5. 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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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
EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

CONSTRAINTS and SETTINGS

SITUATIONS
Dyadic Interaction

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
Emotion/Feelings
Perception
Background: Prior Schemata and Schemes/Species Genetic History
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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Internal
Structures
and
Processes
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
20
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
The Arena
of your
Situations
mind
may
range
Situational
Identities
from
Dyadic
emiTbroad,
deep,
and
Time
Roles
temporally
Interaction
expansive
Relationships
Surface and Observable
to
Physical/Verbal
Behavior
narrow,
surface
and Cognition
temporally
Emotion/Feelings
immediate.
Perception
Self-concept
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
The Arena of your
mind may range
from
broad, deep, and
temporally
expansive
to
narrow, surface
and temporally
immediate.
21
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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
A
C
C
O
M
M
O
D
A
T
I
O
N
PARAMETERS OF AWARENESS
PERCEPTION, RECEPTION, RETRIEVAL
S
t
o
r
a
g
e
INTERNAL REPRESENTATION
of ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXTS
and SCHEMATA
for SOCIAL SETTINGS
ASSIMILATION vs. ACCOMMODATION
MEMORY PATTERN READINESS for PRIOR
SCHEMATA and PRIOR SCHEMES
of COMPLETED vs. INCOMPLETE GOALS
MENTAL
ASSESSMENT
LEVELS
INDIVIDUATION
PHYSICAL, COGNITIVE, SOCIAL
HEDONIC TONE DEGREES
EXTROCEPTION
PLEASURE ++
INTROCEPTION
INTROSPECTION
PLEASURE +
PAIN +
PAIN ++
PAIN +++
STATE TRANSFORMATIONS
IMPLICIT OTHER EFFECTS
PLEASURE +++
INTEROCEPTION
CRITERIA
FOR
FULFILLMENT
TRANSCENDENCE
and
REORGANIZATION
REVISING
GOAL
MASTERING
FORSHADOWING
CRITERIA FOR FULFILLMENT
INCORPORATION
STATES
GOAL
SETTING
ENVISIONING
ASPECTS
INCORPORATION
PSEUDO-DIS-INCORPORATION
IMPLICIT OTHER EFFECTS
ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS
HEURISTIC-DIS-INCORPORATION
LEVEL PERSPECTIVE 
HEURISTIC-INCORPORATION
PSEUDO-INCORPORATION
<<<TIME PERSPECTIVE>>>
DIS-INCORPORATION
DYS-CORPORATION
PSEUDO-DYS-CORPORATION
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ENVISIONING
ASPECTS
DECIDING
EXTROSPECTION
EXTEROCEPTION
Dialectical Reasoning
MODEL
of the
INTENTIONAL
PROCESSES
DISENGAGE
EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

CONSTRAINTS and SETTINGS

SITUATIONS

Roles

Dyadic Interaction
Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
ADVENTURING
ASPECTS
BODY EXPERIENCE
TEMPORAL EXPERIENCE
TIMING
EMOTIONAL BY-PRODUCTS
STRATEGY: COGNITIVE
OPERATIONS
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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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5. 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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5. 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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5. 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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5. 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
5. 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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5. 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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5. 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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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
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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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
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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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
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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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
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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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
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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5. 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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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
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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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes
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.) 5. 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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5. 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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5. 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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5. 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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5. 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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5. 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.
1. Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in the life conditions among peoples of the
world.
2. Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety in cultures
3. Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety in communities
4. Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety in institutions like schools
5. Learning to appreciate what a tremendous variety there is in personality factors among peoples of the
world.
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5. 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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5. 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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5. 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 amongCopyright
yourEdwin
subjects
on these features.
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5. 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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5. 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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5. 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
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5. 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 self-concept 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.
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5. 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 selfconcept. 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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5. 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 non-work 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:
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5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
Envisioning Aspects:
Strategies:
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5. 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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5. 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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•5. 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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5. 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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•5. Definitions and Functions of Intentional Processes (Cont.)
•Mastering:
•Transcendence and Reorganization:
•Storage:
–Manner of storage
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5. 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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Copyright Edwin L. Young, PhD
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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
67
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 and
5. COMPLEXITY
4. ORGANIZATION
High
Organizedand
Hypothesized
to
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
68