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sn#021294 filedate 1973-01-15 generic text, type T, neo UTF8
00100 A SYMBOL-PROCESSING THEORY OF THE PARANOID MODE
00150
00200 K.M. COLBY
00300
00400
00500 Our theory , a conjunction of hypotheses and auxiliary
00600 assumptions, postulates a structure or organization of interacting
00700 symbolic processes. These processes and their interactions are
00800 supported by a number of auxiliary assumptions and presuppositions as
00900 will become apparent as the story unfolds.
01000
01100
01200 We presuppose a schema of action and non-action which takes
01300 the form of a practical inference:
01400 AN AGENT A WANTS SITUATION S TO OBTAIN
01500 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, one might be tempted to
03600 hypothesize that a mental system attempts to explain the 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
04610 [TOULMIN REF.-EXPLANATION IN THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES,BORGER R.AND CIOFFI,
04620 F.,(EDS.), CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, N.Y.,(1971). ]
04700 the paranoid mode with physical disorders might be that the physical
04800 illness simply causes the paranoia ,through some unknown mechanism,
04900 at a hardware level beyond the influence of the programs of a mental
05000 system and beyond voluntary control. That is, the resultant paranoid
05100 process represents something that happens to the system as patient,
05200 not something that it does as an active agent. Another view is that
05300 the paranoid mode can be explained in terms of reasons,
05400 justifications which describe an agent's intentions and beliefs. If
05500 we consider a person to be the agent , does he recognize what he is
05600 doing or trying to do? Or does it just happen to him automatically
05700 without conscious deliberation? This question raises a third view,
05800 namely that unrecognized reasons, ` compiled' versions of the program
05900 now inacessible to voluntary control, can function like causes. Once
06000 brought to consciousness in an `interpreted' version such reasons can
06100 be modified voluntarily through the agent's reflexive talking to and
06200 instructing himself. This contrasts with an agent's inability to
06300 modify causes which lie beyond the influence of self-criticism and
06400 change through internal argumentation. Timeworn conundrums about
06500 concepts of free-will, determinism, responsibility, consciousness and
06600 the powers of mental action here plague us unless we stick closely to
06700 our computer analogy which makes a clear and useful distinction
06800 between hardware, interpreter and programs.
06900
07000 Each of these three views provides a serviceable perspective
07100 depending on how a disorder is to be explained and corrected. When
07200 paranoid processes occur during amphetamine intoxication they might
07300 be viewed as biochemically caused and beyond the patient's ability to
07400 control volitionally through internal reprogramming dialogues with
07500 himself. When a paranoid moment occurs in a normal person it can be
07600 viewed as having a reason or justification. If the paranoid belief
07700 is recognized as such,the agent has the power to revise or reject it.
07800 Between these extremes of drug-induced paranoid processes and the
07900 self-correctible paranoid moments of the normal person, lie cases of
08000 paranoid personalities, paranoid psychoses and the paranoid mode
08100 associated with the major psychoses (schizophrenic and
08200 manic-depressive). Current opinion has it that the major psychoses
08300 are a consequence of unknown hardware causes and are beyond
08400 deliberate voluntary control. But what are we to conclude about
08500 paranoid personalities and paranoid psychoses where no hardware
08600 disorder is suspected? Are they to be considered patients to whom
08700 something is happening or are they agents whose behavior is a
08800 consequence of what they do? Or are they both agent and patient
08900 depending on on how we view the modifiability of their programs? We
09000 shall take the position that in normal, neurotic and psychotic
09100 paranoid processes (independent of the major psychoses) the paranoid
09200 mode represents something that happens to a man as a consequence both
09300 of something he does and something he undergoes. Thus he is both
09400 agent and patient whose mental system has powers to do and capacities
09500 to undergo.
09600
09700
09800 From this standpoint we postulate a duality between reasons
09900 and causes. That is, just as in an algorithm a procedure can serve as
10000 an input argument to another procedure, a reason can function as a
10100 cause in one context and as a justification in another. When a final
10200 cause, such as a consciously conceptualized intention, guides
10300 efficient causes we can say that human action is non-determinate
10400 since it is self-determinate. Thus the power to make decisions freely
10500 and to change one's mind is non-illusory. When a reason is recognized
10600 to function as a cause and is acessible, it may be changed by another
10700 procedure which takes it as an argument. In this sense a two-levelled
10800 system involving an interpreter and its programs is self- changeable
10900 and self-correcting, within limits.
11000
11100 The major processes we postulate to govern the paranoid mode
11200 involve an organization of symbol-processing procedures at one level
11300 governed by an interpreter at another level. We shall sketch the
11400 operations of this organization briefly.
11500 (1) The interpreter executes a `consciencing' procedure which
11600 judges an action or state of the self to be wrong according to criteria of
11700 right-wrong sanctions. A censuring process attempts to find and blame
11800 an agent for the wrong.
11900 (2)The interpreter attemts a simulation of assigning blame to
12000 the self. If the self accepts blame, the trial simulation detects a
12100 consequent undergoing of humiliation. The detection serves as an
12200 anticipatory warning not to execute this procedure since it will
12300 result in the painful re-experiencing of a negative affect-state of
12400 humiliation.
12500 (3) An alternative procedure of assigning blame to others is
12600 next simulated and found not to eventuate in a painful affect-state.
12700 Hence it is executed.It operates to deny that the self is to blame
12800 for a wrong and to project blame onto other human agents. Now it is
12900 not the self who is the agent of a wrong but it is that the self is
13000 wronged by others. This mechanism is only partially effective as an
13100 escape since the self still undergoes criticisms and condemnations.
13200 Only their locus has been shifted from the self to others.
13300
13400 (4)Since others are now believed to have intentions to wrong
13500 the self, procedures for the detection of malevolence in the input
13600 from others, as individuals or as part of a conspiracy, achieve a
13700 first priority.
13800
13900
14000 (5) If the input procedures succeed in detecting malevolence,
14100 output strategies are executed in an attempt to reduce the other's
14200 malevolent effects.
14300 (6) Finally an evaluation is made regarding the success or
14400 failure of the output procedures.
14500 The above description attempts to summarize in somewhat vague
14600 prose a complex series of postulated interactions in an organization
14700 of symbol-processing procedures. The details of these procedures
14800 and their interactions will be made explicit when the algorithm is
14900 described (see p ). The theory is circumscribed in that it attempts
15000 to explain only certain phenomena.It does not attempt to explain, for
15100 example, why the censuring process condemns particular actions or
15200 states as wrongs nor how any of these procedures develop over time in
15300 the child's enculturation experience. Thus it does not provide an
15400 ontogenetic explanation of how an organization of processes came to
15500 be the way it is. The model offers an explanation only of how the
15600 organization operates in the present.
15700 Some evidence bearing on the postulated processes will now be
15800 discussed. The processes of (4),which attempt to cope with a
15900 malevolent other, receive evidential support from observations of
16000 normal, neurotic and psychotic paranoias. The agent may report
16100 directly to an observer that his, for example, hostile remarks are
16200 intended to retaliate for a believed wrong at the hands of the other.
16300 `I want him to feel bad and to leave me alone'. The output behaviors
16400 of the paranoid mode can be grouped into reducing persecution by
16500 retribution or by withdrawal. Retribution is intended to drive the
16600 other away while withdrawal removes the self from the sphere of the
16700 other. We are not aware of any experimental evidence bearing on this
16800 point and perhaps the clinical and everday obsevations are sufficient
16900 not to require any.
17000 The intensive scan for malevolence postulated in (3) has both
17100 clinical and experimental evidence in its behalf. Clinicians are
17200 familiar with the darting eye-movements of psychotic paranoids.
17300 Patients themselves report their hypervigilance as intended to detect
17400 signs of malevolence. Silverman [ ] and Venables [ ] have reported
17500 experiments indicating that paranoid schizophrenics more extensively
17600 scan their visual fields and have a greater breadth of attention than
17700 other schizophrenic patients.
17800 In considering the processes postulated in (2) and (1),
17900 direct evidence is hard to come by. Projection is a century-old
18000 concept which has been used to account for the common clinical
18100 observation that paranoid patients accuse others of actions and
18200 states which hold true for themselves according an outside observer.
18300 As Leibniz said about Newton 300 years ago `he himself is guilty of
18400 what he complains of in others'. A process of projection has also
18500 been offered to account for the particular selectivity involved in
18600 the hypersensitivity to criticism. That is, why does a man believe
18700 others will ridicule him about his appearance unless some part of
18800 himself believes his appearance to be defective. An alternative view
18900 is that the selectivity stems from the agent observing how others in
19000 his subculture are ridiculed and expects the same to be applied to
19100 him.
19200 The obscurity of the relation between what the self expects
19300 as malevolence and the self's own properties is well illustrated in
19400 hypotheses which attempt to explain the paranoid mode as a
19500 consequence of homosexual conflict. It has long been observed that
19600 some (not all) paranoid patients are excessively concerned with the
19700 topic of homosexuality. Several studies of hospitalized paranoid
19800 schizophrenics show them to be preoccupied with homosexuality far
19900 more than the nonpsychotic controls.(See Klaf and Davis [ ],etc) Such
20000 evidence may be interpreted as having causal implications for certain
20100 cases. In a more general theory , if homosexual interests are
20200 evaluated by the censuring process as wrong, then the causal relation
20300 becomes plausible but no more than that. It is also plausible that an
20400 agent expects to be accused of homosexuality because in his culture
20500 that is a common means of ridicule regardless of the actual nature of
20600 the transgression determined by the censuring process.
20700 It is obvious that something ordinarily called conscience
20800 regulates human behaviour. But are distorted censuring and blaming processes
20900 actually the core of the pathological procedures of
21000 the paranoid mode? Heilbrun and Norbert have shown that paranoid
21100 schizophrenics are more sensitive to maternal censure as measured by
21200 the disruption of a cognitive task by a tape-recording of a mother
21300 censuring her son. [ ]
21400 (Further discussion of evidence here)