17. Imprints Can Only be Changed by Bio-chemical Shock.
Let us, for a moment, visualize the nervous system by itself (apart from the body) as a bio-computer with 30 billion reception-evaluation-output centers (neurons) wired-up together and mediated by hierarchical centers. The various sense organs receive billions of signals a minute. The output fibres fire billions of signals per minute. Imprints lay down the basic connections which pattern and guide neural activity.
There is, for example, the First Circuit emergency system which, when the "danger" cues are received and evaluated, commands millions of survival actions. Early "danger" imprints and genetic programs cue this powerful, basic system which effects, when mobilized, every organ in the body. Fear! Once the First Circuit has imprinted a fear stimulus, the only way this chemico-electric synaptic pattern can be changed is to suspend or replace the wiring. The intransigence of human "phobia," and "security-blankets" is caused by imprints.
The only way to rewire neural patterns is to interfere with the neurotransmitter sequence at the synapse, thus retracting the old imprint and allowing for a new imprinting. Shock, illness, trauma, drugs, child delivery, stimulus deprivation and electrical charge are the only ways to change the chemistry of the synapse. When action inside the body becomes overwhelmingly intense so as to alter synapse chemistry, the imprint life-lines to the external environment are retracted. The chance to re-imprint is offered.
When the concept of neural imprinting is understood, techniques for psychological treatment will be changed. The doctor will teach the patient the principles of re-imprinting and the patient will select the new reality SHe wishes to create. Democracy and collaboration are necessary in neurologic treatment. The doctor cannot prescribe or control the treatment, because the result is a new reality for the patient.
Medical practice will also be altered. Infection or malfunction of an organ of the body can produce chemical changes which require recircuiting the neural wiring. When the somatic infection is cured the emergency "sick" wiring may remain in operation preventing the restoration of normal function. Conversely, infection or malfunction may require curative changes which are blocked by the normal "wiring." This view of the nervous system as a programmed bio-electrical network may help explain the "mysteries" of acupuncture. The needles have little effect on the fleshly system, but, particularly when energized with mild electric charges, may affect the synaptic programs which regulate the function of the organ. In the near future we may see Neurologic replace psychology and Neurosomatic-medicine replace the vague concept of psychosomatic medicine.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
18. Conditioning a.s.sociates a Stimulus with an Imprinted Response.
The notion of imprinting has created some confusion in psychology because it suggests a form of "learning" which is immediate and irreversible, quite in contrast to conditioned learning which is the foundation of most psychological theories. According to the cla.s.sic definition: "Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as the result of practice." Learning is based on a.s.sociating one stimulus or response with another on the basis of reward or punishment. Psychological theories of learning are based upon observations of external visible behavior and pay little attention to the internal, invisible neurological situation.
The cla.s.sic studies of conditioning were executed by Ivan Pavlov, the Russian physiologist.
"While studying the relatively automatic reflexes a.s.sociated with digestion, Pavlov noticed that the flow of saliva to food placed in the mouth of the dog was influenced not only by the food placed in the dog"s mouth but also by the sight of food. He interpreted the flow of saliva to food placed in the mouth as an unlearned response, as he called it, an unconditioned response. But surely, he thought, the influence of the sight of food has to he learned. Hence this is a learned or conditioned response." - Hilgard and Atkinson, Introduction to Psychology, Harcourt Brace.
Later research demonstrated that animals could be conditioned to salivate in response to a flashing light, sounds, visual forms, etc. "The conditioned response may be considered a simple habit because 1) an a.s.sociation is demonstrated to exist between a stimulus and a response, and 2) this a.s.sociation is a learned one."
To understand the learning process it is necessary to understand the primary role of the imprint and the secondary role of the conditioned-a.s.sociation. The imprint hooks the natural unconditioned response to an external stimulus - the releaser mechanism. The conditioned stimulus is a.s.sociated with the imprinted stimulus. Imprinting is the basic connection between the external stimulus and the nerve endings; and between the nerve endings and the response.
Conditioning then connects (wires up neurally) other stimuli which are a.s.sociated with the imprinted stimuli. The learned stimuli can then trigger off the response connected neurally to the original imprinted stimulus.
If the infant"s First Circuit is positively imprinted to Mother, other stimuli a.s.sociated with Mother become learned cues which can trigger off the "positive-approach" response. The infant"s First Circuit is negatively imprinted to stimuli - tastes, smells, forms - which are noxious or dangerous. Stimuli a.s.sociated with "danger" trigger off the withdrawal reaction (fear).
Conditioning psychologists have studied the relationships between unconditioned stimulus-response units and learned reactions in terms of the similarity of stimuli (generalization), the reinforcement or reward of the conditioned stimulus-response by the unconditioned, the waning or extinction of the learned a.s.sociation in the absence of the unconditioned reward, discrimination of differences between stimuli, etc.
Cla.s.sical (Pavlovian) conditioning focuses on the presentation of conditioned stimuli in a.s.sociation with the original unconditioned stimulus to the response (e.g., salivation).
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
19. Operant Conditioning Links Peformed Behavior with Reward-Punishment.
Operant conditioning studies behavior which bears little resemblance to the genetically pre-programmed behavior that is normally elicited by the reinforcing stimulus (i.e. salivation is the dog"s normal response to food but rolling over is not). B. F. Skinner, the founder of the school of operant conditioning, distinguishes between respondent and operant behavior.
"Respondent behavior is directly under the control of the stimulus, as in the unconditioned reflexes of cla.s.sical conditioning: the flow of saliva in the mouth, the constriction of the pupil to a flash of light on the eye, the knee jerk to a tap on the patellar tendon. The relation of operant behavior to stimulation is somewhat different. The behavior often appears to be emitted; that is, it appears to be spontaneous rather than a response to stimulation... When operant behavior becomes related to a stimulus (as when I answer the ringing telephone), the ringing telephone is a discriminated stimulus, telling me that the telephone is answerable, but it does not force me to answer. Even though the ringing telephone is compelling, the response to it is operant and not respondent behavior.
"The word operant derives from the fact that operant behavior "operates" on the environment to produce some effect. Thus going to where the telephone is and raising the receiver from the hook are operant acts that lead to the telephone conversation.
"To produce operant conditioning in the laboratory, a hungry rat is placed in a box... The inside of the box is plain, except for the protruding bar with the food dish beneath it.
"...the experimenter attaches the food magazine, so that every time the rat presses the bar a pellet of food falls into the dish. The rat eats and soon presses the bar again. The food reinforces bar pressing...
"With this ill.u.s.tration before us, we are ready to consider the meaning of conditioned operant behavior. As indicated above, it "operates" on the environment; the rat"s bar pressing produces or gains access to the food. In cla.s.sical conditioning the animal is pa.s.sive; it merely waits until the conditioned stimulus is presented and is followed by the unconditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning the animal has to be active; its behavior cannot be reinforced unless it does something.
"A large part of human behavior may be cla.s.sified as operant - turning a key in a lock, driving a car, writing a letter, carrying on a conversation. Such activities are not elicited by an unconditioned stimulus of the Pavlovian type. But once the behavior occurs it can be reinforced according to the principles of operant conditioning."
"...[operant] behavior is sometimes called instrumental behavior because it produces effects just as a tool or other instrument does. Hence operant conditioning is also known as instrumental conditioning." - Hilgard and Atkinson, ibid.
We have considered these definitions and principles because operant conditioning and behavior modification are becoming popular and politically potent aspects of the current behavior-control movement. An increasing number of psychologists are employing conditioning techniques to "shape" the behavior of people who are judged to be disturbed or anti-social; these in addition to the legions of psychologists who attempt to manipulate the behaviors of others in advertising, education and ma.s.s media propaganda.
Neurologic may help people to understand what conditioning psychologists are trying to do and why they are doomed to failure.
Conditioning psychologists are behaviorists. They are concerned with observable, measurable movements in s.p.a.ce-time. Behaviorism developed in the 1920"s as a reaction to "introspective," "faculty" psychology which explained human nature in terms of invisible emotional and mental states attributed to the conscious "mind." Behaviorism, unhappily, chose to model itself after Newtonian mechanistic visible physics just at the point when Einsteinian concepts and invisible states were emerging. In the last half century we have seen an increasing "interiorization" of physics and genetics. The significant (and significantly overlooked) fact about the new micro-sciences is that functions, meanings, lawful regularities have been located in internal structures invisible to the naked eye which are, in many cases, similar to the spiritual faculties a.s.signed by psychoa.n.a.lysts, theologians and philosophers to metaphysical ent.i.ties within the human "soul" or "psyche." Ancient Hindu theories about the unity of consciousness, for example, now find empirical confirmation in descriptions of the nervous systern as an interconnected network of thirty billion cells. Ancient Vedic concepts of the unit of life are confirmed by the discovery that there is only a slight difference in the amino acid configuration which makes up the genetic material of all living ent.i.ties, plants and primates. The theories of physicists like Jack Sarfatti and John Aichibald Wheeler bring consciousness back to the center of the nuclear and quantum-mechanical stage.
When we review the work of conditioning psychologists from the perspective of a seven-circuit (plus one) nervous system, we can see precisely where and why behaviorism is limited. Operant conditioning is concerned with the behavior mediated by the social brain. Learned instrumental actions. Skinnerism is the crowning philosophy of the Third Circuit society, the mechanical civilization which began in the neolithic and which climaxed in Henry Ford"s a.s.sembly lines. Skinnerism is the final philosophic statement of the puritanical protestant-ethic manipulators who dominated the world for 400 years up to Hiroshima. In this context let us reconsider the ominous surgical implications of the standard definition: "The word operant derives from the fact that operant behavior "operates" on the environment to produce some effect... To produce operant conditioning... a hungry rat is placed in a box... A large part of human behavior may be cla.s.sified as operant - turning a key in a lock, driving a car..." This is the third brain at work.
During World War II Professor Skinner was in charge of a War Department Project to train pigeons to peck at panels which would home unmanned bombers into "enemy" targets.
There is another aspect of the operant conditioning model which merits comment.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
20. Conditioning Cannot Change an Imprint.
Skinnerians attempt to "shape" Third Circuit symbolic, manipulative behavior. This can be a futile or dangerously coercive business. Operant conditioning "works" by means of immediate and continual reinforcement. Imprinting requires no reinforcement. As the Psi-Phy Jesuit might say: let me imprint the infant and you can futilely try to condition the child; let me imprint the child and you can futilely try to condition the adolescent; let me imprint the adolescent and you can futilely try to condition the adult.
The imprint requires no repeated reward or punishment. The neural fix is permanent. Only bio-chemical shock can loosen the neuro-umbilical lines. The conditioned a.s.sociation, on the contrary, wanes and disappears with lack of repet.i.tion.
And neural imprints are themselves derivative structures compared with genetic templates which determine the form of the neural robot.
Neural imprints are accidental, local targets for the bio-electric forcefields laid down by DNA, which organize RNA to construct the body and the nervous system.
Humanity has evolved to the point where the knowledge of how to control the nervous system is available. Neurologic has developed rudimentary methods for suspending imprints and creating new neural imprints. Although this knowledge is uneasily suppressed, the basic concept that "reality" is created by the individual nervous system is understood by millions of persons born after 1945.
But genetic engineering is much more important than neural engineering. The research of Paul, Stein and Kleinsmith on non-histone proteins which turn-on DNA offer the key to genetic control. And the work of Bruce Niklas at Duke reminds us of the intransigence of chromosomal patterns which determine body structure.[1]
There are two groups of technocrats clamoring to change the behavior of their fellow citizens. Right-wing punitive coercers. And liberal rewarders. The attempts of both groups of bureaucrats are futile because they attempt to re-condition - rather than re-imprint.
Punitive coercion works only as long as the threat remains and thus requires a police state.
The liberal social psychologists believe that they can change behavior by democratic, supportive, egalitarian education methods. Head-start programs. Peace Corps. Behavior-modification. Bussing. Tutoring. Scholarship payments. Insight therapies. Mental health methods.
These liberal approaches fail to effect change and serve only to support the "humanist" welfare bureaucracy.
The experimental psychologists, for whom B. F. Skinner is spokesman, are more intelligent. They believe that they can impose behavior change by means of involuntary operant conditioning. This, however, requires total and continual control of reinforcements-rewards and punishments. The problem is that psychological methods work only when the conditioners are continually present to reinforce. The liberals have to be there constantly doling out welfare payments, scholarships, grants, interpersonal strokes.
The Skinnerian manipulators must be there constantly controlling environmental response.
As soon as the "subjects" are left alone to their own devices they immediately drift back to the magnetism of the imprint (and the structure of the genetic template).
This creates no problem with domesticated middle-cla.s.s people who have imprinted the docility and fear which provide internal controls for the Second Circuit, the repet.i.tious symbol manipulation of the Third Circuit and the "shame" of the Fourth Circuit. Society"s schools carefully imprint children to be stupid so that it is a simple, rote matter to inhibit questioning intelligence. Symbol-stupidity is so pervasive in every larval society that there is almost no chance for a child to be exposed to an open, fast, mobile, factually truthful, electrically circuited mind. The inefficiency of psychological conditioning and the immovable solidity of imprints is seen most clearly in the Fourth Circuit. It is almost impossible to recondition a s.e.xual imprint, to "cure" a h.o.m.os.e.xual with Social-symbolic rewards or by physical punishment, electric shocks and aversion drugs. Let us inquire of the psychological conditioners how much success they have had in removing s.e.xual fetishes, specialized imprinted l.u.s.ts. When the Fourth Circuit s.e.xual machinery is wired to a particular external l.u.s.t stimulus even menopause cannot alter what biochemistry has etched, engraved, stamped into the synaptic linkdge.
[1]Niklas reports that if chromosome strands are experimentally disarrayed (by poking them with a micro-needle) the molecules move back into the original sequence - much the way iron filings "swim" into position in response to magnetism. This suggests that some sort of energy-field pattern operates to keep the DNA code coherent and logical. A microscopic genetic brain integrates and controls the evolutionary signal.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
21. A Society Based on Conditioning Behavior Must Rely on Control and Secrecy.
The larval societies now controlling the planet can only maintain themselves by the increasing use of coercive and manipulative conditioning methods to shape, direct and control behavior.
B. F. Skinner, the Harvard behaviorist, in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, has presented the case for the Political Conditioners. It can be paraphrased simply "Since human beings, allowed to behave freely, will not act responsibly, they must be psychologically coerced, conditioned to be dutiful, virtuous, reliable, prompt, efficient, happy, law-abiding. Humans must be continually manipulated by rewards and punishments to do the right thing."
There are two aspects of this social conditioning regime which are not stressed by Skinner. To make it work, the government psychologists must have total control over the citizenry and there must be total secrecy and censorship.
In 1961 there came to the Center for Personality Research at Harvard University an enthusiastic Skinnerian who reported on the applications of operant conditioning to patients in a mental hospital. One of the behaviors to be inhibited was hallucinatory talk. Now there are many among us who believe that hallucinations have a functional role in the psyche and would consider the automatic extinguishing of hallucinations a violent restriction of some message that has importance in the emitter reality, even if it is not understood or considered useful to the psychologist"s reality. Using the technique of immediate reinforcement, the Skinnerians would instantly produce a cigarette every time the patient made a non-hallucinatory comment and would take the cigarette away every time the patient would hallucinate. The researcher gleefully announced that the rate of hallucinatory comments dropped by a significant level. Even more impressive changes in behavior accompanied the giving or deprivation of food. The Skinnerian glumly complained that hospital rules prevented them from carrying out this experiment to the useful point of starvation. "If we had total control over food intake, we could really shape behavior," said the operant conditioner, who may or may not have heard the soft comment by one staff member that this technique had been used by most of the dictators in world history.
In order to condition human behavior it is necessary to get control of stimulus early in childhood and to maintain this control throughout life. In the psychological utopia, conditioning would be accompanied by continual psychological testing so that special apt.i.tudes and potential trouble-makers are identified early in the game and special conditioning programs set up, tailored to eliminate individual eccentricity.
Political conditioning requires not only control of reward and punishment, but also secrecy.
One dissident, freedom oriented psychologist can totally disrupt a psychological fascism by public exposure. If parents and even children are warned about the method of conditioning they can consciously decide whether to cooperate or to resist, pa.s.sively or actively. Psychological tests are, for the most part, ineffective, if the subject has been warned about the purpose and construction of the tests. Even the use of drugs in brainwashing can be counteracted by the person who learns about the specific effects of neuro-chemicals.
Psychological conditioning techniques cannot be employed in a democracy where minority groups can campaign against and publicly discuss the techniques being used, and publish the answers to screening tests, where citizens have the right to avoid the conditioners.
Thus the proposals of B. F. Skinner cannot be implemented except in a state where the government has total control of communication.
Without these controls continually reinforcing, continually reminding (e.g., the omnipresent slogans of the police state, the omnipresent advertising directives of the consumer state), people just plain forget what they are trained to do and drift back to their imprints. And to their genetic-robot styles.
Consider the dog who rolls over to get his bone. Will the dog toll over in the absence of the master? This is the nightmare that haunts the aging Mao.
Human behavior is determined by: genetic-neural template (zodiac type) and imprint.
When the child gets to school it is too late to teach Hir. If SHe has imprinted, from hir home or peer-group, a dexterous symbolic mind, SHe will learn in spite of the teachers.[1]
A very thin veneer of operant-conditioned behavior creates the flimsy facade of domesticated civilization.
Larval humanity now faces a genetic cross-roads. Some will choose to solidify social conditioning by manipulating the child"s environment and thus domesticating the imprint. Maoism.
Others will choose to mutate to a higher level where each person is taught to manage and control Hir own imprinting and conditioning. We can expect that many different social groups will emerge along both of these directions.
We have just considered the genetic, neural and social limitations of conditioning. We shall now consider the liberating and limiting implications of serial re-imprinting.
[1]The word "mind" refers to the basic orientation of the muscles of the larynx and the right-hand which determine the style of symbol manipulation upon which social conditioning grafts its rewards and punishments.
THE EVOLUTION, STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
22. Imprinting Is Limited by the Local Environment.
Learning, conditioning and other educational or coercive methods of behavior-control write their messages on sand. After each daily tide of a.s.sociation and reward-punishment the a.s.sociations must be repeated. The coercive nature of learned behavior is not clearly seen because it appears voluntary, indeed, the conditioned robot is obsessively drawn back to his place in the sand box. Larval civilization is a Beckett landscape. Every morning millions of humanoids rush to their sand-piles and reconstruct them.
The ordeal of Sisyphus was an exciting heroic adventure compared to the monotony of social conditioning. The robot, operant-conditioned to symbols, is a reward addict. If we remove the symbol-rewarding environment, if we fail to produce the conditioned stimulus, the humanoid robot goes mad, because SHe has nothing to do. We can accurately speak of stimulus junkies. If there is no sand box and no sand to work on, there is panic. Social deprivation creates desperate reward hunger. The social reality of conditioned response requires continual rewarding. The prisoners continually rebuild their restricting reality walls which crumble if they are not continually reinforced.
Operant conditioning is robotry and can exist only in a controlled, scheduled, coercive society.
If, to continue this rather gritty metaphor, conditioning is building sand structures, imprinting is like stamped-out metal patterns. Trying to recondition an imprint with reward punishment is like dropping single grains of sand on a forged steel pattern. Decades of sand can wear away the iron pattern. Senility can wear down the imprint. The aging politician gets lazy, the aging h.o.m.os.e.xual becomes too fatigued to cruise. Etc.
To change the shape of metal forms one must apply energy sufficient to rearrange the patterning of molecules. Change the electromagnetic field. So it is with neural imprints. Just as heat is used in metallurgy, so is it necessary to apply ma.s.sive bio-chemical energy to loosen the molecular synaptic bonds. Internal stimuli - drugs, trauma, illness, deprivation, shock - can retract the external neural life lines.
Just as heated metal hardens into the new form, so does the re-imprinted nervous system harden into new circuits, freeze back into new membrane forms. We speak here of psychedelic metallurgy, serial re-imprinting, the neurologic craft of recasting the seven minds, recircuiting the bio-electric wiring.
With the present repertoire of Sixth Circuit neurotransmitter drugs it is apparently only possible to re-imprint about once a week. You cannot re-imprint every day. It takes from five to seven days for the new-mind-mold to harden. LSD research indicates that it takes a retractory period of a week for the structure to build up.
If a person had a full-scale LSD re-imprinting experience once a week for forty years, two thousand re-imprintings would be possible. This is to say, two thousand serial-reincarnations could be experienced. It is obvious that even if one played out all the myths, imprinted all the available soles, focused re-imprints on every sense organ and combination thereof, one would be hard-pressed to find and live out that many reincarnations.