Communication

The Social Matrix of Psychiatry

Jurgen Ruesch, Gregory Bateson, Eve C. Pinsker, Gene Combs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351527583
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Psychiatry & Mental Health

The integration of psychiatry into the mainstream of American society following World War II involved rethinking and revision of psychiatric theories. While in the past, theories of personality had been concerned with the single individual, this pioneering volume argues that such theories are of little use. Instead, the individual must be seen in the context of social situations in which rapid advances in communication technology have brought people closer together, changing their behavior and self-expression. Ruesch and Bateson show that following World War II mass communication and culture have become so pervasive that no individual or group can escape their influences for long. Therefore, they argue that processes of psychoanalysis must now consider the individual within the framework of a social situation. Focusing upon the larger societal systems, of which both psychiatrist and patient are an integral part, they develop concepts that encompass large-scale events as well as happenings of an individual nature. They have outlined this relationship in a unified theory of communication, which encompasses events linking individual to individual, individual to the group, and ultimately, to events of worldwide concern. The term "social matrix, " then, refers to a larger scientific system, of which both the psychiatrist and the patient are integral parts. Jurgen Ruesch was professor of psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine and director of the section of Social Psychiatry at the Langley Porter Neuropsychatric Institute in San Francisco. Gregory Bateson taught at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among his books are "Naven", "Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity", "Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred", and "A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind".

1 Values, Communication, and Culture: An Introduction

Jurgen Ruesch

TODAY, in the middle of the twentieth century, scientists and clinicians alike strive for mutual understanding. To renounce dogmatic views and to abandon scientific isolation is the fashion of our time. Psychiatrists have moved out of the enclosing walls of mental institutions and have found a new field of activity in the general hospitals of the community and in private practice. The transformation of the former alienist into a modern therapist and the change from static to dynamic principles necessitated a revision of psychiatric theories. While, in the past, theories of personality were concerned with one single individual, modern psychiatrists have come to the realization that such theories are of little use, because it is necessary to see the individual in the context of a social situation. Our technical civilization has reduced the intellectual isolation of people to a minimum, and modern means of communication and transportation accelerate the dissemination of information to such an extent that in the not too distant future we can expect that no individual or group will be able to escape such influences for long.

The authors have attempted in this book, which is dedicated to a presentation of the broader aspects of communication, to conceptualize interpersonal and psychotherapeutic events by considering the individual within the framework of a social situation. Focusing upon the larger societal systems, of which both psychiatrist and patient are an integral part, necessitated the development of concepts which would encompass large-scale events as well as happenings of an individual nature. We have sketched this relationship in a unified theory of communication, which would encompass events which link individual to individual, events which link the individual to the group, and ultimately, events of world-wide concern.

In the course of our investigation we had to examine the position of psychiatry within the framework of social science. Special attention was paid to the management of scientific information about the behavior of people and the interrelation of data obtained at the individual, group, and societal levels. We refer particularly to the dialectical difficulties which develop when the scientist operates at different levels of abstraction. To facilitate the consideration of an event, first within the narrower context of an individual organism, and then within the framework of a larger societal system, the concept of the social matrix was used. The term “social matrix,” then, refers to a larger scientific system, of which both the psychiatrist and the patient are integral parts. This larger system, however, is of no immediate concern to the psychiatrist or to the patient at the time of interaction. Devoting attention to a particular subject matter, and delineating a circumscribed set of events, the limited concerns of the doctorpatient teams may not immediately affect the larger universe. Nonetheless, the smaller system is a part of the larger system; and conclusions drawn within this smaller system may become inaccurate or even invalid when seen in the framework of the wider over-all system.

This phenomenon we have related to the more general problem of “part and whole” (151). The physician and the psychiatrist, in their work, repeatedly deal with relationships between one cell and the surrounding tissue; one organ within an organism; an individual within the family group; a family within the community; and ultimately, perhaps, the community within the framework of the nation, and the nation within the United Nations. These varied foci of interest are usually watched and studied by different disciplines, all using their own concepts and their separate technical languages. Such divisions, though useful at one stage, can become merely obstructions at a later stage. Therefore, in order to facilitate progress, we propose to use one single system for the understanding of the multiple aspects of human behavior. As of today, we believe that communication is the only scientific model which enables us to explain physical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cultural aspects of events within one system. By the use of one single system we eliminate the multiplicity of single universes, the multifarious vocabularies, and the controversies which arise because we, the scientists and clinicians, cannot understand each other. To introduce the reader to such a system of explanation in its application to the field of psychiatry the present volume has been written.

At this time the reader may ask what, if any, relationship exists between communication and the variety of topics which are presented in this volume. In reply we ask him to bear with us for a little while until such time as we have been able to demonstrate how value theory, psychiatric thinking, and observations about the American culture are intimately connected. We hope to show that these multifarious features which are included under the heading of social matrix are the silent determinants of our means of communication, and that communication is the link which connects psychiatry with all other sciences. It is well to remember that almost all phenomena included under the traditional heading of psychopathology are disturbances of communication and that such disturbances are in part defined by the culture in which they occur. Contemporary psychiatric theories were imported from Europe by Europeans, and inasmuch as psychiatric theories are implicitly theories of communication, they must undergo modification and progressive change when transplanted from one country to another. Therefore, considerable time and space have here been devoted to an understanding of the American system of communication and its implicit influence upon psychiatric practices and thinking.

At first sight, problems of communication seem to be of only secondary interest to the student of individual behavior. People act on their own, they do things alone, and at times they manage, exploit, coerce, or kill others without announcing their intention of doing so. But communication does not refer to verbal, explicit, and intentional transmission of messages alone; as used in our sense, the concept of communication would include all those processes by which people influence one another. The reader will recognize that this definition is based upon the premise that all actions and events have communicative aspects, as soon as they are perceived by a human being; it implies, furthermore, that such perception changes the information which an individual possesses and therefore influences him. In a social situation, where several people interact, things are even more complicated.

When persons convene, things happen. People have their feelings and thoughts, and both while they are together and afterwards, they act and react to one another. They themselves perceive their own actions, and other people who are present can likewise observe what takes place. Sensory impressions received and actions undertaken are registered; they leave some traces within the organism, and as a result of such experiences people’s views of themselves and of each other may be confirmed, altered, or radically modified. The sum total of such traces, accumulated through the years by thousands of experiences, forms a person’s character and determines in part the manner in which future events will be managed. The impressions received from the surroundings, from others, and from the self, as well as the retention of these impressions for future reference, can all be considered as being integral parts of a person’s communication system. Inasmuch as a person’s way of responding to perceived events necessitates the forwarding of messages to the peripheral effector organs, the intra-organ ism ic network is conveniently considered as a part of the larger interpersonal, or even superpersonal (cultural) network.

What, then, the reader may ask, is not communication? In order to answer this problem, we must investigate the questions which a scientist wishes to answer. Where the relatedness of entities is considered, we deal with problems of communication; when entities are considered in isolation from one another, problems of communication are not relevant. To be interested in communication therefore becomes synonymous with assuming a definite scientific position with a viewpoint and interests focusing upon human relations. However, the scientific investigation of communication is made difficult by the fact that we have to communicate in order to investigate communication. Inasmuch as it is impossible to fix at any one moment our position as observers, we are never quite sure of that which we purport to observe. We can never abstain from communicating, and as human beings and members of a society, we are biologically compelled to communicate. Our sense organs are constantly on the alert and are registering the signals received, and inasmuch as our effector organs are never at rest, we are, at the same time, continually transmitting messages to the outside world. Therefore, our biological need to receive and transmit messages is in some ways a handicap to the investigation of the scientific processes of communication. In order to overcome this difficulty, it is necessary for us to make a structural assumption regarding the state of signs and signals within our own organism. This end result of perception and transmission we refer to as information.

The acquisition and retention of information is paramount in any system of communication. In order to retain some traces of messages received and sent, and in order to evaluate these, the human organism is equipped to detect common features in apparently diverse events. The elements or patterns which are common to a variety of happenings are of necessity abstract, and it is these abstract relationships which are retained by the organism. However, in order to proceed with abstraction, the organism must be exposed to a sufficient number of events which contain the same factors. Only then is a person equipped to cope with the most frequent happenings that he may encounter. If a person is able to predict events, and if he possesses the ability to cope with certain happenings, he is said to have relevant information. As far as we know, that which is referred to as information consists of an arrangement of nervous impulses and connections. This arrangement must consist of relationships which are systematically derived from those among the original events outside the organism.

In the social sphere, the acquisition of information about relatedness to people occurs through continuity and consistency of exposure to similar social events; it begins with the child’s experiences with his mother, then with members of his family, and later with contemporaries at school and on the playground. The youngster learns from adults and from his age mates to follow rules and to master the obstacles which he encounters. The repetitive character of social events teaches people to react in stereotyped ways; and stereotyped behavior creates, of course, stereotyped surroundings. Therefore, when we speak of a social matrix, in which interpersonal events take place, we refer to the repetitive and consistent bombardments with stimuli to which human beings are exposed. These originate, on the one hand, in the social behavior of other people and, on the other hand, in the objects, plants, and animals with which people surround themselves. Gradually the stimuli perceived and the responses chosen become stylized; the stimulus shapes the response, and once the response has been learned, the individual is conditioned to seek those stimuli which will elicit his learned responses. This whole process can be compared to the bed which a river cuts into the surface of the earth. The channel is formed by the water, but the river banks also control the direction of flow, so that a system of interaction is established in which cause and effect can no longer be isolated. Stimulus and response are thus welded into a unit; this unit we shall refer to as “value.”

Values are therefore, so to speak, simply preferred channels of communication or relatedness. Information about the values which people hold enables us to interpret their messages and to influence their behavior. Values are not only characteristic of an individual but are also held by groups of people and by whole cultures. The reader will recognize that as soon as interpretation of messages is considered, no clear distinction can be made between communication theory, value theory, and anthropological statements about culture. This combination of features is the medium in which we all operate; therefore we refer to it as the social matrix.

As individuals we are usually not fully aware of the existence of this social matrix. Unable fully to encompass the effects of our own actions upon others, and because of our limited human perspective, we are unlikely to grasp the magnitude and nature of what happens. When we quarrel with a family member, or when we attempt to explain the reasons for a rise in the price of butter, we tend to treat such incidents as unique; thus, unaware that thousands of other people might have similar experiences, we blame our relatives or we curse the grocer. As a matter of fact our behavior in such situations is already both a response to other people’s reactions and a stimulus for their behavior. Our personal and interpersonal concerns, the immediate foci of our daily life, make it difficult for us to appreciate fully the wider aspects of social events. Therefore, in this book, we have made it our task to illustrate some of the relations which exist between individual, group, and culture. While for the average person it is quite sufficient to possess some practical working knowledge of these matters, the psychiatrist, in addition, must possess explicit and systematic knowledge of these relationships if he wishes to help his patients. The relationship between superpersonal systems on the one hand, and interpersonal and individual systems on the other, is not merely a dialectic fancy of the scientist, but is embedded in the daily needs of the individual, whose life and sanity require that he be able to communicate successfully with other human beings. To the achievement of this end the psychiatrist has dedicated his life.

After introducing our subject matter to the reader it might be worth while to say a word about the methods we used to study the social matrix. It is well to remember that regardless of whether the scientist studies psychiatric, social, or cultural phenomena, sooner or later he has to consider the individual. The only thing that differs is the data obtained from individuals. Therefore in carrying out this study we have found it convenient and necessary to keep clear in our thinking the differences between the various sorts of data with which we have had to deal. Especially is this true of the differences between participant experience and experimental operation, and between observation of behavioral acts and introspective reports. The fact must be faced that when a culture or subculture is studied as an integrated communication system, it is necessary to consider in the scheme of scientific operations the following circumstances:

(a) That the members of the population studied make generalizations about their own culture.

(b) That the investigator observes interaction and communication between the members of the population as a neutral spectator.

(c) That each member of the population has his own view of his own roles and can in some measure report these to the observer.

(d) Lastly, that the investigator obtains important insight from his own personal interaction with members of the population.

Each of these circumstances determines a particular way of collecting data, and it is necessary to insist that the data collected in any one of these ways are not the same, either in their order of abstraction or in the distortions which they introduce, as the data collected in one of the other ways. In general, it may be said that these four types of data are mutually corrective and that an undue specialization in any one of the four leads to a distorted picture. The sorts of distortion which result from over-specialization in each type of data collecting may here be mentioned:

If the investigator overspecializes in his attention to what people say about their own culture, he will arrive at an idealized or stereotyped picture of that culture; he will collect a system of social generalizations which ignore the actual behavior of actual people. His picture will be a function of the culture which he is studying, because he will collect stereotypes which are themselves culturally determined; but it will be a distorted function. Further, if the investigator is sociologically minded, he may be guilty of the sort of oversimplification which occurs in organizational charts, forgetting the human individuals and seeing only their defined functions.

Similarly, if the investigator specializes in being a neutral observer of interaction between members of a population, he may build up a picture of customs and character types from which human individuality and the idiosyncrasies of motivation will be lacking. He might, for example, arrive at the position common in anthropology of paying attention to individual behavior, only to use his observations of people’s reactions to point up their culturally stylized attitudes.

If, on the other hand, the investigator specializes in collecting personal introspective reports, he will arrive at the distortions characteristic of the overspecialized therapist; he may see the individuals as isolated entities, not related to each other or to himself. He will be limited to a discussion of their internal structure and dynamics, not seeing the structure and dynamisms of the larger social whole.

Finally, the scientist who overspecializes in participant experience will perceive individual trends and interaction but will tend to ignore the more static phenomena of convention, social organization, and other social determinants. His picture will resemble one which might be drawn by an overspecialized psychiatrist who sees the unique dynamics and flux of an individual’s responses to himself without seeing that individual’s life as socially determined.

Also, it is of interest to note that the systematic differences and distortions which follow when the investigator takes a particular view of the system which he is studying, or when he specializes in a particular method of collecting data, are themselves clues to his value system. The nature or slant of his knowledge is determined by his methods of obtaining that knowledge and by his notions of what knowledge is. If we describe his selective awareness—his structuring of perception—we shall, in fact, be describing his system of values.

As authors, we are fully aware that whatever we may say about value systems of psychiatrists, patients, or the American culture will be colored by our own personal values. On the other hand, we are also fully aware that no scientific observer can escape being bound to his subjective way of perceiving, inasmuch as any investigator is an integral part of the communication system in which he and the observed—be it human, animal, or object—participate. In the present study this danger of distortion has been acknowledged by including various types of data and by having more than one author, each with a different background and viewpoint, participate in the evaluation of the data. This combination of contrasting types of data and differently trained obse...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Values, Communication, and Culture: An Introduction
• 2 Communication and Human Relations: An Interdisciplinary Approach
• 3 Communication and Mental Illness : A Psychiatric Approach
• 4 Communication and American Values: A Psychological Approach
• 5 American Perspectives: An Integrative Approach
• 6 Communication and the System of Checks and Balances: An Anthropological Approach
• 7 Information and Codification: A Philosophical Approach
• 8 Conventions of Communication: Where Validity Depends upon Belief
• 9 Psychiatric Thinking: An Epistemological Approach
• 10 The Convergence of Science and Psychiatry
• 11 Individual, Group, and Culture : A Review of the Theory of Human Communication
• References
• Index