Through personal observation, I have noticed a strong almost instinctive drive for balance when bias emerges, both at the psychological and sociological level. A good example of this is the emergence of Behaviourism as a balance to Psychoanalysis.
Using the FORM/PROCESS (whole/aspect) system of analysis, psychoanalysis, when compared to Behaviourism, has a strong bias to FORM. This is found in Freud's emphasis on relational inconsistancies within social contexts across apparent logical levels. His prime example being sexual relationships within the context of Family, as well as psychological states that suggest out of context behaviour - passive aggressiveness, emotional repression etc.
As we have seen, context is vital to maintain FORM, and allows for different levels of analysis, FORM has a ZOOM control via the attention system, although these levels must be seen within the entire context. In these sorts of systems everyone/everything has it's proper place and there is an emphasis on blocking cross-level 'inappropriate' matching - parents are at one level, children at the next.
Of note is that in the historical period in which psychoanalysis was developed, cross relationships were allowed, and common, but only between 'distant' relatives; thus maintaining the overall structure of "The Family" - the royal families of Europe being a prime example; the emphasis on 'blue blood'. In hierarchy, breeding ('Refinement') is important.(In ancient Egypt, the pharoahs married their sisters).
Emotion plays a strong role in Psychoanalysis, and there seems to be a bias to considering depressive states rather than schizophrenic states. Furthermore, since the main context is Psychoanalysis, there is a no 'win' situation, for to win implies being above or outside of the context, and as psychoanalysis demonstrates, being outside of any context implies mental illness. Therefore, depression is a 'within context' disease whereas schizophrenia is an 'out of context' disease. This leads to the interpretation of levels of depression as being treatable whereas schizophrenia (one context) is more of a problem; depression is interpreted as bias to software (neurosis) and treated through psychotherapy in the form of talk compared to schizophrenia being interpreted as bias to firmware/hardware (psychosis) and treated through surgery, ECT, or drugs before therapy is concidered.
Behaviourism (US based - originated from J.B.Watson in 1913 and strongly developed by B.F.Skinner) seems to have emerged as a balance to Psychoanalysis (European based). In behaviourism the emphasis has been relational, subjects are treated as objects with no recognition of any sense of 'personal identity' or 'being'; the subjective is removed. What is important is the analysis of an object's response to a given stimulus, and whether this response is common across many objects irrespective of form, be it a rat or a human.
There is a strong connectionist point of view where results to various stimuli are listed and the list attached to the object. There is a bias to the comparing (relational analysis) of lists over the comparing of objects, since it is the list that defines the object. Notice the serialization bias in this. There are no levels, the context is held constant, i.e. 'Science' or 'Stimulus/Response', and as such has a more gross bias than the refined levels found in FORM. I suggest that it is the serialization bias that enforces the one context.
The FORM/PROCESS bias can be seen historically. The heyday of behaviourism was in the period from the late 30's to the early 60's, with it's peek being in the US in the 50's. Sociologically, this was a period of vigalance boardering on paranoia, being the height of the cold war with the Soviet bloc. The psychological state was still entrenched in the concept of family and social order, but with the possible development of the 'Family' context becoming a one context frame of mind.
In the late 60's we see the beginning of the breakdown of the family, it's objectification, as the value of it's context is reduced; the Family hierarchy becomes more compact as levels links are broken:
Linkage Collapse Concept of Family
+-----------------------------------+
^ | husband/wife | 90's
| +-----------------------------------+
| | a child (max 2) | 80's
| +-----------------------------------+
| | children | 70's
^ +-----------------------------------+
| | aunts & uncles | 60's
| +-----------------------------------+
| | cousins | 50's
| +-----------------------------------+
| | neighbours/village/'class' | pre40's
| +-----------------------------------+
Since the 60's there has been an expansion in the list oriented bias, reaching it's peak in the 80's, where one's identity was determined by what one had on one's list of assets; the list including life-forms.
Culturally this leads to the development of a one context bias, manifest by the increase in 'generic' goods and a push for various social equalities or freedoms.
As a compensation for this, there is the current (1990's) push for a return to 'Family values' and spirituality.
The analysis of Psychoanalysis/Behaviourism shows cyclic behaviour at a sociological level IDENTICAL to psychological behaviour suggested by current analysis:
Psychological Sociological
Time Time
(Seconds/Minutes/Hours) (Years/Decades/Millenium)
FORM | PROCESS
1200hrs \ 1910's
\
\
*
\
\
1300hrs \
/
/
/
*
/
/
1500hrs / 2000's
I suggest that mental disorders, primarily schizophrenia and depression, manifest the extremes to which the discussed biases can go.
The inability to take things out of context is manifest in the disease of depression.
The ability to form associations excluding context is manifest in the disease of schizophrenia.
In the storing of wholes, there is a strong emotional marker. This marker could be a neutral emotion or a severe emotion. This emotion can act like a form of anchor. For example, someone's face is associated with an emotional state (a State Specific Memory). You see someone with a similar face and experience the emotional marker even though there is no relation between the original face and the 'new' one. The emotional link, therefore, is invalid, but being unable to recognize this, being unable to recognize the lack of connection other than similar bone structure, the emotion is linked to the new face and can cause interference to any relational development between the observer and the new face. (Freud came up with the terms transference and projection. The former has a more specific bias (patient onto analyst) than the latter (where someone or many are the cause of one's problems).
Depression, therefore , is when one keeps carrying emotional baggage through time. The slide show nature of the right hemisphere enables the possibility of severe loss of temporal context. Something that happened 10 years ago is still held as valid - temporal changes are ignored. But temporalness is equivalent to serialization. If I therefore store information in the form of slides (which may be 'arranged' in front of me - see timeline section below) I can call the whole back at any time including the full somatic context. If I store information as a movie I am well aware of temporal position (context) but can loose somatic information (emotional context) since how I feel now is different to then. This relational point of view is manifest as an extreme in schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is when one keeps carrying syntactical baggage through time; i.e. too many connections between 'things'. This can lead to oversensitivity as memories can be recalled with connections that are not part of the current context but are considered to be since there is only 'one' context. A problem also develops with concentration, where so much data is requiring connection that 'homing-in' is difficult. This would explain the emergence of paranoia since having a wide angle of attention puts one in almost permanent 'vigilance' mode (see attention section below).
Another 'trait' is a tendancy to be too literal. This being due to the bypassing of logical levels with connectivity and thus missing metaphoric suggestions which require multiple contexts (or sub-contexts within the main context).
One physiological aspect of schizophrenia is the sudden onset of crying and/or the inappropriate onset of laughter (as well as the hearing of voices - a possible by-product of the evolution of PROCESS form the audition system). There has been a tentative link made between crying and the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain, an area found to have marked sociological links (MacLean 1987). From another source there is a link made between the anterior cingulate cortex and an executive attention centre (Posner & Rachle 1994). From another source, a link has made between the cingulate cortex and pain suppression, both physiological and sociological (MacLean 1987). Do these links have anything behaviourally in common?
Attention seems to be an independant system in that it is utilized both by FORM and PROCESS. Attention has a FORM side with a developed hierarchy of attentive levels, for wide angle vigilance (paranoia) to narrow angle intensity (manic). The PROCESS side uses this hierachy, one level at a time, the FORM side uses this 'wholistically'. The GROSS 'root' of attention seems to be in the RAS with it's FINE development in the cingulate cortex.
The anterior cingulate gyrus is supposed to manifest the executive control centre of attention. This has been suggested by rCBF experiments. What has been demonstrated is the ability to enhance rCBF to areas of the brain if being in an attentive mode is requested of the subject. Subjects in non-attentive/passive modes do not demonstrate this enhanced rCBF.
Attentiveness is different to being vigilant. Vigilance requires a wide angle of awareness; preparation for anything, whereas attention is a concentrated narrow angle of awareness, in preparation for something specifically known. This difference forms the Manic/Paranoia dichotomy associated with attention. There is infact a bias in rCBF between these concepts with the FORM hemisphere showing higher rCBF for vigilance and the PROCESS hemisphere showing a higher rCBF for attention. Since FORM is associated with global, wholistic operation, this is understandable. The bias to PROCESS is one of a serial communicatitive expectation.
The concept of attention, and vigilance, can be linked with the concept of proactiveness, and the concept of non-attention/passivity can be linked with the concept of reactiveness. The former is a preparedness and willingness for action and the latter is a responsiveness to action, with a bias to wait until someone else 'takes charge' and issues orders unless one is 'forced' into action through circumstance.
There remains a question as to whether rCBF is sent to an area or is 'pulled'. Does the attention system respond to blood flow or something else? Current literature suggests that the release of Nitric Oxide by specific neurones in the area required influences changes to the vascular management system enabling increased blood flow. What is not clear is the source of the neuronal excitation.
MacLean (MacLean 1987) discusses experiments, both on monkeys and humans, where pain suppression neurons highly populate the cingulate cortex, and ablations to this area have an effect in suppressing morphine withdrawl symptoms. What is also emphasized is the strong sociological behaviour controlled by this region and thus suggesting the 'pain' present in some sociological situations (mother/child seperation) and management of this pain (crying for attention etc., auditions other than these types of calls seem to have their roots elsewhere in the brain)
Psychological studies have shown that in drug centres, the majority of drug takers participating in group therapy sessions can be classified as being more reactive than proactive. I suggest that the reasons for this need not be directly related with drug use but with their interpretation of their sociological 'look' compared to others in the group as well as to the therepists. However, this interpretation is an expression of the user's current thinking - it is part of the overall context of 'drug user'. Noted is the fact that reactiveness can be associated with passive, or inhibition of, attention (together with a more bias to vigilance and paranoia).
What is of interest is a discovery from NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming, a tool for analising and improving communication skills). This discovery is that reactive persons have a different concept of time than proactive persons. Furthermore, these 'timelines' can be changed; it is possible to change a reactive into a proactive and visa versa (remember, we are emphasiszing bias. All these dichotomies in 'reality' exist in continuums).
Strongly reactive individuals have a timeline that passes through them. This timeline is generated by simply asking the individual to indicate where their past, present, and future 'are'. This can be done by asking subjects to indicate these positions on the floor relative to where they stand. (These can be built up - for example "mark a point for yesterday. Mark a point for last week in relation to yesterday. Mark a point for last year. Join the points.")
Strongly reactive persons draw a line from past to future that starts behind them (their past always unobserved) and goes off in front of them. Connecting past and future forms a timeline. This line may pass through the individual (associated) or will pass to one side (dissociated):
future future
^ ^
| |
| |
O OR |O
| |
| |
past past
Strongly proactive individuals, on the otherhand, have a timeline that passes left to right (or right to left) in front of them, either associated or dissociated:
past -----------> future OR past -----O-----> future
O
The average seems to be more of a V shape:
past \ / future \ /
\ / OR \ /
\ / \/
O
O
This V can be narrow :
\ /
V
O
or have a wide angle :
/
/
/
-------O
There are variations on these, and the points of past and future need not be left to right, but these lines seem to be the basic models. Of interest are the timelines of the strongly biased where a vertical bias is associated with serialization bias (spacially left to right) and a horizontal bias is associated with hierarchically bias (spacially vertical orientation).
Associations.
All of the above can be linked thus:
Vertical timeline -->
reactive -->
attention suppression -->
vigilance enhanced -->
levels of context removed/compressed -->
-ve emotion suppressed (gross rather than refined)-->
+ve emotion enhanced -->
process/relational bias (syntax enhanced) -->
schizoid personalities -->
Schizophrenia bias.
Single context (gross resolution)
Iterative bias (loops)
Generalities bias
Methods of cure -> context reinstallation. (Frame by frame analysis
(slow down)) Break inappropriate connections, allow for invarience.
Horizontal timeline -->
proactive --->
attention enhanced -->
vigilance suppressed -->
relational/temporal removed -->
syntax suppressed -->
form/hierarchical bias (-ve emotion enhanced) -->
(Manic) Depression bias.
Levels oriented context (fine resolution)
Recursive bias (calls itself)
Nit-picking bias
Methods of cure -> temporality context restored (link slides to
movies(speed up)). Allow for varience.
(There may be a correlation with metabolic states and their affects on
time estimation and distortion.
Too fast --> unable to capture fine detail.
Too slow --> unable to capture temporal context.
See the Metabolic Rates and Time where we find that changes in hundreths of a degree of temperature can vary time by 5sec per minute. This can have an effect on information aquisition and assimilation.)
It is possible for a schizophrenic to also have depression, but what sort? By this I mean is the depression neurologically based, endocrinologically based, or psychologically based? There is the suggestion that the emergence is an attempt to restore whole balance which implies that, for example, psychological depression emerges to compensate the schizophrenia.
The problem with integration is that the disfunctions discussed are not necessarily curative mental states responsive to psychotherepy. There are three ways that these behavioural traits can manifest themselves:
Hardware, Firmware, and Software.
Neurological dysfunction - hardware.
Frontal Lobe dysfunction and schizophrenia.
Forntal Lobe dysfunction and Depression.
Endocrine dysfunction - firmware.
Limbic system malfunction and schizophrenia.
Limbic system malfunction and Depression.
Psychological dysfunction - software.
The Double-bind model of schizophrenia.
The success of the FORM/PROCESS system is manifest by the success of humans as a species. What has been vital is the presence of a medium in which sound waves can travel. From this emerges the tools to discover the apparent dual nature of EMF and that wave phenomena exist outside of a medium, although it is possible that our adaption to our local envionment has given us a specific set of local tools which may fail us when applied to areas outside of the planet. And yet the success of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity suggests that our models are in some way 'globally' valid if perhaps slightly skewed.
The observable historical meanderings of the behaviourism/psychoanalysis dichotomy, introduces the possibility of gross predictions of events being possible, and explains the attraction of tools like the I Ching and Astrology which I have shown elsewhere, to have been created from the F/P dichotomy. The question is, as to what level of prediction is possible? The F/P dichotomy is not restricted to sociological interactions, but also to individual thought preferences. Once an initial bias is known, then responses to specific stimuli can be determined and the individual's probable path through time plotted. The determination of bias is based on observations of an individual's past or on explicit questioning. Both would require the consideration of context, for without this, apparent 'miscalculations' may be found to be due to a failure of the context analysis of previous actions. In a councilling situation, this information can act as a feedback system allowing for the setting of goals from a possible set of 'good' choices.
What is observable from the F/P analysis is the possibility of social prediction (group behaviour) based on current social context bias, determined over generations. This is what the I Ching seems to emphasize, it allows for personal randomness but recognizes group determinism. It is therefore understandable how 'primitive' societies developed these strongly visual based systems. The F/P model enables us to refine these systems by removing the 'mumbo jumbo' accumulated over the years where intention became tradition.