetic; one’s communication skills; how one tends to perceive others and how this affects
one’s general style of relating and the way one relates to types of others; how one structures close relationships; one’s
capacity for bonding with others; one’s worldview and how this affects one’s way of being in the world; the kinds of
informal roles one tends to take in types of settings; what one’s informal roles are vis-à-vis family and extended family
members; one’s relation to various reference groups; how one sees one’s place in society; how one tends to structure
one’s life; how one reacts to types of situations; one’s level of maturity; one’s social skills; one’s kinds of knowledge,
learning style; one’s work and survival skills; the degree to which one tends to live in the past or future; how one envisions
their future; and the breadth, depth, and accuracy of one’s self awareness. These are all qualities we can ask one another
about. When we get answers from each other, we can compare answers to observable behavior. We make lack complete
accuracy in this kind of knowledge but we generally find that, given such knowledge, we can anticipate fairly well how the
other will act and we know how to act in synchrony fairly successfully. All of these qualities come together in the
individual as a Gestalt. People tend to get impressions of one another on the basis of the way all of these things come
together in that Gestalt without knowing or having the time or words to designate these qualities. Nevertheless, each
person is exquisitely sensitive to subtle changes in these qualities as they are exhibited in immediate situations just as
they are exquisitely sensitive to the structure of their immediate environment and subtle changes in it in the immediate
setting.
If you are conducting an experiment with human subjects, this enormously complex Gestalt is uniquely in flux with
each subject, yet each and every subject is reacting to the complex and ever changing structure of the experimental setting
and therefore tends to exhibit a degree of similarity in reaction to every facet of the structure of the experiment, including
the experimenter. How do you control for all of this in your experiment so that you are purely and exclusively testing and
measuring the precise variable or aspect of your subjects that is essential to your hypothesis? You do not. That is why in
such experiments statistical methods include a way of accounting for and estimating the ‘standard error of measurement’.
Because of this, you can never accurately generalize from your results to specific individuals but rather only to aggregates
of people with relatively similar characteristics and in relatively similar settings. It should also be plain that inferences
from your results to specific inner characteristics or processes will be very risky and such interpolations can never have
certitude.
If you are one of a group of persons collaborating in an experiment, you also have to be aware of and cope with the
enormous complexity of the Gestalt of each collaborator and yourself as well. Metaphorically speaking, you see yourself
and others only as the through the smoke and mirrors of something approaching magic. Appearances are always
deceiving. This is why transparency is so important; it helps to clear your smoke a bit. It is also why empathy and an nonthreatening stance is important when working with others, it helps reduce their smoke and also clears their mirror a bit so
that you may see more accurately how others are reacting to you.
When you study or experiment with people or institutions you and the structure of your study are most likely having
an effect [in addition to the complex constituents of their Gestalt mentioned above] on your subjects’ identity and perhaps
even their self concept even as you are conducting your experiment or testing them. This too can contaminate your results
and introduce error into your statistics. An awareness of, and sensitivity to, such influences can improve the accuracy of
your study and can help prevent negative effects on your subjects.
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Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective: Why and How We Probe to Discover Who We Are:
This Level has to do with a deeper examination of the self. Introspection can be dedicated or cursory. Occasionally
some unusual event or major alteration in one’s life leads to a more thorough self examination. Ending a significant
relationship; assuming a formal role in an organization or at work that is incongruent with one’s self concept; an
unsuspected, piercing comment about one’s self from another person; being rejected or excluded; even finally attaining
some coveted, long sought for goal; embarking on a new challenge, these are the kinds of things that induce a long-lasting
dwelling within thoughts about oneself. Questions, such as ‘Who am I? What am doing or going to do with my life? What
do I really want out of life? What is the meaning of life and particularly my life? Why am I this way? Why is life treating me
this way? Why do people treat me the way they do?’ can arise and cause much time to be spent probing into one’s self.
Often at these times the person can explore their recent to distant life history, especially the history of relationships with
family and significant others and what impact they have had on one’s life. The death of a loved one or going off to war
knowing one may face death may cause a deep and sometimes shattering questioning of the value of one’s life.
Information from interaction at the Introceptive Level can sometimes be the trigger for self examination. Contact with
something at the Interoceptive Level can evoke memories from the past and generate not only nostalgia but also a
questioning of how different life is now from that earlier period and how one could have arrived at this point in their life.
Such probing of the self is like groping in the dark when you do not even know what you are looking for. Asking
the question, ‘What is the matter with me?’ may lead one down many blind alleys. If this depiction is true for you, then how
much more will it be true for a search to discover what the nature of the ‘other’ is?
While we can observe and recall patterns of words and behavior, we cannot know the inner nature of ourselves or
others except indirectly and cannot know our deepest inner nature except very vaguely, we can know that, with rare
exceptions, all humans and most living creatures, at a minimum, experience degrees of pleasure and pain, have memory,
have feelings and emotions, have a sense of timing, can look ahead and execute goal directed behavior, can repeat and
correct goal seeking behaviors, and can act in synchrony with others. Unlike Introceptive knowledge, we cannot inquire
about these processes to get meaningful answers. These processes are basic and primitive and to know what they are like
we would have to be able to observe our mind as the processes are in play. We cannot observe our mind and we cannot
observe these processes in play. Like self knowledge, however, we know these processes indirectly, or at least we have
developed names for them. Nevertheless, these processes go on quite well without our having direct knowledge of them.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective: Psychotherapy and the Search for Self:
When interacting with others, we can ask such questions as “What are you feeling now?”; “Do you remember what
happened?”; “What do you want?”; “Could you try to do that better?”; “Can you wait until just the right moment?”. When
we say such things we usually get expected responses but we do not know how this is accomplished.
In a professional relationship like therapist and client, there is a structure to the relationship that involves
complementary, formal roles that call for postures and behaviors that are role specific. The subtle, basic, primitive
processes are unconsciously adapting as prescribed by the complementary roles. The structure of the roles is defining the
client. The processes of the client will change and develop in accord with what the therapist is calling out. While the client
is telling his life story and revealing problems, the structure of the role relationship is each of the client’s processes to
develop in a manner channeled by the way the therapist enacts his/her role. If one asks what kind of ego mastery skills the
client needs to develop versus what this particular role relationship is calling out, one might find a discrepancy. If, for
example, the therapist acts as the expert with the necessary knowledge and with control over the therapeutic process, then
the client will decommission his/her knowledge seeking, goal setting, and adventuring skills and will develop a passive
receptive ego. Regardless of the amount of insight gained in the session, if ego mastery skills are not being developed,
success outside the session is unlikely.
The results of early research on the degrees of success with various modalities versus quality of relationship
revealed and subsequently often substantiated, that it is the quality of the relationship that has the greatest and most
positive results. This is probably because what is referred to as a qualitative relationship is one that creates an
atmosphere which calls out and facilitates inner strength and ego mastery skills.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective: Sources of Self Definition:
Looking for a cause for the way one ‘is’ is made impossible if one has naïve and
animistic concepts of what cause and cause and effect relations are. Nevertheless, the
modern structured culture with its professionalism and ubiquitous media provides ready
made, though dubious, answers to questions of what is wrong with us, what ‘the’ cause is of
almost everything, and quick and easy solutions or treatments. When told that you
probably have ‘the problem that we just happen to have the cure for’ the new media reared
public responds in relief with ‘Oh happy day I can buy that fix and my problem will be gone
in a New York minute.’ When one of the human health professionals or pastoral counselor
says you are such and such a type, the new public reared to be dependent on the
professional authority responds with ‘Wow, there is a name for what I am so my questions
are answered and I have an identity validated by a genuine authority.’ When a reverend
says you are secure if you do what I say and believe what I tell you to, or a palm reader, or
psychic tells you what the future holds for you, the new public, reared on fantasy and a
sanitized social order, says, ‘Thank god! I don’t have to think for myself, I don’t have to go
through that hopelessly confusing search for self knowledge or figure life out for myself.
I’m saved! All I had to do was say 'I do believe.’ ’
Due to the structure of the media, it has become a major source of opinions and beliefs
about self and the world that have little relation to people’s behavior, have little impact on
one’s life conditions and welfare, making the two strangely inconsistent. On the other
hand, the enormous strides of technology extend power over nature while it separates
people from consequences upon nature. Technology homogenizes genders, expands the
range of choices and increases desires for things while it expands and shapes preferences
and interests, accelerates a shift of the nature of community from one’s neighborhood to
one’s work and from physical proximity to electronic communications, from community
enforced conformity to near unlimited lack of concern with conformity or anonymity
through impersonal electronic communications. This is an abbreviated description of
contemporary changes but it highlights the shift in cause and effect with respect to
shaping the self and self-concept and social identity.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective (Cont.): The structure of the new American social
order provides the suggestions to the definition of who I am:
‘Just listen to our next broadcast!’ If a person is out of the loop of this new social order, and many people are, they
are lost. No structure, no clue! High structure not only supplies its answers for you but rigidly prescribes and monitors
your adherence. No need for self examination or wrestling with the relationship challenges, great social issues, and ethical
dilemmas of life in the seamless weave of control present in many of our new social institutions and organizations,
whether political, religious, industrial, educational, military, athletic or recreational. No structure and you are lost,
everything is inscrutable, a void as oppressive as control, a bewildering, even terrifying mystery. The dictum now should
be, ‘Do not seek because you will not find.’ Degree-of-Structure of your social setting determines the manner and extent to
which you will be introspective and the degree to which your own unique self actively engages and exchanges with life.
Neither extreme is conducive to self examination. If you wish to probe for knowledge of selves and intentional processes,
look outward to structures.
Which approaches or conditions work to give you the kind of self knowledge or knowledge of others you
are seeking? If you are not seeking self knowledge but, rather your purpose is to study or experiment with
others to acquire knowledge of their selves, what and how much do you think you will learn from a highly
controlled, highly structured experiment? How much do you think you will learn from even the most carefully
constructed or the most open-ended technique for interviewing samples from a narrowly defined population or
a subculture? If your answer turns out to be ‘very little’, then perhaps the assumptions underlying your quest
have fundamental error. Perhaps the starting point of studying the person is the problem. The structure of our
national culture dictates that your focus will be on the individual, even when your discipline is sociological or
anthropological. But, just as the sun and not the earth is the center of our little universe, it is the structures of
human existence and not individuals within that provide the answers to who we are, how we got to be this way,
and where we are going.
If you want to know who you are, what you are like, and what causes you to be the way you are, look
carefully and long at the structures within which you exist, the structures you course through during your day
and throughout your life, the general structure of the conditions of your life. The way structures are designed is
reflected in the way people come to see the world and the way they see the world brings about a way of being in
the world which in turn is reflected in the kinds of moods ebb and flow in their lives. Each aspect of the
structure addresses some aspect of the self. If, for example, you design some aspect of the structure with the
purpose of giving the person self esteem, that design must evoke intentions to act and actions that are worthy
of self esteem. The design must include ways of letting the person know that their actions are respected and
valuable contributions not just to themselves but to the community. Words of esteem by themselves are not
sufficient. It is necessary that estimable actions are intentionally evoked, the person must want to and will to
act in estimable ways. The structure must be designed so that paths are open to them that lead to positive
growth and maturation and so that the consequences of positive, mature actions leave a recognizable record of
their positive impact on the structure and in the community.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective: the structure of life’s ages and stages also shape
personality and behavior.
Levels of Maturity and growing up from childhood to teenage to adulthood, coaching, teaching,
psychotherapy, management, law enforcement, religion, politics, business, marriage, parenting,
athletics, media communications, scientific research, international relations
With normal, non-delinquent, non-criminal, adults, the progression into and through the teen years and on
into adulthood has a pattern similar to that cited in the previous slide. Biological parents become
implicit others, peer groups become secondary implicit others, affiliations become a part of the
secondary implicit other as well. Passing beyond teenage to adulthood their parental implicit other
loses its dominance, peer groups become more influential, but affiliations such as profession, place of
occupation, and social and political clubs and organizations become dominant. The values of the
organizations with which one is primarily identified are ascendant over everything else. If the peer
group or parents maintain the strength they had from childhood and adolescence, these implicit
others diverge from the institutionalized implicit other and conflicts in values plague the person and
life choices become difficult and riddled with ambivalence and indecisiveness. Typically adults have
left behind or become emancipated from earlier peer groups and parents and their implicit others and
the institutionalized implicit takes over and provides a framework for the formation of a new, revised
set of values leaving the choice process consolidated, crystallized, consistent, and less vulnerable to
ambivalence.
Examining the affects of institutional, organizational reference groups on the dynamics of the self
Determinants of and Effects on the private person versus public persona
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective:
The Structure Of Nations’ Life Conditions, Cultures, And Communities
Shape Personality And Behavior.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in geophysical characteristics around the earth and under
its waters.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in structures and systems of the world.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in life sustaining and living conditions among peoples of
the world.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in cultures.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in cities.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in educational, judicial, religious, political, medical,
recreational, communicational, and economic institutions.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in neighborhoods.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in families.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in the levels and types of intelligence among the peoples of
the world.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in personality characteristics and their behavioral
expression among peoples of the world.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in dyadic behavior when people from different backgrounds
interact in different circumstances.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in people’s inner worlds.
• Learning to appreciate how all of the above have evolved over billions of years in the history of the earth and all of its
species.
• Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in how the multitudes of peoples on the earth envision the
future.
• Learning to appreciate that culture is founded on deception.
• Resolving to strive for authenticity in spite of human’s universal tendency to deceive.
• Resolving to relate and communicate with fellow humans with empathy and without judging or prejudging.
• Learning to accept reality with equanimity and yet to be devoted to reversing harmful trends and, with humble
appreciation of my limitations, to making improvements wherever it is possible for me to do so.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective (Cont.): A few of the key factors that can be
redesigned to promote emotional well being and maturity are dimensions of the community,
settings, roles, and role relationships.
Why people might doubt the natural systems approach. The degree of structure proposition.
Effects of Minimum Structure on Relationships
Current Structure, when absent, results in trends induced by past structures to ascend and those aspects of the self that
had been pseudo incorporated tend to be shed and the pseudo dis incorporated to begin to erupt.
Outside of the structure of an institution, or work in a building, there is typically a minimum but not an absence of
structure. What structure there is will likely come from the immediate and extended family and close
friends. Another kind of structure that will be operating has to do with the regular, familiar places that you visit,
the paths you regularly take, the stores, places of entertainment and recreation, and the organizational meetings
you attend. This type of minimum structure provides you with many choices but they are never outside a range
that had come to be acceptable. One does not tend to go outside of the range of this ‘acceptability’. The
principle sources of constraints in this minimum structure are the implicit-others, the secondary implicit-others,
and institutional forms of implicit-other. The most constraining force in minimum or absent structure is the
parental implicit-other. In adulthood the parental and secondary implicit-others fade and the institutional ascends
in influence. However, if emancipation did not take place and dependence upon or frequency of contact with
parents persists, the parental implicit-other maintains its’ powerful influence and can even be the predominant
influence in an intimate relationship. Of course, a person in this condition is not aware of the parental implicitother interlocutor. Nevertheless, this prevents the naturalization of a relationship in which the public persona,
the-best-foot-forward pattern, dissolves and the private person begins to emerge. This is when the relationship
begins to develop a bona fide structure of its own and the two become more similar and adapt to each other’s
eccentricities.
Maximum, medium, and minimum structure
Remember that in the beginning I said people are exquisitely sensitive to their external world and
changes in it? Now we have come full circle. With that same exquisite sensitivity, we can
discover who we are by discovering what in our external structures our exquisitely sensitive
beings are responding to, what in these structures are shaping us. Will this help with your next
project? Will it help with your own self discovery?
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Mental Assessment Levels: (Cont.) 6. Introspective: An Example: A Juvenile Correctional Institution with Medium
Structure and Its Transformation of the Self:
The youth often have had very negative or almost no parenting. When they bond with one or two, usually two with one
being the main one, staff members, over time the closeness of this relationship allows the implicit other they came with to
be supplanted by these two staff members. As teens, they are typically separating from their parents but in need of
guidance. Normally relative or other adult such as a coach is permitted to take over that function. However, the implicit or
actual parent is not supplanted by these adults that they turn to because their parents remain the constant, controlling, and
dominant influence over the teen. At the 24/7 institution, separated physically as well as emotionally from parents, this
supplanting of the implicit other is able to take place. Since, or if, the supplanting staff provide a strong, consistent,
positive, warm, supportive, and rewarding influence within a new bond, becoming the new implicit others, they are likely to
be permanently incorporated. When the youth leave the institution, this new implicit other continues its positive influence.
However, as a teen prior to the institution, a secondary implicit other is forming and this is their peer group. For
delinquent youth the peer group is usually negative but they act as facilitators of emancipation from parents and
protectors from the omnipresent hostilities of their age group. This secondary-implicit-other becomes a powerful,
transforming force in the life of the youth. In the institution, however, a new peer group is formed in the dorm. A strong
resident, or student, government that begins to exert a strong, consistent, positive influence over each new youth entering
the dorm organizes the dorm. At the same time, a high-ranking youth from the dorm assumes the function of buddy or big
brother and inducts, guides, coaches, trains, rewards, and support the new youth. This becomes another positive bond,
which solidifies identification with the new peer group. This new peer group eventually supplants the secondary implicit,
other that was formed in the home community, just as the implicit parents were supplanted. Parallel with this there is an
open, personal, organized, productive, and rewarding community of the total institution, including the attached school.
For most teens another aspect of the secondary implicit other consists of the institutions, clubs, youth programs, church
programs, and the like with which they are identified. The values, codes of conduct, tastes, and interests, and goals of
these more official entities are incorporated but not as strongly as the peer group. Delinquent youths typically form
antiestablishment attitudes and have no institutional implicit others. The community at Stars and Stars includes all of the
youth in official roles in the institution and provides them with the conditions (open, personal, organized, productive, and
rewarding) necessary for identification with and incorporation of this community as their institutional implicit other, thus
supplanting the antiestablishment secondary implicit other.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
Configurations of Levels of Mental Assessment, Knowledge, and Awareness
Child
Teen
Adult
Historian
Psychologist
Extrospection Level
Extroception Level
Exteroception Level
Interoception Level
The following shapes represent the configuration of
Levels by orientation to time by age and type.
Introception Level
Introspection Level
Levels change and expand by age and types
People vary greatly in terms of the extent of their knowledge and awareness of
Levels and Temporal Orientation
Children are aware of the present and immediate past and future objects they sense.
Adults have more extensive knowledge and awareness of the distant past and anticipated
future of objects they sense, sensations, their surroundings and vicinity, their feelings,
and to varying degrees the history and destiny of their life and the world at large.
It may be important to your study or project to know and understand the
variations among your subjects on these features.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
•Individuation and hedonic tone: In this case individuation refers to the degrees of physical, cognitive,
and social hedonic tone that are the original basis for selecting alternatives for moving in life’s infinite
variety of possible paths. Since the human can develop layers in the status of ownership and
involvement with each and every experience, it becomes important to differentiate between first and
subsequent status assignments. A first reaction to an object or experience could be physical pleasure.
Following that, you could experience disapproval from a significant other and this could be social
displeasure, causing you to define the ‘pleasant object’ as ‘bad’ or displeasure. A layer has developed.
The second layer redefining the first, or original layer. As you to use this analytical technique and begin
to take this approach, you could examine examples of the primitive, un-moderated, unmodified, original
pleasure and pain sensations and feelings the person experiences and observe the way these hedonic
reactions shape their personality and steer their navigation through the world and how subsequent
experiences redirect that navigation. Such pleasure and pain sensations can be purely sensory, but can
also be cognitive and social. In other words, there can be primitive pleasure and displeasure reactions to
bodily activities as well as sensations from external stimuli. There can be primitive cognitive pleasure
and displeasure reactions to statements of concepts, ideas, and other intellectual configurations. For
example, architecture, art, machines, etc. can produce cognitive pleasure and displeasure. There can also
be primitive pleasure and displeasure reactions to individual people, social groups, social situations,
social institutions, professions, cultures, etc. The degrees of pleasure and pain will be scaled as follows:
–Extremely intense pleasure
–Strong pleasure
–Mild pleasure
–Mild pain or displeasure
–Strong pain
–Extremely intense pain
•Transformation of Degrees of Hedonic Tone into States of Incorporation: Given a basic, primitive, unmoderated, unmodified pleasure or pain reaction, subsequent events can result in a modification of its
status, or State, as the term will be in this document. The concept used here is referred to as State of
Incorporation and, as we shall see in the next section, there are several States. A basic, primitive, unmoderated, unmodified pleasure or pain reaction can be transformed into any one of the other States and
subsequently transformed again and again, creating a history of layers of States of Incorporation and
their transformations. Typically, something in one of the Mental Assessment Levels exerts an influence
over the primitive pleasure or pain reaction that causes a transformation in its state, as will be elaborated
upon in the next slide. For example, the media dominated new social order, the Extrospective Level, can
be extensively transforming original Incorporated pains or pleasures into Dis-Incorporated States, and
vice versa. Consider how this might relate to your study.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
•Incorporation States: You could examine how this steering occurs. From the
Natural Systems perspective, it seems to occur through a kind of categorizing of
the experiences whereby some experiences, pain or pleasure, are incorporated
and some are disincorporated while some we could say are pseudo-incorporated
or pseudo-disincorporated. These pseudo categories are like faking it inside the
head but leads to faking it in relation to others. Some pain and pleasure
sensations and feelings are simply the subject of ongoing hopeful curiosity or
pessimistic questioning, or are just left open-ended. Finally, some sensations
have to be repressed, whether physically pain-full or pleasure-full. In other words,
peoples' inner worlds are chopped up or parceled into these various states. The
way the content of the world falls into these states or categories forms their
worldview.
–8
–8
–8
–8
–8
–8
–8
–8
•Transformations between States of Incorporation:
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Dealing With the State As Well As the Content
of Communications Shared by Teens?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Can We Graphically Conceptualize Incorporation States?
Can We Conceive of Experiences As Distributed Across
Different States?
How Do We Learn to Identify and Work With State
Encapsulated Mental Content Such As Feelings, Beliefs, Intent,
Memories, Perspectives, Etc.?
How Do We Relate to the State to Assist in Freeing the
Individual for Authenticity?
How Does Information Change When Its State Changes?
Which States Distort Experience and Mental Content and
Prevent Authenticity?
Why Is Lack of Authenticity a Problem?
How Can We Assist Teens in Attaining Authenticity?
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The Many Different Ways We Store and Relate
to Information About Ourselves and the World.
WOW!! I’m really skeptical about this. But, I won’t
accuse right now. I’ll just keep a close eye out on him
and wait and see what he does and says and how he
acts. But, for now, I’m not buying this story.
Heuristic-dis-incorporate
I know you. You’re bad. You must be the one who did
it. You did it didn’t you? Now take your punishment!
Pseudo-dis-incorporate
Dis-incorporate
Dis-incorporate
Pseudo-incorporate
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Incorporate
Oh yes sir. You’re right. It’s my fault.
I’m bad and I repent with all my heart.
No, I wasn’t
dealing drugs,
I was just an
errand boy
now and then.
I know I’m not
that kind of
person. You
believe me,
don’t you?
SOB jerk. Wait till
you're out of site and
I’ll do it again,
worse, but won’t get
caught next time!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
So, that
is what I
believe
and you
should
too!
I agree with everything
you say, like everything
you like, believe
everything you believe.
Pseudo-incorporate
Because if I
don’t, I know
I’ll lose my
privileges.
Dis-incorporate
39
The Many Different Ways We Store and Relate
to Information About Ourselves and the World. (CONT.)
Even if you did
cheat!
Dis-incorporate
I’m so glad you won! You are a much
better player than I am anyway.
Oh, yea, I truly love you dear.
There is nothing wrong with you
at all. You are total sweetness.
Hope no one sees my fingers
crossed!
Pseudo-incorporate
Pseudo-incorporate
Pseudo-incorporate
Sure, I can do it all. Didn’t you
know? I’m superman!
I don’t have any limitations.
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The Many Different Ways We Store and Relate
to Information About Ourselves and the World. (CONT.)
Has this happened before?
I got thrown out of
the house!
PseudodisNo, nothing like
incorporation
that has ever
happened to me.
OK. I understand. Its pretty
awful. You’re safe here. And
whenever you want to talk,
please come to me. We’ll get
through this. Maybe I could
take you to see Mrs. Helper
and together we can help you.
OK, well how about you and I getting to know each
other better? We’ll try to find a place for you.
Maybe we could do something interesting
together. Would you like that?
I’m not
Heuristic-dis-incorporate
so sure
about
this
guy.
What is the matter with me? I keep doing
things that I don’t want to do. I wake up
with nightmares. I have feelings of panic
during the day. I say things I don’t even
mean. Am I going crazy?
Dys-corporation
Incorporate
Oh, this sounds right. But I’d
better wait and look into it
deeper and think it over. If I
listen and try to understand,
maybe I’ll learn something.
Oh my god! How could
you believe I could ever
do anything like that???
Heuristic-incorporate
Pseudo-dys-corporation
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The Many Different Ways We Store and Relate
to Information About Ourselves and the World. (CONT.)
No, damn it! I don’t
like it and I am not
going to pretend I do!.
Well, I don’t like what I’m seeing right
now, but I’ll try to find out what it all
means and how to relate to it. If I listen
and try to understand, maybe I’ll learn
something.
Dis-incorporation
Heuristic-dis-incorporate
Hallelujah! I can be me. I don’t have
to pretend anymore. I can be open to
whatever comes and transparent
about me and what I feel. What a
great feeling. I’ve got a lot of bad
habits and mixed up thoughts, but I
can admit them and learn how to
change for my own sake.
Incorporation
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THE EIGHT STATES OF INCORPORATION
The Psychodynamic Nature of Information
Processing and Storage
•As illustrated in the preceding cartoons, information
about oneself and the world is processed and stored
psychodynamically and this affects the way the
information is retrieved and communicated.
–The individual is not aware of these processes and
categories or states of incorporation.
•The characteristics of the institutional environment
and the nature of the relationship with an adult
authority has a strong influence on this psychodynamic
process of information storage.
–The environment and the relationship can be changed to
promote more healthy storage and retrieval processes
and to promote authenticity.
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Defining the Eight States of Incorporation
and Describing Their Psychodynamics
and the Relevance of These Concepts
to Dealing With Teenagers
A New Approach to Information
Processing and Storage
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Eight States of Incorporation
of All Mental Content or
Schemata of the World
and Schemes of Behavior
1. INCORPORATION
2. HEURISTIC INCORPORATION
3. PSEUDO INCORPORATION
4. DIS INCORPORATION
5. HEURISTIC DIS
INCORPORATION
6. PSEUDO DIS INCORPORATION
7. DYS CORPORATION
8. PSEUDO DYS CORPORATION
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Definition of States of Incorporation
A State Is the Casting the Person Gives to Their Mental Content
1. INCORPORATION: You come to the experience, knowledge, or system with an open mind and you like what
YOU hear or what is happening and accept it. Your processes of critical judgment are not invoked, you find yourself
accepting and enthusiastic. Or else, after initial impressions, you find congruence with your own views or intentions
and whole heartedly embrace the what is being presented.
2. HEURISTIC-INCORPORATION: You feel as though the experience, knowledge, or system being presented is
either congruent with your own thoughts or position or is worthy of consideration, and you decide to give the it the
benefit of the doubt, but you want to think things over carefully, keep an open mind, and to reserve judgment.
3. PSEUDO-INCORPORATION: You feel that you are expected to go along with or accept the experience,
knowledge, or system being presented, and, suspending your own judgment, or regardless of your own judgment,
you make yourself be, or seem to be, accepting or even enthusiastic.
4 DIS-INCORPORATION: After initial impressions, you feel that the experience, knowledge, or system being
presented is antipathetic to your own, or is or is going to be unacceptable to you, and you set the whole thing aside as
alien and do not give it any consideration. You close your mind to what is being said, presented, or happening, but
may, if it seems unavoidable, courteously or uncomfortably endure the whole ordeal
HEURISTIC-DIS-INCORPORATION: You feel as though the experience, knowledge, or system being presented is
probably not congruent with you or your position or way of thinking, and may not even be worthy of your
consideration, nevertheless, you determine to keep an open mind, consider everything carefully, and adopt a wait and
see attitude.
6. PSEUDO-DIS-INCORPORATION: You begin by, for whatever reason or due to whomever, feeling that you are
expected to not be accepting of the experience, knowledge, or system and taking a posture of regarding it as alien,
and, therefore, refuse to give it serious consideration, even though deep down you may want to give it a chance.
7. DYS-CORPORATION: You do not know or have memory of certain important events or relationships from the
past. These memories are totally inaccessible. Nevertheless, you have symptoms or patterns that are present in
your behavior and experience which seem to be beyond your control and not in your best interest. You are
simultaneously doubtful and curious and simultaneously want to and do not want to know if there is some repressed
memory.
8. PSEUDO-DYS-CORPORATION: You have been questioned concerning or accused of something and you can not
remember the act or event. You are certain of its non- existence in spite of other's protests to the contrary. You are
not curious to know if there is any connection between you and the un-remembered act or event.
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A Diagram of the Psychological States of All Mental Content
8 INCORPORATION STATES
Incorporation
Dis-Incorporation
Heuristic-Incorporation
Heuristic- Dis-Incorporation
Pseudo-Incorporation
Pseudo-dis-incorporation
Dys-corporation
Pseudo Dys-corporation
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Changing Storage States in Memory So That Nothing Is in a PseudoIncorporation or Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation State nor in a Dys-Corporation or
Pseudo-Dys-Corporation State
The End Result of This Process Is Authenticity
INCORPORATION STATES
Incorporation
Dis-Incorporation
Heuristic-Incorporation
Heuristic- Dis-Incorporation
Authenticity Is Only Achieved in a
Completely Accepting, Non-Judgmental, UnIntimidating, Positive Environment.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
48
How Do We Positively Influence Teens’
Information Storage and Communication?
Consider the Many Different Ways We, Adults and Teens,
Store and Relate
to Information About Ourselves and the World.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
49
CAN A PARENT OR OTHER INTERESTED THIRD PARTY
INSTRUCT A CHILD
ABOUT HOW TO IDENTIFY AND MANAGE STATES OF
INCORPORATION
IN A WAY THAT THE CHILD CAN EASILY RELATE TO?
How might the youth’s
behavior, feelings, attitudes, relationships, academic
learning, life skills learning, ego and character
development
be affected
if parents, teachers, institutional workers, and other
adult authorities
were able to positively influence
the way the youth stores information?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
50
The Origin of Pseudo Incorporation
You should feel the way I do.
You should believe the way I do.
You like that don’t you,
because it is good to like that!
You like doing that, don’t you?
Well, you should.
Oh yes, I feel that way.
Sure, I believe that, I believe like you do.
Of course I like that, it’s really great!
Sure, I love doing things like that.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
51
Do you recall a parent, adult authority, or peer telling you, when
you were a teen, how you should feel, trying to influence you to
believe what they believe, trying to influence the way you feel,
trying to influence your tastes and preferences to be like theirs,
trying to influence what you did or do?
• How did you feel about being influenced in this way? How did you
feel about being told that you should feel a certain way when you did
not?
• Do you recall ever going along with someone’s pressure? Do you
recall actually making yourself pretend to feel something you didn’t
feel, pretend to believe something you did not believe, pretend you
preferred something you did not prefer, actually having to do
something that was against your values at the time?
• Did you feel compromised? Did you feel like you betrayed your true
self?
• How did you feel about the person making you pretend?
• What might have happened if you had been allowed to speak freely
about your true feelings, beliefs, and preferences? How would
things have been different?
• What do these thoughts tell you about trying to make a youth feel
what they don’t feel, prefer what they don’t prefer, believe what they
don’t believe?
• How could it be a problem for the youth to be encouraged to be true
to themselves?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
52
The Origin of Authentic Incorporation
Whenever you experience
something, feel something, think
something, or do something, you do not
have to pretend it is something different
from what it is, re- interpret it, or deny it
just to please me or anyone else.
Let it be what it is for you and
talk about it the way it is for you, and then
you can learn to deal with it effectively.
4/13/2015
You mean I can honestly see,
feel, do, believe, think differently from you
or anyone else and it’s OK?
Well, maybe then I can honestly
ask your help in finding ways to correct
myself without anticipating that you are
going to force advice or demands on me.
I can safely try things to find
better ways for myself for understanding
and dealing with the world! Wow! That’s
great!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
53
What kinds of problems or dangers do you foresee if
you were to let or encourage a youth to trust their own
feelings about what they experience?
• As you allow the problems you foresee to surface and be
communicated, can you ask yourself what these fears of
danger may suggest about the way you were raised?
• Are there disturbing feelings and confused thoughts swirling
around the edge of your own awareness as you address this
issue? Were you encouraged to openly experience life or
influenced to feel and see the way someone else thought you
should?
• Can you imagine reliving your childhood and adolescence
under conditions where you were encouraged to trust and
have your own positive feelings about your experiences?
• In what way does your own history affect the way you tend to
relate to youths who are experiencing life for the first time?
• Can you identify and manage your own tendencies to
influence youths to distort their experiences so that they
conform to the way you were made to feel about things?
• What alternative strategies would you suggest to use when
you feel a youth’s positive reactions to an experience might
lead to dangerous consequences?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
54
The Origin of Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation
You should not feel that way.
You should not believe that.
You don’t like that do you,
because it is bad to like that!
Did you do that bad thing?
Oh no, I don’t feel that way.
I don’t believe that, I believe like you do.
No, of course I don’t like that, its awful!
No, I couldn't do anything like that.
It must have been someone else.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
55
The Ripple Effect of Successfully Influencing a Child or Teen to
Pretend and to ‘Not Be’ True to Themselves.
• Do you recall a parent, adult authority, or peer telling you:
– how you should not feel,
– trying to influence you to not believe what they don’t believe,
– trying to influence you to change your tastes and preferences to be like
theirs,
– trying to influence you to change friends only because they did not like
your friends,
– trying to influence you to stop doing something that you liked to do only
because they did not like it, because it annoyed them, and not because
there was anything wrong with it,
– trying to influence you to be something you did not want to be?
• How did it make you feel toward:
– the person trying to influence you,
– Yourself,
– whatever you were supposed to deny, reject, or take a negative attitude
toward
• How did it make you feel toward your own ability to assess things, your
own feelings, your own judgment?
• If you gave in, do you think it made you more susceptible to be influenced
and manipulated? How has it complicated your life?
• After reflecting on your own life in this respect, does it teach you anything
about teens and their susceptibility to being influenced?
• What would you do differently after thinking this issue through?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
56
The Origin of Authentic Dis-Incorporation
If something feels bad, is painful,
ugly, harmful, seems untrue or false, or if you
do something that hurts you or some one
else, you do not have to pretend it feels
good, looks good, does no harm, or is true.
You can call it like it is for you.
You do not have to lie or pretend.
We can talk about it and you can
figure out how to deal with it.
Sometimes, when something
tastes bad or makes me feel bad and
everyone is saying great things about it, I
feel pressure to pretend I feel the same
as they do or see it or think about it the
same way they do.
I know its not right, but
eventually I even convince myself that
the awful thing tastes good or the crazy
thing is sane.
But you are saying I can learn
to trust my real sensations, feelings,
interpretations, and evaluations,
regardless of the trend of the group.
If I feel something is harming
me, I can stop, even if everybody is
saying go ahead!
I can even have
negative feelings and
thoughts and I can still
discuss it openly with
you.
I can even
disagree and I’ll still be
OK in your eyes?
Right?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
57
What problems do you foresee if a youth were to
acknowledge negative experiences as negative?
• If you think back to the time when you were growing up as a child and
youth, can you remember times when you were ‘pressured to like’
something that initially was really distasteful or offensive to you?
• What is the conflict here? Is it unpleasant to resist the pressure and risk
being disapproved or rejected? What if your initial experience was painful,
repulsive, or distasteful but you were being pressured to act as though it
was great? Which of the two experiences are you more likely to distort?
Are you more likely to say you do not like being pressured? Are you more
likely to say you like something when you don’t? Did you face dilemmas
like these?
• How do your reactions earlier in life affect the way you relate to youths
facing these dilemmas today? Do you pressure the youth the way you
were pressured? Do you turn around and tell the youth to resist pressure?
• When you understand your own history better, does it help you to relate
with greater understanding and intelligence to youths facing such
dilemmas?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
58
What Do We Do When Something Falls in
That Fuzzy, Gray Area of Life?
Most experiences, sensations, feelings, beliefs, preferences,
relations, goals, methods involve a mixture of pluses and minuses.
Whether something is a plus or minus also depends on a
person’s perspective.
So, how do we learn and how do we teach young people to
relate to ambiguities?
How do we relate to an issue where there is strong
disagreement?
And, what about issues where there is a strong plus in the
present and minus in the future or minus in the present and plus in the
future?
To answer this riddle, we will use the term ‘heuristic’, which
means tentative, questioning, exploring further, curious but reserving
judgment.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
59
The Cultivation of Heuristic-Incorporation
If your own true feelings and thoughts and
intuitions are initially positive, but you are really not
completely sure, then you don’t have to make up your
mind right then and there.
If there is a little bit of uncertainty, you don’t
have to make yourself certain.
Leave it an open question, keep your
reservations, suspend your judgement, delay your
decision, go ahead and be patient and wait until you
feel there is really good reason to assert certainty
and act or commit your self.
If you need more information, have
questions, feel unsure, just wait until things are really
clear to you?
Ask all you want until you reach that
moment when it really feels clear to you.
This is something new to me.
People are always pushing and
don’t seem too happy when I say I don’t
know, but then if I give in, I have this
uneasy feeling that maybe I’ve jumped
the gun and given in and may regret it
later.
But now you’re saying its OK to
have my doubts, and questions.
It’s OK to just admit I don’t
know for sure or am not ready just yet
and want to wait and explore and
consider until I feel OK about it.
That way, if I make a mistake, I
know it was me and I know exactly why
and what to correct.
This is great and sounds so
much more reasonable!
Say, for instance, I am really
excited about something and
just can’t wait.
Somebody really
got me sold on it.
But what you’re
saying is that maybe I should
keep a ‘wait and see’ attitude
in the back of mind.
Hmm, that sounds
wise, if I could just learn to
do it!
But really it does
sound so much more
reasonable!
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
60
What Problems Do You See with Encouraging a Youth
to ‘Wait and See’, to Investigate Before Deciding, to
Want to Find Out for Themselves Rather Than Being
Pushed or Rushed, to Learn to Use Their Own
Judgment Rather Than Blindly Accepting Yours?
• Do you recall parents or other adult authorities telling you to accept
what they say without question, to follow their advice because they
know better, to trust their judgment and that you will understand
when you grow up?
• How did you feel about being told that? How did you feel toward the
adult authority, toward yourself?
• How do you think that affected your trust in your own judgement?
• Did encouraging you to blindly follow their opinion or advice help
you learn to develop your own capacity to use your own mind,
develop your own judgment, to develop intelligent processes of
investigating, weighing, and assessing information for decision
making?
• Did it affect your ability to wait and see, to delay immediate
gratification, and consider consequences?
• Did it help you learn how to resist negative peer influence?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
61
The Cultivation of Heuristic-Dis-Incorporation
If at first something seems
unpleasant, uncomfortable,
distasteful, or disagreeable, but
you are not quiet sure, maybe you
feel that way because someone is
pressuring you or bribing you or
you just don’t trust the person.
In fact, you don’t want
to feel manipulated or coerced
and so you want to say no, turn
away, resist, or refuse just to
show you can’t be manipulated.
Maybe it is sometimes
hard to separate out a genuine
dislike or disagreement from not
being sure or not wanting to be
manipulated.
It is OK to say you
think not, but you will think it over
and maybe sample it some other
time in your own way.
This is OK. You won’t
lose face by finding that it is OK.
But then, who cares if
some take it that way. If someone
wants to gloat or rub it in or say
you were giving in or sucking up,
or ‘they told you so’, just treat it
like it is their problem, their
immaturity.
If you want, take a
harmless sample, test, and see
what the longer term
consequences are?
It could be unpleasant
now but have good consequences
or unpleasant now and have even
worse consequences.
You have a right to
judge for yourself.
4/13/2015
You mean if I feel or think I won’t like something
but maybe in the back of my mind I am thinking this could be
one of those things that are unpleasant but if one uses self
discipline and goes through with it, better things come later?
Maybe enduring the unpleasant now is something
you have to do to reach an important goal.
Maybe I should give it a try or at least think it over
while I hold off a while.
That should be my right.
If someone teases me for hesitating or teases me
for considering going through with it or maybe someone
wants to show that they can get me to do it and prove how
wise or crafty they were, then I should learn to take note of
these things and not let them sway me toward or away.
Worrying about their approval, protecting my pride,
or how I look in the eyes of others could turn out to be the
least of my worries.
I can still keep my negative reservations but
evaluate the question before me for myself when and if I
decide to give it a try.
If I suspect
something is really bad for me
and my friends are saying its
good, I can insist on the right
to check it out thoroughly.
I could find that what
they are pressuring me to do
is actually deadly!!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
62
COMPLEX IMPLICIT
PARENTS
AND CONFLICTS OF
WILL
Do Complex and Conflicting
Parenting Styles
Result in
Conflicts With Authorities and
a Conflict of Will in the Teen?
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
63
4/13/2015
WHAT ARE THE MOST PRIMITIVE WAYS THE INFANT
FIRST RESPONDS TO THE PARENT’S ACTIONS?
Does an Infant Know What to Do With an
Experience the Very First Time It Is
Experienced?
When the Infant Experiences Pain and Then the
Pain Is Removed,
Can the Object That Produced the Pain Be Identified?
Can the Object That Removed the Pain Be Identified?
If These Two Objects Are Stored Separately in
Memory, in What Kinds of States Would They
Be Stored?
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
64
4/13/2015
Pristine Differentiation of Experience in the Newborn
SECOND STAGE
FIRST STAGE
INFANT
INFANT
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
65
4/13/2015
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE INFANT’S
AWARENESS PROGRESSES FROM AN
AWARENESS OF PAIN TO AN AWARENESS OF
THE OBJECT GENERATING THE PAIN?
If the Same Object Generates Pleasure and Then Later
Generates Pain:
 Is It Received and Stored As a Single Object That Generates
Both Pain and Pleasure or
Does the Infant Try to Separate the Memory of Either the Pain
or the Pleasure From Its ‘Concept’ of the Object?
If the Object Generating Both Pleasure and Pain Is
One Parent, and the Infant Progresses to a Primitive
Awareness of Dependence for Survival Upon That
Parent, How Is the Infant Going to Construe That
Parent?
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
66
4/13/2015
Differentiation Progression From the Hedonic Quality of the
Immediate Experience to Its Source in the Object=Parent
Stage 2.
Stage 1.
CHILD
CHILD
Stage 4.
Stage 3.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
CHILD
CHILD
67
4/13/2015
Dealing With the Teen’s
Image or Concept of Their Parent
The client comes to the counseling interview with a distorted
image of their parent or parents.
The teen typically has a composite image that has a single
attribute of either all good or all bad. Incompatible information
about the parent is denied or rationalized.
Nevertheless, all aspects or attributes, both good and bad, of
the parent are exerting an influence on the child.
To help the child cope with the negative influences of the
parent, the counselor must help the teen differentiate and
realistically re-define the parent.
Next the teen must be given ways to relate to and cope with
all aspects of the parent.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
68
4/13/2015
The Developing Child’s Dilemma: How to Deal With a Parent,
on Whom They Are Dependent,
That Is Both Good to Them and Bad to Them?
Good
parent
Inappropriate Resolution of
Dilemma: Pseudo
incorporates split good-bad
parental image as unified good
parent image and pseudo-disincorporates bad parent image.
Bad
parent
Realistic
Stage
Dilemma: Parent Image Split into Two Incompatible Images
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
69
image and
descriptio
n of parent
as both
good and
bad.
4/13/2015
As the differentiation of the child’s personality progresses,
in what manner does it develop a will of its own and
become capable of interacting with the world independently of the parent?
What is the outcome of this shaping of the will?
Why Does a Child Insist It Does Not Want Something When You
Know It Likes and Really Wants That Thing?
Why Does a Child Insist It Likes Something When You Know It
Does Not Like It?
Why, When You Want to Give the Child Something It Likes, It
Says ‘No’ and Insists on Having Something Else?
Why, If You Really Don’t Want the Child to Have Something
Because You Know It Is Harmful for the Child, Does the Child
Insist on Having It?
What Do These Contrary Behaviors Signify for the Child’s
Development?
Your answers to these questions are crucial for a realistic
understanding of your child and teenager.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
70
4/13/2015
Conflict of Wills:
Origin of Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation of Parental Preferences and Wishes
and the Origin of the Independent Will
PRECURSOR TO OPPOSITIONALDEFIANCE
AND SOUR GRAPES AND SWEET
LEMONS:
“If you want me to want it, I insist I don’t want it, even if I
really do.”
THIS IS ONE OF THE CHILD’S PRINCIPLE SOURCES OF
POWER.
“If you don’t want me to want it, I will want it, even, and
especially, if it is harmful to me.!”
ALSO, ONE OF THE PRIMARY MOTIVATIONS OF
THE SUBSTANCE ABUSER.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
71
4/13/2015
INTERNALIZED PARENTS AND
THE EARLY SENSE OF SELF
How Do the Traits and Behavior of Parents
Influence the Child’s Mind and Personality?
Through the Telescope
Versus
Through the Microscope
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
72
Life Histories Through a Telescope and a Microscope
• Through the telescope: when looking at life through the telescope, we see
the broad perspective, as though at a distance. Like a landscape far away,
we see the general features of a wide range. Looking at time through an
imaginary telescope, we see the general features of a long span of a
person’s life. Just as we can compare the landscapes of a mountain range
versus a desert, we can compare the life-scapes, or life histories, of a
person raised in an impoverished neighborhood and dysfunctional family
versus a person raised in middle class, well furnished neighborhood and
intact, functional, mature, healthy family. These perspectives help us
understand how people can be shaped by their environments and histories
toward very different outcomes.
• Through the microscope: We all know of exceptions to these
generalizations even though we know that the exception proves the rule.
We are surprised to see exceptions like a very healthy, mature successful
person coming out of a disadvantaged neighborhood and family and an
advantaged neighborhood and family producing a person who leads a life
of crime. So, we want to look closer and deeper, like though a microscope,
to understand what little things might be having such big influences.
• In this lesson, we will examine a very important factor that begins to shape
the person’s destiny even from the earliest moments of their life. We will
look at how the child internalizes the parents or parent substitutes and how
this influences the child’s course of development for many years, perhaps
the rest of their lives.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
73
What Is the Most Influential Factor Shaping a
Child’s Life, From Birth to Death?
• Think About Children You Have Known and Observed
From Birth Into Adulthood.
• What Was the One Factor That Had the Most Influence
in Shaping the Way the Child Developed and the Way
They Turned Out As an Adult?
• What Single Factor Had the Most Pervasive Influence?
• What Influenced and Shaped Their Interaction With
Peers, School, the Opposite Sex, Career, Ambition,
Health, Happiness, Management of Money, and
Religion and Values?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
74
THE CRITICAL FACTORS
INFLUENCING THE EVOLVING SELVES OF
CHILDREN?
The answer is:
PERVASIVELY INFLUENTIAL, OVERARCHING, UBIQUITOUS,
UNCONSCIOUS
IMPLICIT OTHERS
WHICH ARE GENERATED BEGINNING AT BIRTH
AND THEIR INFLUENCE CONTINUES
ON AN UNCONSCIOUS LEVEL
THROUGHOUT THE LIFE SPAN.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
75
When the Newborn Infant Enters the World,
What Is the World to It?
• Supposing the Initial Mental Processes of the Infant Are,
At the Beginning, Strictly Oriented To:
– First, Survival, Avoiding Pain, and Satisfying Hunger And,
Second, Seeking Pleasure.
• Then,
– What, From the World That Is Presented to the Infant, Is Taken In to the
Infant’s Mind?
– Next, How Are These Presented Experiences Taken In?
• We Shall Begin Our Lesson by Looking at the Quality
of the Mother-child Relationship, Then the Parents-child
Relationship, and Finally, Parental Language Habits
and the Child’s Self Concept.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
76
THE INFANT’S WORLD IS THE INFANT’S PARENTS
The Earliest and Most Enduringly Pervasive Influences on the Evolution of the Child's Self
The infant’s world, in
the beginning, is the
MOTHER and father.
Later, as the child
differentiates
between the parents
and the world, the
world still carries, or
is imbued with, the
emotional aura of the
parents. The child
attributes to the world
behavioral features
that are identical to
those exhibited by
the parents.
4/13/2015
WORLD
MOTHER
CHILD
FATHER
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
77
WHAT IS AN IMPLICIT OTHER?
HOW ARE IMPLICIT OTHERS
IMPLANTED IN THE CHILD’S MIND?
• How Are Parents (and Others in a Similar Relation to the
Infant) Injected Into to the Mind of the Child?
• From All That Parents Do With Their Child, What Is It
That Sticks in the Child’s Mind?
– Is It the Information and Experience in General That Is the
Critical Factor,
– Or, Is It the Dynamic of the ‘Way’ the Parent Reacts to and
Interacts With the Infant,
– And, Consequently, Is It Also the Patterns That This ‘Parental
Way of Interacting’ Generates in the Child’s Mind?
• How Does an Internalized or Incorporated Parent Affect
the Child’s Manner or ‘Way’ of Reacting to Experience
and Information?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
78
The Nature of the Implicit Parent
Hmm? I wonder
what naughty thing
that baby could be
up to now?
Hey, you lousy
kid, stop that
crying and get
back in your pen!
Oh! I’m so
beautiful and
cute. I don’t
have time to
be bothered
with that
droolie,
smelly kid.
I’m so worried about
my baby. I have to
watch him and
check to see if any
thing is wrong with
him every minute of
the day.
What is the world going to look like to this baby if its mother were to have been each of
these types? How is this baby going to come to feel about itself?
79
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
In the early years, and over time, everything the parent says, the tone it is said with, everything the parent does
to the child, every reaction, and their manner of reacting, all these things get built into the child’s brain as the
ubiquitous implicit other and as the way parents, people, and the universe regard and will react to the child’s
behavior. But, even more important, even what the child feels and thinks and wants and intends, inside its
head, without even having to be expressed, is transformed to complement and satisfy its implicit others.
Naturally, this characteristic of the Implicit other defines the child’s self, gives the child its initial and lasting
self concept, and determines its mode of being in the world.
MOM
Poor baby, how can Mommy make you feel better?
Don’t even come home
unless you make an A+
From Infancy Through adolescence
BUILDING IN THE IMPLICIT OTHER
4/13/2015
Copyright by Edwin L. Young, PhD, 7/1997
80
Incorporation of a Self Concept
• What Happens to All Those Things You Say
to a Child?
• How Does a Self Concept Develop?
• What Role Does a Self Concept Play in the
Child’s Personality and Behavior?
• What Is the Relation Between the Developing
Self Concept and the Incorporated Implicit
Others?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
81
Things the Parent Says to the Child Begin to Be Built Into the Child As
Its Self Definition
and Become a Major Controlling Factor Over Its Behavior.
This Is One Way the Implicit Others Are Built, Without Awareness, Into the
Self.
THINGS THE PARENT SAID TO THE CHILD
Poor baby, how can Mommy make you feel better?
Don’t even come home unless you make an A+
TEEN
4/13/2015
I have learned that this is who I am!
I am weak and dependent and need
sympathy and indulgence.
I can mess up, but I am never
supposed to make a mistake, I’d better
be very careful.
Just because I am me I am unique and
special and important, better than
others.
I am too good to associate with certain
groups, they might harm me or rub off
on me.
Even though I am someone special
just for being me, I could lose that if I
don’t perform perfectly.
Life is dangerous and I had better not
take risks.
I had better find out what all the taboo
things in life are and make sure I don’t
get rejected.
I am a klutz, I’d better not try anything
that I am not perfect at already, I don’t
want to look like a klutz.
Even though I’m special, I’m a
nuisance and not liked.
If I am not or don’t do things just the
way someone else wants it to be, I
won’t be loved.
When I don’t yield to someone else’s
wishes, I am mean and bad.
Copyright by Edwin L. Young, PhD, 7/1997
82
THE PSYCHODYNAMICS
OF INFORMATION PROCESSING AND STORAGE
AND ITS APPLICATION TO WORK WITH TEENS
What Happens to Terrifying, Deeply Disturbing, Traumatic
Experiences and Information?
Are some memories so painful or frightening that they are
completely inaccessible even though the incident or
information was very intense?
If a memory is inaccessible to the youth,
how does it affect behavior?
When a youth’s behavior seems inexplicable, bizarre, or
irrational, how do we relate to that youth?
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
83
The Origin Dys-Corporation
“These things are too horrible even to be
mentioned. No one should ever expose themselves
to the possibility of it happening to them. It
happened to so and so and they claimed to be a
victim, but we know they must have been doing
something to ask for it. Stay away from people like
that, they are awful, the worst of the low life.
How humiliating and disgracing to have
something like that happen in one’s family. If it
happened to one of our own, we would have to
throw them out on the streets and we could never
hold our heads up in this community. We would
have to move.”
“No, nothing like that ever happened to
me. No, I don’t know why I am always tense,
always apologizing, always trying to impress and
please, have such a hard time sleeping and wake
up with nightmares, always have a hard time
concentrating, am often taken advantage of and
get myself into situations in which I get abused or
have accidents, or why I never feel good enough to
belong or be liked by anyone.
That is just the way I am, nothing ever
happened to me to cause me to be that way and I
resent you even questioning me.”
Our society labels certain things as being so taboo
that no one dare mention them when and if they
occur in a family. Each family, however, has its
own point on the taboo scale of what can be
openly discussed in the family and a scale for what
can be publicly disclosed.
Prohibitions against discussing these items
prevent people from being able to cope with them
and cause people to have unendurable suffering
from shame and fear of being detected.
They ex-communicate their own private self from a
sense of belonging to the human race. Everything
associated with the trauma is anathema to the
victim, but they often try to pretend that they are
normal and have normal reactions.
These memories perpetually hover, unconsciously,
in the background as potential life-ruining
scandals and cast shadows over the remainder of
people’s lives on earth!
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Imagine that this
person was a
victim of severe
sexual abuse,
incest,, or
physical abuse
assaults and they
are in a family that
does not tolerate
discussing or in
any way admitting
such instances
occurred.
84
The Effects of Taboo Experiences
in the Life of a Child or Teen
• When the youth is harboring a memory of something that they were
involved in that is considered too taboo even to mention, the memory
becomes inaccessible, but does not go away.
• Without knowing it, the youth reacts as though that memory were about to
be discovered. Though unconscious, the memory is highly active.
• If called on by an adult authority without knowing why, the youth will react
with anxiety and defensiveness.
• They are constantly trying to appear normal and like everything is alright,
yet they are uptight, high strung, fidgety, and shy, hostile, or unusually
approval seeking.
• They have anxiety laden, intrusive thoughts and fantasies and therefore
are not able to concentrate well for any length of time.
• If they are in situations in which they are supposed to be quiet, still, and
concentrating, their tension and nervousness will mount. As a result, in a
classroom setting, these students will be frequently admonished.
• Admonishment increases their anxiety and self criticism. It is a vicious
cycle.
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85
Resurgence From Dys-Corporation Leads to Addiction Binges
Consciousness,
before the
resurgence,
is relatively clear.
Dys-Corporated
taboo trauma experience
overtakes and throws
consciousness
into turmoil
A SITUATION IS IN PROGRESS THAT IS SIMILAR TO
THE TRAUMA EXPERIENCE AND IT TRIGGERS OR
CAUSES A RESURGENCE OF THE MEMORY AND
FEELINGS ASSOCIATED WITH THE ORIGINAL
TRAUMA EXPERIENCE, EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT THE
SAME AND DOES NOT ENTAIL THE SAME DANGER.
Consciousness
after resurgence
is in turmoil,
clouded, foggy.
Resurgence
of Repressed
Experience
THIS RESURGENCE REACHES THE EDGE OF
AWARENESS AND GENERATES OVER-WHELMING
NEGATIVE EMOTIONS.
THE PERSON IS DRIVEN TO GET RELIEF FROM THE
SYMPTOMS AND TURNS TO A SUBSTANCE THAT
OBLITERATES CONSCIOUSNESS.
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86
Dys-Corporated Memories Can Be Triggered by Situational Cues
and Re-Surge Into Awareness, Striking Terror in the Youth
• Occasionally something in a social
Clouded,
situation can trigger resurgence of
Clear
terrified
mind
the Dys-Corporated memory.
mind
When this happens, the youth
can openly react with bizarre
behavior. Efforts of adult
authorities to calm the youth down
and get them to obey are fruitless.
This can make the authorities
enraged at the youth and cause
them to impose severe discipline.
• Occasionally the resurgence will
only be displayed as extreme
distraction and agitation but not bizarre
behavior. When this happens, the youth
appears to be rational and capable of listening to reason. When
admonished, the youth tries to conform but remains agitated.
The authority can read into this a lack of compliance an
intentional desire to resist. If the condition is persistent, it can
be interpreted as lack of motivation, defiance, or intention to
disturb others.
• As the vicious cycle worsens, the youth perceives the
predicament as unbearable and impossible to solve. The
chronic pain and hopelessness will expose some youths to
vulnerability to drugs to reduce the pain and despair.
87
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There Is No Posture of Dys-Corporation
The Art of Recovering and Dealing with Troublesome Memories
• Since it seems impossible for anyone to deliberately, completely ban an item from access to
conscious awareness, there is little possibility of there being a posture of Dys-Corporation. Once
Dys-Corporation occurs, a suggestion that the client has a memory they are not aware of, or do not
want to be aware of, seems absurd and offensive to the client. However, if the client experiences
unexplainable tendencies to feel or act in ways that are counterproductive or senseless to them, and
they are in the presence of an exceptionally accepting and non intimidating, responsible adult or
therapist, they may begin to wonder if they have a repressed memory. They may, at that point, even
ask about hypnotism. However, if they reach this point a non-pressuring, patient, expectant waiting
for the repressed memory to surface may result in its surfacing. Surfacing usually occurs when the
client has moved on to another topic. Suddenly, they look distracted, as though listening to a
strange sound, and then, with surprise, report the recovered memory. With Pseudo DysCorporation, the process is distinctly different. If asked, they respond with resentment and certainty
that it could not be and explanations for why this could not be. There is no curiosity about
inexplicable symptoms or tendencies to feel or act in counterproductive, senseless ways. There is
no accommodation to the therapist’s waiting, expectant manner. And certainly no sudden,
surprised recovery of a lost memory.
• Nevertheless, in both cases, the most productive approach for the therapist is the one taken with
Dys-Corporation. In neither case is it helpful to interrogate, question, doubt, criticize, confront,
berate or dismiss the client. The dynamics of both Dys-Corporation and the Posture of Pseudo-DysCorporation involve self protection based on enculturated or conditioned values and attitudes that
prohibit disallowed memories. In the Dys-Corporated instance, anxiety, shame, and guilt stand as
unconscious sentries keeping the memory from surfacing because it is not only taboo, but recovery
also reinstates the emotions of pain and terror in full bloom, as though happening now. If there is
great trust that the therapist will hold their hand and get them through this so that it will not be a
threat again, the recovery can proceed for the Dys-Corporated memory. Likewise, if there is great
trust that the therapist will be understanding and non judgmental, the dissimulating, evasive,
manipulative client can also bring forth and deal with the Pseudo Dys-Corporated memory.
• In the case where there is a sensitive original memory that has been distorted by a subsequent,
implanted, altered version, the recovery of the pristine memory is dependent upon a non
intimidating presentation of the plot of the original memory scenario in contrast to the distorted
subsequent memory. On questioning when there is a distorted subsequent version, the person
seems very certain that this is the correct version. Ironically, when questioned, whether there was a
subsequent, implanted version or not, the person is never so completely certain of the original
memory as they are certain in the case of remembering the supplanted version. Delicate, patient
suggestions about plot and plot differences is the most successful way to help the person recover
obscure, unwelcome, or taboo memories.
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Resurgence and Recapturing of Dys-Corporated Items or Facets of Items
• Dys-Corporated memories or facets of memories:
– Numbness is Dys-Corporated feeling which is a massive overkill as a protest against hugely unfair
conditions imposed by an intimate or family relation or by life
– Anesthesia or related cessation of functioning of a body organ is a selective reaction against
sensations or intentions which seem to the person to act as a traitor delivering the person to
participate in some forbidden act such as a sexual act, or screaming, or indiscriminately swallowing
substances, or violent outburst.
– Resignation is dis-incorporated ‘will’ which is a protest reaction to blocking and frustrating
conditions imposed by an intimate, parent, or authority, or life.
– Paralysis or immobilization of ‘will’ is a Dys-Corporation of will in massive protest reaction against
hugely unfair or terrifying conditions imposed or potentially about to be imposed by an intimate,
parent, or authority, or life.
• Resurgence or recapturing of memories or facets of memories
– Under especially inauspicious conditions or under therapeutic conditions there can be a resurgence
of the Dys-Corporated in which the person is sometimes flooded with the memory of the DysCorporated and the original situation that generated it.
• Resurgence under the right conditions is sometimes so real that, to the person, it seems as though
that same situation is recurring in all of it original vividness. If these conditions seem trustworthy
enough, sometimes the Dys-Corporated memory (or facets) is released into incorporation as a fact
from the past or dis-incorporation, as an unacceptable phenomenon, permanently. The memory has
been recovered and dealt with.
– Recapturing occurs when the person senses that something has been Dys-Corporated and begins
to try and recover the lost memory.
• Recapturing typically occurs under auspicious conditions created by a combination of an accepting
therapist and safe life conditions. Recapturing can also involve the vivid flooding into consciousness
of the original scene with its emotional consequences.
• Recapturing and sometimes resurgence, under these auspicious conditions, are likely to lead to a
tremendous sense of relief after the catharsis and reclaiming of lost capacities and a tremendous
sense of freedom and tranquility.
• When the above recapturing occurs as a part of ongoing therapy that has dealt with related issues of
substance abuse, such as trigger situations, perceptions of the world, skills, etc., The person may
accelerate the reduction in need and incidence of substance use or suddenly stop altogether and
simply say, ‘I don’t need it anymore’.
• Authorities dealing with such youths can become an ally of the youth’s underlying intention to become
normal and recognize what a humiliating and terrifying condition the youth is dealing with. Then,
either the authority or a helper can temporarily remove the youth from program activities, listen and
calm the youth down until they feel ready to re-enter and at least marginally participate. With
reduction of threat in the immediate situation, sometimes the youth can get involved and lose
themselves in the activity as though the traumatic memories disappeared.
89
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Becoming an Ally to the Terrified, Overwhelmed Inner Child
and the Inner Child That Longs to Be Normal.
If you, as the authority truly empathize with the youth’s inner dilemma and
turmoil, both the good and the bad, the youth will begin to gradually feel safe
and gradually calm down. Taking the youth out of participation briefly can help
them gather themselves for a return.
I understand how
terrified and upset
you are and that
you really don’t
want to be that way.
I understand how
much you want to
be able to be OK
and participate with
the group.
I know its hard.
Lets try and settle
down just a little and
start with something
you know you can
do. That’s right,
that’s good.
4/13/2015
I can’t do it!
I can’t do it!
I’ve got to
get out of
here!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Oh! She really
understands and
accepts me. I’m
beginning to feel
safe. Maybe I can
join in again, but I
hope its not too
hard for me now.
90
The Origin of Pseudo Dys-Corporation
1. People like us do not do
things like that. That kind of
behavior is inexcusable. So
you better not do it again or
we’re throwing you out.
2. But I started just to have one or
two drinks, and then the party started
getting revved up and before I knew
it, I had had several and was feeling
no pain.
I did not want to let the rest of the
group down, so I just kept on having
another when they offered me one. I
did not want to offend anyone.
Then I don’t know what happened, I
just blacked out and later they told me
I had really been obnoxious.
But I can’t remember at all.
3. We know that
you drink too
much and use
that as an excuse
to say you got out
of control and use
the excuse that
you drank so
much you blacked
out and can not
remember what
you did. That is
very convenient
but irresponsible.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
In fact, the
blackout is well
known, can not
be proven with
certainty, and
therefore makes
and excellent
excuse. It is also
often used for
unacceptable
behavior
occurring in the
past, particularly
distant past. 91
Layers of Dysfunction Can Be Confusing
• Sometimes there is a deeper problem which the youth is not
aware of and yet it is driving him/her to destructive or self
destructive behavior.
• The authority sees the negative behavior and reprimands the
youth.
• The youth has seen people use the explanation of
unconscious forces causing negative behavior. Seeing that
this works to somehow get the offending party off the hook, the
youth will pretend to have had a black out or repressed
problem and are therefore not responsible.
• The authority can make the mistake of accepting the presented
excuse or make the mistake of rejecting it as just a way of
escaping blame.
• Without objecting to the fabricated excuse, the authority can
move deeper to relate to the fact the youth does in fact feel
guilty about the bad behavior but also that something in
addition is bothering the youth that is a bit more complicated.
• Typically when the authority asserts that the did the offense but
the situational factors may have been the cause, oddly, the
youth begins to confide his own share of the responsibility for
the offense.
92
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The Effect of the Authority’s Increasingly Negative
Reactions on Youth’s Denied Inner Experience and
Intentions Is to Drive It Deeper, Make it More
Inaccessible and Increase Pressure to Explode
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
93
Multiple Forces and Factors Influence Intentional Acts
• When you discover that at teen has begun experimenting with
drugs or alcohol, you typically first ask why. If you are looking
for a single, simple answer, you will miss the mark.
• Sometimes the adult authority (parent, teacher, etc.) can be
unwittingly contributing to the choice to use drugs even though
they are actively trying to discourage trying or using drugs.
• The teen has begun to bond with peers and relate to them as
their most influential reference group. The introduction to drugs
is usually through a peer.
• Two typical mistakes are:
– for parents or other adult authorities to forbid involvement with drugs
and/or threaten punishment of some sort
– or, for parents to try to enforce avoidance of suspected peers.
– Neither of these approaches work because:
• the teen is in the process of EMANCIPATING from the parent and adult
authorities
• the teen is usually out of reach, AWAY from home
• Teen’s BONDS with one another take precedence over family and their
influence is more likely to prevail
• ADVENTURESOMENESS, daring, facing challenges, rebellion,
experimentation, being initiated into the forbidden, sophisticated vices of
adults is taken as a sign of being grown up.
• Going to war against peers and drugs means, to the teen, war
against themselves and they must win.
• The model on the next slide illustrates the paths of this losing
battle.
94
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An Example of a History of Complex State Transformations of an
Item Such as an Intention, Preference, Belief, Acquaintance,
Especially as Relates to the Substance Abuse Item
1 Substance
Abuse
Item
8 Friend (Peer)
9 Friend Manipulation to Accept Item
12 Parental
Pressure to DisIncorporate
Peer
10 Incorporation of Friend
1
1
2 Parent
3 Parental Manipulation to Reject Item
7 Partial Incorporation of Parent
Partial Dis Incorporation
of Parental Manipulation
4 Incorporation
of Parent
2
3P
a
r
Manipul
e
ation
n
t
a
l
6 Parental
Manipulation
to DisIncorporate
Item
11 Peer Manipulation
to
Incorporate Item
21 Dis Incorporation of
Parental Manipulation
22Pseudo Dis Incorporation of
Parent
25 Partial Pseudo Dis Incorporation of Self
Partial Pseudo Incorporation of Self
2
4
20 Incorporation of Peers’
Manipulation Leads to PseudoIncorporate Item
1
9
13 Reaction to Item:
Partial Incorporation Item
Partial Dis Incorporation of Item
5 Substance
Abuse Item
18 Partial Pseudo-Incorporation of
Item
Partial Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation of
1 Item
7
14
15 Increased Pressure to
Dis-Incorporate Item
16 Reaction Leads to
Pseudo-Dis- Incorporation of
Item
A Model of an Adolescent’s Relations to Parent, Peer, and Substance Abuse
Color Code: Blue = parent red = self green = peers purple = substances
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95
The Preceding Model Demonstrated the Fact That the
Internal and External Forces Impelling a Person
Toward Self Destructive Behavior Are Seldom Simple.
• The youth seldom has the awareness or vocabulary to express
the complex forces driving their behavior. However, they do
know when the explanation or accusation of someone else,
especially an adult authority, is over simplifying their situation.
• Deep listening and acknowledging this complexity and at the
same time acknowledging the fact that neither the authority
nor the youth has a complete and accurate grasp of these
forces is reassuring to the youth and allows them to begin talk
it out and to work on each factor separately.
• Letting them think it through, and respecting this process,
makes them feel more adult, gives them cognitive and social
skills, confidence, security, and eventually the strength to
resist being influenced against their will.
• Even the slightest success in grasping one of these forces with
the help of an empathetic adult authority is highly rewarding to
the youth and gives them hope enough to continue trying to
surmount their problems rather than surrender to self
destructiveness or general destructiveness.
• Understanding from, and bond with, such an adult is like being
given a life boat when lost in a stormy sea.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
96
A Major Source of Influence Over Teens’ Behavior Is their
Self-Concept, Self-Image, or Social Identity
• Self-concept begins to be built into the young child by things parents
say to the child. Self-concept is wedded to parents until the teen years.
• Some attributes or traits are incorporated by the child and some are
dis-incorporated. What is in or out is a function of parenting style.
Children can incorporate negative attributes because parents,
deliberately or unwittingly, implant or assign them to the child.
• Entering the teens years, peers begin to assign attributes or labels to
each other. Recognizing the opportunity to redefine themselves, teens
engage in elaborate sampling of identities, almost like trying on
clothes. Some are flattering and some unflattering, but belonging to the
group is dependent upon an acceptance of the network of identities
dealt by the hand of the group members.
• Intense struggles and competition for enviable identities develop.
Ascribing unflattering identities is also a powerful tool for influencing
each other. Failure to surrender to group influence can release a
barrage of unflattering labels. This can be devastating to the targeted
teen.
• Teens try to present an image that will secure them a coveted identity.
“How do I look? How am I doing? Am I measuring up? Will my
appearance get me in?” These are the crucial questions.
• Discrepancies between coveted and actual identities bring great
distress. Every effort is made to hide or disguise such discrepancies.
Their feelings of distress are hidden so as not to seem vulnerable.
• As a result, their public persona takes center stage and their private
person is increasingly suppressed or pseudo-dis-incorporated.
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97
States of Incorporation and the Public Persona-Private Person Dichotomy
Public Persona
Pseudo-Incorporated Items
Pseudo-Dis-Incorporated Items
Pseudo-Dys-Corporated Items
Private Person
Incorporated
Dis-Incorporated
HeuristicIncorporated
Heuristic-DisIncorporated
Dys-Corporated
Items
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
98
Helping Teens Grow Toward Authenticity and Maturity
• All children have some kind of contact with cultural taboos. Taboos are not to be talked about and
taboo experiences therefore become repressed or suppressed but don’t go away. They generate
bizarre, irrational behavior that needs to be related to with compassion and guidance rather than
criticism and punishment. Having feelings, desires, thoughts, preferences, beliefs, intentions, or
engaging in acts that are not approved of by parents and authorities results in denial and an inner
sense of estrangement with the end result being tension and anxiety. Tension and anxiety cause the
child to be distracted, fidgety, and to perform poorly. The child is unaware of these processes and is
unable to control them. Consequently, a punitive approach exacerbates the problem.
• To help the child, with these types of problems, adjust, the parent or adult authority must learn how to
relate to troubled kids. With listening and understanding, it is possible to foster a bond with them.
Even when you know and they know they are being deceptive, the constructive approach is to be
understanding and accepting toward the deception because it is only a top layer of many deeper
layers of inaccessible problems. When listening to the troubled youth it is necessary to convey an
understanding that there are deeper layers without probing. Being critical or accusatory at this point
drives the problem deeper.
• Typically youths lack understanding and lack words to describe what is going on with them. The adult
must be tolerant, patient, and understanding of this deficiency. In addition to layers, there are also
multiple causes which are too complex for the teen to grasp and verbalize. However, they sense the
complexity. Accepting the complexity and their confusion is reassuring to the teen.
• Teens are going through a transition with many tumultuous changes and challenges. Being sensitive
to the pressures and challenges of being a teen is also reassuring to the teen. Knowing the power
that the struggle over identity has in adolescence can help adults understand teens’ strange needs for
bizarre fashions and behaviors. They crave an identity that is acceptable to their peers to such an
extent that their public persona expands and causes their inner private person to shrink, leaving the
private feeling unaccepted, misunderstood, lonely, alienated, and in despair.
• With these forces and pressures at work it is easy to see why it is so hard to resist the temptation to
say yes and use drugs. To take a combative stance against drugs and peers actually contributes to
losing the battle. The alternative approach is to listen, understand, bond, and unobtrusively assist
them in exercising their own judgment and encouraging them to explore alternatives and skills that
they can use in coping with these complex pressures. This approach builds trust and encourages
them to be themselves, be authentic, develop better judgment, and attain true maturity.
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How Can We Create Conditions in which Teens Can
Be
Positively Receptive to Information?
•In face to face interactions with teens,
what determines whether or not they will be
receptive to what you want to communicate?
•What does receptive mean?
•Are there different types of receptivity?
•What are the effects of different types of
receptivity?
•How are types of receptivity changed?
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100
Postures of Receptivity
in Education, Coaching,
Counseling, and Parenting
•The degree of success of education, coaching,
and counseling with youth who are antisocial,
emotionally disturbed, immature, and addicts, as
with all humans, is directly related to the mental
posture the adult helping agent and especially
the youth take toward that coaching, counseling,
and education.
•The first goal of counseling, coaching, and
education is, therefore, to provide the conditions
in which the youth moves toward the most
helpful Postures of Receptivity.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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101
The Difference Between Incorporation, Receptivity, and
Ownership
• In lesson 6, incorporation was described as
the inner relation we have toward our
experiences, feelings, preferences, beliefs,
thoughts, intentions, and acts.
• In this lesson, 8, the related concepts of
receptivity and ownership are subcategories of
incorporation. They have similarities to but
crucial differences from incorporation.
• Receptivity is described as how open or
closed a person is with respect to information
being presented, such as in a conversation,
lecture, or written text. Receptivity relates to
general information.
• Ownership is described as how a person feels
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102
States of Incorporation, Owning, and Postures of Receptivity
Are Labels for Different Versions of the Same Concept
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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103
States of Incorporation Translated Into Postures of Receptivity
Receptive:
Information being given you is carefully listened to, accepted, deeply
processed, appreciated, and stored as a part of one’s repertoire of
working knowledge for future use
Unreceptive:
Information being given you is not listened to, is rejected, disagreed
with, looked down on, and not stored for future reference.
Pretending
to be receptive:
You pretend to be listening to and accepting the information being given
you. You may feel that you should take it seriously and try to remember
it, but you do not, perhaps can not make yourself be receptive.
Pretending
to be unreceptive:
You pretend to not be listening to and accepting the information being
given you. You really want to listen and learn and take it seriously, but
conflicting influences and pressures are making you pretend to be
unreceptive. Your inner self wants to remember the information in spite
of pretending to be unreceptive, but the conflicts interfere with
concentration and you can not store it properly.
Tentatively
Receptive:
You have a favorable, trusting attitude toward the presenter and the
subject matter, but you have reason to reserve final judgment until you
have more supportive information. Or, you have sufficient trustworthy
information, but insufficient familiarity with the presenter and therefore
reserve judgment.
Tentatively
Unreceptive:
You have an initially unfavorable, reserved attitude toward the presenter
and, yet, you want the information to be credible. There are still
questions about the subject matter. You remain skeptical but leave
room for the possibility that the information may be worthy of
consideration. It is like saying, ‘prove to me by doubts and suspicions
are wrong.’
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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104
Conditions Promoting Receptivity
• Under what conditions would a person be completely open,
trusting, and receptive to newly presented information?
– If you know and trust the person providing the information and feel
their bond with you and their care for you would prevent them from
giving you misinformation.
– If you know the presenter has a long, proven record of credibility.
– If the presenter has a well known reputation and is presenting
information in the area of their expertise.
– If you have a mutually supportive relationship or are in similar
circumstances and you know the the presenter would have as much to
lose as you if the information is untrue or inappropriate.
– If you are given the privilege of access to all relevant supportive or unsupportive information yourself so that you could check it out if you
wished.
– If there is no rival, conflicting information that you know of.
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105
The Posture of Receptivity
• I would like for you to examine and consider the
information I am about to give you. I want you to
consider the relevance of the information. I would
also like for you to give me the same respect I am
giving you and genuinely listen to what I am going to
share with you.
• I will try to show you the relevance of this
information and its value to your life. You may
question me as I will question you, but with respect
that, both of us have the right to be listened to.
• If you do not understand the information or the
facts, or do not understand the relevance, then
please feel free to ask about it.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
• The way you present it to me makes me feel comfortable with
my own assessment and judgment about the validity and value
of the information. I feel comfortable about stating my
questions, confusion, or objections. That allows me to take the
information in more deeply and permanently. That makes me
feel that what I have learned, my new knowledge, has an
integrity about it. This way it is easier for me to revise my prior
beliefs and knowledge to accommodate this new information.
That makes me really consider using the information in the
future and to take the consequences of doing so seriously.
• Since it is my judgment, I can change my opinion if I feel I am
wrong. There is no coercion here. I am so much more
motivated to learn this way. I want to act more responsibly
about my education.
• It also makes me respect you more and even want to listen to
you and take the information you are sharing with me more
seriously.
• This is great, I feel so much more alive, even though the
challenge and responsibility is greater. I feel that really learning
this information is going to help me!
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Conditions Promoting Un-Receptivity
• Under what conditions would a person be completely unreceptive to newly presented information?
– The person presenting the information has to present this information, the
information was not chosen by them nor gained by them through first
hand experience. They have something to gain by presenting the
information and getting you to accept it, regardless of its validity.
– You have validated reasons to believe the presenter holds ill will toward
you, or the group you are affiliated with, or, you have had prior reasons to
believe this ‘type’ of person will have ill will, or be exploitative, toward you.
– While there is nothing to make you suspect the presenter is
untrustworthy, they prohibit you from questioning or investigating for
possible contrary information or evidence.
– They present themselves as authoritative or trustworthy and insist you
accept the information because of their authority on the subject matter or
simply because of their presumed status rather than the merits of the
information. They discourage your questioning them personally, their
motivation, their credentials, or the experiential basis of their knowledge.
– You have prior experience with the subject matter that causes you to
question any presentation of that type of subject matter. Or, you had
been previously influenced, by someone that you do trust, to be
suspicious of this type of subject matter.
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The Posture of Un-Receptivity
because you work here doesn’t mean that what
I represent this institution, therefore, you should listen Just
you have to say is right or valuable for me. Give me
to me and accept or learn what I have to say to you. some other reason why I should accept what you say.
I like and respect ‘you people’, therefore, you should
accept what I say.
Just because you say you like and respect me means
nothing. I know from experience that ‘you people’
have exploited and deceived ‘my people’, so you will
have to prove yourself to me first!
What I am communicating to you is correct and
valuable information and so you should listen and
accept it.
But, I want to check out for myself. Why can’t I
investigate and see if there is conflicting information?
I am the authority on this subject and therefore you
should listen and accept it.
Why should I accept you as authority on this too, or
believe you are such an expert? What are your
grounds for saying that?
Besides, I know plenty of
instances that contradict this
information and show that it is
not valuable to me, so why
should I suddenly be so
gullible now? Don’t try to bully
me!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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Conditions Promoting Pretending to Be Receptive
• Under what conditions will a person pretend to be receptive
when they are not?
– If there is an ‘agency’ power over a person that can positively or
negatively influence the person’s life fate, they are likely to pretend to
be receptive even when they are not.
– If a person’s reputation or status can be diminished in the eyes of
peers or significant others, they will tend to pretend receptivity to what
that reference group says they should be receptive to.
– If a person has the possibility of reward if they are receptive to the
information, this becomes an ulterior motive to pretend receptivity
even though they are not.
– If the person has an identity that includes being receptive and is given,
or may attain, some type of status for this identity, they will tend to
pretend receptivity even though they are not.
– If the person has a love, reverence, or admiration for the presenter, or
feels emotionally obligated to them, they will tend to be receptive
even when they are not.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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The Posture of Pretending to Be Receptive
OK, I know you will agree with me. Everybody
does, especially the cool people. Trust me, this is
going to be really good for you and you’d be crazy
not to see what I’m talking about and agree with me
and go along with me. I know you don’t want look
like a nerd or look stupid, so get with the program
and go along with me. OK?
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
I don’t want you to turn against me or harm me.
And besides, what will people think? I want to
succeed so I will get the reward, so, ‘I’m receptive!,
I’m interested!’ I’m always tops, that’s who I am, so
I am receptive here and will be tops again, you’ll
see!
Of course I love you, you’re the greatest, my hero,
so how could I not be receptive to you! And, after
all, I appreciate all you have sacrificed for me.
Also, I don’t want to be disapproved of, so, I’m
listening! I’m listening!
110
Conditions Promoting the Posture of
Pretended Lack Capability of Being Receptive
• Suppose a person has some kind of handicap, emotional or physical,
and they say it prevents them from being able to be receptive.
– If there is a handicap, is it such that it makes it impossible for the person
to be receptive, to attend, to listen, or to consider the information? It may
be that the disability is a distraction. However, how the handicap affects
concentration may be a matter of how the person relates to it. If they
initially tried to function normally and the handicap interfered and they
got behind, lost confidence, and focused on their failure, the direction of
the focus may be the major problem.
– Suppose the handicapped person did get behind, lost confidence and
therefore lost focus, and was graded down on performance. Now it
seems reasonable that this person would claim that their handicap made
it impossible to be receptive, focused, concentrate, learn, and perform up
to standard. At this point, whether criticized or indulged for proclaiming
their handicap is to blame, their use of the handicap as an excuse and
their focus on the handicap and feelings of failure become the problem.
This is one of the more serious conditions that promote the posture of
‘pretended lack of capability of being receptive’.
– Other conditions could be when and if the handicapped person were to be
teased, ridiculed, or taunted about their handicap, thus truly preventing
the person from being able to stay focused.
– Assume that someone was acutely aware of the extra challenge facing the
handicapped person and took time to help accommodate to it, make their
peace with it, and refocus on the goal rather than the obstruction, doing
what they can rather than being preoccupied with what they can’t do.
Their progress might still not be the same as a non handicapped person,
but considering the limitation, they may be progressing optimally for
them.
• In the end what really matters is the way the adult teacher, helping
agent, or authority relates to the teen.
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The Posture of Pretended Lack Capability of Being Receptive
You say you have a learning
disability. What is it like? Does it
mean that you can not learn?
Well, lets see, with all of these
worries about your handicap, how
does that affect your concentration?
First of all, accept your limitations
and don’t expect to perform like
someone with no limitations.
Second, who are you learning for?
Is it for the impression you will make
on others, or is it for yourself and
your own preferences and goals?
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
Well, it makes it difficult. I can’t do as well as
the others and I get discouraged. When others
find out about it, I feel inferior. I lose
confidence and don’t do well and am afraid
someone will find out and think I’m no good.
What should I do? I don’t want to leave.
I think I see what you’re getting at. I can’t do
well if I’m always worried about how well I’m
doing. But what do I do about it?
OK. If I do it for myself and forget about what
people think, I will be getting something of
value for me. The other way I don’t get
anything and just feel embarrassed and
depressed.
112
Conditions Promoting Pretending to Be Un-Receptive
• Under what conditions will a person pretend to be unreceptive when they really are receptive?
– If a person’s family, peers, or other significant reference group has
a negative attitude toward certain types of experiences,
information, or institutions, they will tend to not want to be found to
be receptive to any of these. They will not want to look disloyal to
these significant others.
– If a person feels their self esteem may be stake if they are
receptive and then are rebuffed or fail, they will feign being unreceptive or having lack of interest or care.
– If a person feels that by appearing receptive they will be judged to
be gullible or unsophisticated, they may tend to appear unreceptive.
– If a person feels that by revealing that they are open and receptive
to someone, they are vulnerable and might be taken for granted or
exploited, they may pretend to be un- receptive.
– If a person feels that by appearing receptive it may reduce their
value in someone’s eyes, they will tend appear un-receptive.
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The Posture of Pretending to Be un-Receptive
1 OK, so you want to know what I have to offer, that’s
great. Now just take a seat over there and I will get to you
when I have time.
2 Well, don’t let anybody know I’m
interested, OK? I have to pretend like I
don’t care or they’ll think I’m easy.
3 You know, this is new to you and its quite hard. You
might not do well.
4 Well, I’m not really interested, I’m just
checking it out.
5 So you’re wanting to know about this. Well, just sit back
and let me guide you to the truth.
6 Hey, I’m no dummy. I’m actually
skeptical about all this. I’m not easily
taken advantage of you know! I’ve got
some self respect. So, what’s the deal
anyway?
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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Conditions Promoting Either
Tentative Receptivity or un-Receptivity
• Under what conditions will a person take a posture of
being tentatively or heuristically receptive?
–If a person has grown up emotionally secure and
independent and encouraged to investigate, think things
through, use their own judgment, be independent, they will
tend, in almost every situation, to be either tentatively
receptive or tentatively un-receptive, depending upon the
credibility of the source, the apparent motives of the
presenter, the apparent reasonableness of the information,
the ability to question, the availability of and access to
supportive information, regardless of any other
psychological factors such as pressure and influence.
–If, in the current situation, they are taught how to and
encouraged to be tentative, to listen but reserve judgment,
they will eventually learn and adopt this posture. They will
learn to resist pressure.
• When persons adopt a tentative or heuristic posture
toward information, they tend to process it more
deeply, retain it longer, recall and use it, and revise
when conflicting information arises.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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The Postures of Tentative Receptivity and Un-Receptivity
If you have any doubts, or misgivings, or
questions, or reservations, and you feel you need to
think it through more before you do it, or decide, or
agree, or buy into it, then I want you to trust your
feelings and intuitions, not rely or depend on mine.
I don’t want you to learn from me to give in to
pressure from others or to impulses in your self.
Whatever doubts or reservations you have, listen to
them, consider them, realize you have a choice, its your
life and your time and learning to develop your own
wisdom and judgment and skill in checking things out
is much more important than my getting you to agree
with me or my having my way and showing I’m the one
who knows best.
Because, if that were the way you grew up, what
would you do when you were away from me and on
your own? Don’t give in to pressure from anyone who
tells you what to do or think or tries to sell you
something?
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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Well, I do often have questions, doubts,
reservations, uncertainties, misgivings! It is hard
to have the patience and persistence and resist
pressure against making my own decisions and
coming to my own conclusions. It would be easier
to rely on someone else and blame them for the
negative consequences.
Everybody is different and I would be pulled
this way and that and I would feel like maybe I
was just a puppet or robot for everyone else and
didn’t have a will or life of my own.
When and if I absolutely had to decide for
myself, control my own destiny, determine my
own future, I would be lost.
When I make my own decisions I have to face
the consequences and learn from them. Maybe it
is better to go through the agony and anxiety of
learning to use and trust my own judgment now,
while I am young! Maybe it is worth the risk. I
appreciate your trusting me and giving me the
chance to mature.
Noticing Postures of Receptivity and Cultivating Tentative or Heuristic Receptivity
• Being open and trusting is a result of having had a secure, accepting
set of parents and early life history.
• Children and teens also know and need to accept the fact that not
everyone should be trusted on first encounter and not everything that
they hear should be automatically accepted.
• An important part of maturation is learning to sense when to question
and reserve judgment or delay decision making.
• In the quest for acceptance and approval, some youths will set aside
their questions, misgivings and reservations.
• Reinforcing youths when you observe them questioning and
deferring judgment and decision making until they have more
information, have weighed the decision, and resolved their
reservations and doubts can help them become consciously aware
of their use of these processes and their right to use them.
• When you observe teens caving in to pressure and making
premature judgments and decisions, you can step in, take the youth
aside, and encourage them to explore the issue with you thoroughly,
uncover their feelings of discomfort, their reservations, consider
alternatives and consequences, and point out the strengths and
maturity of taking this new approach.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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117
How Do Internalized Parents Influence the Way
Teens View Their World?
What All Goes into Shaping a Teen’s World View?
What Role Does the Teens’ World View
Play in Their Lives?
What Difference Does This World View Make?
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Children Begin at a Very Early Age to Construct
a World Schema or World View.
Their world view is a reflection of the way the parents view the world and the
way the parents relate to the child.
The parental-child interaction patterns result in expectations, preparatory
reactions that pull for the habitual parental pattern.
These expectations and interaction patterns become generalized to the world
at large and therefore tends to elicit from others reaction patterns similar to
those of the parents.
Responses from the world confirm the child’s developing world view.
As you observe children’s behavior, you will see that
each has their own unique behavior patterns.
Ask yourself, ‘where do these come from’?
What is the source of these patterns?
What are the dynamics underlying these patterns?
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HOW DO IMPLICIT OTHERS AFFECT
THE TEEN’S PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD
AND THEIR VIEW OF THE WORLD?
• In previous lessons, we frequently mentioned the concept
of Implicit Others.
• In this lesson, we will learn that the child’s behavioral
interaction patterns stem from:
–
–
–
–
habitual interaction patterns with the parents in early life
expectations that are generalized to the world
adoption of parental world views
incorporation of the parents as implicit others that determine the
child’s behavior even while away from the parents.
• Now we will explore more deeply the dynamic interaction
between world views, implicit others, and behavioral
patterns.
• We will expand beyond this to some novel, important
concepts.
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THE CHILD’S NEW EXPERIENCES OF THE WORLD ARE SEEN THROUGH
THE LENS CONSISTING OF AND COLORED BY ITS IMPLICIT OTHERS
HYPOTHETICAL
REAL WORLD
Child
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Interpretation
of the World
World
View
Throug
h the
Lens of
the
Implicit
Other
Implicit
Other
Implicit
Other
Interpretation
of the world
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THE CONSTRUCTED AND IMPOSED VIEW OF THE WORLD
TURNS AROUND AND SHAPES THE CHILD’S PERSONALITY
• Does The Child’s View Of The World, Which Is Shaped By
Implicit Others [parents], Reflexively Affect How The Child
Feels About Itself?
• Are the following aspects of the child’s personality All
Complementary to each other?
– The Child’s Views of the World
– the Child’s Modes of Being,
– the Child’s Ego States,
– and the Child’s Ego Feelings.
• Identity is social, exists only within social contexts, and is
given by and belongs to the group. Ego states and ego
feelings are internal and develop early and mostly in the
family context. As they are brought into the social context,
they influence what identity will be ascribed to the person.
Self concept is a composite of interactions between ego
states, ego feelings, and identity and stays within the person.
• Try observing the child’s habitual demeanor, moods,
emotions, along with immediate interactions with others to
infer ego states and ego feelings. Modes of Being can be
inferred from observations over extended periods of time.
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THE WAY PARENTS TREAT THE CHILD IN ITS EARLIEST YEARS IS
INCORPORATED BY THE CHILD AND THEN PROJECTED ONTO THE WORLD
The Child Then Perceives That Projected Image As the Attitude the World Has Toward IT.
This Reflexive Perception, in turn, Influences the Child’s Own Enduring Modes of Being in the World,
Its Recurring Ego States, it Transient Ego Feelings, as well as Its Cognitive and Emotional Growth
World View Seen Through the Lens of the Implicit Others
The Attributes of Implicit Others Construct the Schemata of the World.
Perceived Attributes of Significant
Implicit Other is Projected onto World
Perceived Attributes of Significant
Implicit Other is Projected onto World
Implicit Other
as Lens coloring
how the world looks
Implicit Other
as Lens coloring
how the world looks
Modes of Being
Attitudes & Behavior of Child
Complementary
to Attributes
Attitudes & Behavior
of Childof
Implicit Others and
World View
Complementary
to Attributes
of
Ego
States
and View
Implicit
Others
& World
Ego Feelings
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Each Child Learns to See Their Image of the World
As Their Parents See the World
Teen
“The World
is:
Sinful
Tempting
Corrupt
Nurturing
Indulgent
Warm
The
Parents
are, so:
Passionate
Seductive
Regressive
Sinister
Intimidating
Exploitative
“The World
is:
Idealistic
Judgmental
Demanding
Realistic
Laisez-faire
Reciprocating
Typical Versions of the World Incorporated by Children as They Incorporate Their Implicit Parents.
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The Relation Between World Views, Ego States, and Ego Feelings
Sinful
Tempting
Corrupt
Nurturing
Indulgent
Warm
Passionate
Seductive
Regressive
Ego States:
resisting or
giving in to
temptation
Ego States:
dependent
and entitled
Ego States:
coquettish &
flirtatious
Ego Feelings:
devilish or
guilty
Ego Feelings:
needy and
affectionate
Ego Feelings:
sexy and
aroused
Sinister
Intimidating
Exploitative
Idealistic
Judgmental
Demanding
Ego States:
defensive &
cautious
Ego States:
ambitious and
critical
Ego Feelings:
persecuted
and resentful
Ego Feelings:
anxious and
pressured
Realistic
Laisez-faire
Reciprocating
Ego States:
practical &
assertive
Ego Feelings:
confident and
responsible
These typical world views, ego states and ego feelings are relatively enduring and stable. Ego states and
feelings are more prominent and intense during adolescence.
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Behavior of People in Various Ego States
Sinful
Tempting
Corrupt
Nurturing
Indulgent
Warm
Passionate
Seductive
Regressive
Sinister
Intimidating
Exploitative
Ego States:
defensive &
cautious
Ego States:
resisting or
giving in to
temptation
Ego States:
dependent and
entitled
Ego States:
coquettish &
flirtatious
Ego Feelings:
devilish or
guilty
Ego Feelings:
needy and
affectionate
Ego Feelings:
sexy and
aroused
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Ego Feelings:
persecuted &
resentful
Idealistic
Judgmental
Demanding
Realistic
Laisez-faire
Reciprocating
Ego States:
ambitious and
critical
Ego Feelings:
anxious and
pressured
Ego States:
practical &
assertive
Ego Feelings:
confident &
responsible
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The Teen’s World View Is a Complex
Aggregation of Positive and Negative Segments.
• The teen is receptive to, incorporates, and owns some segments of
the world and is unreceptive to, dis-incorporates, and dis-owns other
segments of the world.
• Due to pressures from parents [and their representation as implicit
others], from other adult authorities, and from peers, teens relate to
some segments of the world with pretense rather than authenticity.
• Just as identities can vary with the situation, so do ego states and
ego feelings vary in relation to segments of their world and as
situations related to segments change.
• Heroes and idols chosen in hero worship often reflect the teen’s
predominant ego states and feelings.
• Ego states can be authentic or inauthentic and ego feelings reflect
the sense of authenticity or in-authenticity. The sense of inauthenticity increases as the discrepancy between their real, inner
self and their pretense or pretended image (public persona) widens.
• Authenticity is associated with peace and serenity while a lack of
authenticity is associated with an ego feelings of stress, anxiety, and
despair.
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The Person’s View of the World Is Divided by
Postures and Ownership and Assessed from the Perspective of States
Segmentation of the Totality of One’s World
IN
OU
T
AUTHENTIC
EXPERIENCE
Dis-Inc
Inc
Heuristic
Dis-Inc
Heuristic-Inc
PseudoDis-Inc
Pseudo-Inc
Dys-Inc
PseudoDys-Inc
NON-AUTHENTIC
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
PEACE
DESPAIR
EXPERIENCE
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FORMATION OF THE TEEN’S SCHEMATA OF THE WORLD
Encounters and experiences with phenomena in these various segments affect what is
incorporated and how they are incorporated. They form the teen’s schemata of the
world. The way in which the teen will come to relate to these phenomena determines
degrees of success and failure in life.
• There are two lists on the next slide. The first is a list of shared
representations of the world. The second is a list of representations
of the person’s internal world.
• As the child grows into the teen and the teen into the adult, they will
have first encounters with items on these lists. As a child, they
seldom conceptualize these items. As a teen, there are endless
discussions, especially among each other, about these items. They
are on the phone or communicating by computer endlessly discussing
these items. Such interminable phone conversations may seem like a
tremendous waste of time to the parents.
• Teens are actually working very hard to get a consensual view of the
world and to sculpt their own private view of the world.
• They intuitively know that their survival in the future, as an adult, will
depend on how knowledgeable, skillful, and sophisticated they are
about each of these items. This need for consensus is to avoid
disapproval from peers and is a driving force toward conformity.
• They have to work these things out for themselves, but they are
confused and bewildered. They hope to avoid seeming like they are
dependent on adults for assistance, yet they will surreptitiously listen
and watch adults to see if they can glean the necessary information
from them.
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A Key to Mental Content Items That Are Significant for Treatment
and That Are Subject to State Transformations
The following two lists are summaries of the kinds of items that are highly subject to state transformations.
Retracing and undoing inaccurate, inappropriate state transformations and reorienting postures of receptivity
and ownership with respect to these items may be essential for a full, healthy, authentic, spontaneous, creative,
successful and happy life.
Items in both columns are obviously intertwined in real life. They exist in a complex web of mutual influences
and interlocked history. They exist in a gestalt that is hidden, interior, layered and multi-valenced.
Therapists and other adults counseling or coaching teens can not impose their assumptions about this gestalt
without reaping unwanted consequences. Patience is the key to facilitating their unfolding in an uncorrupted,
genuinely therapeutic manner. If teen’s are to receive direct coaching from an adult, it typically has to be from a
non-parent third party to be accepted by the teen.
• Shared Representations • Representations of the Internal World
–Perceptions, Memory Schemata and Behavioral,
of the External World
Language, and Cognitive Schemes, Levels of
– View of World and Culture
– Institutions and Programs
– Ethnic and Social Groups
– Extended Family, Family,
Peers, Intimate Relationships
– Knowledge and Skill Domains
– Interests, Activities, Taste
– Places, Situations, Events,
Traumatic Incidents
– Schedules and Dates
– Public Values, Beliefs, Laws,
Rules, Customs, Etiquette
– Identities and Roles
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Assessment and Interpretation
–Pleasure and Pain Experiences, Trauma and Ecstasy
Experiences
–Decisions, Goals, Fantasies, Visions of One’s Future,
and the Difficult to Access Implicit Others and Their
Influence
–Plans and Strategies
–The Difficult to Access Criteria for Fulfillment and
Foreshadowing of the Future
–Experience of Time, Timing, Schedules, and
Temporal Perspectives
–Emotions and Feelings, Ego States, Self Concept
–Personal Events and Incidents, Traumatic as well
Victorious
–Success-Failure Completion Experiences
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Beginning Crystallization of Identity Configuration in Late Adolescence and the
Development of Styles of Relating to Identity.
Styles of Relating to: Identity, Persona, Image Presentation
Porous Pretentious
Rigid
Hidden
Effacing Chameleon
These styles relate to the manner in which identity attributes are adopted or
presented and to the manner of coping with discrepancies and threats.
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Conscience, Values, Implicit Others, Incorporation States and Therapy
•
•
•
•
•
Conscience has long been considered to be the mental faculty enjoining us to do good acts
and to sense the goodness or badness of intentions, acts, or character in general. The
Freudian Superego, in a comparable manner transmits commands and admonitions to the
ego. Conscience tows us in toward conformity to conventions and values. Values, the stamp
of approval for acts done and to be done, are transmitted, typically through parents at first and
later through institutions and peers.
The Implicit Other, by contrast, is much broader, less conscious, more pervasive in influence.
As with conscience and superego, the Implicit Others are typically first parents and later
institutions and peers. However, Implicit Others extend their purview to adequacy, goal
choices, processes and procedures, tastes and preferences, mannerisms, opinions and
beliefs, in short, extends to anything that can be intended or seemingly was intended.
Implicit Others are the primary source determining, not one’s original intentions, but the
revised and redirected versions of the intention or the blocking of the intention altogether. If
we think of intention as extending to what is coming into the mind as well as what is thought,
felt, or expressed verbally and behaviorally, then the Implicit Others are influencing everything
mental. Whether a person allows their mind to focus on and learn math, climb trees, feel sex,
speak in a certain manner, believe a certain thing, and on to infinity, it is the Implicit Other that
exerts the major influence. And, this is happening as unconsciously as breathing. The States
of Incorporation, Postures of Receptivity and Ownership and their content are a direct result of
and are determined by the Implicit Others. Consequently, Implicit Others have a primary
affect on the formation of the teen’s schemata of the world.
Until the person has uncovered the role of their Implicit Others in the intentions and acts and
every other facet of their minds, they have no free control of their own intentions, acts, and
whole life. Only when this relationship is explicit to the client are they truly free to choose,
mold, and determine their own lives.
This is the function of intentional coaching, teaching, and counseling: to
provide safe, patient conditions for a teen to unfold in their own time and
manner, uncover the sources of their intentions and behavior, and gain
enduring self determination and inner freedom and serenity.
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How Do We Create the Conditions that Will
Induce Positive Ownership of and
Involvement in the Information and Skills
Being Presented?
What are the Typical Postures Teens Take toward
Materials Being Presented or toward Participation
in Programs and Activities?
What Are the Causes of these Postures?
How Are Counterproductive Postures Supplanted
with Productive Postures?
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Understanding and Dealing With
Postures of Ownership
in Parenting, Therapy, and Education
•The goal of therapy and education is to provide the conditions in
which the youth moves toward the most helpful
Postures of Authentic Ownership.
•The degree of success of therapy and education with youth who
are antisocial, emotionally disturbed, immature, and addicts, as
with all humans, is directly related to the mental posture of
ownership that both the adult helping agent and the youth being
helped take toward the treatment and education.
•The question is, ‘how do we create conditions conducive to
that ideal posture of ownership?’
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States of Incorporation Translated Into Postures Ownership and Involvement
Owning:
Dis-owning:
Pretending to
information perceived about your self or the world is taken into the self
and accepted as a part of the self. Information presented by you is
accepted as fully intended. When something is owned, you are involved
with it, identify with it, tend to remember information about, and act
responsibly toward it.
information perceived to be about you self or the world is rejected as not
belonging to the self, as not-self. Information presented by you is
presented as not intended, as not you. The is the way you really feel.
you pretend to own information about yourself and your world when you
own:
really reject or dis-own this information. You pretend to accept or
take in or identify with information about things when you really reject or
dis- own this information. You pretend to own information presented
by
you but know it is false or a front.
Pretending to
you pretend to dis-own information about your self and the world when
dis-own: deep down you sense or even know that it is true or really does belong or
relate to you. You pretend to dis-own information, people, affiliations,
things presented by or associated with you even when you know that
you really are that way or really intended, believed, acted that way, or
were affiliated or associated with. You pretend to sever your identification
with the item.
Tentatively
your reaction is favorable or accepting, but something makes you
owning:
want to suspend judgement and wait until you are convinced you really want
to own this information, or be associated with, identified with, or involved with
the item.
Tentatively
your initial reaction is negative, unfavorable, but something makes
dis-owning:
you want to suspend or withhold judgment and wait until you have seen and
considered all relevant information before you reject or dis-own it or sever
connection with or involvement with the item completely.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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Relations Between Incorporation, Receptivity, and Ownership
How I relate to you has something
to do with your receptivity.
G
l
o
b
a
l
Incorporation is
internal and personal.
Incorporation
Receptivity
Ownership
M
e
t
r
o
p
o
l
i
t
a
n
P
u
b
l
i
c
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
P
e
r
s
o
n
a
l
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The ‘I and the Me’ and the ‘Us and the We’ Perspectives on the Expanse of Ownership
The Perspectives of Involvement Versus Observation
Team Spirit Versus Objectivity
Viewed:
From the Inside = Adventuring - From the Outside = Behavior
•
The complex process of
differentiating the world into
categories of ownership:
–
Ownership
–
World
at Large
A more
inclusive
union
World
SeenatAsLarge
Alien
Not Identified With
NotOut-group
Me
In-group
Owned
Me - Mine
In-group
Involved
Owned
Me - Mine
Involved
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Dis-owned
Out-group
Not-me
Dis-owned
Not Involved
Not-me
Not Involved
137
–
what is mine, what I
own, what I relate to,
belong to, and identify
with such as my
personality, official roles,
and possessions versus
what is mine but I do not
own such as my loved
ones and children.
groups that I identify
with in a local sense
such as my class and my
team versus do not
identify with or belong to
such as competing
teams or schools
Yet, in a more global
sense, I nevertheless
belong to and identify
with, in an inclusive
sense, things such as my
school as one among all
schools, and things such
as, my ethnic group
along wigh all ethnic
groups as a human
being, my town, and my
nation along with all
nations, the earth, world,
and the universe as one.
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The ‘Us’ and the ‘Them’:
the Perspectives and Effects of
Looking ‘Up At’ and Looking ‘Down On’
Social and Ethnic Groups
You guys are
just no good!
We’re the
top of the
heap and
nobody can
touch us!
Look how they
look up to me.
Am I really that
special!
Oh my gosh! Let
me out of here. I
don’t want to be
near them. They
will hurt me.
Modes of Being and personality characteristics shaped by the structure of society.
I’m
inferior.
I’ll never
have a
chance!
Wow!
They’re so
great. I wish
I could be
one of them!
You think you’re
hot stuff but
you’re just
conceited and no
better than I am!
I hate you. You
get it all and I get
nothing. I’m
gonna get you and
bring you down.
The Fact of Ethnic and Socio-economic Status Groups Creates a Structure That in Turn
Creates or Shapes the Teen’s World View and Shapes Personality Characteristics
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Overcoming the Biasing Effects of the Given Social Structures
The negative effects of arbitrary but unfamiliar social groupings
can be reversed in adolescence and especially in high schools
and juvenile correctional institutions.
By getting to know one another
from each of the groupings.
By activities involving cooperating and
competing on the same teams with
people from each of the groupings.
World Views, Modes of Being, and Personality Characteristics Can Be Changed for
the Better by Changing the Structure of the Social Environment.
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The Relation of Owning and Involvement with Respect to Information and Knowledge
I want you to examine and consider the
information I am about to give you about the
world and about yourself.
I want to know if you have examined,
thought about, tested, and used your own
judgment so that you have satisfied yourself
that what you have concluded is what you
genuinely think and feel is true.
I want to know whether you intend to
remain open minded when you meet
conflicting information in the future.
If this is your posture, then you may rest
assured that I believe in your right to your own
opinions and judgments about yourself and the
way you express and act on them and I accept
your judgment.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Wow! When you put it that way, if you really
mean what you say, it makes me want to think,
and study these issues about myself and my view
of the world very responsibly.
When I do that, I feel that what I conclude and
express or act on is really me. I’m not being
coerced or manipulated into something against my
will. I do not have to pretend. I take full ownership
of what I think, feel, decide, and do.
That makes me feel so much more involved.
That makes me feel I have integrity. That makes
me really seriously consider the consequences
and change if I am wrong.
This way I am so much more motivated, learn
so much better, act so much more responsibly.
It also makes me respect you more and even
want to listen to you and take you more seriously.
This is great, I feel so much more alive, even
if the challenge and responsibility is greater.
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The Relation of Owning and Involvement with Respect to Affiliating and Participating
We have an interesting project I would like for you to
get involved with. I will describe what it is all about
and then you can see what role you would be
interested in playing. You can check it out, ask
other participants, try it out, taking your time, and
then we can discuss how you can become a part.
Here are the advantages and benefits to
participating with us. Here are the alternatives.
Shall we explore it together?
Well, if that is your choice, then OK. But you do have
to remain here while we all participate. Either I or one
of the other members will come back to see if there is
something you would like to do with us. By the way,
do you ever - - - ? Because we could use your help
in that department.
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It seems like you are giving me a
choice and I’m not used to that.
Are you sure you want to give me
a choice, because, if you do, then I
don’t want to be involved.
Well, maybe I could just watch
what those are doing over there
and maybe I might could do
that. It seems a little more
interesting now that you are
giving me a choice and
considering how I, personally,
might get involved. I don’t feel
pressured at all. Thanks.
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The Posture of Dis-Owning and Un-Involvement
I want you to do this because I know
what is best for you. I want you to like
this because I like it, it’s good, and I
know you will like it if you try it. I want
you to believe this because I know it is
right. I want you to feel this because it
is the way you are supposed to feel. I
want you to follow my advice because
I know what is best for you and I know
the consequences will be bad for you
if you don’t do what I say, do it my
way!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
But I don’t want to do, like, believe, feel all
of those things because I have tried them and
I don’t like them and I know I don’t want them!
You want me to take your advice blindly
because of your past experiences. I want to
learn how to use my own judgment, I want to
learn from my own mistakes, I want the right
to make choices just like you.
If you try to force me to be you and do
and think as you say, then, even if I have to, I
won’t own it. And, if I am forced and it later
turns out not good for me, I will blame you.
If I use my own judgment and make my
own choices and then it turns out bad, I will
learn from my mistakes, because they were
mine! A sense of ownership motivates me.
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The Posture of Pretending to Own or Be Involved
You know, if you don’t do such and such, it will
break my heart. You’re driving me to a heart attack
because you won’t associate with the people I want
you to. No child of mine would refuse to do such
and such. Everyone in our family has always
believed such and such. You can’t consider
yourself to be a member of this group if you don’t
believe that way, too.
Why do I dedicate myself and work myself to
the bone? So you can go into the profession I
wanted to and couldn’t. I want you to do this. Is
that such a big deal? Can’t you just do it to please
me?
If you’re going to be difficult about this, I will
just have to force you.
Of course, I’ll be what you want to be, do what you
want me to do, feel what you want me to feel, go
where you want me to go, believe what you want me
to believe, like what you want me to like. Of course I
appreciate all you have done for me. I understand
how important it is and much it means to you. I was
just being silly when I said I wanted something
different. I’m over that, I really want what you want
for me. You are so wonderful, how could I ever want
to be anything or do anything except what you want
for me!
Learning the posture of
pretending to own originates with the
parents and then is carried over in
interaction with peers. By now, the
teen has learned to be able to pretend
to own something negative that peers
are pushing.
Finally, the teen can rebel when
out of sight of parents.
The posture of pretending to own
leads to despair at not being able to be
oneself.
It also leads to giving in to
negative peer pressure and can be
dangerous.
Pretending to own is powerful. A
person can even convince themselves
that they really like the taste of
something that tastes awful.
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The Posture of Pretending to Dis-Own or Be Un-Involved
I know you would never be like that. I know
you could never do anything like that, at least I
hope not. If I thought you had ever even
considered it, I would be so disappointed in
you. You really agree don’t you, you can tell
me, you wouldn’t have any inclination to give
in, you can resist, I know you want to. You
have the strength to do it, just reach inside
and find the determination. Just say to
yourself you going to ignore the fear and pain
and overcome the odds. You’re a strong
person you can accept the responsibility. I
know you can afford it and want to, so go
ahead and do it.
No, I don’t have any pain. I
don’t feel bad! No, I’m not
scared or worried. That might
seem like high risk to most
people, but not to me. No, I
don’t like them either. No, I
don’t believe that way either,
I’m just like you, I dislike that
just like you do. No, I’m not
uncomfortable, or bored, I’m
having a good time, really I am!
I didn’t really want to belong to
that group anyway.
Pretending to disown
often gets a person into a
situation of high risk for
negative consequences for
themselves and their loved
ones or friends.
Because they learned
the pattern early in
interaction with parents, they
really feel it is best thing to
pretend the opposite of what
they feel, want, or know
deeper down.
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Discouraging Vs Encouraging
The Posture of Keeping Owning or Involvement in Suspense
A. Discouraging Suspended Judgment and Action.
B. Encouraging Suspended Judgment and Action.
1. OK! This is the way its
going to be. This is the
truth. You’re either with
me or against me. There
are no in-betweens. It is
now or never. There is no
room for uncertainty or
wavering. He who
hesitates is lost.
1. OK! I want you to think
this over and consider all
the angles, alternatives,
and consequences. You
don’t have to make up your
mind, agree, or make a
decision until you feel sure
about it yourself. You are
the one who will have to
live with it. This is the way
you learn-thinking it
through, going with what
you feel and think, feeling
ready, own-ing the decision
or idea, being responsible
for your own position and
later facing and learning
from the consequences
your-self, so you can
mature.
3. You are too wishywashy, no guts, can
never make up your
mind, what are you afraid
of? Don’t you know your
own mind? Are you
afraid of commitment,
making decisions? He
who hesitates is lost.
2. But I don’t know for
sure, I need more information, I need more
time, I need to think it
over, I need to compare
and consider the long
and short term
consequences, it is not
black or white --it is
shades of gray, I need to
try it first, try a little of
this and that, test and
compare results. I
believe it is premature
or even immature to do
it now or decide now, or
close out all other
options now.
2. I appreciate your
encouraging me to delay
gratification and
suspend judgment and
think things through and
compare and get all the
facts first! It is kind of
hard at first, but I’ve
watched you do it and
I’m learning. I see how I
have avoided some
really bad moves that I
would have been sorry
for or felt dis-honest or
compromised because I
caved in to pressure. I
feel like I am maturing,
becoming more like an
adult. I’m proud of my
self and my judgment!
4. You’re
pressuring
me. Making
me take
unnecessary
risks, rush
into things.
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There Are Many Different Ways We Store and Relate
to Information about Ourselves and the World.
It is very difficult to change a person’s postures, attitudes, and
perspectives on the world and themselves.
Once a person has adopted and expressed an opinion, they
usually identify with it and even accept it as a part of their
identity. They will fiercely resist attempts to change them.
Sometimes maintaining such opinions and perspectives can
be harmful or disadvantageous to the person.
How can we create the conditions in which people can
authentically change and maintain self respect?
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How Information That Is Stored Is
Transformed
From Being In One State into a Different State
•Sensations, sights, sounds, and perception of
words and behavior are all received in an original
state or first impression.
•If the first impression is positive, something has
to happen to change that state to negative.
Something unusual must happen to cause altering
the first impression, or pretending that it is now
changed into its opposite, or negative.
•If the first impression is negative, something has
to happen to transform it into positive or
pretending that it is its opposite, or positive.
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What Causes a State Transformation From an
Original First Impression to Its Opposite?
•
•
•
•
Parental influence
Sibling or peer influence
The influence of adult authorities seen as surrogate parents
Subsequent consequences that are in conflict with the
original impression.
– Examples:
• If something tastes good but later makes you sick
• If something tastes bad but brings acceptance or admiration from
peers.
• If something is painful but later yields reward
• If something is pleasant or fun but later yields punishment, disdain,
ridicule, or rejection
• If something generates anxiety but later yields success in a valued
goal
• If something generates excitement or thrill but leads to danger or
actual catastrophe.
• Internalized or implicit parents and/or peers
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Three Models of the Transformation of States That Result in
Self Defeating Behavior
Including the
Typical Accompanying Defense Mechanisms
• I. Transformation From an Original State of
Incorporation to Pseudo Dis Incorporation.
• II. Transformation From an Original State of
Dis-Incorporation to Pseudo Incorporation.
• III. Transformation From an Original State of
Incorporation to Dis Incorporation as a Result of an
Associated Trauma.
* MODELS II. AND III. ARE ADDRESSED IN LESSONS 13 AND 14 THAT FOLLOW.
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I. Crucial Examples of Transformation From an Original
State of Incorporation to Pseudo Dis Incorporation.
• Poor School Performance.
– Original positive experience with mastery in gaining knowledge and skill.
– Transformed into Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation (disaffection, dislike, rejection,
rebellion, fear, avoidance, distraction, inattentiveness, etc.)
• Illegal Behavior.
– Original experience with belonging, acceptance, approval.
– Transformed into alienation, aggression, attack, destructiveness, and a
seditious attitude toward the establishment and law and order.
• Substance Abuse.
– Original experience of self acceptance, comfort, security and safety.
– Transformed into self rejection and self hate, loneliness, emptiness, fear and
anxiety.
– Use of substances to reduce painful feelings and stimulate excitement,
energy, and motivation.
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I. Dynamics and Defense Mechanisms Related
to Postures and States of Incorporation:
an Example of Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation
Internal Result: Deprivation of the original
incorporated item results in a sense of heroic,
magnanimous martyrdom, a sense of unfair
deprivation, of being exploited, slighted,
cheated, and persistently experiencing envy,
being discriminated against, harboring veiled
jealousy, and self pity.
Originally
Incorporated
Later Pseudo- DisIncorporated
Defenses: sour grapes,
rationalization,
Sober Person appears chagrined,
judgmental, wary, provocative, sullen.
External Result: examples are projecting
hostility and mal-intent and reacting with
suppressed anger. The cornered person must
defend themselves. The rejected, failed, or
slighted person must retaliate. The person who
feels unjustly treated must dramatize self
destructive martyrdom. The disapproved person
must deprecate. Ostracism, discrimination and
desire for revenge go hand in hand.
Projection
Substance use releases mood cycles
from >maudlin self pity
to >crude seductiveness to >bitter accusations.
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I. What the Child Had Originally Incorporated
MY
ORIGINAL
GOALS and
NEEDS
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I. Interpersonal Dynamics CAUSING Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation
Hey you! Stay away.
I’ve got to show
them they can’t do
me this way. I
know, I’ll catch this
smart-alecky, weak
little kid after school
and just smash him
to bits!!
Hey you over there,
Fred! You need to
straighten up. You
need to change
your attitude young
man or you’re out!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
I just wish I could disappear. Maybe
taking drugs will be like disappearing.
I’ll just get smashed!
Hey you! Stay away.
They're crucifying
You’re not my kind!!
You’re not my kind!!
me! I’m so
misunderstood.
They’re so unfair. I’m
not even given a fair Damn! They’re laughing at me again. It
chance.
is so frustrating being here. I just want to
get out. I’ll do anything to get out.
OK, son. You’ve
done it one time
too many. We
don’t want you
here anymore!
I know they’re talking about me. They think I’m
stupid, inferior, bad, and no good. I know they wish I
weren’t here. Why is everyone against me?
You want me to put on a smiley
face and pretend everything is OK.
Well, it’s not OK. I feel like I’ve got
a boiler about to explode inside me
and don’t know what to do with it.
153
I hate those guys. They get to do everything.
They get to win and have everyone look up
to them as jocks. I wish I could just cut them
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down to size!!!
I. Recognizing and Restoring Original, Deeply Buried Incorporation
Which These Disparaged Individuals Had and Still Have
but Then Had to Bury and Disguise From Even Themselves.
• When given a chance, encouraged to persist,
recognized for even the smallest improvement, the
original incorporation surfaces with hope, dreams, and
expectations restored. It surfaces with tentative
receptivity and a tentative desire for involvement that is,
in the beginning, very fragile.
• Sometimes, when a youth enters this phase after having
been a real problem case, the temptation is to
demonstrate that they are being admitted begrudgingly
with expectations for failure again. Placing an extra
burden of their having to prove themselves while underWow! She noticed me. I did good. I
the-gun.
going to try again tomorrow. Maybe
there is a chance for me after all.
Well, Fred, I see you worked on
your homework for today. That’s
great improvement. Keep it up.
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RESTORING THE ORIGINALLY INCORPORATED
• WITH JUST MINIMAL ENCOURAGEMENT THE FOLLOWING PSYCHOLOGICAL
RESULTS BEGIN TO BE REVERSED:
– Internal Results: Deprivation of the original incorporated item results in a sense of heroic,
magnanimous martyrdom, a sense of unfair deprivation, of being exploited, slighted, cheated,
and persistently experiencing envy, being discriminated against, harboring veiled jealousy,
and self pity.
– External Results: examples are projecting hostility and mal-intent and reacting with
suppressed anger. The cornered person must defend themselves. The rejected, failed, or
slighted person must retaliate. The person who feels unjustly treated must dramatize self
destructive martyrdom. The disapproved person must deprecate. Ostracism, discrimination
and desire for revenge go hand in hand.
• AS YOU ADD BONDING WITH POSITIVE ADULT AUTHORITIES, POSITIVE
ROLES, REAL AND REALISTIC OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUCCESS, AND
TEACHING AND COACHING TO HELP THEM GAIN NEW SKILLS FOR COPING
WITH COUNTERPRODUCTIVE INFLUENCES AT HOME AND FROM PEERS,
THE FOLLOWING NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES TEND TO BE AVOIDED:
– Poor School Performance
– Illegal Behavior
– Substance Abuse
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How Do We Reverse the Teens Tendency to Pursue
Negative and Dangerous Experiences?
WHAT IS THIS TEENAGE TENDENCY TO PURSUE HIGH RISK, DANGEROUS ACTIVITIES?
1. Emancipation from dependence upon and control by parents is necessary
for the transition to adulthood. However, many have a need to rebel
against authority and parents.
2. Teens are notorious for their idea or feeling that they are invincible. They
also, typically, have only a rudimentary knowledge of consequences.
They want to learn how to be an adult. They want to convince themselves
that they are powerful enough to face adult challenges.
3. They shift their dependency and protection needs onto peers and together
peer groups engage in high risk activities and prove to each other that
they have the necessary prowess and sophistication. In the process of
pursuing these goals and enacting these needs, they put themselves to
extreme tests and experiment with bizarre tastes and preferences.
4. If we were to expose infants or very young children to these same
activities, experiences, and tastes, they would recoil in disgust and
fear. In other words, the primitive human reacts to the unpleasant
and dangerous with dis-incorporation.
5. These emergent needs and goals cause the teenager to overrule this
primitive dis-incorporation with pseudo-incorporation of the unpleasant
sensations and pseudo-dis-incorporation of parental admonitions of
caution.
6. How do we reverse these tendencies and still facilitate the teen’s
necessary maturation, development of ego strength, and
character strength?
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The Pristine Nature of the Infant
Cognitively undeveloped, for the infant, what is good is pleasant and what is bad is
unpleasant. They have no adult values, beliefs, intentions, or goals. They are
innocent. Adults can project their own intentions onto them and then react to them as
though they were intending like adults. If the infant does something the adult does not
like, this adult could say the infant is ‘intending’ to annoy the adult. Adults often
assume the infant has these adult-like intentions and, therefore, if the infant is intending
to annoy the adult, the infant, according to some adults, should be physically punished.
From the primitive infant’s point of view, the pain is associated with its source, not the
adult’s intended lesson. The infant intends such things as to suck its thumb, cry out
when hungry, reach toward a curious looking object in order to touch it. Very much like
non-human species, its intentions are immediate and non-verbal or non-cognitive, and
definitely not based on values, beliefs, or ulterior motives. If something tastes bad, the
infant reacts immediately with a grimace and spitting out reaction. Alcohol and smoke
are distasteful and unpleasant to the infant. So how do they become tasty and pleasant
to the teen and adult? If something is immediately and obviously dangerous, the infant
recoils in fear. If something is painful, the infant screams, cries, and/or scrambles
away. This tells us that the pristine nature of the infant is the true gauge of what is
originally incorporated and dis-incorporated.
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Crucial Examples of Original States of Dis-Incorporation
That Are Later Transformed to Pseudo Incorporation
PRIMARY DIS-INCORPORATION IS WHAT THE INFANT EXPERIENCES. IT IS IMMEDIATE, NON-COGNITIVE, AND RELATES
TO THE SENSORY AND AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEMS.
SECONDARY DIS-INCORPORATION DEVELOPS IN LATER CHILDHOOD AND IS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE OF AND
MEMORY OF CONSEQUENCES. IT IS COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL.
DEVELOPING INTO THE TEEN YEARS, COGNITIVE-SECONDARY DIS-INCORPORATION BECOMES HIGHLY COMPLEX
AND CAN OVERRULE PRIMARY DIS-INCORPORATION.
“I no longer
dis-incorporate
these babyishthings.”
Dis-Incorporation
•
PRIMARY DISINCORPORATION
– Originally, I don’t like or want:
– Pain and discomfort.
– Things that taste and smell
Bad.
– Whatever will harm me.
– Bad feelings and emotions.
– Primitive danger perception.
•
“I am too
powerful for
that!.”
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
SECONDARY DISINCORPORATION
–
–
–
–
–
Disapproval.
Rejection .
Whatever makes me look ugly.
Whatever makes me look bad.
Failure.
158
Secondary
dis-incorporation
leads the way to
pseudo-incorporation
of original Primary
dis-incorporation
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Dynamics and Defense Mechanisms Related to
Postures and States of Incorporation:
an Example of Pseudo Incorporation
Internal Result: Inconsistency
results in a semi-conscious sense
of betrayal and alienation of self,
and loss of integrity
Originally
Dis-Incorporated
Can lead to selfhate, selfdisrespect, and
selfdestructiveness
Such a Person, when Sober,
typically, may appear syrupy
sweet, and passiveaggressive.
External Result:
The example is an
agreeable capitulation
to authority figures
and peers with a
Later Pseudo-Incorporated: Probably due
feigned compliance
to parental or peer expressed wishes,
and a thinly disguised
subtle influences, or blatant pressure.
(pseudo-disincorporated)
Inner Defenses: sweet lemon
(Pseudo-Incorporated); compulsivity, resentment, hostility
and distrust of
defensiveness, with denial of:
authority figures and
distaste; negative feelings; fatigue;
ambivalence; boredom; disbelief; and fear and resentment of
peers. All
distrust.
accompanied by
feelings of resignation,
anxiety, depression.
Feelings Suppressed and
Displaced (pseudo-disincorporated)
Substance abuse is likely to release mood cycles ranging from maudlin loathing of self to
raging bitterness toward “authority” or peers. It also can intensify self-destructiveness.
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Interpersonal Dynamics Causing Pseudo-Incorporation
DIFFERENTIAL SOURCES OF PSEUDOINCORPORATION
MOTIVES TO CONFORM
MOTIVES TO REBEL
Peer pressure to do the
following:
Parental and authority
pressure to not do the
following:
– Drinking alcoholic beverages
– Smoking
– Illegally using drugs, medications, or inhalants
– Other forms of health jeopardizing behaviors
– Avoiding homework
– Failing or cheating in school
– Dangerous risk taking
– Reckless driving
– Meeting opposition with violence
– Hurting or exploiting others
– Sexual abuse or exploitation
– Deliberate violations of rules
– Illegal acts and exposure to capture and
punishment
– Allowing oneself to be taken advantage of
– Reckless spending
– Compulsive, irresponsible hedonism
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Two Conflicting Pressures Both Push Toward the Same Pseudo-incorporation of Fear and Pain
•
Motives to conform and motives to rebel occurring simultaneously result in blocking out and denying pain,
distaste, discomfort, and fear and pretending these feelings and sensations are actually good, desirable, and
heroic.
Hey old man,
You’re a member of our gang
Why you little
stay
out of our
now, so you have to do what we
business or
%*^+#*@~`’”>**, if I
do and what we tell you to do.
Ahhh,
we’ll
turn
on
you
ever catch you
And, keep your mouth shut about
too!
our secrets or you’ll have to
how
smoking again, I’ll
answer to us. I know you don’t
beat you till you’re
want to find out what might
delightful!
black and blue and
happen to you if you’re disloyal!!
ground you for a
year!
Leave this guy
alone or you’ll
have to answer
from me!
Right on man! You’re
one of us now.
Wow! I’m cool now.
My parents can’t
control me anymore.
I’ve got friends who
are going to look after
me. I try anything I
want to. I’m
somebody. I’m grown
up.
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161
But, maybe I’m hemmed in and have just
substituted one control for another? I hate the
pressure they put on me and the risk I have to
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The Dynamics of Pseudo-incorporation of Negative Sensations and Feelings
Paves the Way for a Vicious Cycle Toward Increasing Alienation, Risk,
Danger Seeking, and Ending in Pseudo-incorporation of Self Destructiveness.
Why you little %*^+#*@~`’”>**,
if I ever catch you drinking
again, I’ll beat you till you’re
black and blue and ground you
for a year!
Ahhh! This is the life. Whiskey, fine
whiskey. Ha, ha, I’m feeling no pain.
Let’s party!!!
Hey, he likes it and does it, so it must
be good. Why does he get so mad if I
want to try it? All my gang does it and
they are really cool and sophisticated.
I want to be like them and just say to
hell with my parents. They’re just
spoil sports. This is cool!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
My parents are behind the
times. They’re too uptight
to try new things, but I’m
not. They keep raggin on
me. They act like I’m a
criminal and not a part of
this family any more.
They threaten with
throwing me out. I’ve got
to go anyway so who do I
turn to? Nobody but my
gang is going to help me
out. I don’t want to admit
it, but I’m really scared
and depressed. The gang
uses this stuff to get high
and forget their problems
and have fun. We can
really be wild and crazy
with drugs. So let’s do it!!
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In the early years, and over time, everything the parent says, the tone it is said with, everything the
parent does to the child, every reaction, and their manner of reacting, all these things get built into the
child’s brain as the ubiquitous implicit other and as the way parents, people, and the universe regard
and will react to the child’s behavior. But, even more important, even what the child feels and thinks
and wants and intends, inside its head, without even having to be expressed, is transformed to
complement and satisfy its implicit others. Naturally, this characteristic of the Implicit other defines the
child’s self, gives the child its initial and lasting self concept, and determines its mode of being in the
world.
Poor baby, how can Mommy make you feel better?
MOM
Don’t even come home unless
you make an A+
Infant/child
UNWITTINGLY BUILDING NEGATIVE IMPLICIT
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
OTHERS
INTO THE TEEN’S UNCONSCIOUS
4/13/2015
Negative implicit parents driving teen
to pseudo-incorporate danger and
irresponsibility
and pseudo-dis-incorporate caution.
YOU
LITTL
E
BUM!
MOM
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
I gotta rebel against
these characters.
I gotta get outa here!
164
YOU
LITTLE
SCOUNDR
EL!
DAD
4/13/2015
Negative implicit PEERS driving teen
to pseudo-incorporate danger and irresponsibility
and pseudo-dis-incorporate caution.
C’MON!
Let’swant
rock!to get
Crimeny!
I don’t
We feel
doinlet them
into trouble
butlike
I can’t
know
that. I have
to wild
go along
something
really
and pretend like I am really
tonight.
into it. Even
if I am out by
myself, I still have to pretend
like I am really tough and wild!
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Perceiving the Youth As a Gang Member Instead an Individual With a Life History Forces an Identity on
the Youth, Solidifies Gang Loyalty, Banishes Them to Psychological Alienation Even If They May Long to
Get Free From This Island of Terror.
Stereotyping as
The Gang
Vs Unique
Persons with a Past
“gang members”
A new form
of
prejudice?
Life History
Life History
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Life History
166
Life History
Life History
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The Drama of the Last Chance Bridge on the Highway of Life
If youths must begin the process of emancipation and growth toward self
reliance and emotional independence during their teen years;
If many of them have grown up in homes and neighborhoods rife with
violence, drug use, and serious mental and emotional problems;
If many of them, due to the conditioning from their environments, come with
long histories of failure in school and a loss of self esteem that results from
that failure.
If the models for many of them were abusive and neglecting and taught
them to expect that from others and taught them to be that way themselves;
Shouldn’t we expect them to pseudo-dis-incorporate positive motives,
goals, affiliations, and relations?
And, shouldn’t we expect them to pseudo-incorporate negative
experiences, motives, and negative influences and goals?
As the transitional adult, the one helping them cross the last bridge to
adulthood and independent living, are we the last hope for understanding
them, bonding with them, coaching them, providing structures within which
they can finally experience a modicum of success, and reorienting them
away from the negative and back toward the positive?
Who else will attempt to overrule the influence of the negative implicit other
from parents and peers that they will otherwise carry with them the rest of
their lives?
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YOU CAN BE THEIR BRIDGE
Understanding them as unique individuals with a
life history
and creating the conditions for them to change
without losing face
and you become their
BRIDGE to a positive future.
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An Educated Will Is the Only True Psychological Bridge to the Future
•
And now as I and my fellow graduates go on from here to meet the challenge of the future, I
leave this reminder for those who will follow in our footsteps and for those who will guide them:
“the most important thing that we learned and that you undergraduates must learn and
teachers must teach is the value of self reliance, independent judgment, the strength and
wisdom to make our own decisions and to make them well.”
You see this period in your lives is your bridge to the future. If you do not learn these vital lessons
now on the practice field of high school, there will be no one else to turn to and say, ‘Coach where did I go wrong
that time? Listen to me and help me learn to master the art of good judgement and good decision making, the art
of living with an independent will, the art of responsibility for myself and my community. The greatest gift you can
give me is the gift of a good, strong, free will.’ Thank you for that gift, and may you continue giving it to the youth
who journey through these halls for many, many years to come.
The Future
Graduation Speech
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Recognizing the Original, Deeply Buried Dis-Incorporation Which These
Disparaged Individuals Have but Must Disguise From Even Themselves.
Providing the Conditions to Restore the Originally Dis-Incorporated
• What do we do to create the conditions to restore the originally dis-incorporated?
– Avoid pushing them toward greater in-authenticity due to generating pseudo incorporation.
– Listen to them as they struggle to grow and overcome their lack of knowledge about their world and
consequences and overcome their confusion and their fears.
– Treat them and their processes of growth and struggle with respect to preserve what little self respect they
can salvage and encourage their trust in themselves.
– Treat them as unique, individual persons with life histories that forced them into destructive and self
destructive paths without undermining their need to have an independent, free will.
– Respect their desperate need for both independent living and security and guidance.
– Understand their need for integrity and need to avoid dependence and subservience and to avoid self
betrayal.
– Understand the frightening dilemmas they face in their environments at home, neighborhoods, and with
peers.
– Recognize their need to bond with a strong, dependable, adult who can understand, like and appreciate
them and coach them in the development of socializing, coping skills without advising or controlling as a
parent.
– Recognize that a large part of their inner self still wants to be a child with protection, safety, and security but
that they dread having anyone know they feel this way.
– Recognize that the sweet lemon defense is difficult to shed without a sense of losing face.
– When given attractive and competing alternatives, which they can gradually transition to without having to
focusing on it and feeling that demeaning loss of face, they will eventually move in that more positive
direction.
– Provide situations and occasions in which they can revise their identities and self concept and gradually
acquire a positive identification with the larger society and overcome their generalized alienation.
– Create programs that structure their time and which provide them with roles, challenges, and fun.
– Provide them with activities within which they can finally experience a modicum of success and happiness,
reorienting them away from the negative and back toward the positive?
– Provide situations in which they can feel strong and brave without putting themselves or others in harm’s
way.
– Provide hope for their future.
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Once Information or Experience Has Been
Parceled to a State, It Is Extremely Difficult to
Transform It Into Another State
or Restore It to Its Original State.
How do we create the conditions in which a teen’s original stored
states can be restored, or such states as Pseudo-Dis-Incorporation,
and Disavowing undone?
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Crucial Examples of Transformation From an
Original State of Incorporation to Dis-Incorporation
• The following items are a few examples of what can result in disincorporation of the people, things, and/or situations.
• Examples of things that inflict extreme physical or emotional pain, or
fear, can cause dis-incorporation. Not only are the causal agents
(people, things, situations) dis-incorporated, but the dis-incorporation
can be generalized or extended to anything similar, sometimes even
remotely similar to the causal agent, the object used in inflicting pain
or fear, or the situation or setting in which the trauma occurred.
– Being suddenly and severely, physically hurt by someone or thing, or some
category of person or thing, that was previously a source of safety,
protection and nurture.
– An accident of nature, or everyday human living, that threatens one’s life
(e.g. a storm or lightening, a car wreck, nearly drowning, rape, robbery, etc.).
– Being suddenly abandoned or rejected by a person or group.
– Eating a food that makes one violently ill.
– Public, humiliating failure.
– Being publicly betrayed and humiliated.
– Witnessing someone else go through any of the above.
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Dynamics and Defense Mechanisms Related to
Postures and States of Incorporation That Are Transformed Into Disincorporation
An Example Of: Dis Incorporation of the Previously Incorporated
As a Result of an Associated Trauma
Internal Emotional Result: sense of loss; strong sense of
deprivation and agitation; diffuse need; sense of abandonment;
intense phobic or fear reaction to the trauma associated
objects/situations; craving escape or relief from diffuse inner
agony, especially when in the proximity of similar situations..
An Originally
Incorporated
item later
becoming a
painful or
traumatic
experience*
Sober Person appears
hypersensitive, vigilant,
nervous, uptight, needy
Possible External Results: Impulsive craving
for sedative substance use; frenzied pursuit of
substitutes or distractions; un-assuaged
hunger for support and protection; suppliantsycophant behavior with substitutes or
potential protectors; chronically soliciting
approval.
Later, as a result of trauma
and/or pain, a conditioned
avoidance (DisIncorporation) response is
infixed *
Defenses: avoidance, rationalization of fear,
identification with aggressor types
Defenses: Substitution, Substance use
When a sober, fully conscious person is experiencing these kinds of pain and fear, there is a
craving for escape or for substance use. Substance use, as a defense, tends to relieve the person of
their extreme vulnerability to inner pain. When the person is sober and lucid again there is typically a
recurrence of panic and a craving for escape or the blurred consciousness, oblivion, and freedom from
pain and fear which only a chemical substance can bring.
Even thoughts or reminders of the trauma can precipitate such cycles.
*Classic examples are familial abandonment, sexual, or physical abuse, accidents.
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Example of Transformation
From Incorporation to Dis-incorporation:
Experiences With Dogs As Pets That Are Friendly and Protective
Means Pets Will Be Incorporated.
The Feeling of Safety and Love With Their Own Pets
Generalizes to All Dogs, Perhaps All Pets, and Even All Animals.
These children feel safe and happy with their pets and will stay that way until
some traumatic experience occurs that frightens them.
Stage 1.
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Transformation of Incorporation to Dis-Incorporation
When a traumatizing experience occurs, as in the picture below, the child or youth’s association of
danger with this animal may generalize to all dogs, all pets, or even all animals, especially all
unfamiliar animals. The extent of the generalization is difficult to determine or predict. This much is
clear: much of that which was formerly incorporated is transformed into dis-incorporation. If all
pets and/or all animals are dis-incorporated, this would be an overgeneralization. The question now
is, how can we replace an irrational overgeneralization of fear with a rational caution, limited to
unfamiliar animals, and complete a avoidance of animals known to be dangerous.
Arrrrgh.
Arrrrgh.
The Boy Who
Loved Dogs.
Yow!
He
bit
me!
Stage
2.
It only takes one traumatic incident on the path of life to
cause over-generalized fear and dis-incorporation.
To undo the damage and restore a rational reaction is a
long and difficult path.
The understanding and approach we use is of critical
importance.
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Effects of Traumas, Phobias, and Their Dis-Incorporated Items
on One’s Life Space
Uh Oh! There are some dogs.
Maybe one of them will try to
hurt me. I better get out of here
quick!!!
Phobias based on traumatic experiences can result
in dis-incorporation of whole classes of related
items. This dynamic means many of life’s doors are
shut for this person. His life space shrinks with
each such experience.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
176
I not only want
to avoid all
dogs, but I’m
never going to
jog on any of
these trails
again. I’ll just
exercise inside
from now on.
Stage 3.
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Interpersonal Dynamics Causing and Perpetuating Dis-Incorporation
• The teen does not want the coach to know he is afraid to go on the jogging path. He, himself, may only
have a fleeting memory of the original trauma.
• He feels that he should not be afraid and keeps it to himself. This compounds the problem because now
the coach thinks he is lazy or unmotivated.
• The coach gets angry and attributes intentional slacking off to the teen. The coach is unlikely to
understand the nature of the effects of trauma.
• If the teen were to mention the trauma, the coach would still be angry and attribute negative motives or
weakness to the teen. If the incident is repeated, the coach is likely to throw him off the team. This
could exacerbate the trauma effects.
You’ve got to go jogging now or
you’re off the team!
Oh my gosh. What am I going to do now? I don’t want
him to know I’m afraid, he will think I’m a coward and
throw me off the team. Let me out of here. But there’s no
way out! How am I going to get out of this one. I’ve
stalled for a few minutes, but he’s gonna catch me and
then what?.
Sure, sure coach. I just have to go
to the locker room for a minute and
then I’ll start jogging.
Stage 4.
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Pushing the Negative Vicious Cycle Down Even Further
When an avoidance reaction is treated with scorn or punishment, it
just gets worse and makes recovery even more difficult.
Disparaging comments and negative labeling destroy self
confidence and self esteem even more and make it increasingly
more difficult to try to overcome the avoidance reaction.
You’re just lazy, no good.
You don’t deserve to be on
this team. You’re a coward
and weakling. Come back
when you’ve developed
some backbone!
I’m no good. I’m weak. I’m so
ashamed of myself. I even hate to
show up at practice again because I
know what he thinks of me and
everybody else probably does too!
Stage 4.
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Recognizing the Difficulty of Making the Transformation of a DisIncorporated Item Back to an Originally Incorporated Item.
• The difficulty:
– Effects of traumas are hard to reverse. Reversing takes much patience and
time. The traumatized person must be helped to gain insight into the nature of
trauma and accept the challenge of overcoming it. Typically, the traumatized
person is reluctant to do this because there is a resurgence of the trauma
experience in memory and the terror feelings flood back.
– Persons with avoidance reactions can go undetected for years. They simply
state that they do not want to do the feared thing because of a lack of
preference, not because of a fear.
– When the fear and avoidance reactions extend to a wide range of objects,
people, and situations, the outsider can find no reason for the avoidance
reaction, and sometimes the traumatized person cannot either. The avoidance
reaction appears irrational. The outsider wants an explanation and supplies their
own. They tend to call it uncooperativeness and explain it as oppositional
tendencies or laziness and call the problem person names such as silly, childish,
crazy, lazy, snobbish, stupid, coward, etc.
– A cornered or pressured person with an avoidance reaction can suddenly switch
to rage and this may result in punishment.
– These negative reactions harm the relationship between the youth and the
teacher or other adult authority, making it even more difficult to engage the youth
in a recovery process.
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Recognizing the Survival Function of Avoidance Reactions
•
•
•
•
•
It is often difficult to distinguish between learned oppositional behavior and avoidance reactions
based on trauma. When the youth is observed engaging the activity or aspects of the activity
but refuses when an authority asks or requires them to participate, this is a reliable sign that
lack of cooperation is not based on prior trauma.
Uncooperativeness that has grown out of a life history with an ineffective or inappropriate
parenting style is treated differently. In this case, the approach to gaining cooperation requires
focusing on the relationship between the teacher or other adult authority. Patience and
gradualness is necessary in both cases. With uncooperativeness, the approach is to listen,
allow them to explore alternatives and then explore consequences. The coaching person is
accepting the youth’s need to defend their will, to not be controlled, yet engaging them in the
relationship so as to provide them security and safety with a caring adult. As the wall breaks
down, engaging in activities together and sharing their feelings of satisfaction and fun creates
an atmosphere in which cooperativeness begins to seem to have its rewards and to not be
threatening. The focus is not on feared objects, people, or situations in this case.
With avoidance reactions we are dealing with a primitive survival instinct. Since the immature
human does not come with a knowledge of what is safe and what is dangerous, any painful or
frightening event causes an avoidance reaction, not for just the exact cause of pain in this
instance, but for a range of similar objects, or class of objects. It is like hedging your bets. If
this one was bad, maybe anything similar might be bad. For the unknowledgeable, this is a
good survival strategy. But, its drawback is that the person is cut off from avenues that are not
harmful and could have benefits. Even the singular causal factor may be safe if we know the
effective strategy for dealing with it. The person with the generalized avoidance reaction never
gets the chance to learn these strategies.
Secondly, avoidance reactions tend to bring scorn from others and can eventually be damaging
to self concept, identity, and self confidence. The eventual results from this can be expulsion
from the group and from many opportunities.
Recognizing that avoidance reactions are not the product of a negative will but a vital survival
instinct related to traumas and potential traumas can help adult authorities develop
understanding, patience, and successful strategies for dealing with this problem.
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Providing the Conditions to Restore an Originally Incorporated State.
• The conditions for restoring the normal state:
–
–
–
–
–
–
The person coaching the traumatized person must avoid epithets and labeling, avoid punishment,
threats, and manipulation, and avoid projecting explanations for the uncooperative behavior.
Patiently accepting their reluctance and keeping them as close to the activity as they can endure, and
still feel safe, and maintaining acceptance and acknowledgement and approval of their presence
allows them to view the activity and observe that it is safe for the others. At the same time this blocks
the habit of running away and building animosity and distrust toward the coach and the group. This
procedure may have to go on a long time before the next step.
Next, the person coaching, with just the two of them present, may ask for assistance or participation in
some parallel activity that is non-threatening. Showing appreciation for their assistance or involvement
is the beginning of establishing positive associations with the avoided activity.
When the youth seems comfortable and satisfied with themselves while carrying out the parallel
activity, the coach can suggest another session when they can be alone. Then, ask the youth if they
would like to learn some small step involved in the avoided activity. If the proposal is accepted, then
the procedure is to give moderate praise for every effort, even it is incorrect or if it is started and then
retreated from. The youth is receiving assurance that they are not going to be tricked or dragged into
the arena of threat against their will. They have an out. Their faltering, tentative efforts are not going
to be judged or ridiculed, causing embarrassment again. Allowing them to express their feelings and
accepting these feelings as OK and natural helps them regain confidence in themselves. These
sessions, with just the two of them, provide and opportunity for the youth to ask questions about other
matters involved in their struggle to grow up and for the coach to explain and illustrate and encourage
the youth to explore alternatives. This process builds a secure bond between the coaching person
and the youth. Such a bond is necessary as a secure foundation for trying to master new challenges.
Very gradually, one small step at a time, the youth will gain a sense of trust and security and gradually
develop a mounting confidence and finally restoration of faith in themselves as they simultaneously
gain mastery over what they once feared.
Finally, reintroduction to the group situation, in an unobtrusive manner, when they are confident they
can do it allows them to publicly display, without fanfare, that they are normal and can participate
normally.
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The Process of Transformation From the State of Incorporation to DisIncorporation and Back to Incorporation
• Something previously incorporated is something one feels safe and
comfortable with. It does not become dis-incorporated without some
intense experience of pain or fear. To ask a person to overcome their
avoidance is, to them, like asking them to disregard their survival
instincts. Survival instincts are very strong. Avoidance reactions are
trusted above all else. It must be so. To override this instinct is like
asking the person to make themselves vulnerable to extreme danger.
The person asking will be considered untrustworthy and a source of
threat and danger themselves.
• The transformation, therefore, requires that the youth test and discover
for themselves, have experiential proof, that each tiny step is truly
safe. They can not be asked to take the word of any one else. Even
observation of safety is not sufficient. Observation can soften the
youth and make them more likely to want to sample some innocuous
step. Proof through their own experience is the only thing they can
rely on. As each tiny step proves safe, the dis-incorporated can
gradually be re-incorporated.
• The transformation, therefore, requires shifting to heuristic disincorporation then heuristic incorporation and then, finally, to
incorporation, after many intermediate steps.
• Every caution should be taken to make sure the item is not pseudoincorporated. If this happens, while the coaching person may feel they
are having success, it is all a sham and when the coach is away, the
avoidance returns with the addition of suppressed resentment toward
the coach.
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CAUTION!
• YOU MAY FEEL THAT THIS PROCEDURE IS TOO TIME
CONSUMING AND DIFFICULT.
• REMEMBER, THAT WHEN AVOIDANCE REACTIONS ARE
NOT ATTENDED TO, A SPIRALING VICIOUS CYCLE
CONTINUES DOWNWARD AS DOES THE YOUTH’S
PROSPECTS FOR A PRODUCTIVE HAPPY LIFE ALONG
WITH IT.
• REMEMBER, THAT WHEN THE AVOIDANCE REACTION IS
NOT ATTENDED TO NOW, ALL SUBSEQUENT ADULT
AUTHORITIES THAT WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS
YOUTH WILL BE EXPENDING TIME AND EXPERIENCING
THE DIFFICULTY OF DEALING WITH A YOUTH WITH AN
UNRESOLVED AVOIDANCE REACTION, OVER AND OVER
AGAIN. IT MAY GET MORE AND MORE ENTRENCHED.
• REMEMBER, YOU COULD, SOME DAY, BE THE ONE DEALT
THE HAND SOMEONE ELSE REFUSED TO PLAY!
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Summary of the Fourteen Lessons of Section I
About How to Understand and Relate to Adolescents
1. It is vitally important to view teens’ current will, intentions, and behavior in terms of their
unique life history and current life circumstances.
2. In early childhood, personality characteristics are strongly influenced by internalized parents.
3. Parental differences present complexities that make the child’s Implicit Parents complex and
thus create conflicts of will in the child.
4. The characteristics of the child’s environment have a strong influence on what and how
information is stored in the child’s mind.
5. It is vitally important to know how to relate to these memory states that the teen’s information
and experiences are stored in.
6. Parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches must learn how to positively influence the
way teens receive, store, and share information and experience.
7. It is important to understand the unique role of the memory of traumatic experiences in the
teen’s life and how to relate to them
8. Parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches must learn how to create conditions in
which teens are positively receptive to information.
9. It is important for parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches to understand the way a
teen views the world, their idea of what the world is all about, and how their view was profoundly
influenced by the nature of their parents and the way their parents saw the world.
10. Parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches must learn how to create the conditions
that induce positive ownership and involvement in education and program activities.
11. Parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches must learn, and can be taught, to
creatively listen to and communicate with teens and facilitate their learning to do the same.
12. Parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches must learn how to create the conditions in
which the negatively stored information and experience can be transformed into the positive.
13. Since the tendency to pursue negative and dangerous experiences is particularly strong during
the teen years, parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches must learn how to
successfully and positively reverse this tendency.
14. Parents, counselors, teachers, and maturity coaches must learn how to assist the teen in
recovering disavowed original, positive states from childhood and create the conditions in which
the teen can begin to build, once again, on these positive forces from their past.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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1 Life History Shapes the Teen’s Behavior
•
If you have a thorough knowledge of the teen’s life history, it becomes clear
how their current behavior and intentions are the outcome of that history.
It is also understandable why, with some teens, there is a wider and more
discrepant split between observed behavior and hidden intentions.
Life History
Favorable
Intentions
Behavior
Beginning
Innocent
•
Life History
Unfavorable
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
185
Behavior
Intentions
4/13/2015
1 Current Circumstances Shape the Teen’s Behavior
• Given current circumstances that are friendly, supportive, and
encouraging, the behavioral outcome should be positive.
• Given current circumstances that are threatening, unsupportive, and
discouraging, the behavioral outcome should be negative.
• It is vitally important the parents, teachers, counselors, and maturity
coaches understand the inner person and the outer behavior of the teens
in terms of their life history and current circumstances.
Current Circumstances
Current Circumstances
Favorable
Unfavorable
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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2 Teens Initially Tend to See the Whole World
As Being Just Like Their Parents
and Just Like the Way Their Parents See the World
1. It is important to view a teen
as reflecting the pervasive effects
of internalized or implicit parents.
2. The teen projects
the characteristics of these implicit parents
onto other adult authorities and other parent figures, institutions, society,
and sometimes even peers.
3. In their earliest years
they learned to adopt the view of the world that their parents have.
1. Implicit parents,
2. projection of parental characteristics,
3. adopted view of the world all.
Three major factors in shaping the child’s and teen’s personality:
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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4/13/2015
3 Understanding the Role of Implicit Parents and How They
Influence Teens’ Behavior.
•It is important to understand that a wide range of negative
emotions can be generated by implicit parents.
•We cannot see implicit parents and teens are not aware
of them, in spite of their pervasive influence.
•Implicit parents, just as parents in reality, are often both
complex and conflicting.
•Their influence, therefore, results in puzzling behavior.
•Conflicts between implicit parents generate
conflicts of will which, in turn,
generate negative emotions.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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4/13/2015
4 Understanding Comes From Relating Unobserved Past and
Current Structure to Observed Effects
It is important to understand that
negative factors from life history and
inner conflicts induced by implicit parents
affect the teen’s receptivity in the learning situation.
+
The current, entire structure of the teen’s world
has a profound influence on the nature of the teen.
+
The structure of schools and institutions for teens,
the way they are organized,
and the structure of their educational practices
all conspire to promote a lack of integration
between imparted knowledge and practice.
=
These dynamics can result in failure in school and life
and result in lowered self esteem.
This is a vicious cycle.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
189
4/13/2015
5 LOOKING INSIDE THE TEEN’S MIND
AT THE DYNAMICS OF INFORMATION
PROCESSING
AND OBSERVING HOW THIS CHANGES
DURING THE TEEN YEARS.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
190
4/13/2015
5 How Inner States of Information, Postures Toward Presented Information,
Feelings, and Intentions Are Stored in Memory and How They
Determine Behavior, Learning, and What Is Expressed to the World.
I have a goal
and I’m gonna
make it!
Providing the
conditions that
promote authenticity
and maturity in the
way information is
stored and expressed
is one of the most
important functions of
adult authorities in
relation to teens.
That’s
not the
real
me.
I don’t like it
but better wait
and see.
I like it but
better wait
and see.
I’m happy to go along
with whatever you
say.
Ohhh!
I’m so
sorry for
you.
Ha, ha! I’m
really not sorry.
You got what
was coming to
you.
I’m
really
sad
and
hate
this!
Examples of
States and
Postures
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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4/13/2015
6 Dealing With Pretence and Fronting
• To avoid rejection and disapproval,
teens put up a false front,
but doing so gives them
an inner sense of alienation and estrangement from
both the authorities and themselves.
• To reverse this trend,
it is necessary to learn
how to create conditions
that promote positive receptivity and authenticity.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
192
4/13/2015
6 The Pressures of the Teen Years
Force a Move Toward InAuthenticity
and This Results in
a Preoccupation With
Hypocrisy and Phoniness in Others
• When we create conditions that reinforce the false front,
• we generate a ripple effect
• that extends to all relationships
• and to intellectual and emotional development in general.
• The end result is feelings of
• loneliness, cynicism, and
estrangement from self, others, and society.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
193
4/13/2015
7 Understanding that Some Bizarre
Behaviors
Are the Effects or Symptoms of
Repressed or Dys-Corporated Experience
It is important to understand that highly
inappropriate behavior may be caused by terrifying,
deeply disturbing, traumatic experiences that have
been shut out from the teen’s own awareness.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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4/13/2015
7 Traumas Often Close a Wide Range of Avenues
That Are Similar to the Trauma Experience.
The Behavior of the Traumatized Person
Is Typically Very Frustrating for Adults to Deal With.
Lack of Recovery From Trauma Is Costly to the Traumatized
Person and Everyone Involved With Them
• The process of transformation of stored experiences from
the state of incorporation to dis-incorporation or dyscorporation is typically sudden. It typically requires a
trauma or extremely distasteful experience to cause this
transformation.
• The transformation back to incorporation of the trauma
experience so that it can be dealt with is very gradual and
requires careful, methodical, patient, non-intimidating, noncoercive, small steps that end on a positive note bringing
the person a little closer to re-incorporation with each step.
• The person being re-introduced must feel in control.
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4/13/2015
8 Atmospheres Conducive to Receptivity
• It is important to understand that
teens and adults vary in terms of
how receptive they are
to vital information and to each other.
• It is necessary to learn
how to deal with postures of receptivity
and how to create conditions in which
teens, teachers, parents, therapists, and
other adult authorities
are receptive.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
196
4/13/2015
9 Understanding Teens From Inside Out:
How They View And Relate To The World
• It is important to understand
how teens in general and individual teens
view the world
and what effect their world view has on their
personalities.
• An adult who is in a position to help
can not simply deal with the troublesome behavior
but has to understand behavior
in terms of how the teen has come to see the world.
• Otherwise, the management or treatment of behavior
may completely miss the mark.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
197
4/13/2015
10 Ownership Of And Involvement In
What Is Being Presented To Them
Is Absolutely Essential
• It is important to understand that
providing a program that is supposed to help
or educate is next to worthless
unless conditions are created in which
the teen voluntarily becomes involved
and gains a sense of ownership.
• Ignoring this factor is likely to cause
the teen to remain aloof
and increase
a hidden sense of alienation.
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198
4/13/2015
11 Listening and Modeling Listening
• It is vitally important for adult authorities
• to learn the skills
• of deep, non judgmental, empathic, and effective
• listening and communicating
• so as to create the conditions
• in which the teen
• can learn to be transparent and empathetic.
• Likewise, it is vitally important that teens
• learn the skills of
• empathic listening
• and transparent communication
• with their peers.
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4/13/2015
12 Cultivating a Sensitivity to Teen’s Need to
Unfold Inner Layers in Their Own Time and Manner
•
•
•
•
•
ON MAKING CONTACT WITH WHATEVER ORIGINAL, POSITIVE CORE LIES DEEPLY
BURIED
If we know the dynamics of the states of incorporation and postures of receptivity, then we
know how to react to teens when we see evidence of each struggle to reach and reveal
deeply buried positive memories and tendencies.
If we know that the current state of an item has a history of layers, even if we feel quite
certain what the deeper, original, causal layer is, we still have to wait until the teen is ready to
unfold and expose that deeper level. Otherwise, we run the high risk of shutting off deeper
levels from accessibility and thus leaving the core person, with all their sense of isolation,
loneliness, pain, alienation, and emptiness, stuck in their black hole.
The skittish item waiting in the next layer requires absolute certainty that it will not meet
shock, criticism, a judgmental attitude, or disinterest before it will unfold. When the least
intimidating, most empathetic and understanding, secure, and accepting atmosphere is
created, even then it has to cross its own entrenched sentry of anxiety in order to come out.
Indirect signals are typically sent out to test the atmosphere before it gingerly appears, and
even then the teen asks repeatedly for reassurances. This is an arduous, painful, difficult,
and exhausting process. But on the other side of coming out, when the world greets it with
acceptance, there is tremendous relief, gratitude, and joy.
If substance abuse is involved, for some substances there is a refractory period after use
during which the physiological need surges up and dominates before rational considerations
can curb the addiction compulsion. Immediately before and during this period there is a
hypersensitivity to triggers. The dynamics of this period and measures which can be used to
cope with it can not be explored unless there is a highly un-intimidating, non-confrontational,
non-coercive atmosphere. Otherwise a wall of pseudo-dis-incorporation will forever prohibit
accessibility to this vulnerable period.
The presence of substance abuse greatly complicates this process of reaching in inner,
positive core.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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4/13/2015
12 Movement Out Of Pseudo and Dys Corporated States
and From In-Authenticity to Authenticity
• It is easy to push a person into pseudo and dys incorporation states and inauthenticity.
• Providing the conditions for a person to move toward authenticity is very
difficult, requires great skill, patience, and is very gradual.
• Moving a client toward authenticity requires that the coaching adult be
authentic, mature, wise, healthy, integrated, and at peace.
• Facilitating movement toward authenticity is one of the fundamental
necessities for successful coaching.
• Increasing integration and authenticity and decreasing conflict between the
public and private person reduces the need for high risk taking, self
destructiveness, withdrawal, or use of consciousness-obliterating
substances.
• Evoked authenticity initially may mean the expression of negative feelings
and destructive, abusive behavior. When this occurs, the coach should not
judge or repress but rather engage, now, in coaching with respect to
learning to express such feelings in more appropriate, effective, and inoffensive ways.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
201
4/13/2015
12 As a Result of Unusual Positive Life Experiences, Good Coaching, or Psychotherapy, Mental
Content Assigned to Any Negative State Can Be Shifted Into Any Other Positive State
INCORPORATION STATES
Theoretically, any state can be
transformed into any other state.
Incorporation
Dis-Incorporation
Heuristic-Incorporation
Heuristic- Dis-Incorporation
Pseudo-Incorporation
Pseudo-dis-incorporation
Dys-corporation
Pseudo Dys-corporation
An Intimidating Posture Can Shift Content Into the Pseudo or Dys States. Movement from a
Pseudo, or Dys Incorporated State to a Properly Incorporated or Dis-Incorporated State Requires a
Highly
Accepting,
Patient,
on the Part of the Maturity Coach.4/13/2015
Copyright
Edwin L. Young,
PhD and Non-Intimidating Approach
202
13 DENYING THE NEGATIVE AND DANGER SEEKING
There Is a Tendency in Teen Years,
As a Part of Drive for Emancipation,
Drive for Mastery,
and Rebellion,
to Pretend to Prefer Things
That Are Distasteful, Painful, and Dangerous
• The dynamics of pseudo-incorporation
• of negative sensations and feelings
• paves the way for
• a vicious cycle
• toward increasing alienation, risk, and
danger,
• that can end in pseudo-incorporation
• of self destructiveness.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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4/13/2015
14 DENYING THE POSITIVE
There Is a Tendency in Teen Years,
As a Part of Emancipation, Mastery, and Rebellion,
to Pretend to Reject Former
Values, Beliefs, Tastes, and Attitudes
• It is important to understand that the very nature
of the teen stage of life creates conditions in which they
are easily influenced to reject prior positive attitudes and
behaviors and to influence one another
to adopt pseudo-negative attitudes and behavior.
• Once this negative transformation has occurred,
the challenge is to learn how to create conditions in which
the prior positive attitudes and behavior can be restored.
•
But, also, the key is to learn how to do this and
still facilitate the teen’s process of maturing
toward well-rounded, and healthy independence.
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4/13/2015
The Work of Coaching Youths Toward Maturity
This Can Now Be Seen As Providing the Conditions for Teens
to Unfold and Transform Themselves
Toward Their Inner Hazy but Prized Criteria for Fulfillment
and Hazy but Compelling Foreshadowed Self.
In Other Words,
To Help Them Realize
Their Highly Prized And Sometimes Deeply Hidden
Dreams And Hopes For Their Future.
• In Maturity Coaching, There Is a Progression:
– Through Layered States of Incorporation
– Spreading Through Greater Breadth and Depth of the Gestalt of the Self
– Expanding the Interrelation and Integration of Disparate Aspects of the
Self
– Transforming Processes of Relating to the Self and World
– Transcending to Higher and More Fulfilling Modes and Levels of
Being
– and Eventually to a Perpetual Serenity and Mental Freedom and
Creativity
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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4/13/2015
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
•Envisioning Aspects: You could examine the content of how
they envision the future as based on these states of
"incorporation". You could also examine how they envision
what might possibly happen in the future and what they
might possibly do in the future. These are highly significant
inner processes.
–Level Perspectives:
–Time Perspectives: By training oneself to be attuned to significant happenings in the
present so as to collect instances in both similar and different situations over time and
compare and extract tentative generalizations and detect trends, a person can develop
hypotheses about the effects of structures, systems, and settings. This perspective on
the differential effects of structure, formed on the basis of a wealth of instances into
history that exhibits a theme relating to the structuralist hypothesis, can lead to much
more well informed plans for appropriately restructuring an institution so that it has the
aforementioned positive selective causal influence on the client population’s internal
structures and processes. This is one of the most powerful cognitive strategies
available to humankind for developing a vision for its future.
–Level by Time Perspectives:
–Maturity and Level by Time Perspectives on
Consequences
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
206
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
Envisioning Aspects: Implicit Other Effects: Incorporation, or rather States
of Incorporation, is different from the concept of Implicit Other. The Implicit
Other is more closely associated with Freud's Superego, yet not the same, of
course. As for States of Incorporation, every experience is initially parceled
into one of the States but can be transformed into different States later. The
Implicit Other relates solely to the Incorporation of people who exert a
pervasive influence over our behavior and even our thoughts, feelings, and
values. The Implicit Other also can cause items of experience to be
transformed from one State of Incorporation to another. The Secondary
Implicit Other, almost universally in America and probably many other
cultures, arises during the transition into the teen years when the peer group
starts to gain ascendance. Even if a teen has no friends, no peer group, the
changes in their age cohorts still exert the influence of the Secondary
Implicit Other. A 'developmental task' for the teen is to learn to identify and
resist too much influence from peers, a form of emancipation, in a manner
slightly different from emancipation from the influence of parents. When
moving from teenage to young adulthood and on into an identity and selfconcept as an adult, there is a transition, either during advanced education
or directly to work or an occupation, which adds a sense of independence,
self-reliance, and assumption of responsibilities as a marriage partner and
parent.
4/13/2015
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
207
The Modifying and Censoring Effects of the Implicit
Others (Parents) on Original Intentions
Implicit
Parent
Implicit
Parent
Original
Intentio
n
Teenage Child
ORIGINAL INTENTIONS ATTEMPTING TO PASS
THROUGH THE IMPLICIT OTHER FILTERS
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
208
Internalized or Implicit Parents Remain Inside the Mind
Continuing the Effects They Originally Had on the Child, But
Now on the Inner Child of the Adolescent and Adult
IMPLICIT
PARENTS
Teenage
Child
UNCONSCIOUS
EFFECTS OF THE
PERPETUAL
WATCHFUL EYE
(AS THOUGH
THROUGH A TWO
WAY MIRROR) OF
INTERNALIZED,
IMPLICIT PARENTS
INNER
CHILD
THE UNCONSCIOUS, INNER CHILD IN RELATION TO IMPLICIT PARENTS.
ITS INTENTIONS ARE MODIFIED BY IMPLICIT PARENTS
BEFORE TURNING TO INTERACT WITH THE WORLD.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
209
Reactions to Situations As an Indirect Indicator of the Nature of One’s Implicit Others
SITUATION
Discomfort in a
situation, with an
act, or with
feelings related
to the situation
suggest that the
implicit other has
influenced
suppression and
modification of
one’s original
intention.
Discomfort can
be a teacher
helping one to
regain one’s
authenticity.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
A METHOD FOR REGAINING
AUTHENTICITY, SPONTANEITY,
PEACE, AND PERSONAL
FREEDOM
The modified intention
is expressed in action
and PseudoIncorporated.
We attempt to infer the
intention from the
action.
The person experiences
discomfort,
Inauthenticity, and
dissatisfaction
Implicit
Parents
Original
Intention
Original Intention is
Pseudo- DisIncorporated
Original
Intention is
Modified to Suit
Implicit Parents
Detection of discomfort leads to the
inference that the person did not follow
through on their true original intention.
210
Teenage Child
The Combined, Competing Effects Of Parent and Implicit Parent
Vs The Child and Inner Child
On Intentional Processes and the Urge to Recover One’s Authentic Self
Parent
This is what
we want you
to be, feel,
do, and have!
Parent
Implicit
Parent
C
H
IL
D
This is what
we want you to
Inner
child
want, be, feel,
do, and have!
child
Implicit
Parent
Nevertheless, in spite of you, this is
STILL:
what I really WISH I could want
really WISH I could be,
what I STILL really feel,
what I STILL really want to do,
what I STILL really want to have!
BUT! Don’t you see, this
is:
what I really want to want
what I really want to be,
what I really feel,
what I really want to do,
what I really want to have!
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
211
Using Your Children to Fulfill
Your Frustrated, Unfulfilled
Dreams for Yourself
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
Greatest!
My son, the
Greatest! He’s
just like me.
He is where I
could have
been if someone
had given me
the opportunities
I gave him.
212
Stealing a Life and Leaving a Smiling, Empty Shell, While Underneath, Inside the Shell, the Child
Feels Its Life Is Not Worth Living and Is in Silent Despair.
This is the way my Dad sees
it: I’m a good boy whom he
has molded into something
great and now he gets to show
me off and thinks I should be
really happy about that! If I
don’t smile and show off for
him, he says I am ungrateful.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
This is the way I see it ! He’s getting me
to live out, and live up to, his unfulfilled
dreams and taking credit for my success.
To him, I don’t have a right to a life of my
own, to be myself, and to receive credit for
what I do myself and not
be his show piece.
213
Using Your Children to Justify Your Failure to Realize Your Own
Frustrated, Unfulfilled Dreams for Yourself
My son, the bum! He’s
just like me. I never
got
anything
but bad breaks,
and he never
will either. He’ll always
be a
bum.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
214
Using Your Children to Justify Your Failure to Realize Your Own
Frustrated, Unfulfilled Dreams for Yourself
To him I am proof of fate’s
dirty deal and the living
explanation for his failure.
He can say he never made it,
but, see, neither could my
son.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
215
To me, I know I’d better not
succeed or do better than he
has done, or he will put me
down, put me ‘in my place’.
I’m stuck in his rut!
Enforcement of
Teen’s Self Betrayal
ACT
Peer and
Social
Environment
Modified
Intention
When the social
environment
questions the
intention behind
acts performed
under this state of
self betrayal, the
child learns
deception and
rationalization as a
way of life rather
than a candid
exploration of lack
of knowledge or
mistaken judgment
for the sake of
personal self
correction.
Threat of
disapprova
l,
withdrawal
of support,
neglect, or
rejection
Threat of
disapprova
l,
withdrawal
of support,
neglect, or
rejection
Negative
Implicit
Other
Negative
Implicit
Other
Effects of Implicit Other
Original Intention
Diverted &
Suppressed Original
Intention
The importance of the needs of
the parent’s shadow, community reputation,
and public persona all override the teen’s
personal criteria for fulfillment, need to be
true to themselves, and having their own life
so that, as a result, they do not want to live.
They are saying, “I will not care, I
will be reckless, take drugs, get stoned, and
fail in school to make a statement to you
that you have made my life not worth living.
I want to die and I want to humiliate you.
This is the only way I know to get my
message across.”
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
216
Parents impose and
enforce their own intentions for what
the child should have, be, do, feel,
and/or believe. In the process, they
usurp and incapacitate the child’s
will and cause the child to betray
their will.
The Child must submit,
deceive, or rebel. Loss of integrity,
authenticity, sense of ownership,
tendency to confront consequences,
and finally loss of motivation follow
from either submission or
deception. Risk of emotional
expulsion, reprisal, and withdrawal
of support follow from rebellion.
In this no-win situation,
the child experiences despair and
loss of self respect due to a sense
of betrayal of self. In this battle of
wills, the parental purpose is to
make sure the child has a good,
successful life with out giving them
trouble. But, the cost is the soul
of the child and the beginning of a
life long sense of futility and
resignation.
‘TURNING TABLES’ OF CONSCIENCE BACK AGAINST PARENTS DURING MID-TEENS
Teenage child
You should not hide
marbles behind your
back!!!
MOM
You shouldn’t hide marbles
____behind your back_____.
IMPLICIT OTHER
DAD
You shouldn’t hide marbles
____behind your back_____.
IMPLICIT OTHER
DAD
MOM
I try to not hide marbles behind my back, but
sometimes I just can’t stand it and give in and do it
anyway.
But, wait a minute, isn’t that Mom and Dad
hiding marbles behind their backs? And, they told ‘Me’
not to! Damn! They told me to adhere to values that they
don’t even adhere to themselves! That makes them
phony AND guilty! Why should I listen to them ??? Why
should I follow their teaching and advice when they don’t
follow it? If they don’t even believe in their own values,
then I don’t believe in them and I’ll just act two-faced and
espouse values in front of them that I don’t believe in or
adhere to. I’ll just do what they told me not to and when
they catch me and try to punish me, I’ll just throw it
back in
their faces that they do it too.
See how they like that!
I’ll turn it back on them!
Now see what they do!
TEEN’S INCORPORATION OF PARENTS AND THEIR VALUES AND TEACHINGS, AS IMPLICIT OTHERS, CAN BE TURNED BACK
AGAINST PARENTS WHEN PARENTS HAVE VIOLATED THESE VALUES. IF THE TEEN WAS JUDGED AND PUNISHED HARSHLY,
THEN THEY WILL BE EVEN MORE HARSH IN THE JUDGMENT AND CRITICISM OF THEIR PARENTS.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
217
SOLUTION TO TEEN SELF-BETRAYAL,
TURNING-TABLES ON PARENTS,
AND REBELLION
• OPEN DISCUSSION OF VALUES AND VALUE CONFLICTS
• OPEN ADMISSION OF PARENTAL MISTAKES AND MORAL ERROR
• GENUINE LISTENING TO ALL OF THEIR TEENS’ POINTS OF VIEW
AND RESPECT FOR THEIR THOUGHTS AND JUDGMENT
• NEGOTIATION OF A TENTATIVE SET OF NEW VALUE CODES AND
GUIDES FOR BEHAVIOR BASED ON TRUST, REALISM, AND
COMPROMISE
• MUTUAL AGREEMENT TO OPENLY AND OBJECTIVELY REVIEW
THE CONSEQUENCES OF NEGOTIATED AGREEMENTS AND RENEGOTIATE AND REVISE
• MUTUAL RECOGNITION AND APPRECIATION OF SUCCESSFUL
AGREEMENTS AND GROWTH
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD 4/13/2015
218
NEGATIVE IMPLICIT OTHERS, MANIFEST INTENTIONS, AND THEMES OF INCOMPLETENESS
Implicit Others
Prior Schemata > Schemata are tagged
for temporal perspective and reserved
for future action. Schemata have Prior
Schemes attached to them. In an
appropriate context, relevant Schemata
and Schemes are elicited to fulfill the
criteria for completion of an evolving
intention. At the envisioning phase,
elements of the evolving Original
Intention are its Schemata and
Schemes can evoke Schemata of the
Negative Implicit Other which then alter
the Criteria for Fulfillment, and hence the
Goal and the Scheme Strategies and
over ride the Original Intention. What is
expressed during Adventuring, then is
the Revised Intention, or Manifest
Intention which conforms to the
constraints and dictates or wishes of the
Implicit Other.
Manifest, enacted,
Intention:
Feeling of futile,
hollow, or wasted
effort or attainment
Original Intention
to speak or act.
Store Incomplete
Original Intention
to be held in
reserve
as Theme of
Incompleteness.
Revise the Original Intention so as to
conform to wishes of the Implicit Others
The Original Intention is
now Incomplete and remains in waiting
for an occasion for its expression. Such
and uncompleted Original Intention, lying
in wait for the right occasion to in order
to be completed is called a Theme of
Incompleteness.
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219
Therapy Techniques for Replacing Internal, Centrally Controlling, Negative Implicit Others
With Positive, Properly Socializing Implicit Others
The model on the previous page is a basic model illustrating the role of the implicit others in transforming original intentions into modified,
manifest intentions which will eventually become acts.
The implicit other can take many forms, depending on the personal characteristics of one’s parents and other significant persons and
experiences in a person’s life.
The implicit other is only one of a great many factors that may contribute to the formation of the original and the transformation into the
manifest intention and act. Parents and parental figures in the child’s early life make the greatest contribution to the character of the
implicit other(s).
Five basis types of implicit others are delineated. There is a long list of attribution adjectives from which one can select to find the most
appropriate characterization of one’s parents and consequently of one’s implicit other(s). Once one’s own list of adjectives has been
selected, it is possible to recall or imagine the effects each attribute might have on the way one feels, intends, and acts in particular
situations and settings.
Thereafter, when you find yourself feeling and acting in ways that are troublesome to you or to others, you can try to infer whether or not
this troublesome effect might be the result of the characteristics of the implicit others you had singled out. If this is the case, then you can
ask yourself if you really want to feel and act that way, and, if not, then you might ask, ‘how might I be able to feel and act if these negative
implicit others were supplanted and my ideal implicit other took their place’. Throwing the old out and imagining the new may not bring
about an immediate change, because behavior habits are difficult to change. We typically feel that acting out of character will be perceived
by others in the same way our parents, et al, who formed the implicit others, would react to us. However, gradually practicing, using small
changes and steps, and seeing the positive, or lack of negative, reactions of others, can smooth the way into your new way of being and
bring a feeling of exhilaration, release, and freedom.
To accomplish this transformation of the Negative Implicit Other, we must establish around-the-clock opportunities for bonding, guidance,
and positive reinforcement within the widest possible range of social settings and situations. Maturity Coaches, Teachers, Counselors,
Case Workers, and other third parties can be trained to identify teachable moments for correcting behavior. Simultaneously, we can point
out to the youths the contrasts between two different ways: a) ‘what and from whom’ they had learned to feel and act the way they used to
in the home environment and b) the benefits of learning and practicing the new way of being. Always take care to emphasize that parents
and extended family members need not be rejected because, they, too, have never had the opportunity to learn a more effective,
rewarding, constructive way of life. In the end, the youth can be advised to take the lessons home with them and be a model and, at
appropriate times, teacher to family and peers and others in the home community.
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220
THE INNER CHILD AND THE IMPLICIT OTHERS
Unconscious effects of the
perpetual watchful eye of
internalized, implicit parents
We know what you’re
thinking. We know
what your really want
to do! We saw you do
that! You know what is
going to happen to
you.
INNER
CHILD
Inner Child in relation
to Implicit Parents
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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221
• No matter how grown up
one is, the parents they
internalized as child
remain in the mind as
implicit others. We do not
know they are there but
we show and feel their
effects. We feel the same
things we felt as child
when parents were always
present. Similar acts and
circumstances always
bring the same feelings
and inner reactions.
Similar desires, feelings,
thoughts, and intentions
bring the same inner
reactions that we had as a
child when our parents
were present and reacting
to us.
SLIPPING PAST THE IMPLICIT OTHER FILTERS
Ah ha! We
caught you!!
Original
intentio
ns in an
adult
Original intentions
attempting to slip
past the implicit
others.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
• As adults, we attempt to free ourselves
from the negative influences of our
parents, just as we tried as teens, even
though we are no longer accountable to
them and have our own independent
lives. However, when we do try to
change our lives to be what we really
want for ourselves, we usually find that
effort snuffed out by the same old
feelings. We even attempt to rationalize
and say we didn’t really want that or we
really wanted to do that [sour grapes and
sweet lemons. If we are successful in
slipping past, we typically feel uneasy
about it. If it seemed our parents wanted
us to be mediocre or miserable or
anxiously striving, even as adults, we find
it difficult to shake that old pattern.
222
HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR IMPLICIT OTHERS AND THEIR EFFECTS
•
S
i
t
u
a
t
i
o
n
Discomfort in a
Pseudo
situation, with an
Incorporate
act, or with
Action
feelings related to
the situation,
suggest that the
implicit other has
Action >
influenced
Inferring
modification and
modified
suppression of
intention
one’s original
from action
intention.
Discomfort can be
a teacher helping
one regain one’s
authenticity.
Impli
cit
Other
s
Origin
al
intenti
on
Pseudo Dis
Incorporate
Original
intention
Modifie
d
intenti
on
Experience of
discomfort/inauthe
nticity/dissatisfacti
on
Leads to inference that one did not
follow through on one’s true,
original intention.
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223
Everything that goes on in our
minds is colored by the Implicit
Parents. Here are a few factors
that are affected.
– The way we see the world
and the way we think the
world or people relate to
us.
– How we relate to
authorities.
– How we relate to our and
other’s feelings.
– How we envision our
future.
– How we define ourselves,
our self definition or self
concept.
– Our self esteem and how
we estimate and judge
ourselves.
– How we related to
different kinds of learning
and education.
– How we relate to the
opposite gender and sex.
– Our belief systems,
values, interests, and
preferences.
– How we relate to work,
mode of everyday living,
finances, success or
failure.
Finding And Facing Down The Implicit Parents Using the ‘As If’ Scenario
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Your parents will be as they always have been just as is true of their parents before them.
It is your own ‘inner’ mother and/or father that is the crux of the matter as far as your life and your
future is concerned.
When you see a vivid display of the typical nature of their personalities, take note of it because
this image can create a clear mirror of your inner mother/father that is invisible but, nevertheless,
so pervasive, invasive, and insidiously checking on and diverting your every ‘first’ impulse.
Seeing the external mother/father doing their thing helps you grasp this inner process because the
inner mother/father is so difficult to detect. Yet, you feel those same feelings and act that same
way that you did in their presence even in their absence.
In order to detect the inner parents, you have to work backwards.
You may feel unfulfilled and you may know that this has been going on so long, as long as you
can remember, but now you can stop yourself, in your head, and then work backwards.
To do this, you use an 'as if' scenario that says, "If I could detect the inner mother/father at just
exactly the moment of my original impulse, I could sense how my inner parent would probably be
acting and talking. They would be acting and talking just the way I see them in real life in that
typical, vivid moment and now they would hindering or squelching my true impulse in my head in
the present just as they did in the past. They would be inhibiting the first impulse before it even
gets a chance to try itself out. And, that is why I never flow freely from that pristine impulse to
action. And, that is why I end up never feeling fulfilled. So what, if I make a mistake! It is my life
and I can recover and learn from it. It is not the end of the world. And, I can pick myself up and
try again just like everybody else. And, all the feelings I have learned to not like and tried not to
feel are, nevertheless, good and are there for a reason. Those feelings do not kill you, they pass,
and other more likeable feelings come along. How much better that would be for me than
perpetually feeling unfulfilled!“
The shouldn’t and the should of the inner parents can then be replaced with a freedom to
experiment and an ability to acknowledge my own judgment and trust my own judgment and then
deal with the consequences in my own way.
When I can do that I feel fulfilled. I am myself. I am true to myself.
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224
A METHOD FOR REGAINING
AUTHENTICITY, SPONTANEITY, PEACE, AND PERSONAL FREEDOM
S
i
t
u
a
t
i
o
n
Impli
cit
Other
s
Origin
al
intenti
on
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
When we learn to identify
situations that are discomforting, when we
identify what in ourselves is being affected,
when we identify how the implicit others are
handicapping and crippling our lives,
dominating our careers, or keeping us
locked in to miserable feelings and moods,
we are on the road to inner freedom. We
can now decide to throw off or exile our
implicit others. It is a difficult path back to
our original intentions and primitive
feelings.
The first move is acknowledge how
we have been limited. The second step is
imagine the possibility that our true
tendencies may be buried deep and may be
almost opposite to what we feel compelled
to be, do, or have. The third step is to
acknowledge that we barely know our true
buried self and finding and expressing it is
held back by powerful feelings of anxiety.
The fourth step is to try to imagine being,
doing, and having differently. Just to
imagine this makes us feel awkward and
want to recoil.
It seems strange that to break out
and explore and experiment will make us
feel even more uncomfortable and uneasy
than we did before we began this journey.
However, to break out requires discipline,
determination and persistence.
225
Psycho-Therapeutic Methods of Supplanting Implicit Others in the Adult
Accepting, understanding, providing an
atmosphere where the past and the negative
effects of the implicit others and be safely
uncovered and explored and the authentic self can
be discovered and expressed.
Origin
al
intenti
on
Impli
cit
Other
s
ADULT
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
S
i
t
Supplanting the
u
negative
a
implicit others.
t
i
o
n
Origin
al
intenti
on
ADUL
T
Act
consistent
with
original
intention.
Now I can be, do, and have in
ways that are authentic, true
to myself, and eventually
spontaneous. I am finally
beginning to feel at peace
with
myself.
226
•
Phase II. Using journaling and the Think-aloud Method to Overcome the Implicit Other
Self Reflexive and Retroflexive journaling: gaining freedom from negative Implicit Others to be
one’s authentic self.
Implicit others exert the predominant influence over intentions and interpretations of one’s past.
Gaining emotional independence and emancipation from and extracting implicit others and their influence are
the major goals of therapy, if the person wants to achieve inner freedom, happiness, and serenity.
Moving back and forth from
one’s view of the distant
past to the recent past to
one’s vision of one’s future.
Self Retroflexivity
1. Distant Past
2. Recent Past
Self
Retroflexivity
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
Distant Future
Self Reflexivity
227
Phase II. Using journaling and the Think-aloud Method to Overcome the
Implicit Other
• Self Retroflexive journaling: (CONT) ENVISIONING AND THE IMPLICIT OTHER.
–
–
–
–
–
–
By using journaling on a daily basis to recollect the influence of the negative implicit other in particular
situations, it eventually becomes a habit to do so in the midst of the day’s actual situations also.
Recovering the inner experiences related to these situations and then retracing back to the situation of
origin with one’s parents, or peers, a clear connection can be made. Such an insight that informs
oneself of how one’s current inhibitions, compulsions, etc. were formed and how they have made you a
prisoner with negative implicit others as the guards, releases you to the possibility of extracting them
and their inner influence. As you begin to do this, you may begin to see these situations as
opportunities to experiment with new ways of being and behaving, of breaking out of the inner prison.
Gradually, as you see that things can be different, that you can be different, that you can create a better
world for yourself, you may want to begin to move from the distant to the recent past and present and
then begin to see how your view of your future has also been constrained by the negative implicit others.
Once again you can see the possibility of re-construing your future. You can envision a new future that
in more in tune with your newly found authentic self and newly found potential.
The next task is to envision plans, strategies, and steps to achieve new goals.
Finally, you can decide to take the opportunity to experiment and practice new ways of being and doing
in actual situations. Record your interaction, evaluate it, and self correct just as though you were
growing up for the first time.
As you break a few of those ominous barriers, you gain courage to try more, you gain confidence, and
the first thing you know you are no longer a creature of old habits but are able to meet new situations
with spontaneity, flexibility, assertiveness, and self assurance. Experimenting and finding new ways of
responding become second nature. Life is an adventure. You are free to be yourself and create your
own world and way of being in the world.
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228
ADOLESCENCE AND SOCIOTHERAPY
For the adolescent, life is lived in
prospect rather than retrospect.
Everything is new.
What teens need is someone to help
show them the ropes.
It works best if that someone is a third
party and not a parent.
In the institution, that third party is the
Maturity Coach
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229
Socio-Therapeutic Methods of Supplanting Implicit Others in the Adolescent
The Original intention intelligently modified to
take into consideration consequences and shaped to
more skillfully, wisely, and responsibly achieve my own
goals.
“You have helped me see that by helping to
maintain a healthy, positive community, my own life is
much better also.”
“It’s like you have become my true
parents, psychological parents that are
really for me. I feel secure now. Now I
am really proud of me!”
Origin
al
intenti
on
TEEN
Impli
cit
Other
s
New,
more
maturely
expresse
d
intention.
S Origin
al
i intenti
on
t
Supplanting the negative
u
implicit others by caring,
Maturity
coaching, and helping the teen
TEE
a
Coach
learn to use good judgment.
N
t
i “I’ve developed a bond with
because you have been
o you
genuinely interested in me,
me support and
n given
guidance without coercing
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
4/13/2015
me, and helped me learn to
use my own judgement
230
wisely.”
Journaling Exercise to Assist in Supplanting the Negative
Implicit Other
•
If a person were to sit down at the time optimal for them to ponder their life, morning,
night, or whenever, and recall the situations where they felt the most unfulfilled,
blocked, anxious, resigned, angry at self or others, etc. and after recovering the
memory of the situation and the feelings to take time to go back in time to similar
situations and/or feelings when they were a child with their parents and then recall
how their parents reacted to them, what they said to them, regarding that type of
situation and/or their behavior in that situation, then maybe they could also write their
speculations and inferences about the parental influence related to the recovered
memory might still be operating, albeit unconsciously, in their lives today. Then write
about alternative ways others, for example some person or persons they feel are free
of types of reactions and feelings the writer has, someone they feel is really healthy
and happy, and imagine how those people would have reacted had they been the
writer's parents. In imagination, take them to be the parents and reenact the scene
with these new parents present and with their reactions and see and feel in the mind's
eye how the writer themselves acting freely and differently. See what it would be like
being this way or that and choose one way to actually decide to enact in real life,
regardless of how odd they might feel, how out of character, how contrary to their
identity do it anyway. Then afterwards get back to Journaling that experience and
consider whether to try another, uncharacteristic, approach or to go with that one for
a while. This is pretty elaborate, but change at such a fundamental level is inevitably
a big and demanding challenge.
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231
Differentiating Between the
Needs of Adolescents Versus
Adults
and Differential Use of Methods
Is of Crucial Importance.
Psychotherapy with journaling as
homework is ideal for the adult.
Maturity Coaches with sociotherapy is ideal for the adolescent.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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232
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
Envisioning Aspects: Cultural expectations play a big role in shaping the transition
from adolescence to young adulthood. In the contemporary culture both genders
tend to take the role of provider, both get jobs, many enter 'positions', as distinct
from ordinary work, or professions. These new 'life conditions' serve to contribute to
the new identity as 'adult' and this transforms a wide range of interests, preferences,
tastes, values, time and resource distribution, and even dress and demeanor . This
happens almost automatically and unconsciously. I used the word 'Typically' in the
previous email because there are differences in either whether they make this
transition and/or the rate at which they do so. People tend to notice only the
exceptions, the cases in which the person remains fairly similar to the way they were
as a teen. When a young adult takes a job, a position with a large corporation, or
enters a profession, their new life circumstance begins to assert its influence. One
becomes identified as a GM, NBC, DOW, Wal-Mart, SBC, Texaco, Coca-Cola, Ernst
and Young, DreamWorks, Luby's, etc. type person. 'Typically' their self-esteem gets
a boost from this identification and it gradually creeps into their self-concept. The
essential meaning of being a good provider who is affiliated with such and such a
corporation is that 'you are somebody' with all the nuances associated with being a
successful provider, a corporation X person, a responsible member of society, a
person automatically trusted as a good financial risk, a home owner, a family man, a
member of such and such Church and such and such social, political, business
organizations, and on and on.
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Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
Envisioning Aspects: It is the exception when the earlier influence of the parental and
Secondary Implicit Others maintains significant or noticeable influence over the adult,
even if they have regular contact with them parents and teen peers. This is something
that is increasingly rare in contemporary culture. Even the influence of spouses is
greatly diminished in contemporary America. Notable exceptions are the families of
recent immigrants or ethnically Hispanic families. Many people in these families do not
follow the conventional phases of the "Typical" modern American. Their struggles that
result from this antiquated pattern are legendary and even a frequent topic in the film
industry. The nature of relationships and the frequency of contact with family and nonwork related friends have been greatly diminished. An exception may be for those living
in impoverished Ghettos. The toll taken on moderns from moving into this new era, with
its cataclysmic technological and social changes, is a topic that is constantly being
written about, discussed in the media, and portrayed in movies. A person walking down
Fifth Avenue with a Cell Phone glued to their ear is an example of the sense of isolation
and estrangement and the switch to electronic versus face-to-face contact. Regardless of
whether it is taking some kind of toll on them, to them, the more trappings of the modern
age they have, the more they admire themselves.
Environmental Conditions: From envisioning the nature of the client population to
envisioning the nature of a project designed to study a particular client population. By
envisioning the topical climate of your academic discipline with respect to this type of
study, one can gauge how receptive your audience in your discipline will be to your
project and make adjustments in either in your study or in how you present your project
to that audience. By envisioning the immediate environmental conditions of your
planned study and their affects on your subjects or client population, you can make
adjustments in your design so as to optimize the experiments control and eliminate bias
and increase objectivity. By envisioning possible things that could go wrong in your
study you can avoid invalid executions of the experiment and the possibility of having to
make reruns and being questioned about undue efforts by the experimenter to influence
the results.
–Strategies:
234
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
Envisioning Aspects:
Strategies:
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235
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
•Criteria for Fulfillment: You could examine how they use these processes to
select the criteria that will make them feel fulfilled. This is a fulcrum concept as,
although it is hidden, often from the person themselves, this process,
nevertheless, is the guiding principle of their life. Resolving the discrepancy
between the demands of external structures and their inner criteria for fulfillment
by making decisions and then setting goals is a crucial process.
•Foreshadowing: Often a person will go through all of these processes up to this
point of setting criteria for fulfillment and then will have a sense of
'foreshadowing' of how it is going to turn out. This foreshadowing that may be
bleak or optimistic, while the actual outcome could be quite different from their
foreshadowing. Often people can tell you about this experience of fulfillment or
lack of it and matching or not matching their foreshadowing. We are getting
ahead of ourselves here.
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236
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
•Deciding and Goal Setting:
•Adventuring: Once they have gone through all of these processes,
which occur very rapidly, they usually engage in the adventure of trying
to achieve their goal and then, at the end, experiencing degrees of that
sense of fulfillment that comes from their reaching their criteria.
•Body Experience
•In types of action
•Conflict
•Cancellation
•Temporal Experience
In types of action
•Timing
•Impulsivity
•Delay and types of delay.
•Queuing
–Emotional By-products
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237
• Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
•Dialectical Reasoning Processes:
–Disengaging
–Mirroring
–Foreshadowing:
–Envisioning Aspects:
–Criteria for Fulfillment:
–Revising Goal
–Re-engaging: Normally they will meet obstacles and barriers along the way and will
have to disengage, review or mirror what they have done and how they have done it as
well as what they have encountered along the way, revise some part of their strategy or
plan and then re-engage.
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238
Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
Failure or Incompletion of Tasks and Goals and Looping Scenarios
•Completion, Failure, Exit: Finally, the person will come to the completion phase in
which they have had varying degrees of success or failure. Sometimes, at this point, they
will make revisions once again but then, in the end, they will always store their experiences
in a memory bank of schemata and schemes for future use.
•The great principle of learning and knowing is that we do not know what we do not know.
Knowing this principle, we should be on an eternal quest to discover or uncover what we
do not or may not know and not rest with an assumption and assurance that we know all
there to know or that is worth knowing. We often do not take up this quest because it may
entail moral dilemmas, loss of approval, exclusion, loss of love, or guilt.
•An equally great corollary to this great principle is that we know vastly more than we know
we know but that this domain of knowledge is within us and kept unknown in order that we
not risk disapproval, loss of love, exclusion, or guilt.
•Time for pursuing these two types of unknowns, like time in general, in limited and must be
rationed. We tend to choose to use our limited time for quests that we feel are consistent
with ‘the known’, least challenging, and that are the most safe, comfortable, and selfgratifying. By not keeping ourselves open to potentially valuable information that may run
contrary to those ‘consistent with ‘the known’, least challenging, and that are the most safe,
comfortable, and self-gratifying’ types of information, we are depriving ourselves of
potentially vast sources for creativity and productivity.
•Our tendency to take this self-protective posture with regard to possible causes of failure to
succeed in reaching goals and desires and causes or conditions related to tasks or goals
that were not completed dooms us to repeat ineffective or even dangerous behavioral
patterns or strategies.
•This ineffective process is one of the principal causes of the famous Freudian ‘repetition
compulsion’. Otherwise, the painful emotions that accompany memories of failed
strategies would prevent their repetition, and incomplete tasks and goals would not be
pursued regardless of their lack of utility for us.
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239
• Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
•Mastering:
•Transcendence and Reorganization:
•Storage:
–Manner of storage
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240
Relation between ‘Duplex Pyramids’ and ‘The Model of Intentionality’
•Natural Systems, with its Duplex Pyramid, uses these external structures and systems and internal
structures and processes to bring a holistic perspective to the human problems we face. It provides a
framework that can guide those who have the responsibility to design programs. With the Duplex
Pyramid approach, one can approach a problem by systematically looking at the external structures and
systems and the internal structures and processes all together and then consider how each element of
the Duplex Pyramid will influence the other. This is the opposite of the more fragmented, narrow
approaches that are often taken in such problem solving situations in the modern, complex world. This
seems to be the more natural and 'human-friendly', as well as, in the end, the more practical, approach.
As modern society itself has become so complex and fragmented, it is now not natural (or rather not easy)
to take the natural approach. Natural Systems is an attempt to bring back the 'human-friendly', natural
approach. However, now it has to be re-learned and, as it were, updated to the complexity of the modern
world. Consequently, The Natural Systems Institute is dedicated to (re-)educating leaders in the human
services areas in this holistic, human-friendly, method of analysis of social problems as well as the
design of human programs so that their methods are based on the Duplex Pyramids. It is not an easy
task. If you invest the energy and time in learning the Natural Systems approach, I feel quite sure the
dividends will be surprisingly huge.
•Processes of Intentionality and Their Role in Integrating the Components of the Duplex Pyramids.
–With levels of structure
–With aspects of systems
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241
6. Parameters of Awareness
and Their Role in Dialectical Reasoning and Creative Thinking:
Introduction to the Parameters of Awareness: While growing up, your mind becomes increasingly complex. In
the beginning, it, our mind, is not self-aware. At some point older people, siblings, parents, and other adults try to draw
the child’s attention to such things as forgetting; remembering; controlling impulses and thinking before acting;
reflecting upon what one has done; having and not having certain feelings; having and not having certain thoughts;
questioning ‘why’ concerning actions; remarking about what you should know; explaining dreams as different from
reality; reminding about paying attention and not day dreaming; instructing about time, being on time, the meaning of
yesterday and tomorrow; and the like. In saying these things to the child, adults are teaching the child to be self-aware,
to manage its mind, and to control its behavior intelligently. The child will usually begin to wonder about its mind. What
if there was no adult around to coach and to remind the child about these inner processes?
Typically, however, humans experience a stimulus and produce a habitual response, in other words we are action
oriented and habit oriented. This means, typically, we do not think about what we are going to do before doing it. When
we act without allowing ourselves to be fully aware of the conditions and circumstances surrounding and the
consequences of our actions, this is called impulsivity. When we act without thinking first but do allow ourselves to be
aware of the conditions and circumstances surrounding and the consequences of our actions, this is called
spontaneity, transparency, or authenticity. These, typical, ways of responding to the world are not recommended for
conducting intellectual studies or projects or when facing major life choices or challenges laden with dilemmas. In
these cases, we must allow ourselves to be aware of the conditions and circumstances surrounding and the
consequences of our actions and we must also ‘think first’. If we renege on these imperatives, we do so at our peril and
put others at risk as well. Consequently, it seems to me that there is a more basic imperative and that is to inform
ourselves about the way awareness itself is structured and train ourselves to manage our awareness or manage our
minds. The more we learn to do this expertly, the more expertly we will conduct our intellectual projects. This is one of
the foundations for effective dialectical reasoning and a necessity for high-level creative thinking.
Inferred Parameters of Awareness Inside the Brain or Mind: In the next series of slides I attempt to detect and
describe the way my own awareness operates. I have isolated ten of what I call parameters of awareness. Who knows
what is actually going on inside the brain. Nevertheless, from a pragmatic point of view it seemed to me that by
describing these parameters and imagining the way they might work they might provide the reader with a tool for trying
to detect their own parameters of awareness. If this works for you, then this tool might also assist you in making
adjustments in the way you work on an intellectual project. Thus, it may provide a guide for deciding when to switch
gears, so to speak, in the midst of your intellectual work and adopt more task specific strategies.
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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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Animated Graphic Portrayal of the Parameters of Consciousness
3. DIRECTION
Future-Past of
External-Internal Levels
6. INTENSITY
Low
10. PERSEVERANCE OF FOCUS
Unrelated categories
considered together
INTEGRITY
9. CONTENT
It is hypothesized that, at ‘all’
times, in the human brain, ten
parameters of inner awareness
are simultaneously and
constantly being re-configured.
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Perspective
Observable
Brain andCOMPLEXITY
4. ORGANIZATION
High
Organizedand
to
Hypothesized
Simple
InferableNon-Organized
Parameters
of the High
Processes of Awareness
as though related
or Germaine
Related categories
tied together consciously
7.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
INFERABLE
PARAMETERS
OF INNER
AWARENESS
AND FOCUS
Focus
Level
Direction
Organization
Complexity
Intensity
Integrity
Boundary
Content
Perseverance
Perspective
by the integral nature
of their relation.
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
A. Expanded-Firm
Contracted
-Firm
8. BOUNDARY
B. Expanded
-Porous
Contracted
-Porous
243