00010	             CHAPTER THREE
00100		A SYMBOL PROCESSING THEORY OF THE PARANOID MODE
00200	
00300	           
00400	
00500	
00600		This theory  ,  a  conjunction  of  hypotheses  and  auxiliary
00700	assumptions,  postulates  a  structure or organization of interacting
00800	symbolic  procedures. These  procedures and  their  interactions  are
00900	supplemented in the theory by a number of auxiliary assumptions and presuppositions as
01000	will become apparent as the story unfolds.
01100	
01200	
01300		I shall  presuppose  a schema of action and non-action which takes
01400	the form of a practical inference:
01500			AN AGENT A WANTS SITUATION S TO OBTAIN
01600			A BELIEVES THAT IN ORDER FOR S TO OBTAIN , A MUST  DO X
01700			THEREFORE A PLANS, TRIES OR  PROCEEDS  TO  DO  X. 
01800	An agent  is  taken  here  to  be  any intentionalistic system, person ,
01900	procedure or strategy having  purposes.  To  do  means  to  produce,
02000	prevent  or allow something to happen. We presuppose the agent's power
02100	to do X. X can be  multiple  sequential  or  concurrent  actions  and
02200	includes   mental   action   (e.g.  deciding)  as  well  as  physical
02300	action(e.g.talking). It is also  presupposed  in  this  action-schema
02400	that  ,  in  doing  X,  A receives feedback as to whether S is coming
02500	about, i.e.    whether doing X is successful or not in  obtaining  S.
02600	
02700		It is established clinical knowledge that  the  phenomena  of
02800	the  paranoid mode can be found associated with a variety of physical
02900	disorders.  For example, paranoid thinking can be found  in  patients
03000	with   head   injuries,   hyperthyroidism   hypothyroidism,   uremia,
03100	pernicious  anemia,  cerebral  arteriosclerosis,   congestive   heart
03200	failure,  malaria  and  epilepsy.      Also drug intoxications due to
03300	alcohol, amphetamines, marihuana and LSD can be  accompanied  by  the
03400	paranoid  mode.   To  account for the association of paranoid thought
03500	with these physical states  of  illness, a psychological theorist might  be  tempted  to
03600	hypothesize that an intentionalistic cognitive system would attempt to explain a physical illness
03700	state by constructing persecutory beliefs blaming other human  agents
03800	for causing the ill-being of the disease state. But before
03900	making such  an  explanatory  move,  we  must  consider  the  elusive
04000	distinction  between  reasons  and  causes  in  explanations of human
04100	behavior.
04200	
04300	
04400		When human action is to be explained, confusion easily arises
04500	between appealing to reasons and appealing  to  causes,  as  has  been
04600	discussed  in  detail by Toulmin [ ].  One view of the association of
04700	[TOULMIN REF.-EXPLANATION IN THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES,BORGER R.AND CIOFFI,
04800	F.,(EDS.), CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, N.Y.,(1971). ]
04900	the paranoid mode with physical disorders might be that the  physical
05000	illness  simply  causes the paranoia ,through some unknown mechanism,
05100	at a "hardware" level beyond the influence of the procedures of  mental
05200	processes and beyond voluntary self-control. That is, the resultant paranoid
05300	process represents something that happens to a person    as  victim,
05400	not  something  that he does as an active agent. Another view is that
05500	the  paranoid  mode  can  be   explained   in   terms   of   reasons,
05600	justifications  which  describe an agent's intentions and beliefs. 
05700	Does a person as an  agent  recognize, monitor and control what  he  is
05800	doing  or  trying  to do? Or does it just happen to him automatically
05900	without conscious deliberation? This question raises  a  third  view,
06000	namely that unrecognized reasons, aspects of the program which are sealed off
06100	and inacessible to voluntary control, can function like causes.  Once
06200	brought to consciousness  such reasons can
06300	be modified voluntarily by the agent, as a language user, reflexively talking to  and
06400	instructing himself. This second-order monitoring and control through language  
06500	contrasts with an agent's inability to
06600	modify causes which lie beyond the influence  of  self-criticism  and
06700	change through internal linguistically mediated argumentation.  Timeworn  conundrums about
06800	concepts of free-will, determinism, responsibility, consciousness and
06900	the powers of mental action here plague us unless we stick closely to
07000	a computer analogy which  makes  a  clear  and  useful  distinction
07100	between hardware, interpreter and programs.
07200	
07300		Each of these three views provides a serviceable  perspective
07400	depending  on how a disorder is to be explained and corrected.   When
07500	paranoid processes occur during amphetamine intoxication  they  might
07600	be viewed as biochemically caused and beyond the patient's ability to
07700	control volitionally through internal  reprogramming  dialogues  with
07800	himself.  When  a paranoid moment occurs in a normal person it can be
07900	viewed as having a reason or justification.  If the  paranoid  belief
08000	is  recognized as such, a person has the power to revise or reject it
08100	through internal  debate.  Between  these  extremes  of  drug-induced
08200	paranoid  processes  and the self-correctible paranoid moments of the
08300	normal  person,  lie  cases  of  paranoid   personalities,   paranoid
08400	reactions  and  the paranoid mode associated with the major psychoses
08500	(schizophrenic and manic-depressive).   One opinion has it  that  the
08600	major  psychoses  are  a consequence of unknown "hardware" causes and
08700	are beyond deliberate  voluntary  control.     But  what  are  we  to
08800	conclude about paranoid personalities and paranoid reactions where no
08900	hardware disorder is detectable or suspected?  Are such persons to be
09000	considered  patients  to  whom something is mechanically happening or
09100	are they agents whose behavior is a consequence of what they do?   Or
09200	are  they  both  agent  and patient depending on on how one views the
09300	self-modifiability of their symbolic processing?  In these  enigmatic
09400	cases  we  shall  take  the  position  that  in  normal, neurotic and
09500	psychotic paranoid processes (independent of the major psychoses) the
09600	paranoid  mode  represents  something  that  happens  to  a  man as a
09700	consequence of what he has undergone,of something  he  now  does  and
09800	something  he now undergoes.  Thus he is both agent and victim whose
09900	mental processes have powers to do and liabilities  to  undergo.  His
10000	liabilities are reflexive in that he is patient to and can succumb to
10100	, his own symbolic structures.
10200	
10300	
10400		From this standpoint I would postulate a duality between reasons
10500	and causes. That is, just as in an algorithm a procedure can serve as
10600	an  input  argument  to another procedure, a reason can function as a
10700	cause in one context and as a justification in another. When a  final
10800	cause,   such  as  a  consciously  conceptualized  intention,  guides
10900	efficient causes we can say  that  human  action  is  non-determinate
11000	since it is self-determinate. Thus the power to make some decisions freely
11100	and to change one's mind is non-illusory. When a reason is recognized
11200	to function as a cause and is accessible to self-monitoring, it may be changed by another
11300	procedure which takes it as an argument. In this sense a two-levelled
11400	system  involving an interpreter and its programs is self- changeable
11500	and self-correcting, within limits.
11600	
11700		The major processes here postulated to govern the paranoid  mode
11800	involve  an organization of symbol-processing procedures at one level
11900	governed by an interpreter at another  level.  We  shall  sketch  the
12000	operations of this organization briefly. First:
12100		(1) The interpreter executes a `consciencing' procedure which
12200	judges  an  action  or  state  of  the  self to be wrong according to
12300	criteria of right-wrong  sanctioning  beliefs.  A  censuring  process
12400	attempts to find and blame an agent for the wrong.
12500		(2)The interpreter attempts a simulation of  assigning  blame
12600	to the self.  If the self accepts blame, the trial simulation detects
12700	an affect-signal of  shame  warning  of  an  eventual  undergoing  of
12800	humiliation.   The   detection   in   the  simulation  serves  as  an
12900	anticipatory warning not to actually execute this procedure since  it
13000	will result in the painful re-experiencing of a negative affect-state
13100	of humiliation.
13200		(3)  An alternative procedure of assigning blame to others is
13300	next simulated and found not to eventuate in a painful  affect-state.
13400	Hence  it  is executed. It operates to deny that the self is to blame
13500	for a wrong and to project blame onto other human agents. Now  it  is
13600	not  the  self who is responsible for a wrong but it is that the self
13700	is  wronged  by  others.  This  procedure  is  inefficient  and  only
13800	partially  effective  as  an  escape  since  the  outward behavior it
13900	generates  results  in  the  self  still  undergoing  criticisms  and
14000	condemnations  from  others  which can lead to shame and humiliation.
14100	The locus of the censure is shifted  from  the  self  to  others  but
14200	actions  designed to contend with others paradoxically result in what
14300	the self is internally trying to avoid.
14400	
14500		(4)Since others are now believed to have intentions to  wrong
14600	the  self,  procedures  for the detection of malevolence in the input
14700	from others, as individuals or as part of  a  conspiracy,  achieve  a
14800	first priority.
14900	
15000	
15100		(5) If the input procedures succeed in detecting malevolence,
15200	output strategies are executed in an attempt to  reduce  the  other's
15300	malevolent effects on the self.
15400		(6) Finally an evaluation is made regarding  the  success  or
15500	failure of the output procedures.
15600		The above description attempts to summarize in somewhat loose
15700	prose  a complex series of postulated interactions in an organization
15800	of symbol-processing procedures.    The details of  these  procedures
15900	and  their  interactions  will be made explicit when the algorithm is
16000	described (see p ).   The theory is circumscribed in that it attempts
16100	to  explain only certain phenomena of a particular type of episode.It
16200	does not attempt to explain, for example, why the  censuring  process
16300	condemns  particular actions or states as wrongs nor how any of these
16400	procedures  develop  over  time   in   the   person's   socialization
16500	experience.  Thus  it  does not provide an ontogenetic explanation of
16600	how an organization of processes came to be the way it is. The  model
16700	offers  an  explanation  only of how the organization operates in the
16800	genesis of characteristic behavior in the present.
16900		Some evidence bearing on the postulated processes will now be
17000	discussed.  The  processes  of  (4),which  attempt  to  cope  with  a
17100	malevolent other, receive evidential  support  from  observations  of
17200	normal,  neurotic  and  psychotic  paranoias.  The  agent  may report
17300	his self-monitoring directly to an observer commenting that his, for example, hostile  remarks  are
17400	intended to retaliate for a believed wrong at the hands of the other.
17500	("I want him to feel bad and to leave me alone".)  The output actions
17600	of  the  paranoid  mode  can  be grouped into reducing persecution by
17700	retribution or by withdrawal. Retribution is intended  to  drive  the
17800	other  away  while withdrawal removes the self from the sphere of the
17900	other. We are not aware of any experimental evidence bearing on  this
18000	point. Perhaps the clinical and everyday observations are sufficient
18100	enough not to require any.
18200		The intensive scan for malevolence postulated in (3) has both
18300	clinical and experimental evidence in its  behalf.    Clinicians  are
18400	familiar  with  the  darting  eye-movements  of  psychotic paranoids.
18500	Patients themselves report their hypervigilance as intended to detect
18600	signs  of  malevolence.  Silverman [ ] and Venables [ ] have reported
18700	experiments indicating that paranoid schizophrenics more  extensively
18800	scan their visual fields and have a greater breadth of attention than
18900	other schizophrenic patients.
19000		In  considering  the  processes  postulated  in  (2) and (1),
19100	direct evidence is hard to come by and thus  the  postulates  are  on
19200	shakier  ground. Projection is an ancient concept which has been used
19300	to account for the common observation that paranoids accuse others of
19400	actions  and  states  which  hold  true  for  themselves according an
19500	outside observer. As Newton, in a classic paranoid clash, said  about
19600	Leibniz  300  years ago `he himself is guilty of what he complains of
19700	in others'[ Manuel].  A process of projection has also  been  offered
19800	to   account   for   the   particular  selectivity  involved  in  the
19900	hypersensitivity to criticism.   That is,  why  does  a  man  believe
20000	others  will  ridicule  him  about his appearance unless some part of
20100	himself believes his appearance to be defective. An alternative  view
20200	is that the selectivity stems from an agent, uncertain of himself and
20300	observing how others in his community  are  censured  and  ridiculed,
20400	expects the same to be applied to him.
20500		The  obscurity  of the relation between what the self expects
20600	as malevolence and the self's own properties is well  illustrated  in
20700	hypotheses which have attempted  to explain the paranoid  mode  as  a
20800	consequence of homosexual conflict. It has long  been  observed  that
20900	some  (not  all) paranoid patients are excessively concerned with the
21000	topic of homosexuality.   Several studies  of  hospitalized  paranoid
21100	schizophrenics  show  them  to  be preoccupied with homosexuality far
21200	more than the nonpsychotic controls.(See Klaf and Davis [ ],etc) Such
21300	evidence may be interpreted as having generative implications for certain
21400	cases. As a special case  in a more  general  theory of avoiding humiliation, if  homosexual  interests  are
21500	evaluated by the censuring process as wrong, then a genesis of the paranoid mode
21600	on these grounds becomes plausible. It is also plausible that an
21700	agent, doubtful of his own sexuality,  might expect  to be accused of homosexuality in a community
21800	which censures homosexuality. In such a community homosexuals trying to
21900	"pass" are of necessity suspicious and a bit paranoid since like the
22000	spy in hostile territory,  they must be on guard against stigmatizing detection.
22100		It is obvious that  self-censuring processes contribute to the
22200	regulation of human behavior. But are distortions of censuring and blaming processes 
22300	"really" the generative core of   
22400	the  paranoid  mode?   Heilbrun  and Norbert have shown that paranoid
22500	schizophrenics are more sensitive to maternal censure as measured  by
22600	the  disruption  of  a cognitive task by a tape-recording of a mother
22700	censuring her son. [ ]
22800	      (DESCRIBE INITIAL CONDITIONS OF PARRY HERE)