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		We  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  patient,
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, ` compiled' versions of the program
06100	now inacessible to voluntary control, can function like causes.  Once
06200	brought to consciousness in an `interpreted' version 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  
06410	contrasts with an agent's inability to
06500	modify causes which lie beyond the influence  of  self-criticism  and
06600	change through internal linguistically mediated argumentation.  Timeworn  conundrums about
06700	concepts of free-will, determinism, responsibility, consciousness and
06800	the powers of mental action here plague us unless we stick closely to
06900	our computer analogy which  makes  a  clear  and  useful  distinction
07000	between hardware, interpreter and programs.
07100	
07200		Each  of these three views provides a serviceable perspective
07300	depending on how a disorder is to be explained and  corrected.   When
07400	paranoid  processes  occur during amphetamine intoxication they might
07500	be viewed as biochemically caused and beyond the patient's ability to
07600	control  volitionally  through  internal reprogramming dialogues with
07700	himself. When a paranoid moment occurs in a normal person it  can  be
07800	viewed  as  having a reason or justification.  If the paranoid belief
07900	is recognized as such, a person has the power to revise or reject it through internal debate.
08000	Between  these  extremes  of  drug-induced paranoid processes and the
08100	self-correctible paranoid moments of the normal person, lie cases  of
08200	paranoid  personalities,  paranoid  psychoses  and  the paranoid mode
08300	associated   with   the   major    psychoses    (schizophrenic    and
08400	manic-depressive).   Current  opinion has it that the major psychoses
08500	are  a  consequence  of  unknown  hardware  causes  and  are   beyond
08600	deliberate  voluntary  control.    But  what are we to conclude about
08700	paranoid personalities  and  paranoid  psychoses  where  no  hardware
08800	disorder is detectable or suspected?  Are such persons to be considered patients to whom
08900	something is mechanically happening  or  are  they  agents  whose  behavior  is  a
09000	consequence  of  what  they  do?  Or  are they both agent and patient
09100	depending on on how we view the self-modifiability of their symbolic processing? 
09200	In these enigmatic cases we shall  take  the  position  that  in  normal,  neurotic and psychotic
09300	paranoid processes (independent of the major psychoses) the  paranoid
09400	mode represents something that happens to a man as a consequence of  
09500	what he has undergone,of something he now does and something he now undergoes.  Thus  he  is  both
09600	agent and patient whose mental processes have powers to do and liabilities
09700	to undergo. His liabilities are reflexive in that he is patient to 
09710	and can succumb to , his own symbolic structures.
09800	
09900	
10000		From  this  standpoint we postulate a duality between reasons
10100	and causes. That is, just as in an algorithm a procedure can serve as
10200	an  input  argument  to another procedure, a reason can function as a
10300	cause in one context and as a justification in another. When a  final
10400	cause,   such  as  a  consciously  conceptualized  intention,  guides
10500	efficient causes we can say  that  human  action  is  non-determinate
10600	since it is self-determinate. Thus the power to make some decisions freely
10700	and to change one's mind is non-illusory. When a reason is recognized
10800	to function as a cause and is accessible to self-monitoring, it may be changed by another
10900	procedure which takes it as an argument. In this sense a two-levelled
11000	system  involving an interpreter and its programs is self- changeable
11100	and self-correcting, within limits.
11200	
11300		The major processes we postulate to govern the paranoid  mode
11400	involve  an organization of symbol-processing procedures at one level
11500	governed by an interpreter at another  level.  We  shall  sketch  the
11600	operations of this organization briefly. First:
11700		(1) The interpreter executes a `consciencing' procedure which
11800	judges an action or state of the self to  be  wrong according to criteria of
11900	right-wrong sanctioning beliefs. A censuring process attempts to find and blame
12000	an agent for the wrong.
12100		(2)The interpreter attempts a simulation of assigning blame to
12200	the  self.  If the self accepts blame, the trial simulation detects an affect-signal
12300	of shame warning of an eventual undergoing of humiliation. The detection in the simulation  serves  as  an
12400	anticipatory warning not to actually execute  this procedure since it will
12500	result in the painful re-experiencing of a negative  affect-state  of
12600	humiliation.
12700		(3) An alternative procedure of assigning blame to others  is
12800	next  simulated and found not to eventuate in a painful affect-state.
12900	Hence it is executed. It operates to deny that the self  is  to  blame
13000	for  a  wrong and to project blame onto other human agents. Now it is
13100	not the self who is responsible for a wrong but it is that the  self  is
13200	wronged by others. This procedure is inefficient and only partially effective as an
13300	escape since the outward behavior it generates results in the self still undergoing criticisms  and  condemnations  
13400	from others which can lead to shame and humiliation.
13500	The locus of the censure is shifted from the self to others but actions
13600	designed to contend with others paradoxically result in what the self is
13700	internally trying to avoid.
13800	
13900		(4)Since  others are now believed to have intentions to wrong
14000	the self, procedures for the detection of malevolence  in  the  input
14100	from  others,  as  individuals  or as part of a conspiracy, achieve a
14200	first priority.
14300	
14400	
14500		(5) If the input procedures succeed in detecting malevolence,
14600	output strategies are executed in an attempt to  reduce  the  other's
14700	malevolent effects on the self.
14800		(6) Finally an evaluation is made regarding  the  success  or
14900	failure of the output procedures.
15000		The above description attempts to summarize in somewhat loose
15100	prose  a complex series of postulated interactions in an organization
15200	of symbol-processing procedures.    The details of  these  procedures
15300	and  their  interactions  will be made explicit when the algorithm is
15400	described (see p ).   The theory is circumscribed in that it attempts
15500	to explain only certain phenomena of a particular type of episode.It does not attempt to explain, for
15600	example, why the censuring process  condemns  particular  actions  or
15700	states as wrongs nor how any of these procedures develop over time in
15800	the person's socialization  experience. Thus it does not provide an
15900	ontogenetic  explanation  of how an organization of processes came to
16000	be the way it is. The model offers an  explanation  only  of  how  the
16100	organization operates in the  genesis of characteristic behavior in the present.
16200		Some evidence bearing on the postulated processes will now be
16300	discussed.  The  processes  of  (4),which  attempt  to  cope  with  a
16400	malevolent other, receive evidential  support  from  observations  of
16500	normal,  neurotic  and  psychotic  paranoias.  The  agent  may report
16600	his self-monitoring directly to an observer commenting that his, for example, hostile  remarks  are
16700	intended to retaliate for a believed wrong at the hands of the other.
16800	("I want him to feel bad and to leave me alone".)  The output actions
16900	of  the  paranoid  mode  can  be grouped into reducing persecution by
17000	retribution or by withdrawal. Retribution is intended  to  drive  the
17100	other  away  while withdrawal removes the self from the sphere of the
17200	other. We are not aware of any experimental evidence bearing on  this
17300	point. Perhaps the clinical and everyday observations are sufficient
17400	enough not to require any.
17500		The intensive scan for malevolence postulated in (3) has both
17600	clinical and experimental evidence in its  behalf.    Clinicians  are
17700	familiar  with  the  darting  eye-movements  of  psychotic paranoids.
17800	Patients themselves report their hypervigilance as intended to detect
17900	signs  of  malevolence.  Silverman [ ] and Venables [ ] have reported
18000	experiments indicating that paranoid schizophrenics more  extensively
18100	scan their visual fields and have a greater breadth of attention than
18200	other schizophrenic patients.
18300		In  considering  the  processes  postulated  in  (2) and (1),
18400	direct evidence is hard to come  by and thus the postulates are on shakier ground. Projection is an ancient
18500	concept which  has  been  used  to  account  for the common 
18600	observation that paranoids   accuse  others  of  actions  and
18700	states  which hold true for themselves according an outside observer.
18800	As Newton, in a classic paranoid clash, said about Leibniz 300 years ago `he himself is  guilty  of
18900	what he complains of in others'[ Manuel]. 
19000	A process of projection has also been offered to account for the particular  selectivity  involved  in
19100	the  hypersensitivity to criticism.   That is, why does a man believe
19200	others will ridicule him about his appearance  unless  some  part  of
19300	himself  believes his appearance to be defective. An alternative view
19400	is that the selectivity stems from an agent, uncertain of himself and observing how others  in
19500	his community are censured and  ridiculed, expects the same to be applied to
19600	him.
19700		The  obscurity  of the relation between what the self expects
19800	as malevolence and the self's own properties is well  illustrated  in
19900	hypotheses which have attempted  to explain the paranoid  mode  as  a
20000	consequence of homosexual conflict. It has long  been  observed  that
20100	some  (not  all) paranoid patients are excessively concerned with the
20200	topic of homosexuality.   Several studies  of  hospitalized  paranoid
20300	schizophrenics  show  them  to  be preoccupied with homosexuality far
20400	more than the nonpsychotic controls.(See Klaf and Davis [ ],etc) Such
20500	evidence may be interpreted as having generative implications for certain
20600	cases. As a special case  in a more  general  theory of avoiding humiliation, if  homosexual  interests  are
20700	evaluated by the censuring process as wrong, then a genesis of the paranoid mode
20800	on these grounds becomes plausible. It is also plausible that an
20900	agent, doubtful of his own sexuality,  might expect  to be accused of homosexuality in a community
21000	which censures homosexuality. In such a community homosexuals trying to
21100	"pass" are of necessity suspicious and a bit paranoid since like the
21200	spy in hostile territory,  they must be on guard against stigmatizing detection.
21300		It is obvious that  self-censuring processes contribute to the
21400	regulation of human behavior. But are distortions of censuring and blaming processes 
21500	"really" the generative core of   
21600	the  paranoid  mode?   Heilbrun  and Norbert have shown that paranoid
21700	schizophrenics are more sensitive to maternal censure as measured  by
21800	the  disruption  of  a cognitive task by a tape-recording of a mother
21900	censuring her son. [ ]
22000	      (Further discussion of evidence here)