In a way, the hypnotist is a kind of “Penultimate Hypercluster”. His lingual energy is absorbed in the field of potentials and remains trapped, generating dissociations and stamping the field of potentials without resorting to a mediation of a structure (=of consciousness). The role of the stamping (=memorizing) is relegated to the hypnotist and the whole process of realization is attributed to him and to the language that he elects to use.
A distinction between endogenic and exogenic events is essential. Both types operate on the field of potentials and bring about the materialization of structures or dissociations. Examples : dreams and hallucinations are endogenic events which lead to dissociations.
Automatism (automatic writing) and Distributed Attention Automatic writing is an endogenic event. It is induced exclusively under hypnosis or trance. The lingual energy of the hypnotist remained trapped in the field of potentials and caused the writing. Because it never materialized into a structure, it never reached consciousness. No language representations which passed through allowed levels of excitation were generated. Conversely, all other exogenic events ran their normal course ? even when their results conflicted with the results of the endogenic event.
Thus, for instance, the subject can write something (which is the result of the trapped energy) ? and provide, verbally, an answer which starkly contradicts the written message. The question is an exogenic event which influences the field of potentials. It effects the materialization of a structure which is realized through allowed levels of excitation. These levels of excitation constitute the answer provided by the subject.
This is a vertical dissociation (between the written and the verbal messages, between the exogenic event and the endogenic one). At the same time, it is a horizontal dissociation (between the motor function and the regulatory or the critical function).
The written word ? which contradicts the verbal answer ? turns, by its very writing, into an exogenic events and a conflict erupts.
The trapped energy is probably organized in a coherent, shapely, manner. This could be Hilgard?s “Hidden Observer”.
When two exogenic events influence the field of potentials simultaneously, a structure is materialized. But two structures cannot be realized through the same allowed level of excitation.
How is the status (allowed or disallowed) of a level of excitation determined ?
A level of excitation is allowed under the following two cumulative conditions:
a.When the energy that it represents corresponds to the energy of the structure
(When they “speak the same language”)
b.When it is not occupied by another structure at the exact, infinitesimal, moment of realization.
The consequence: only one of two exogenic events which share the same level of excitation (=the same lingual representation), will materialize into a structure. The second event will remain trapped in the field of potentials. Namely: only one of them will reach consciousness, awareness.
Homeostasis and Equilibrium of the Field of Potentials The field aspires to a state of energetic equilibrium (entropy) and to homeostasis (a functionality which is independent of environmental conditions). When these are violated, energy has to be traded (normally, exported) to restore them. This is achieved by the materialization of structures in such levels of excitation as to compensate for deficiencies, offset surpluses and, in general, balance the internal energy of the field. The materializing structures are “chosen” under the constraint that their levels of excitation bring the field to a state of equilibrium and / or homeostasis.
They use lingual energy in the allowed levels of excitation.
This, admittedly, is a rigid and restraining choice. In other words: this is a defence mechanism.
Alternatively, energy is imported by the stamping of the field of potentials by exogenic events. Only the events whose energy will balance the internal energy of the field will be “selected”. Events whose energy does not comply with this restraint ? will be rejected or distorted. This selectivity also characterizes defence mechanisms.
Patterns, Structures, Shapes Patterns are an attribute of networks (which are composed from interconnected and interacting hyperclusters). The field of potentials is stamped by all manner of events ? endogenic as well as exogenic. The events are immediately classified in accordance with their energy content. They become part of hyperclusters or networks through the process of realization (in which the lingual energy decays through the allowed levels of excitation).
These are the processes known as Assimilation (in a network) and Accommodation (the response of the network to assimilation, its alteration as a result). Every event must belong to a hypercluster or to a network. If its level of excitation is not “recognized” (from the past) ? the brain will first check the most active hyperclusters and networks (those of the recent past and immediate present). Finally, it will examine those hyperclusters and networks which are rarely used (primitive). Upon detecting an energetically appropriate hypercluster or network ? the event is incorporated in them. This, again, is Assimilation. Later on, the hypercluster or the network adapt to the event. This is Accommodation which leads to equilibrium.
Assimilation is possible which is not followed by accommodation. This leads to regression and to the extensive use of Primitive Defence Mechanisms.
Compatibility with Current Knowledge Fisk (1980)A person tends to maintain some correspondence between his Fixed Level of Energy and his level of energy at any given moment.
External events change the field equation (=the fixed level of energy) and activate calibration and regulation mechanisms that reduce or increase the level of activity. This restores the individual to his normal plateau of activity and to a balance of energy. These energetic changes are considered in advance and the level of activity is updated even before the gap is formed.
When stimuli recur they lose some of their effectiveness and they require less energy in relating to them. Dynamics such as excitement, differentiation and development provoke such an excited state that it can disintegrate the field. A downward calibration mechanism is activated, the Integration.
When an event cannot be attributed to a hypercluster, to a network, or to a string (a field line) ? a new structure is invented for it. The very shape of the field is altered, as a result of this new introduction. If the required alteration is sizeable, it calls for the dismantling of hyperstructures on various levels and for a forced experimentation at the construction of alternative hyperstructures.
The litmus test is: minimum energy with maximum energy (coherence and cohesiveness).
Structures whose level of energy (excitation) is less than the new structure, will be detached from the new hyperstructures created in order to accommodate it (Denial) or will be incorporated into other hyperstructures (Forced Matching). A hyperstructure which contains at least one structure which was attached to it in a process of forced matching is a Forced Hyperstructure. The new hyperstructure must be energetically stable ? while the forced hyperstructure must be energetically unstable. This is why the forced hyperstructure will pop into consciousness (be excited) more often than other hyperstructures, including the new ones.
This is the essence of a defence mechanism : an automatic pattern of thinking or acting which is typified by its rigidity, repetitiveness, compulsiveness and behaviour and mental narrowing effects. The constant instability is experienced as tension and anxiety. A lack of internal consistency and limited connections are the results.
Myers (1982) Distinguishes between 3 components : emotions (=potentials), cognitions (=structures) and interpretations (hyperstructures), memory (the stamping).
Minsky (1980) The memory is a complete conscious state and it is reconstructed as such.
In our terminology : the structure is hologramic and fractal-like.
Lazarus The cognition (=the structure) leads to an emotions (=decays into a potential).
This is a partial description of the process ? and its second leg only.
Zajonc (1980) Emotions (=potentials) precede cognitions (=structures). An emotion is based on an element of energy ? and the cognition is based on an element of information.
This distinction seems superfluous. Information is also energy ? packed and ordered in a manner which enables the (appropriately trained) human brain to identify it as such. “Information”, therefore, is the name that we give to a particular mode of delivery of energy.
Eisen (1987) Emotions influence the organization of cognitions and allows for further inter-cognitive flexibility by encouraging their interconnectedness.
My interpretation is different : emotions (=potentials) which organize themselves in structures are cognitions and the duality is deceiving. This also renders the question of what preceded what all but superfluous.
See also: Piaget, Hays (1977), Marcus, Nurius, Loewenthal (1979).
Greenberg and Safran The emotions are automatic responses to events. The primordial emotion is a biological (that is to say physical) mechanism. It reacts to events and endows them with meaning and sense. It, therefore, assists in the processing of information.
The processing is speedy and based on responses to a limited set of attributes. The emotional reaction is the raw material for the formation of cognitions.
As opposed to Loewenthal, I distinguish the processing of data within the field of potentials (=processing of potentials) and the processing of data through structures (=structural processing). Laws of transformation and conservation of energy prevail between the two types of processing. The energy is information or lingual energy.
The processing of the potentials is poor and stereotypical and its influence is mainly motoric. The structural processing is rich and spawns additional structures and alterations to the field itself.
Horowitz (1988) All states of consciousness act in concert. When transition between these states occurs, all the components change simultaneously.
Gestalt The organism tends to organize the stimuli in its awareness in the best possible manner (the euformic or eumorphic principle).
The characteristics of the organization are : simplicity, regularity, coordination, continuity, proximity between components, clarity. In short, it adopts the optimal Path of Least Resistance (PLR), or path of minimum energy (PME).
Epstein (1983) The processes of integration (assimilation) and differentiation (accommodation) foster harmony. Disharmony is generated by repeating a fixed pattern without any corresponding accommodative or assimilative change.
Filter ? is a situation wherein a structure in PLR/PME materializes every time as the default structure. It, therefore, permanently occupies certain levels of excitation, preventing other structures from materializing through them. This also weakens the stamping process.
The Bauer Model of Memory Organization (1981) Our memory is made of units (=representations which are the stampings of structures on the field). When one unit is activated, it activates other units, linked to it by way of association. There are also inhibitory mechanisms which apply to some of these links.
A memory unit activates certain units while simultaneously inhibiting others.
The stamped portion of the field of potentials which materializes into a structure does so within a hyperstructure and along a string which connects similar or identical stamped areas. All the stamped areas which are connected to a hyperstructure materialize simultaneously and occupy allowed levels of excitation. This way, other structures are prevented from using the same levels of excitation. Indeed, it is a situation of activation and inhibition, or prevention, simultaneously.
The Model of Internal Compatibility A coherent experience has an affective dimension (=potential), a dimension of meaning (=structure) and of memory (=stamping). Awareness is created when there is compatibility between these dimensions (=when the structures materialize and de-materialize, are realized, without undergoing changes). The subconscious is a state of incompatibility. This forces the structures to change, it provokes denial, or forced adjustment until compatibility is obtained.
Emotions relate to appropriate meanings and memories (=potentials become structures which are, as we said, hologramic and of fractal nature). There are also inter-experiential knots : emotions, meanings and / or memories which interlink. A constant dynamics is at play. Repressions, denials and forced adjustments break structures apart and detach them from each other. This reduces the inner complexity and “internal poverty” results.
The Pathology according to Epstein (1983) When mental content (events) is rejected from consciousness (=a potential which does not materialize).
Mental content which cannot be assimilated because it does not fit in. There is no structure appropriate to it and this entails rewiring and the formation of unstable interim structures. The latter are highly excitable and tend to get materialized and realized in constant, default, levels of excitation. This, in turn, blocks these levels of excitation to other structures. These are the mental defence mechanisms.
Pre-verbal and a-verbal (=no structure materializes) processing.In this article, (1) and (3) are assumed to be 2 facets of the same thing.
Kilstrom (1984) A trauma will tear apart the emotional side of the experience from its verbal-cognitive one (=the potential will never materialize and turn into a structure).
Bauer (1981)Learning and memory are situational context dependent. The more the learning is conducted in surroundings which remind the student of the original situation ? the more effective it proves to be.
A context is an exogenic event whose energy evokes hyperstructures/networks along a string. The more the energy of the situation resembles (or is identical to) the energy of the original situation ? the more effectively will the right string resonate. This would lead to an Optimal Situational Resonance.
Eisen It is the similarity of meanings which encourages memorizing.
In my terminology : structures belong to the same hyperstructures or networks along a common string in the field of potentials).
Bartlett (1932) and Nacer (1967) Memory does not reflect reality. It is its reconstruction in light of the attitude towards it and it changes according to circumstances. The stamping is reconstructed and is transformed into a structure whose energies are influenced by its environment.
Kilstrom (1984) Data processing is a process in which stimuli from the outer world are absorbed, go through an interpretative system, are classified, stored and reconstructed in memory.
The subconscious is part of the conscious world and it participates in its design through the processing of the incoming stimuli and their analyses. This processing and analysis are mostly unconscious, but they have influence.
Data is stored in three foci:
The first one is in the Sensuous Storage Centre. This is a subconscious registry and it keeps in touch with higher cognitive processes (=the imprinting of events in the field of potentials). This is where events are analysed to their components and patterns and meaning is bestowed upon them.
Primary (short term) Memory ? is characterized by the focusing of attention, conscious processing (=the materialization of a structure) and repetition of the material stored.
Long Term Storage ? readily available to consciousness.
We differentiate three types of memory : not reconstructible (=no stamping was made), reconstructible from one of the storage areas (=is within a structure post stamping) and memory on the level of sensual reception and processing. The latter is left as a potential, does not materialize into a structure and the imprinting is also the stamping.
The data processing is partly conscious and partly subconscious. When the structure is realized, a part remains as a potential. Material which was processed in the subconscious cannot be consciously reconstructed in its subconscious form. A potential, after all, is not a structure. The stimuli, having passed through sensual data processing and having been transformed into processed material ? they constitute a series of assumptions concerning the essence of the received stimulus. Imprinting the field of potentials creates structures using lingual energy.
Meichenbaum and Gilmore (1984) They divide the cognitive activity in three components:
Events, processes and cognitive structures.
An event means activity (=the materialization of potentials into structures). A process is the principle according to which data are organized, stored and reconstructed, or the laws of energetic transition from potential to structure. A cognitive structure is a structure or pattern which receives data and alters both the data and itself (thus influencing the whole field).