GREGORY BATESON AND
A LANGUAGE FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY
by
c. 1976
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. THE NEED FOR A LANGUAGE............................................................................ 3
II. GREGORY
BATESON AND
THE BEGINNINGS OF A LANGUAGE............................................................... 11
A. Context....................................................................................................... 11
B. Logical Types.............................................................................................. 15
C. Categories of Learning and Communication.................................................. 20
D. Pathology.................................................................................................... 30
E. Psychotherapy............................................................................................. 36
III. FREUD'S
PSYCHOANALYSIS: PARALLELS AND PARADOXES................... 44
IV. FREUD,
BINSWANGER AND LEARNING III.................................................... 61
V. THE LANGUAGE AND OTHER THERAPIES..................................................... 76
A. Gestalt Therapy........................................................................................... 77
B. Relationship Therapy................................................................................... 82
C. Direct Analysis............................................................................................ 88
D. Network Therapy........................................................................................ 93
VI. SUMMARY
AND CLOSING REMARKS.......................................................... 100
THE NEED FOR A LANGUAGE
One of the testimonies to
the importance of psychotherapy to Western people's understanding of themselves
and their possible ways of being is the great breadth of interest in it and the
universal lack of consensus on almost any aspect of the process one might want
to consider. Theories, methodologies,
and schools of therapy continue to proliferate. People with an incredibly wide diversity of formal training
consider the practice of psychotherapy a logical fruitful way of bringing their
training to bear on the world around them.
One would think that as
different therapies were tried and compared, ways that were better would have
come to be generally agreed upon and results would have become more assured and
predictable. Diagnosis would become, in
this way of understanding, ever more accurate and finely matched to an
appropriate method of treatment. This
has not been the case. As new
therapies, theories, and terminologies
have arisen, it has been the people who had hoped for a refinement and
elimination of theories, leading to the identification of the best methods,
yielding predictable and demonstrable results, who have been most disappointed
and critical of psychotherapy as it was being practiced. In the last twenty years or so many articles
have called the effectiveness of psychotherapy severely into question. (92, 186, 98)
Unfortunately the studies
which are most emphatic in their assertion that psychotherapy is ineffective
seem generally to be the studies most limited to the “effective” vs.
“ineffective” dichotomy. When a field
with the extended history, the multitude of formal approaches and the myriad of
personal therapeutic styles which are incorporated under the term “psychotherapy”
is reduced to a single dichotomy, it is obvious that most of the complexities
of the experience involved must be screened out by the language used.
Psychotherapists as well as
their critics tend to be grounded in a faith in science. Even though they may be successful in terms
of relieving the suffering of their patients,
most therapists are uneasy when they cannot say why they are successful
in “provable” scientific language.
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, one of the
most successful (in the terms used above) and influential therapists of
recent times, in agreeing with Zilboorg that one is unable to say
satisfactorily why one is successful puts her hope in science to provide the
explanatory system which would make her successes repeatable by others. She says that, “our aim is to replace
intuition with understanding, and to convert the intuitive truths with which
all psychotherapy works by necessity, into scientific truths, so that they may
become public property . . . ready to be used, tested, questioned, probed, and
experimented with by anyone else who is interested in science.” (244)
There are two fundamental
problems with the approach Fromm-Reichmann would like to be able to
follow. One is the assumption that
there is knowledge to be had which, when properly categorized and specified,
can be known and used equally by anyone else who is interested in science. With the proper formulations, supposedly,
one can have a body of “true” knowledge which allows the knowers to be
interchangeable. This separating of
knowledge from the knower isolates a part of an interdependent process, and is
then by its nature incomplete, a skewed picture of what is in fact a larger
whole. This is the subject/object
separation. It is an approach which
fosters, for example, the investigation of
“consciousness” rather than “consciousness of . . .”. Consciousness is not a “thing”. It is a process in which there is always one
who is conscious and “something” of which one is conscious. Everywhere the scientific approach makes
“things” where there are only processes.
Generally this involves subdividing into bits which can be studied,
“isolating variables”.
In the practice of isolating
variables is the second problem of the “scientific” approach in the behavioral
sciences. The application of this
method seems to let the essence of an interaction or process slip through its
methodological fingers.
It is almost axiomatic in
psychotherapy research that those data which can be most reliably quantified
seem least significant for the comprehension of the process; while those
aspects of the treatment which clinicians would consider crucial are generally
not accessible to measurement and yield low reliability among observers. (4)
While there is a movement in
the sciences back to studying whole entities as processes, this approach which
promises so much for our understanding is still relatively new and has had
little impact on the mainstream of the behavioral sciences. Barry Commoner, a noted biologist, describes
clearly the need for holistic ways of seeing.
If we consider all the forms
of matter that we know about, only in regard to narrow spectrum [nuclear
physics] is there a possibility of what might be called the “atomistic
approximation” succeeding. Everything
else is necessarily holistic, so that what has appeared to be a universal basic
approach to science since the Greeks--atomism--is really a special case, which
only worked where it has worked and is not going to work anywhere else, up or
down. It’s a narrow window, a special
case; but, because of the enormous consequences of understanding the atom, it
has misled everyone into believing that atomism is synonymous with
science. I think this is the great evil
of Western science today. (93)
From a beginning with whole
processes one is able to, and should, work toward and understanding of
component parts. The minute is as
important as ever. However, whenever
one is dealing with systems (which, as we shall see, is most of the time), the
whole is more than, and different from the sum of its parts. One cannot build from an understanding of
the small to an adequate description of the large though this is what is usually attempted in
research on psychotherapy.
Though the people trying to
explain psychotherapeutic change “scientifically” have had little success, that
does not mean that changes which is helpful to a client does not occur or that
it occurs randomly. Some therapists, in
all probability, are better for particular clients than others. Some clients are more likely to improve than
others. Something certainly happens for
some people (though change may in some cases be more significant for the
therapist than for the client).
(122) One is, however, looking
in the wrong way when one seeks to correlate client gain with the school of
psychotherapy adhered to be the therapist.
(99)
There are many theories of
psychotherapy, but is impressive how often the therapist’s technique is more an
expression of his personality than an adherence to any particular school of
thought. Various studies have established
that competent psychotherapists of different schools agree more closely with
each other regarding the most important elements in therapy than do
not-as-competent therapists belonging to the same theoretic school. In addition, the competent therapists, regardless
of their theoretic persuasion, agree more closely with the patient’s appraisal
of the important elements in his therapy than do the not-as-competent
therapists. The patients who feel they
have undergone a significant change as a result of psychotherapy uniformly
place their response to the therapists ahead of “insight.” (173)
We are left here in a very
unscientific position. We can say that
there are some elements of therapy more important than others. At the same time no specific technique can
be prescribed as most successful,
therapists seem to use a technique which is uniquely a product of their
own personalities.
In reporting on an extensive
study of two groups of therapists, one with a seventy-five percent improvement
rate and one with a twenty-seven per cent improvement rate in their work with
schizophrenic people, Whitehorne says the difference in effectiveness between
the two groups seemed to be attributable to:
...the differences found
among physicians in the extent to which they were able to approach their
patient’s problems in a personal way, gain a trusted, confidential relationship
and participate in an active personal way in the patient’s reorientation to
personal relationships. Techniques of
passive permissiveness or efforts to develop insight by interpretation appear
to have much less therapeutic value.
(231)
A therapist has to
“participate in an active personal way.”
He has to “invest” personally in the therapeutic process.
There is evidence that this
same sort of investment is required, at some level, of the patient. In a study restricted to factors “in” the
patient which influenced their continuing in psychotherapy in an outpatient
clinic in Chicago, Heine and Trosman had interesting results. The presenting complaint (whether it was
emotional or somatic) and the degree of conviction on the part of the patient
that treatment would be helpful proved not to be significant as factors in
whether or not they continued in psychotherapy beyond a very brief time. The significant factors proved to be the
“active collaboration” in the therapeutic process by the patient as opposed to
“passive cooperation,” and whether the patient was seeking “help in changing
behavior” or simply expecting medicine or diagnostic information.
Though we can say that
“active investment” on the part of both people in individual psychotherapy
(therapist and patient) is a very important element in a helpful therapy, and
that in such therapy there will be substantial agreement between the therapist
and patient on what are the important elements of the therapy, we have not
begun to say how any element in the therapy is productive of helpful change.
In fact the language
commonly used to talk about psychotherapy, and therefore that which is
available for naturalistic (non-quantitative) research, is riddled, according
to Gregory Bateson, with:
...a number of imperfectly
defined explanatory notions which are commonly used in the behavioral
sciences-- “ego,” “anxiety,” “instinct,” “purpose,” “mind,” “self,” “fixed
action pattern,” “intelligence,” “stupidity,” “maturity,” and the like. For the sake of politeness, I call these
“heuristic” concepts; but, in truth, most of them are so loosely derived and so
mutually irrelevant that they mix together to make a sort of conceptual fog
which does much to delay the progress of science. (64)
Given the lack of
specificity of “process oriented” language and the general inadequacy of the
usual atomistic (reductionist) scientific approaches, it is no wonder that a
therapist and a patient find themselves in the situation which Bateson
describes so well:
The patient and the
therapist are both virtually unable to tell you what happened that led to psychotherapeutic
change. . . . I do not know of any
school of psychotherapy that, as yet, has enough language for talking about
these levels to even attempt to give insight at these levels. (30)
We need a language which can
speak rigorously about the whole of the process of psychotherapy, not just
about what is happening “in” the patient or what is done by the therapist. In order to accomplish this goal a language
and the concomitant way of understanding must be able to deal with the system
of therapist-patient, with that in the process which is more than the sum of
the parts.
In the work of Gregory
Bateson, I believe, there is a way of thinking about phenomena which could
allow for the development of a language which could speak rigorously about the
process of psychotherapy in a holistic way.
Since Bateson himself has never attempted such a project in a systematic
fashion, it will be the work of this study to develop such a language.
The language when developed
should be able to express coherently, in the same general set of understandings
and terms, all the phenomena surrounding a field as general as
“psychotherapy.” While it may not offer
a theory in all areas adequate to the phenomena, it should allow one to discuss
and understand, and therefore do further work in, areas which up to now have
had very different approaches and terminologies. Examples of the phenomena which should be accessible to the
language are: human learning, human
development, families, psychopathology, bits of interaction (usually called
“stimulus,” “response,” and “reinforcement”), profound inter-relating (the
“I-thou relationship”), communication generally, and “intra-psychic” processes.
A language is an approach to
phenomena which embodies in itself a way of sorting and assigning meaning, an
epistemology. A change in language, in
epistemology, does not necessarily imply a change in behavior (as is usually
understood). In this case, it does not necessarily
imply that a new form of psychotherapy will result from using a new language to
understand this process. However, a
change in ways of understanding does imply a change in possibilities. In a different epistemological context, the evolution
of psychotherapy as a formal interactive process will, in all likelihood, be
modified. So, while a “Batesonian”
language does not imply a “Batesonian therapy”, it is probable that if many
therapists began to think about therapy as a whole and to perceive the bits of
therapeutic interaction in Batesonian terms, the therapy which they practiced
would gradually modify (evolve) in the direction of more fully and clearly
embodying these understandings. As we
will see over and over in the course of the study, basic premises involved in
how one understands interactions, the context of meanings or “punctuations” in
which an interaction occurs, tend to be self-validating. We will also see that the more one’s
abstract epistemological premises are adequate to the complexity of the
phenomena under consideration, the more one is able to give form and meaning to
aspects of the phenomena which otherwise would seem random and of no
consequence.
Our goal, then, is to
develop a language which can give expression in a coherent form to a greater
complexity of aspects of the psychotherapeutic process than are presently
available to the languages commonly used.
It should be remembered in reading this work that a language is a
different sort of an enterprise than a specific theory or experiment. It cannot be stated in any short compact
form which can then be discussed or proved.
It exists only in its use, and that is the only way it can be
learned. In the title of the next
chapter, the term “beginnings” is meant to imply that the language is in the
process of development and explication throughout the entire work. Where the reader encounters a part that
seems unclear or that does not conform immediately to his experience, he is
asked to continue reading. The point
will, in all likelihood, be discussed again in a different context later in the
work. Through the use of language in
several different contexts, it is hoped that this study will enable the reader
to utilize the language in the contexts of his own experience.
Perhaps a brief description
of the form which the study as a whole will take will better prepare the reader
for his encounter with our language.
The study will have the chapters listed below. In the explanation of each of the succeeding chapters should be
apparent the scope, methodology and limitations of the work.
GREGORY BATESON AND THE
BEGINNINGS OF A LANGUAGE
In this section of the paper
the attempt will be made to present Bateson’s thought as it has developed over
the years so that the reader will experience the formal elegance inherent in
the whole as well as coming to understand concepts which are the
particulars. The individual concepts
will be developed as fully as possible using some of the different ways of
approaching them and different language in which they have been couched at
different points in Bateson’s career.
Only when ideas have been explained and have been set forth in their
interrelationship which makes for the coherence of a language or approach will
the study attempt to come back to any sort of a shorthand or a set of terms which
can be taken conveniently along when talking about other people’s thought or
therapy.
Though several different
ways of talking about a concept used by Bateson at different times may be
offered, the general approach to his thought will not be historical. Only when an account of the different forms
that a theory or concept took over the years seems to be the best way to show
the present concept in its full resonance will such an account be undertaken. The history of the double bind theory in its
transformation from “binder versus victim” to “schizophrenic (i.e., bound)
family” will be such a case.
Though much of this section
will be quite abstract, dealing with the orderedness of contexts, the nature of
difference, and so forth, there will also be discussion of the phenomena out of
which these patterns are drawn.
Hopefully, the language which is developed will be demonstrably
convenient when speaking about therapy, families, and the like.
FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYSIS: PARALLELS AND PARADOXES
There is a remarkable
correspondence between the ordered levels of the contexts of learning which
Bateson talks about and the levels of intra-psychic process which Freud
described. The study will show that
using Bateson’s way of thought, much of Freud’s work becomes available and
useful from an “information theory” or “cybernetic” point of view. Freudian concepts such as “transference,
“ “primary process,” and “unconscious” are completely at home in a
Batesonian language, though the processes which they describe are thought about
in ways very different from Freud’s.
Many of Freud’s descriptions of his technique, such as his early
descriptions of free association, the treatment of compulsives and the
evolution of his approach to transference exhibit the formal characteristics
described by Bateson and his colleagues as the “therapeutic double bind.”
In working as fully and
concretely as possible with a language as broad and rich as that of Freud, the
application of Bateson’s language can be demonstrated and refined.
FREUD, BINSWANGER, AND LEARNING III
In his article, “Freud’s
Conception of Man in the Light of
Anthropology,” Ludwig Binswanger puts forward an excellent assessment of
Freud’s work from the point of view of an existentialist. While giving Freud great respect for
illuminating the patterns of functioning of human beings, Binswanger finds
Freud’s basic concept of people as “Homo Natura”, as organism, fails to take
into account people in their existential being. The being who can say “my organism,” “my history,” “my growth” is
a being unrepresented in Freudian thought, according to Binswanger.
Binswanger’s argument, when
followed in a much more careful way than the sketch presented here, is quite
forceful. In the terms of this paper,
he says that Freud’s language cannot deal adequately with certain human
experiences. If, in the parts of the
study up to this point, the parallel between Bateson’s language and Freud’s has
been convincingly drawn, it seems likely that some examination or comparison of
Bateson with Binswanger will be in order.
This comparison will involve
an attempt to come to a clear understanding and statement of Bateson’s concept
of Learning III. In the context
of the development of Bateson’s thought and the outlining of Binswanger’s understanding
of how a language must deal with “Homo existentialis”, Learning III will,
hopefully, be understandable. The
concept of Learning III will enable us in our languague to discuss a given
therapy’s approach to the most fundamental aspects of human existence.
By this point in the study, the language will have been set out in its full scope and resonance. This chapter will involve using the language to talk about other therapies. The “how” of cure in such therapies as Network Therapy, and the therapies of Jessie Taft, Fritz Perls and John Rosen will be discussed in Bateson’s terms. This should make systems whose terminologies and emphases seem hardly to intersect, available for easy comparison as to what they are attempting to accomplish and how helpful change using each approach is effected. It is for this purpose that the study is undertaken and the language constructed.
SUMMARY AND CLOSING REMARKS
This section will attempt to
knit together the loose ends left in the study up to this point.
A brief summary of the
language as it has been developed will be offered to give the reader a better
sense of the unity and form of the work as a whole. Finally, we will very briefly discuss the relation of the
language to the act of writing this thesis.
This will offer a final reminder of the inter-active nature of all the
processes touched upon in this work including the writing of the study itself.
GREGORY BATESON AND THE
BEGINNINGS OF A LANGUAGE
In this chapter we will
attempt to develop the language of this study and give the reader an initial
sense of its usefulness. We will begin
by trying to make a connection between the language and the experience of the
reader. We must begin on common
ground. We then hope to show that the
connection we have chosen to make with the reader’s experience and the
subsequent development of our way of describing experience is neither
capricious nor arbitrary. By discussing
the basic form of experiencing and learning we hope to show that the language
we want to use embodies this same basic form.
The two are isomorphic, to use a term which will be used several times
in this work. As we develop our
language into more rigorous clarity, the same clarity should be available for
describing human experiencing and learning.
We will use the mathematical theory of Logical Types to help give
clarity to our language, and then we will try to apply the theory to human
learning. In both of these processes we
will be retracing the steps of Bateson.
The last two sections of this chapter will use the description of human
learning we develop to talk about how this process can go awry (pathology) and
what can be done about it (therapy). It
is the language for discussing psychotherapy toward which we are building. Hopefully, the steps we take in working
toward this goal will ultimately prove themselves necessary, helping the reader
to have a fuller sense of the size and complexity of the task we are
undertaking.
In all this task, we will be
using the work of Gregory Bateson.
While some of the specific points in this chapter are original to the
present author, the thinking is so deeply rooted in Bateson’s thought that
separating the original from paraphrase of Bateson has become impossible. Only the organization of the chapter as a
whole and some of the examples of various points are clearly original. The additions and refinements of the language
in subsequent chapters will to a much greater degree be the work of the present
author. Unfortunately, any confusion or
unnecessary complexity involved in our language and its use is original with
the present author and cannot be attributed to Bateson.
Having set out the plan for
this chapter and our debt to Bateson, we will begin in our attempt to establish
a meeting place between our language and the experience of the reader.
CONTEXT
A certain mother habitually
rewards her small son with ice cream after he eats his spinach. What additional information would you need
to be able to predict whether the child will:
a. Come to love or hate spinach; b. Love or hate ice cream, or c. Love
or hate Mother? (65)
This is an example Bateson
uses to convey the importance of the notion of context. It is, hopefully, a good entry point into
his way of thinking, a way of thinking by no means unique to him, but which is
in his work presented through a range of subjects and with a clarity and depth
which is truly unique.
Take a moment with the
example above. Consider what
information or what kinds of information you would need to make the predictions
involved.
The question is explosive in
its implication. Each bit of
information one gets increases one’s sense of how much information is
needed. Consider the change in the
meaning of the situation any one of the following pieces of information would
effect: The child is diabetic and ice
cream is dangerous. The expense of ice
cream greatly taxes the family budget.
The mother learned her eating habits in exactly the same or a very different
way. The father considers this bribing
the child. The other children don’t get
ice cream for eating spinach. The other
children get ice cream and cake while this child only gets ice cream. The father raises spinach for a living.
Each possibility completely
modifies the situation and each begs further clarification and
modification. The contextual
information one would need to confidently predict the outcomes in question is
potentially infinite. Knowing only what
one knows in the example, one knows nothing.
Or, more properly, without the context, what one knows has no meaning. It has no meaning to an observer. This point must always be understood in
talking of meaning. Meaning is always
perceived meaning. Information is only information
to a perceiving entity.
Differences only makes a
difference when it is some sense (or by some sense) perceived.
Explanation involving
context is always hierarchical. Every
context has a context. The unit of
meaning is the phenomenon as perceived in its context. As one focuses on the context, however, a
new context appears.
A phoneme exists as such
only in combination with other phonemes which make up a word. The word is the context of the
phoneme. But the word exists as
such--only has “meaning”--in the larger context of the utterance, which again
has meaning only in a relationship. (36)
Context is a difficult sort
of notion. One can never locate “a
context.” It is the greater set of
phenomena which in-forms a sub-set. In the relationship between the sub-set and the greater set is
the demarcation of the sub-set, the outline.
The outline is necessary so that there can be a relationship. “It is this and not that (outline),” and,
“You don’t know what this (sub-set) means until you relate it to that
(context).” Because there is a
perceived outline, there is a difference.
Because there is a perceived difference, there is relationship. Because there is relationship, there can be
perceived meaning.
Is this actually how people
perceive? Watzlawick and his colleagues
say it definitely is.
“Sensory and brain research
has proved conclusively that only relationships and patterns of relationships
can be perceived and these are the essence of experience.” (222)
Some examples of what this
statement means in actual perception may make its implications more
immediate. Consider that the eye does
not “look” in the sense of pointing at a thing and taking it in; the eye
scans. It moves picking up
differences. A star is not a beam of
light to the eye. It is a beam of light
which is different from its dark background.
Stare directly at a star without moving your eyes (if you can) and it
disappears. Only when the eye moves
away from the light to a contrasting dark point does it reappear.
Pribram describes an
experiment conducted in Moscow by Eugene Sakolov which demonstrates the same
process happening with auditory perception.
A tone beep of specified
intensity and duration was presented at irregular intervals to a subject whose
electroencephalogram, galvanic skin response and plethysmographic record were
traces. At the onset of such an
experiment characteristic changes in these traces are observed. These accompany behavioral alerting and are
known as the orienting reaction. As the
experiment proceeds, these indices of orienting become progressively more
attenuated until the beep of the tone no longer seems to have any effect. This is habituation. At this point Sokolov reduced the intensity
of the tone without changing any of its other characteristics. Immediately the electrical traces from the
subject signaled an orienting reaction.
Sokolov reasoned, therefore, that habituation could not be simply some
type of fatiguing of sensory and neural elements. Rather, a process must be set up in the central nervous system
against which incoming sensory signals are matched. Any change in signal would result in the orienting
reaction occurred at the moment the shortened beep ended. The electrical tracers showed the alerting
retains to the period of silence. (Pribram’s emphasis) (195)
When one considers the
perception of differences over time, the notion of context falls more
comfortable into place. Each event is
part of the perceptual context of an immediately subsequent event. At the simplest level, the tone is the
context for the silence that follows and vice versa. It is the event against which a difference appears when the
subsequent event is perceived. At the
next level up the hierarchy of context, in this case, we find the first order
of pattern formation in perception, of “redundancy”. The original patterns of tone and silence are the context against
which a later pattern of softer tone and silence or shorter tone and silence
can make a difference. This difference
is certainly of a more abstract or higher order than the difference between
tone and silence. This difference is
perceivable only when the original difference between tone and silence no
longer evokes the orienting reaction, i.e. is no longer a difference which
makes a difference.
It would appear that the
organism had made a generalization about the pattern of tone and silence
which allowed it no longer to expend its attention in reacting to each
individual tone and silence. Only when this
pattern was changed was the orienting reaction, the person’s awareness that
something different was happening, evoked.
A difference-perceiving or
relationship-perceiving entity which can be described as learning or adapting
will perceive redundancy or pattern.
Redundancy is the sort of relationship discussed above in the notion of
context when this relationship is perceived over time. In Bateson’s language the terms “redundancy,”
“pattern,” and “information” are used almost interchangeably in his description
of the phenomena involved in perception and learning.
Any aggregate of events or
objects (e.g. a sequence of phonemes, a painting, or a frog, or a culture)
shall be said to contain “redundancy” or “pattern” if the aggregate can be
divided in any way by a “slash mark,” such that an observer perceiving only
what is one side of the slash mark can guess, with better than random
success, what is on the other side of the slash mark contains information
or has meaning about what is on the other side. Or in engineer’s language, the aggregate
contains “redundancy.” Or, again, from
the point of view of a cybernetic observer, the information available on one
side of the slash mark will restrain (i.e. reduce the probability of) wrong
guessing. (47)
In Pribram’s example of the
tone/silence, when redundancy was perceived, i.e. when a pattern of tone and
silence was perceived, the context for change in pattern was established. As there is a hierarchy of contexts, so there
is a hierarchy of redundancies perceivable.
One can perceive a change in a pattern, a change in a pattern of
patterns, etc.
Organisms are thrust into
the perceptual/communicational world of redundancy and context and the
hierarchies of both by the most basic nature of perception. Organisms perceive relationship by
perceiving difference. Yet when we are
faced with an object/event (if only difference can be perceived, the use of the
word “object” must be carefully modified), the perception of a book, for
example, there is an infinite number of differences (contexts) possible which
could be perceived. There are the
differences between the book and the Brooklyn Bridge, a Bach concerto, a
humming bird, another book, Planck’s constant, ad nauseum. Somehow some differences are perceived and
some are not. If this were not so, the
perceiving entity would be faced with much more information than it could
possible take in. Somehow a sorting or
screening must occur. This means that
while “objects of perception” may fall in one’s path in a random manner, what
is perceived of those objects will be sorted or screened in a non-random
fashion. There must be
redundancy in the act of perception. And, if this is true, the hierarchical nature
of redundancy and context must be reflected in or be a reflection of the basic
form of human perception.
What we have been describing
so far are some of the basic characteristics of the world of information and
perception, the world of form. This is
the world of learning and meaning. It
is a world of interaction, always involving a perceiver and perceived. both are necessary for meaning, redundancy,
context or learning to exist.
The first major contribution
Bateson made to the investigation of the world of form was his using the
mathematical theory of Logical Types, originally advanced by Whitehead and
Russell in 1910 as a formal explicative tool in describing the hierarchical
nature of patterns or meaning as they are manifested in human learning and
interaction. Hopefully the groundwork
has been laid showing that this world and its laws are basic to all human
activities. Now we shall proceed to the
more formal and rigorous descriptions of this world involved in the Theory of
Logical Types.
LOGICAL TYPES
In looking for an
explanation to the Theory of Logical Types in Bateson’s work, one can turn to
almost any article to find the theory set forth. Yet each time the description is a bit different. In each case the part on Logical Types comes
near the beginning of the essay and is part of the context of understanding
Bateson is trying to construct. Though
the main theme of the essay may be primitive art, animal play, learning,
alcoholism, schizophrenia, somatic change in evolution or comparative cultural
anthropology, an understanding of logical types, when presented in a way
appropriate to the subject, seems crucial to understanding Bateson’s thinking
on that particular subject. Here is the
explanation of the theory which precedes a discussion of the logical categories and communication.
First, it is appropriate to
indicate the subject matter of the Theory of Logical Types: the theory asserts that no class can, in
formal logical or mathematical discourse, be a member of itself; that a class of
classes cannot be one of the classes which are its members; that a name is not
the thing named; that “John Bateson” is the class of which that boy is the
unique member; and so forth. These
assertions that it is not at all unusual for theorists of behavioral science to
commit errors which are precisely analogous to the error of classifying the
name with the thing named--or eating the menu card instead of the dinner--and
error of logical typing.
Somewhat less obvious is the
further assertion of the theory: that a
class cannot be one of those items which are correctly classified as its
non-members. If we classify chairs
together to constitute the class of chairs, we can go on to note that tables
and lamp shades are members of a large class of “non-chairs,” but we shall
commit an error in formal discourse if we count the class of chairs
among the items within the class of non-chairs.
In as much as no class can
be a member of itself, the class of non-chairs clearly cannot be a
non-chair. Simple considerations of
symmetry may suffice to convince the non-mathematical reader: (a) that the
class of chairs is of the same order of abstraction (i.e., the same logical
type) as the class of non-chairs; and further, (b) that if the class of
non-chairs is not a non-chair.
Lastly the theory asserts
that if these simple rules of formal discourse are contravened, paradox will be
generated and the discourse vitiated. (Bateson’s emphasis) (42)
Mathematics can make the
structure of logical types very clear because of the different languages
available to it. Consider the
statement, “The addition of two positive real numbers will always result in a
positive real number”. This is
obviously of a different logical type from, a meta-statement to the statement,
“4+6=10.” It is unlikely that one would
confuse the two levels because one is stated in discursive language while the
other is in a mathematical symbols.
However, once one begins to make statements of a higher logical type
than the two examples here, only discursive language remains, and paradox is
more likely. The statement, “All
mathematical propositions must be proved before they can be used,” embodies
such a paradox. It is a proposition
about all propositions, a member of a class which also encompasses the class as
a whole.
In the study of digital
communication the Theory of Logical Types can be almost rigorously
applied. “Digital communication” is
that in which the messages bear no formal relation to the things for which they
stand. The word “chair” does not look
or sound like the object for which it stands, and you can’t sit in it. This is analogous to the digit “4” which
bears an arbitrary relation to the quantity for which it stands and is not in
itself particularly larger or smaller than any other digit. In digital communication difference of
Logical Type is indicated when one message describes or types another. The message, “What are we talking about?” is
of a different logical type than whatever messages made up the discussion which
one can imagine to have preceded it. It
is a meta-message; a message about a class of messages. Unfortunately for rigor, there is no such
thing as a purely digital message. All
spoken language is accompanied by analogic communication such as gesture,
facial expression, tone of voice, etc.
An analogic message is one in which there is a formal relationship
between the message and its referent.
How broadly you smile tells me how happy you are, or how happy you want
me to think you are. Usually we say it
is the aspects of analogic communication which accompany a digital spoken
message. The establish a context by
telling the receiver how the message is to be understood. They are statements about how one is to
understand a message in the structure of the message itself as well as in all
the other sorts of contexts in which any message is conveyed. These are of a higher logical type, but here
the ladder of the hierarchy begins to seem more like an ascending net. The Theory of Logical Types has become a
formal description of a very useful way of approaching and understanding
phenomena rather than rigorous mathematical theorem.
In the study of living
organisms, the Theory of Logical Types is helpful in understanding the
inevitable hierarchy in the communication among these organisms. Still, there are certain other differences
besides those already enumerated between the logical types involved in a
logical system and the phenomena occurring in communication which we can use
logical types to understand. In a
logical system, if it can be proven that a certain combination of premises
leads to a paradox or untenable conclusion, the whole structure of premises and
paradoxes can be discarded. It is as if
they never existed. Organisms, however,
existing in time, must embody their premises in some form before a paradox can
occur. At the point of the paradox, the
experience of the organism in its embodiment of ultimately paradoxical premises
does not cease to exist.
An example of this
phenomenon is found in the experiments described by Bateson in which dogs have
been taught to discriminate between a circle and an ellipse. Gradually the ellipse is rounded and the
circle is flattened. At the point where
the two look so much alike that discrimination is impossible, the trained dogs
consistently begin to exhibit bizarre behavior. They cease eating, bite their handlers, or demonstrate various
other behavior which seems to indicate a mistrust for their environment. A naive dog facing the indistinguishable
circle and ellipse will simple guess, accepting his reward as he gets it.
In this experiment a dog not
only learns that he will be rewarded for picking a circle, he learns the
meta-premise, “This is a context for discrimination.” Bateson theorizes that gradually the smell of the laboratory or
the harness in the experiment comes to be a “context marker” which can signify
to the dog that the patterns of learning which he has encountered there before
are again in effect. Yet faced with
indistinguishable configurations, he is in paradox. His experience in trying to discriminate is in fact a comment on
the class of activities involved in discrimination. In trying to discriminate, his experience is that discrimination
is impossible. Because he is unable to
change meta-premises from “I should discriminate” to “Discrimination is
impossible, I should guess,” the dog seems to embody the paradox as it becomes
pained and disoriented. It’s
communicational pattern disintegrates.
The fact that an organism
cannot quickly cease to operate on certain premises, or to perceive in certain
patterns when those premises or patterns lead to pain or paradox is one aspect
of the economics of the adaptation or organisms. It is the difficult aspect of what is still a necessary process. Bateson uses logical types to explain the
way in which an organism “sinks” certain abstract premises in order to retain
flexibility in immediate sorts of interaction.
The process which we saw in the experiment where people became
habituated to a specific tone/silence pattern can be seen as happening
universally among organisms (or any system of a certain complexity). Once the pattern of tone/silence is
perceived or generalized, the person stops responding with the orienting
reaction. The person then can save the
attention involved in the orienting reaction for new and refined perceptions
such as changes in pattern. The
generalization gives new flexibility to perception. Any premise which can be acted upon in a more general or abstract
form (at a higher logical type) allows the organism this flexibility to
immediate perception and action.
Some types of knowledge can
conveniently be sunk to unconscious levels, but other types must be kept on the
surface. Broadly, we can afford to sink
those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the
environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of
behavior which must be modified for every instance. The lion can sink into his unconscious the proposition that
zebras are his natural prey, but in dealing with any particular zebra he must
be able to modify the movements of his attack to fit with the particular
terrain and the particular evasive tactics of the particular zebra.
The economics of the system,
in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those
generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping
within the conscious the pragmatics of particular instances.
The premises may,
economically, be sunk but particular conclusions must be conscious. But the “sinking,” though economical, is
still done at a price--the price of inaccessibility. Since the level to which things are sunk is characterized by
iconic algorithms and metaphor, it becomes difficult for the organism to
examine the matrix out of which his conscious conclusions spring. (48)
The formal description of
the “sinking” of premises continues to be useful even as one moves out of areas
which could in any way be conceived of as involving learning or adaptation on
the part of the individual organism. It
is a natural systems phenomenon of the process called “evolution”. In the human being and other land mammals
the presence of air around the nose is certain enough so that the control of
breathing can be sunk into the more primitive or autonomic portions of the
brain only to be overridden when immediate conscious control of breathing is
necessary. Though we can breathe in
many different patterns which we consciously choose, when rendered unconscious,
we continue to breathe just as our hearts continue to beat. A porpoise, on the other hand, cannot count
on air being around the blow hole at any given time. For that reason control of its breathing is located in the
highest, most complex, most conscious part of its brain. The difference this makes was tragically
learned during early experiments with dolphins. When for one reason or another they were anesthetized and became
unconscious, they stopped breathing and died.
So far we have described
what might be called the “evolutionary purpose” of the sinking of premises from
one perspective. The process of
generalizing and sinking premises allows flexibility at the level of immediate
response. There is another evolutionary
purpose equally important. Flexibility
or response allows for stability of general premises. This is every bit as important for an organism or any system
capable of adaptation. the most general
or abstract premises must change slowly, if the system is to maintain its
coherence. Bateson describes how this
works in a finite system such as the human brain.
Gestalt perception--the
perception of pattern--enables the brain to discard details and to name complex
unites. It is necessary, however, to
consider in somewhat more detail the role of pattern in the economics of
circuitry. The brain is finite and,
while the possible linkings of neurons mist be astronomically numerous, there
is still a problem of accomplishing what must be accomplished with the finite
means available. Where Freud envisaged
an economics of psychic energy, the engineer of today would argue for an
economics of circuitry. If the same way
of thought can be applied to two separate problems, this is a saving of
circuitry. At the highest level, this
sort of economy is practiced by scientists who use the differential calculus
both for the computation of trajectories and analysis of chemical processes.
The basic analysis of this
economics has been begun by Ross Ashby, whose Design for a
Brain must be regarded as unimportant landmark in both psychiatry and
communications theory. Ashby’s primary
thesis concerns the interdependence of variables within complex systems, where
every variable is directly or indirectly liked with each other. He points out that when such systems have adaptive
characteristics, that is, when they tend to seek a steady state, there is a
necessary relationship between those variables which change their values
rapidly and those others in which change is comparatively slow. Broadly, when the system encounters load or
stress, the rapidly changing variables act to maintain the stability of the
slowly changing variables. The general
idea may be illustrated by considering an acrobat with his balance pole. The acrobat maintains the ongoing truth of
the proposition, “I am on the high wire,” by varying the position and angle of
his balancing pole. The effect of
pegging the rapidly changing variable--fixing the relationship between the pole
and the acrobat’s body--will result in rapid disruption of the more lasting
proposition: the acrobat will
fall. (33)
It is in the interest of the
organism to have the more changeable premises vary so that more abstract, more
deeply sunk premises can remain stable.
If an organism learns certain abstract premises in a certain definable
context, when it again finds itself in what seems to be the same context, it
will endeavor to operate on the previously learned premises even if
it has to manipulate its perception of
immediate data to do this.
The necessary redundancy in the act of immediate perception acts in
service of maintaining more abstract patterns of perception.
CATEGORIES OF LEARNING AND COMMUNICATION
Bateson has formalized his
descriptions of the processes discussed here in the article, “Logical
Categories of Learning and Communication.” In this article (which we will
follow rather closely in this explanation) he discusses the different “levels
of learning;” Using his numbered levels
of learning may give us a more useful set of terms for talking about such
processes as “sinking” than we have had to this point.
Bateson is rather casual
with his use of the terms “learning” and “level” in this article. For the sake of clarity we can say that
change of premises of a certain numbered level shall be called “learning” of
that level. So change in premises of
punctuation which are at level II we would call Learning II. Usually this distinction is not necessary,
or is supplied by the context. In such
cases the abbreviation “L II” will be used.
Bateson describes the simple
receipt of a message with a specific response as “Zero Learning.” The message received in a Zero Learning
situation may be of any logical type. While other levels of learning may be characterized
by the level or logical type of “error” to be corrected by trial and error,
Zero Learning does not involve trial and error at all. It is mostly a concept to help in
definition. The likelihood is small that
anything occurs in the lives of organisms which is completely this simple. Bateson offers the following list of
“phenomena which approach this degree of simplicity:”
(a) In experimental settings, when “learning” is complete and the
animal gives approximately 100 per cent correct responses to the repeated
stimulus.
(b) In cases of habituation, where the animal has ceased to give
overt response to what was formerly a disturbing stimulus.
(c) In cases where the pattern of the response is minimally
determined by experience and maximally determined by a problem of accomplishing
what must be accomplished with the finite means available. Where Freud envisaged an economics of
psychic energy, the engineer of today would argue for an economics of
circuitry. If the same way of thought
can be genetic factors.
(d) In cases where the response is now highly stereotyped.