00100	.SEC THE PARANOID MODE
00200	.SS The Concept of Paranoia
00300		Like ourselves, the ancient Greeks called one another paranoid.
00400	The term `paranoia' (Gr.:para=beside; nous = mind) was a lay rather than
00500	a medical term which referred to states of craziness and mental deterioration.
00600	For two thousand years the term did not appear in the classification schemes
00700	of mental disorders. [Menninger et al.] Historians do not seem curious about
00800	what persons with persecutory delusions were called all that time. (It is
00900	doubtful that there weren't any.) In the 18th century the term reappears
01000	in German classifications to refer to delusional states which were
01100	considered disorders of intellect rather than emotion. [Lewis ].
01200		Little agreement about the term's usuage was reached until the present
01300	time when it has achieved adjectival status as in "paranoid personality" and
01400	"paranoid state". Currently the term is used to refer to the presence
01500	of delusions (false beliefs). Some users refer to any sort of delusion
01600	as indicative of paranoia but mainly the delusions are persecutory. Somatic, erotic, grandeur and
01700	jealousy delusions are identified as such without usually calling them
01800	paranoid.
01900	
02000	.SS The Paranoia of Everyday Life
02100	   I shall contrast two modes of information processing activity,
02200	one termed "ordinary" and one termed "paranoid".
02300	   In the ordinary mode a person goes about his business of everyday
02400	living in a matter-of-fact way. He deals with routine situations in his
02500	environment as they arise, in the main taking things at their face value.
02600	Things and people behave in accordance with his belief-expectations and
02700	thus can be managed routinely. Only a small amount of attention need be
02800	devoted to monitoring the environment simply checking that everthing is
02900	as expected. This placid ongoing state-sequence can be interrupted by the
03000	the detection of signs of alarm or opportunity at any time but the 
03100	predominant condition is one of a steady progression of events so ordinary
03200	as to be uneventful.
03300	   In contrast to this routine ordinariness is an arousal state of
03400	emergency . The particular aroused emergency I shall
03500	be considering here constitutes the paranoid mode of information processing
03600	characterized by a wary suspiciousness. A person whose thought is dominated
03700	by the paranoid mode can be compared to a spy in a hostile country.
03800	To him everyone is a potential enemy, a threat to his existence
03900	who must be evaluated for malevolence or harmlessness. The secret agent
04000	is hypervigilant and fully  mobilized to attack, to flee, to stalk. In this
04100	situation appearances are not to be taken at face value as ordinary events
04200	or background but each is attended to and interpreted to detect malevolence.
04300	Events in the environment, which in the ordinary mode would not be connected
04400	to the self, become referred to the self. The unintended is misinterpreted as
04500	intended and the undesigned is confused with the designed. Nothing is
04600	disattendible. The predominant intention of the agent is to detect malevolence from others. 
04700	In paranoid patients the over-riding belief in and expectation of malevolence on the part of others
04800	keeps the self in an aroused alarm state , a state which occurs only as
04900	an interrupt in the ordinary mode of information processing.
05000	     MORE HERE ON EVERDAY PARANOIA?
05100	
05200	.SS Characteristics of Clinical Paranoias
05300		Observations made by clinicians on paranoid thought and action
05400	have been thoroughly described in the psychiatric literature. Extensive  
05500	accounts can be found in Swanson, Bohnert and Smith (1970) and in Cameron (1967). Only those phenomena
05600	characteristic of a psychiatric interview will be described here.
05700		When a psychiatric interview in conducted by means of teletype (Hilf,et al,1972)
05800	the interviewer  cannot see or hear the patient. The model of paranoia to be described
05900	simulates linguistic behavior in a teletyped interview. It
06000	does not simulate the "paranoid stare" nor the intonations of 
06100	indignation observable  in vocal communication. The simulation model is 
06200	therefore quite circumscribed in what it attempts to explain.
06300	
06400	     
06500		The interview phenomena  the model attempts to explaain consist of suspiciousness,
06600	self-reference, hypersensitivity, fearfulness ,
06700	hostility and rigidity. 
06800	.F
06900	Suspiciousness
07000	
07100	
07200	   The  main characteristic of the clinical paranoid mode consists of 
07300	suspiciousness of others which derives from the patient's  malevolence beliefs.  The patient believes 
07400	others, known and unknown, have evil intentions towards him. He is continously on the look-out for
07500	signs of malevolence which he often reads from his own probings. He is convinced others try to 
07600	bring about undesirable states in himself such as humiliation, harassment, injury
07700	and even death.  In an interview he may report such beliefs
07800	directly or ,if he is guarded , they will only be hinted at.  Disclosure may
07900	depend upon how the interviewer responds in the dialogue to reports of 
08000	fluctuating suspicions or of absolute convictions of malevolence.
08100	     The patient may vary in his own estimate of his malevolence beliefs.
08200	If they consist of weakly-held suspicions, he may have moments of reasoning with himself in
08300	which he tries to reject them as ill-founded.  But when the beliefs represent
08400	absolute convictions, he does not struggle to dismiss them.  They become
08500	pre-conditions for countering actions against tormentors who wish and
08600	try to do him evil.  He seeks affirmation of his beliefs, sympathy , and 
08700	allies in positions of power such as clinicians or lawyers who can help him
08800	take action.
08900	     The conceptual content of the malevolence beliefs may involve a 
09000	specific other person or a conspiracy of others such as the Mafia, the 
09100	FBI, Communists. The patient sees himself as a victim ,one who suffers at the hands
09200	of others rather than as an agent who brings the suffering on himself.
09210	Other agents subject him to and make him the object of their evil
09300	intentions.  At times the conceptual content of the beliefs are not 
09400	directly expressed in an interview. The patient may be so mistrustful of 
09500	how their disclusure might be used against him that he cautiously feels 
09600	his way through an interview offering only hints which the clinician
09700	then uses to infer the presence of delusions.
09800	
09900	     A clinician faces the task of distinguishing whether the malevolence
10000	beliefs are true, false or pretense.  Some malevolence beliefs may turn out
10100	to be true. Others are true but have derived from  the paranoid's
10200	tendency to provoke others to the point where they in fact display 
10300	hostility towards him.
10400	
10500	
10600	.F
10700	Self-Reference and Hypersensitivity
10800	
10900	
11000	     The patient believes many more events in the world pertain to 
11100	himself in a negative way than seems justified to other observers.  For example, he is convinced that 
11200	newspaper headlines are directly personally at him or that the statements
11300	of radio announcers contian special messages for him.  Thus he
11400	hypersensitively reads himself into situations which are not actually intended to
11500	pertain to him and his particular concerns.
11600	     The references to the Self are usually interpreted as malevolent
11700	conceptually.  He may believe he is being observed and influenced by 
11800	others with evil intentions.
11900	
12000	     References to the Self are interpreted as slurs, slights or unfair 
12100	judgements.  He may feel he is being watched, stared at and even 
12200	mysteriously influenced.  In crowds he believes he is intentionally
12300	bumped and on the highway he feels repeatedly tail-gaited.  Bombarded
12400	without relief by this stream of  wrongs , he becomes hyperirritable, querulous and guarrelsome.
12500	     He is touchy about certain topics, flaring up when linguistic 
12600	representations of particular conceptual domains appear in the conversation.  For
12700	example, any remarks about his age, religion, or family, or sexlife may set
12800	him off. Even when these domains are touched upon without reference to him,
12900	e.g. religion in general, he takes it personally.  When a delusional 
13000	complex is present, linguistic terms far removed but still connectible to
13100	the complex act as flares.  Thus a man holding beliefs that the Mafia 
13200	intend to harm him, a remark about Italy might cause him to react in a 
13300	suspicious or fearful manner.
13400	
13500	Affect-States
13600	.F
13700	
13800	     The major affects expressed, both verbally and nonverbally, are 
13900	those of fear and anger.  The patient may be fearful of physical attack
14000	and injury even to the point of death.  He fears others wish to subjugate
14100	and control him.  His fear is justified in his mind by the many physical
14200	threats he detects in the conduct of others towards him.  His chronic
14300	irritability becomes punctuated with outbursts of raging tirades and 
14400	diatribes.  When he feels he is being overwhelmed he may in desperation
14500	physically attack others.
14600	     The experienced and expressed affects of fear and anger blend with
14700	one another in varying proportions to yield an unpleasant negative affect
14800	state made continuous by fantasy rehearsals and retellings of past wrongs.
14900	Depending on his interpretation of malevolent input, the patient may 
15000	move away from others in being guarded, secretive and evasive and then
15100	may suddenly jump at others with sarcastic accusatoriness and 
15200	argumentativeness.  His affect-states become chained into loops with 
15300	those others in his life space who take censoring action towards him because
15400	of his uncommunicativeness or outbursts.
15500	
15600	     As will be described, the affects of shame and humiliation play a 	
15700	a crucial role in the operations of the paranoid mode. 
15800	One of the assumptions of the theory to be presented
15900	involves a principle of escaping   humiliation and thus preventing
16000	a further reduction in self-esteem through re-experienced humiliation.
16100	
16200	.F
16300	Rigidity
16400	
16500	     Among the chief properties of clinically observed paranoia are those 
16600	phenomena which may be characterized as indicators of rigidity.  The
16700	patients beliefs in his sensitive areas remain fixed, difficult to 
16800	influence by evidence or persuasion.  The patient himself makes few 
16900	verification attempts  which might disconfirm his convictions.  To
17000	change a belief is to admit being wrong.  To forgive others also opens
17100	a crack in the wall of righteousness.  He does not apologize nor accept
17200	apology.  He stubbornly follows rules to the letter and his literal
17300	interpretations of regulations can drive others wild.  It is this quality 
17400	of rigidity and fixity which makes the treatment of paranoia by 
17500	psychological methods so difficult.
17600	
17700	.SS Theories of Paranoia
17800	
17900	     While paranoid processes represent a disorder at one level, the 
18000	observable regularities of the disorder imply an underlying order at 
18100	another level.  Attempts to explain, to make intelligible, the order 
18200	behind the disorder , have been offered since antiquity.  Scientific 
18300	explanations do not stand alone in isolation.  They are evaluated relative
18400	to rival contenders for the position of `best available'.
18500	
18600	     Theories stem from two sources, from hypotheses suggested by the 
18700	structure of the phenomena themselves and from modifications of previous
18800	theories (bequeathed myths of the field). Each generation develops new explanatory theories by discovering
18900	new phenomena or by modifying predecessor theories.  The old theories are
19000	unsatisfactory or only partially satisfactory because they are found to 
19100	contain anomalies  or contradictions which must be removed.  Sometimes
19200	previous theories are viewed as lacking evidential support by current standards.
19300	Theories are mainly superseded rather than disproved.  The new versions
19400	try to remove the contradictions,increase  comprehensiveness or gain evidential
19500	support.
19600	     Theories offered as scientific explanations should be (a) systematic
19700	(i.e. coherent and consistent) and (b) empirically testable. Previous
19800	psychological formulations about the paranoid mode do not meet these 
19900	criteria.  For example, to account for paranoid thought process by 
20000	citing  an imbalance of intellect and affect or defective role-taking
20100	is to be so global and  untestable as to not merit theory status.
20200	What is needed as an explanation of the right type is a structure of 
20300	symbol processing mechanisms, strategies, functions or procedures which is capable of producing
20400	the observable regularities of the paranoid mode. Here I am using the term
20500	"mechanism" in its broadest sense of manner of working or modus operandi.
20600	However this broad use of the term
20700	"mechanism" may suggest  a  mechanistic philosophy which is not my intention.
20800	Strict mechanism views the world as consisting basically of particles obeying  laws
20900	of motion. Some biologists and psychologists share this viewpoint in
21000	spite of the fact that physics itself for the past 50 years has been
21100	moving away from the classical mechanics of particles in motion towards fields
21200	and wave functions as more appropriate explanatory concepts. In psychiatry it is
21300	still useful to view some things which happen to a man in mechanical terms. But
21400	a man is not only a passive recipient, subject to Newtons's laws, he
21500	is also an active agent, a language user who thereby can monitor
21600	himself, control himself, direct himself, comment on and criticize these performances.
21700	Modern psychiatric theory should try to offer an account of man as agent as 
21800	well as recipient  and come to grips with those enigmatic cases in which
21900	what happens to a man can be a consequence of what he has done.
22000	     Let us consider some psychological explanations for the paranoid mode beginning 
22100	in the late 19th century.  (Historians can certainly find notions of 
22200	intentions, affects and beliefs as far back as  Aristotle, who seldom quoted
22300	his sources.  
22400	`Everything has been said before but it has to be said again because
22500	nobody listens'(Gide)). In 1896 Freud [ ] proposed a theory at least of the right 
22600	type which postulated a defensive strategy
22700	or mechanism to explain persecutory paranoia [ ].  He assumed the believed persecution of the 
22800	self by others to represent projected self-reproaches for childhood 
22900	masturbation.  Today hardly anyone finds this explanation plausible but 
23000	the concepts of defense  and projection, not original with Freud but
23100	made popular by him, have survived.
23200	     Around the turn of the century, Fliess (according to Jones[ ]) proposed in letters to Freud
23300	that paranoid thought stemmed from an unconscious homosexual conflict. 
23400	Freud embraced this idea whole-heartedly and in 1910 [ ] developed it in terms of 
23500	transformations being applied to the basic proposition `I (a man) love him.'
23600	He postulated this proposition to be so intolerable as not to be admitted
23700	to consciousness and therefore subjected to being transformed unconsciously,
23800	first into `I do not love him, I hate him' which in turn was transformed
23900	into the conscious belief `He hates me' with the accompanying conclusion
24000	`Therefore I am justified in hating him'.
24100	     In modern terms this explanation offers a set of strategies ,functions or 
24200	procedures which progressively distort symbolic-structures.  It is thus 
24300	the right type of explanation for a symbol-processing viewpoint. Great difficulty has 
24400	been encountered in testing the theory since there is no agreed-on method
24500	for detecting the presence of unconscious homosexual conflict.  The 
24600	explanation is also inconsistent with another of Freud's ideas that 
24700	everyone harbors unconscious homosexual conflicts. But everyone does 
24800	does not become paranoid. To reconcile the
24900	inconsistency one would have to postulate some additional, possibly 
25000	quantitative factors, to explain the intensity and extent of the paranoid
25100	mode in certain people. Another difficulty is the fact that overtly
25200	homosexual people can be paranoid, requiring in such cases a postulate
25300	of some other type of underlying conflict.
25400	     The current state of the homosexual-conflict explanation is a doubtful
25500	one.  But as will be discussed, it may contain a grain of truth as a 
25600	limiting case for a more general and comprehensive humiliation theory of the paranoid mode.                               
25700	Freud's  later attempts at the
25800	explanation of paranoia (In Ego and Id) assumed simply that love was transformed into hate
25900	This notion is too vague and incomplete an articulation to 
26000	qualify for a contemporary dialectics of explanation which reqires a more
26100	precisely defined organization of functions to account for such a transformation.
26200	Cameron's (1967) explanation of "projected hostilty" is also insufficient on these grounds.
26300	     Tomkins [ ] in 196?  proposed an information-processing theory of the 
26400	paranoid posture articulated in terms of defensive strategies,
26500	transformations ,and maximizing-minimizing principles.  He viewed the
26600	paranoid mode as an attempt to cope with humiliation. He proposed that a person whose 
26700	information processing is monopolized by the paranoid mode is in a 
26800	permanent state of vigilance, trying to maximize the detection of insult
26900	and to minimize humiliation.
27000	.V
27100		"The major source of distortion in his interpretation is
27200		 in his insistence on processing all information as though 
27300		 it were relevant only to the possibility of humiliation."
27400	.END
27500	     The hypotheses of Tomkin's  theory, stated in essay form, are difficult to 
27600	test for their consistency and for their empirical correspondence.  But 
27700	as will be shown,, I have, with some modifications, adopted several of them.
27800	By conjoining them with other hypotheses to form a collaboration of elements in a working model we can 
27900	enhance their testability both logically and empirically.
28000	     In 1970 Swanson et al.[ ] in a book on paranoia portrayed
28100	how a `homeostatic' individual attempts to deal with `bewildering 
28200	perceptions'.  They postulated that a person in homeostatic
28300	equilibrium perceives a pronounced inner or outer change which is 
28400	inexplicable or unacceptable.  The resultant disequilibrium is so 
28500	bewildering that in order to restore equilibrium, the person constructs
28600	a paranoid explanation which attributes the cause of the change, not to 
28700	the self, but to an external source.  With the cause of the change 
28800	identified , bewilderment is abolished and uncertainty reduced.
28900	     Elements of this formulation represent   symbol-processing
29000	strategies particularly in cases of paranoid thinkng associated with the 
29100	`pronounced changes' of organic brain damage or amphetamine psychosis.
29200	These are conditions which happen to a man.
29300	In paranoid states, reactions or personalities where no pronounced
29400	physical change can be identified ,the formulation is inadequate and must
29500	be filled out with more specific transformations. However the                                      	
29600	theory does emphasize intentionalistic strategies which we also believe must play a part
29700	in a model of human thought processes.
29800	     In sum, the rival theories of paranoia here reviewed have not gained
29900	widespread acceptance because of various weaknesses and limitations.
30000	No reigning and unified theory of paranoia is widely accepted today.
30100	In such a pre-consensus state the field is wide open for contenders. I shall propose a 
30200	simulation model as a candidate explanation intended to be more explicit, 
30300	systematic, consistent  and testable than the theories   described above.
30400	The model combines hypotheses of these previous contributions with hypotheses
30500	and assumptions of our own into a coherent unified explanatory system.