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practical theory is powerful. When I create my own theory, it provides me with vision and perspective. Trust-Level theory is especially powerful in helping me into this expansion process, because vision is a direct function of trust.When I was teaching graduate students in psychology, the two courses I enjoyed teaching most were Theory Construction and History of Psychological Theory. True to the mainstream of that day, I was firmly convinced of the soundness of several assumptions that then seemed to be irreproachable. Among these assumptions were the following three:
That the physical science model was unquestionably the one to follow;
That "scientific" (e.g., physics) and "engineering", (e.g., mechanical engineering) theories and principles were of different orders of significance, and there was no question as to which was of the higher order;
That ontological validity was the primary criterion of quality in a theory.
There were several other assumptions that most of us made, but it is on these three assumptions that I wish to focus in introducing the content of this chapter.
During some twenty years of university teaching I made several attempts to construct theories of my own. During this process I abandoned a number of earlier assumptions, including the above three. My current assumptions go something like this:
That something quite different from a physics model is necessary in constructing an adequate theory of behavior and experience. Psychological events may differ from physical events in at least three significant ways. Psychological events are non-dichotomous; they are relic in nature, and if not relic they are at least self-determining; and they have an intrinsic quality not predictable from or determined by the environment. I understand from some of my physics friends that in the last decade a "new" physics is aborning that questions some of the same assumptions that I questioned;
That in psychology and in the behavioral sciences generally, a "basic" theory and an engineering theory are the same thing. All effective theory is a tri-partite affair: (a) hypothesis construction, (b) data collection, and (c) engineering test. These three processes continually interact with each other as theory is refined and developed;
That the most effective theory provides an instrumental function, a guiding function. This is the primary criterion of the quality of a theory, not ontological validity.
Trust-Level (TORI) theory, as described in this book, was constructed over the years as an effort to meet my primary criteria of a satisfactory psychological theory. I will make thirteen statements about TORI theory, which is my best effort to match the criteria that I believe are most critical. Each of these statements implies an informal and "practical" criterion of the quality of a theory.
It is an applied theory, an "engineering" theory, designed for application to all human systems. The level of analysis, behavior, and experience is the level that is optimal for the user, the person who works with persons and human systems at that level. It is written in the language of the user. The number of variables are such as to be suited to any user. The basic four (TORI) variables are appropriately simple or complex for the practitioner to "keep in mind" without machine analysis or mnemonic aids.
The theory is suited for the user with no formal training. The person can use the theory unilaterally, without others having to know the theory or subscribe to it. The basic variables are in all life. It is also a whole-life theory which can be applied to all of the situations that any user faces.
The theory applies equally to the gut, the heart, and the mind of the person. When we understand this fully and apply the theory, it has integrative and wholizing properties.
The criteria overlap and each, in some ways, is a partial restatement of the other. That is, if the theory meets any one of the subsequently following twelve criteria, it also meets the applicability criterion. The following discussions are relevant to this section as well.
Trust-Level theory is an instrument, a tool, that serves as a general guide to inquiry and discovery.
It is a guide to perception and diagnosis, enabling the user to focus on the factors, among the multitude that operate in all human situations, that matter, that are worth examining, that contribute most to the variance, that deserve attention. Perception is always a selective process. The theory provides an initial screening. There is, of course, some limitation to this process. Selective focus means that we leave out some parts of the perceptual field.
It is a guide to thinking and problem solving, to analysis of the total field of reality as the theorist/practitioner sees it.
It is a guide to action and programming, providing a map with marked paths to effective action. It aids in the making of choices, in the planning of action steps, or in the preparing of a long-range program of social action.
A high-quality theory is, of course, not a static process; it does not lock-step the viewer, problem-solver, or actor into a program. The person using Trust-Level theory is always an experimenter, an inquirer, a searcher. The theory is an aid in the search.
True inquiry is, in itself, an act of trust and faith: Trust that the universe does have some stability’s that are determinable and that personal inquiry will be effective in some significant way; confidence in the nature and validity of experience; and trust that keeps the energy high and the quest an adventure rather than a burden.
Inquiry is also, of course, a process of doubting, of caution, of safeguards, of methodological rigor, and of skepticism. It is the ebb and flow of caution and of courage that make inquiry complex and exciting.
It suggests a behavioral rather than a primarily ontological option. It provides live options for what a person does rather than options regarding the nature of reality.
It is a way of looking at a problem, rather than a formula for its solution. It is a viewpoint, rather than a prescription. To the mother it suggests how she might look at the child rather than giving her a rule to apply to a child's behavior. For the worker and his or her boss, it suggests a relationship that might be effective, rather than a formula for the interaction. To the teacher it suggests how he or she might go about solving problems together with the pupils rather than prescribing what the teacher or pupil should do in each situation.
There are advantages to a practical theory which specifies rules for supervision, parenting, discipline, value-clarification, motivating people, or winning friends. Such theories do "tell me what to do on Monday morning" in the classroom or do give me a specific rule or prescription for each class of problem that I may meet. The inexperienced supervisor, parent, or teacher is thus reassured. Such rules are especially useful in environments I, II, and III, but become less useful as environmental quality increases. A prescriptive theory and its related techniques are useful only where fear is high and the environment primitive. As life becomes more flowing, trusting, open, self-determining, spontaneous, and rises to higher levels of being, prescriptive theories become less useful. And as life moves into higher levels of awareness and flow, we seek a theory free of prescriptions.
In the lower-level environments, persons find security in rules, in environmental consistency, in law and order, in strong leadership, in a sense of being in control, and in the certainty that rewards and punishments will follow rationally and in fair sequence on all actions that respond to or violate the rules that we have agreed upon or that we have been given.
In more trusting levels of environment, persons find security in an internal state of self-acceptance, in withness and mutuality, in the excitement of challenge, and in transcending states. Rules, guide-books, prescriptions, and interpersonal programming do not create the unexpected, the emergent, creative interdependence, and other spontaneous processes.
The theory is a statement about and a description of life processes. It is experimental and empirical; it is always being tested. Change is the basic nature of living, of interaction, of process, and of being. Trusting is a catalytic force that evolves with life processes. It is not possible to confine the process within any "operational" definition that is adequate.
The theory evolves with the person who creates it for himself or herself and is a function of the evolution of the theorist, of the environment in which he or she lives, and of the situational factors of the very moment in which the theory is applied.
The person who uses TORI theory is an experimenter, continually improving in understanding and ability to test the theory itself. The theorist is continually attempting to find out what the theorist-as-person, or the theorist-as-father, or the theorist-as-manager does in real-life situations. Thus, as I discover and create my own theory, I discover and create my own life. My theory therefore becomes a statement of how I view life at the moment, how I view myself, and how I will relate to the life-process.
All theory, in some sense, comes out of each person's experience in arriving at the theory. This is explicitly true in the case of TORI theory. Each person who creates/uses the TORI theory creates an idiosyncratic statement that comes out of his or her highest integration of the life experience. Naturally, a theory designed for use changes in use. Because it is always owned by the user, it is always shaped by the user. Therefore, reality itself is continually created by the user, and because the theory applies to the process-reality that is created in interaction, it is as live and quivering as life itself. As life changes, the theory changes.
Start with the single, guiding assumption that trusting is the central, catalytic process that infuses, colors, determines, modifies, and guides all the other life-processes. My own life process, then, becomes a lifelong quest to discover what trust means to me, what my trusting does to me, how it shapes my environmental state, how it determines my interactions with others and with nature—how, in short, it guides my life. I am my own single authority in this process, and no one else can tell me how this happens for me.
My own theory is my own working out of this life issue. I can state it in whatever words I need to use to convey its meaning to myself and to others. Mainly, my theory resides in my mindbody. It is what my mindbody does in synergizing my total system: How I see things, how I feel about life, what assumptions I make about experience, the choices I make, the integration I make of all my processes.
The application of the theory can be as cognitive, planned, deliberate, articulated, worded, or rational as I wish to make it. My experimentation can be conscious: I can make deliberate attempts to show myself to others, to tell people I am angry when I feel it, to make a deliberate choice and act on it, to experiment with my life. Such conscious efforts to be more trusting usually take the form of a variety of experimental efforts to be more personal, more open, more self-determining, and more with others. I can plan my program, check with others as to how they see me, search inside for my own reactions, assess my feelings about the process, persist in the effort to determine my own preferred level of openness, say, or my own manner of clarifying my wants.
On the other hand, application of the theory can be as spontaneous, unplanned, impulsive, free-form, non-conscious, unverbalized, or irrational as I wish to make it. I can let my body take over and let myself be: Go with the flow. Discover my impulses. Let the world happen. Trust that I will find my best life, my most trusting state, my deepest joy. Trust the process. My own process. Life's process.
Or I can be anywhere in between these extremes. I can invent or create my own mode of search, quest, or experimentation, for I am in charge. I am the theorist and the user.
Because "the TORI theory" has not been invented yet, there is no authority to tell us what it is really like to be trusting. Each of us is on his or her own. I am the probe instrument in this life experiment. I am the experimenter. I am the guinea pig. I am the data. I make the interpretations and draw the conclusions—except that there are never any conclusions.
For me, Jack, the chapter writer and the spokesman-for-the-moment for TORI theorists/users, this realization of the aloneness and the centrality of my own process and being is, at once, deeply frightening, full of dread, but also even more deeply reassuring, affirming, full of strength, full of awareness of my potential, and courage-giving.
While, in its essence, this is a quest I make alone, it can also be as interdependent as each of us decides to make it. Trusting means that all persons are available to me if I can learn how to contact them; that all wisdom is available to me if I can learn how to see it; that all help is there for me if I can learn how to accept it; that all love is there for me if I can be in it. I am free to make life a community. So theory construction can be, in some real sense, a communal process.
For most of us there are rhythms in our manner of searching for and creating our theory. All living is good. Sometimes it is good to reflect, to verbalize, to reason. Sometimes it is good to get out of our heads and be in the experience, into our trusting and into our fearing. Sometimes it is good to be outside of ourselves and watch ourselves doing the reasoning and doing the being. Sometimes it is good to be in control, sometimes out of control; to be sane at some moments, crazy at others; deeply in dread or deeply in ecstasy. It is the transcending of fearing and the experience of trusting that bring clarity and vision and enable us to see the theory. Trusting, the central process, gives us (a) the vision, clarity, and illumination, and b) the courage to see the vision whole. Vision and courage are the two central components of trusting.
It is possible and useful to see the "theory" as alternatively passive and active. That is, I create the theory, but, also, the theory then creates me. It takes care of me, nourishes me, sustains me in moments of my doubt, when fear takes over. If I create the theory well enough, it resides in me to create me and care for me. In some sense I am my theory, and my theory is me. At moments of internal segmentation, when fear takes over, I can experience my theory as a kind of reified friend that comes to my aid.
This is especially true at times when I reach out in trust and meet a seemingly untrustworthy person. I trust someone, and they let me down. I am being open, and someone sees my vulnerability and uses it against me. I reach out in what I experience as love and receive in return what I experience as unjustified hate. When life seems to let me down, then my "theory", if it is strong and durable enough, if it is internalized enough, comes to my aid, putting the event or events into perspective. The theory helps me, for instance, to see that the response of the other person may not have been to my trusting at all, but to what was seen as my defensive, fearful state. I needn't conclude that trusting doesn't "work"; my particular trusting action didn't, that one time, create what I hope for.
The structure and strength of my personal theory are functions of how I handle the fearing/trusting events of my life.
Each person is unique. Each pair and relationship is unique. Each community is unique. As I become more trusting, this uniqueness becomes more distinct and more significant. Trusted, the person and the event take on their special qualities. Trusted, both the person and the relationship become unique.
So it is with TORI theory, which is the creation of the user. I mean this in more than a platitudinous sense. As I see persons celebrate their uniqueness, I see them grow, become stronger, more aware of their distinctive becoming, less defensive, less needing to enter battle with the world. A common parlor game among theorists, especially neo-theorists, is to put the other person's theory down by putting it into a convenient category. "Isn't what you are saying simply Platonic idealism?" Or Reichian armorizing? Or Christianity? Or Zen? Or phenomenology? Categorizing a theory, like classifying a person, is to diminish it.
Instead, each TORI user is to view his or her statement of personal theory as idiosyncratic. My theory is my peculiar, self-produced view of the world; it is my articulation of my experience. It is not classifiable, and any attempt at classification is to be resisted.
There is, of course, overlap in the way people who seek the trusting life experience the world and describe it. There are common elements in the experiences of TORI theorists. As a result, there is a growing body of common assumptions, common postulatory statements, shared hypotheses about trust-induction and trust-reduction, and common hunches about what works and what doesn't. But there are no categories—only commonalties.
It is useful to look at this common body of knowledge/guess/fantasy/belief as idiosyncratic—as a special way of experiencing the world, of diagnosing, of problem solving, and of acting from a special viewpoint and using a unique set of attitudes, central variables, and assumptions. My view is that every theory of the life process is "true" (i.e., is a valid way of looking at the world); each is useful for selected purposes and makes a special contribution to the field; each moves forward our general understanding of behavior, experience, and social systems. From the standpoint of the practitioner, as well as that of the theorist, the critical issue is not whether or not the theory is valid. The critical issue is: How useful is the theory for my purposes?
Each theory has been formulated by persons whose experiences grew out of a unique setting. The theory is likely to be most useful in settings similar to those from which it was derived, with the special phenomena that were under study by the theorist and in the cultural context out of which the theorist and the theory grew. Each theorist/ practitioner is free to try the theory/model in his or her life situations and to judge for himself or herself which viewpoint is most useful, using the criteria that he or she selects.
I believe that, appropriately, the most significant factor in this selection is the matching or compatibility between ( 1 ) the central dynamic in the theory, and (2) the central dynamic in the user. This matching or compatibility need not be a simple relationship. In the case of TORI theory, for instance, those who use it with greatest effectiveness are those who are especially attuned to the significance of the trust/fear polarity in life. The user may have high fears, high trusts, special experiences in the clinic or in the field or in the family; the user may bear the traumatic effects of sustained or acute fear or enjoy the ameliorative effect of high trust; and there are always internal dynamics which create a fit between theory and user.
However, personal and subjective the theorist/user may feel about his or her theory, each theorist/user is to some degree an eclectic, and naturally so. Each manager, therapist, or parent, at the point of deciding, intervening, or acting, uses whatever mindbody wisdom is available then and there. TORI theory is not an exclusive response—it is a potentially useful adjunct to any other theory, and any other theory can be used as an adjunct to TORI theory.
There are some common elements crossing all theories. As we gather more theory-related data, this commonality presumably will grow. For instance, the primary dynamic in Freudian analysis, in primal therapy, and in TORI theory is fear. The theories differ in (a) hypotheses about ways that fear is manifested and translated into other mindbody processes, and (b) derivations in terms of optimal inductions for fear-reduction. Theories differ in terms of relative emphasis placed upon the significance of fear-reduction (trust formation) as a primary factor in personal and system effectiveness. TORI theory places primary importance upon the four processes that mediate and sustain fear: (a) depersonalization and role-taking; (b) masking and strategizing, and especially covert strategizing; (c) oughting, persuading, and manipulating; and (d) controlling and hierarchizing. TORI theory, then, would differ significantly from theories that directly or indirectly reinforce these "defending processes." Theoretical approaches illustrating this point would be: (a) procedures in psychodrama and Transactional Analysis that reinforce role behavior; (b) all theories that have strong external interventions (strategizing); (c) a wide variety of socio-economic and psycho-dynamic theories that imply strong programs of persuasion, parenting, and influencing; and (d) therapeutic and political theories that use control as a central process.
The degree to which an eclectic user/theorist who is using TORI theory in connection with other theories uses role behavior (decides to act like a manager, for instance), strategy e.g., tries to find ways to make the patient more assertive, persuasion (e.g., as a consultant, tries to devise ways of making the worker more loyal or productive), and control (e.g., sets boundaries for the child or the patient), depends upon a number of factors. Because in natural life all persons are to some degree fearing/defending, all of us have some component of intentional and/or unconscious elements of the above four processes in our motivations or behaviors in most situations. Therefore, someone intending to apply TORI theory has several issues to confront: How do I learn to be more trusting, less defensive, and thus have fewer defending (fear-inductive) processes to get in my way when I'm managing, parenting, or teaching? How much role-, strategy-, persuasion-, and control oriented action do I intentionally build into life situations for which I have some formal responsibility? How important do I judge fear/trust to be, relative to other factors, in the situations in which I work and live as a professional or as a person? I might, for instance, assume that I truly believe that TORI theory is correct in making trust the primary variable, but unconsciously or quasi-consciously I really believe that power, say, is the significant factor.
TORI theory is constructed to be relevant and directly applicable to all living systems. It is presumably equally relevant to any situation that a person enters. Internalizing the theory makes it possible for a person to be the "same" person in all situations, even though there might be role expectations that differ. There need not be a special theory for recreation, administration, therapy, teaching, advertising, rehabilitation, government, international relations, personal growth, parenting, being a minister, being a friend, or being a person.
If this theory is effective, one need not learn strategies appropriate to the role or modify one's behavior to fit other's expectations. One need not learn professional management techniques designed to accomplish professional goals or lead a situational, segmented life that is adjusted to the immediate circumstance, job, position, or culture. This is not to say, in any sense, that it is easy to learn such a theory-based life; but once learned, it is practical, health-producing, effective, and responsible to achieve and live such a life. It is possible to start learning here, now, in this culture, in whatever job one has.
It is then possible to (a) be who I am, in a unique, congruent, and uncluttered way, (b) show who I am, including all of the significant nuances of me, (c) do what I deeply want to do, making the choices and following the impulses that are most intrinsically me, and (d) be with other people in ways that are meaningful to me and to those I am with.
In practice, of course, all of the above happens in degree. What is significant is that persons, after some experience with living the theory in some depth, do report a high degree of effectiveness in applying the theory in a wide range of environments and professional jobs. Some people, after understanding the theory and having a confirming experience, make radical changes in life style. Others make what seem to be minor changes in attitude or behavior but report major changes in effectiveness in what they do and increased personal satisfaction in doing it.
Of great potential significance in determining the practical and immediate effectiveness of the theory is a three-year program which began in the fall of 1977. Two groups of 32 persons, representing a wide variety of professions and a number of different geographical areas in the United States and Canada, one meeting in the Central area and one meeting on the West Coast, made three-year tests of the applicability of TORI theory. Each of the 64 professionals planned a program in his or her organization or in a client organization to apply the theory or some major aspect of the theory. Each group of 32 met intermittently during the three years for a total of 31 days a year, when the programs were planned, evaluated, and compared. In most instances, research on effectiveness was built into the programs. Some programs were conducted as part of the requirements for completing a doctoral dissertation. Two additional groups of similar size began in the summer of 1978.
From these multiple tests, we learned much about the general applicability of the theory. Lorraine and I participated in all four of these groups, as well as with the group adjunct professionals who worked with the testing groups to create modifications, changes, and additions to the general body of TORI theory.
Because of the highly personal nature of the theory, what happened to each of the participants in terms of personal growth and professional competence is of central interest. The evolution of each of the four community groups of 32 through the environmental changes discussed in Chapter 3 is also of critical significance. Plans were made to fully document and describe both the personal and the community changes, and some were reported in book form.
The structure or form of some theories is tightly ordered, formal, systematic, and logic-tight. That is, the relationships among the statements that make up the full statement of the theory are rigorous. The postulates and theorems of classical geometry are logic-tight. The statements in Hull's mathematico-deductive theory of rote learning are comparably rational and formal.
The content or substance of some theories is similarly formal and logic-tight. Within a given statement of a proposition, law, or hypothesis, the concepts are defined in terms of rigorous operations, measurable on equal-interval scales, coded in such a way as to be susceptible with relative ease to computer operations and refined to eliminate the cloudy and fuzzy edges.
The processes of some theories are so conceived that the progressive changes are susceptible to unitizing, in a procedure similar to calculus or at least to the "just noticeable differences" of Fechner, whose unites were conceived as a phenomenological calculus. Lewin and others made compelling analyses of behavioral and experiential "process" in terms of topological space, a mathematical treatment directed toward achieving a closer approximation of the apparent non-precision of mental events.
Experience over the years has convinced me that it is illusory to try to build a behavioral and experiential system that is rational, mathematical, rigorous, and logic-tight in structure, content, and process. The search for such models is nevertheless to be encouraged. The advantages for prediction and control are obvious. However, I assume that the basic nature of experience and behavior is that it is flowing, spontaneous, emergent, fuzzy-edged, non-logical and amorphous. I see experience more as a cloud or a drop of water than a computer or a telephone switchboard, no matter how sophisticated the rational model becomes.
The structure, content, and process of TORI theory are purposefully free-flowing, cloud-like, emergent, non-rational, and fuzzy-edged. Trust, the major construct, is a hypothetical construct that is assumed to be general in nature, a characteristic of all personal and social systems, and related in a significant way to all experience and behavior. Any specific operational definition that I have tried to make falls short of being satisfactory for more than limited purposes.
It is possible, of course, to make a number of statements about the relationships between and among major constructs in the general system, and to make them in such a way that they are susceptible to empirical test in fairly rigorous terms and thus to use a wide range of data from existent research in the human sciences. A high level of confidence in some statements results. For example: persuasion leads to resistance; covert strategy leads to circumventive behavior; behavior that is perceived as distrusting leads to acceleration of fear and distrust, etc. Each of these statements is an over-generalization. Each lacks precision and is too global to subject to rigorous test. Those who aspire to a postulate-theorem-like structure of theory would be uncomfortable with all of them.
Most "knowledge" in the behavioral sciences is in this fuzzy form. Practitioners can probably use fuzzy "theory" to advantage and improve the effectiveness of management, therapy, and teaching by the skilled use of such theory. Whether such fuzzy theory is a better basis for practitioner performance than wisdom gained from reading great literature or having profound or diverse experience is still, for me, a moot question. My confidence (trust) that such theory is very useful and that it can be made considerably more useful is such that I am devoting my life to constructing such theory.
In a significant sense, the content of TORI theory is in the process. What is done is less significant than how it is done. The process is the message. A trusting person communicates trust with body language, by the style of relating, the vibrations that are given off, the penumbral coloring, the shadow as well as, or perhaps more than, the substance. This is why it is difficult to learn TORI theory from a book, or even from a demonstration. Learning what my fears and my trusts do to me, how I learn to communicate my being rather than my role, and how I learn to show who and what I am, with all my shadows—all these learnings come from the heat of experience and love and interaction in community. These learnings are enriched by reading, by articulating theory, and by trying things out, but the core of the learning is and comes from gut experience.
So for TORI theory the distinctions among structure, content, and process are shadowy. Congruence is at the heart of the problem.
We are all familiar with incongruity of theory and practice. I recently attended a conference on holistic health in which the verbal message (the content) went on for hours with Environment VII, VIII, IX, and even X words and principles, but the procedural and relationship messages (the process and structure) were replete with Environment II, III, and IV procedures and structures. The medium was a series of lectures; the "management" of the conference was formal, structured, authoritarian, hierarchical, and benevolent. One of the papers presented in detail the techniques that would be used to teach people how to be holistic!
It is one thing for us to have some kind of high congruity in the statements, form, and even the process of the theory. It is another thing for us to achieve and to create congruity in the environments we create for ourselves.
We will not create a new and TORI-like world fit for humans through the use of non-human and non-TORI methods and processes. Testing produces the cheating. Spanking produces the delinquent child. Structuring produces unflowing people. The police state produces criminals. Therapy sometimes produces people that need to give or receive therapy. Punishing produces a system that breeds the need for more punishment. Defensive and fear-bred methods and governance produce defensive and fearful people.
The meaning of life is in the process, not in the product. A product-oriented culture will not likely produce a process-oriented people. Learning, growing, being, feeling, withing, doing, showing—all are processes. Each process rewards itself. None requires a product. None requires a reward. None requires a justification. In each case the reward and the meaning and the value are intrinsic, are in the doing, are in the process. The process is the content. The structure contains the process and is the message.
Trust-Level theory aims at achieving simplicity. Nature is simple. Words, interpretations, theories, and statements tend to be complex. Complexity leads away from the natural, whole life and its processes.
Parsimony has a distinguished place in the history of good theory construction. The TORI theorist and practitioner makes an effort to eliminate all unnecessary complexity: to be stingy with assumptions, the number of concepts, the structure of the basic statement of the theory, the number of variables in the overall system, the number of variables used in diagnosis and problem-solving—all aspects of the process. What is complex about it is the statement that I have just made about simplicity!
Much of the imputed complexity used in describing behavior and experience comes from defensive processes. That is, imputing complexity is a defensive act. Scholars and philosophers increase the complexity of descriptive statements about behavior and experience in part as an effort to prove competence, cover ignorance, demonstrate articulatory powers, and win in competitive struggles with others who are competing in the word- and concept-making arena.
I believe that much of the complexity comes from unnecessary differentiation of concepts. It is possible to make progressively more precise and focused differentiations among any set of concepts or constructs. For example, it is possible to classify defense mechanisms or defensive behaviors into a seemingly overwhelming number of categories. It is also possible to classify interventions or treatments used to reduce defensiveness to an equally overwhelming number of categories. It then becomes possible to match specific treatments to specific defenses and come up with a bewildering array of matchings. One recent book on therapy suggests that the road to progress in therapy is to learn to match treatments to illnesses or defensive modes, and when we have done this we will have taken the major step in reducing mental illness! Another solution at an opposite extreme is to hypothesize that there is only one "kind" of defense that matters (i.e., all defensive mechanisms are responses to internal fear states), and that one basic genre of treatment e.g., primal scream methodology; placing in an environment of optimal trust, etc. ), or perhaps a basic few treatments will be effective or optimally effective in reducing fears underlying the defenses. Because differentiation is an easy and seductive process, and because we have so few valid data on relationships between precise treatments and precise defenses, it is possible and tempting to build a vast body of mini-theories, all of which have some evidence, some logic, or some attractiveness, about these matchings.
I prefer to take the option of simplification which, at the recognized risk of oversimplification, predisposes a search for an elegantly simple structure, the basic and elemental processes that underlay the over differentiation.
As I have indicated earlier, there is another reason for seeking simplicity. I am searching for a theory that can be used by anyone in any situation; that can guide the user in any choice; that can be internalized, understood, and built into the mindbody. This theory will be one that allows me to act on the theory without machines for data processing, without mnemonic aids, without consultants or guides at my elbow, without notes or manuals to refer to, without complex skills that require professionalization or para-professionalization, without an esoteric language necessary for understanding or communication, without complex alternatives or variables that require complex intrapersonal data processing, without rules that risk misapplication or mechanization, and without complexity of structure.
This is certainly not to imply that simplicity, in and of itself, is valid. I would like to avoid unnecessary complexity. Given an alternative between two equally likely choices in theory construction, I would prefer to take the simpler of two alternatives.
One further point. We have been struggling to ferret out concepts and constructs that are redundant, that add nothing to simpler concepts which describe the behavior or the experience, that create pseudoproblems, or that predispose to reification. We are exploring doing without such redundant concepts, as well as those which arise out of misconceptions about behavior and experience. We believe we can eventually demonstrate that leadership reward, discipline, value, supervision, role, responsibility, and authority are superfluous and, in fact, counter-productive.
The process of trusting one s own experience is at the heart of TORI theory. For a number of reasons, perhaps largely because behavior is more susceptible to inner-observer reliability tests than is experience, behavior has come to be trusted in modern psychology more than experience. Behaviorism has a firmer and more respectable base footing in "scientific" psychology than does phenomenology, awareness, or experience.
On the other hand, experience is surely closer to me as a person, to trust as a construct, and to the events that I am trying to understand, predict, and join others in changing, than is behavior. Although it is possible to study trust, the self, and the social system through observable behavior, it is somehow less satisfying. It is trust, as an experience, that interests me.
Of the six ways set forth in Chapter 3 in which I chose to define the high-quality environment, five are clearly experiential constructs, though several could be defined in terms of observable behaviors. It is, of course, possible to describe any of the criteria in behavioral terms. The theory applies to both behavior and experience.
One of the contributions that psychology has made to modern life is to make us aware of the errors in, and limitations of, experience. Several generations have arrived at an increased distrust of the reliability of one's own perceptions, cognitions, motives, sensations, and inner states. Systematic interobserver checking seems to be necessary in order to rule out the vagaries of our own internal processes. Doubt, skepticism, a healthy look askance—all are in order when one tries to determine what is real, reliable, and to be trusted. All this leads to a generalized doubt about one's own internal states—values, motives, abilities, feelings, viewpoints, sensations. It is easy to see how this atmosphere of seemingly necessary doubt provides a base of shifting sands for the TORI processes. How do I know who I am? If so much of me is unconscious, especially the most significant part, and perhaps the most real part, and if my perceptions and introspection’s can't be trusted, then whom do I turn to in my attempt to discover who I am? If I'm not sure who I am, then how do I show myself to others? Is what I seem to want what I really want, or are my surface wants a distortion of, even a reversal of my real inner wants? If, as the analysts seem to tell us, the very intensity of my perceived want proves that my inner need is just the reverse of what it seems, then where is my enduringness in all this? Where do I reside?
How am I, in a world brought up to distrust, with reason, the inner world of experience, to discover a strong sense of inner worth? How am I to find a faith in my own values, beliefs, and perceptions?—the strength to stake my life on my inner convictions?—a confidence that my inner feelings are genuine and worth listening to and honoring?— and a willingness to expose this inner life impulsively and without the fear-born masks of caution? How do I feel good about something I can't trust?
One of the most promising aspects of the new revolution is the centrality of the inner states. We are returning to the honoring of consciousness and sensation. Even the conservative establishment in the behavioral sciences is looking anew at inner states, the world of experience: altered states of idiosyncratic, dreams, hypnotic states, drug-induced fantasy and experience, control by the will of body states and processes, hallucinatory activity, the religious experience, psychic states, cosmic and mystical states, and all manner of non-behavioral processes.
Out of all this will come the possibility of a growing sense of trust, with a more experiential base, growing out of a wider perspective. This newer and deeper level of trust will be a firmer base than the childlike, pre-experience naiveté that is potentially vulnerable to the inevitable disappointments of diverse experience. Trust that persists, fresh and whole, through the awareness of evil and error is a firm base for an enriched life. Such trust allows one to focus one's energy on the living processes rather than on the defending processes.
A full theory of human life must be based firmly on both experience and behavior.
The essence of living, both experience and behavior, seems to be that it flows. The bodymind that functions best seems to be one that is into the flow, the continual movement of energy, the bioenergetic systems, the internal symphony of flowing processes. The mindbody is a glorious process. It is a oneness in mind, body, and spirit. It enters into synchronic and harmonious flow with other living organisms in the environment.
Some flow models seems to fit human systems best: the river of life, the stream of consciousness, the ebb and flow of feeling, the rhythms of the body. The experiences of sailing, skating, dancing, and flying seem to strike a kind of polyphony with the inner rhythms of the spirit and physical body. The primitive perceptual processes seem to fill in the voids, round off the edges of experience, and give us a world that is experientially a gestalt, made whole by the interactions between the person and the world outside the skin. The more we find out about the nervous system, the more it seems to act in flow, more like a field of energy than a computer network.
The TORI discovering processes happen, emerge, flow, and are most functional and healthy when they are unforced, when they arise out of the field of interaction between the person and the world, and when energy flows. Being, showing, becoming, and interbeing are processes.
Defending is stopping the flow. Putting up roadblocks. Pushing the river.
There is something about socialization and institutionalization which gets people out of the flow. People, when put in role, want to do something: manage, control, justify their pay or their role. I have a vivid memory of an administrative meeting at Brigham Young University when I was teaching there in the forties. The new part of the campus was being built on a beautiful, flowing hill. The school planners had arranged a number of concrete sidewalks in different patterns on the campus part of the hill. Soon the administration noticed that several worn trails were developing on the campus, on which students would walk in the directions they had decided to go. As a faculty member of a committee which was to solve this and other similar problems, I was party to a discussion on what we should do about these worn patterns on the lawns, and what we should do about the student violators who disobeyed the "keep off the lawn" signs. After several suggestions as to how we might stop such behavior (defend against the flow), President Harris, a man who was wise and non-defensive, suggested: "Why not simply build sidewalks over the worn patterns on the lawns?". This stopped the violations (years later I was to write about the principle that regulations produced the criminals) and speeded up the traffic between classes. Certainly not accidentally, the new sidewalk patterns were very graceful and pleasing to the eye. I am very much aware of what I have learned from experiencing trusting people like Franklin Harris, who knew very little "psychology" but knew a lot about people and about institutions. Harris was an early advocate of reducing over-management, over-regulation, over-organization, and other fear induced accouterments of institutional life.
There are many facets to the process of going with the flow. My ocean-playing and wave-knowing friends tell me that the surest way to drown in rip tides and other tricky patterns in the flow of the water is to fight the flow and to defend yourself against it. Going with the flow is the way to live in the flow of the water and the flow of life. As Lao Tzu said, soft conquers hard. That yielding conquers resistance, that the living process outlasts the defending process, are principles of flow.
For many years I have worked with large gatherings of from a few hundred to several thousand in number. I remember once, early on, working with a group of about eleven-hundred teenagers in an eight day conference in Minnesota. The first time I stood up to work/play with the group, I noticed they were very restless—I could sense the pent-up animal energy. I was frightened. Petrified is perhaps a more accurate word. Following the Harris principle, I tried to tune in to what they seemed to want to do and then suggested that they do it: they translated their restlessness and animal energy into a number of quick movements that included jumping and shouting.
I had learned before then and have learned several times since that I can get a group to do almost anything provided that I don't try to get it to do what it doesn't want to do. Any group member who wants to "lead" or initiate in an effective way can tune in to what is going on in the group at a deep, organic level, translate this "want" into an activity, and suggest it. This is the only really significant service that "leadership" can provide to a group, community, or nation. But anyone who is really tuned in to the flow, in the community and in the self, can be very effective in channeling energy and action.
Living in the now does not mean that I am powerless and helpless, tossed like a stick of wood on the surface of a torrent and at the mercy of accidental dangers. Deeply aware of the flow in all of us, including myself, I can join the central and organic movement that is happening. I am a part of the community and of the flow. If I can sense something of what we all want, I can make creative suggestions that define, create, and focus the flow. I needn't create unnecessary conflict. If I define my power as my ability to be me, to show me, to do what I want, and to join others in the flow, then I am always powerful. I am as powerful as my being. The expression of power is then the same as my expression of the four discovering TORI processes. "Power" then becomes an unnecessary concept, adding nothing to what is already being said in talking about the TORI processes. It is only when I define "power" as my ability to "go against the flow"; to make the defending processes effective; to detach myself, accomplish a covert strategy, persuade/manipulate, or control; or to go against life, that I become powerless. In this sense, everyone is powerless, and rightly so. Only on a very short-term and surely a dysfunctional basis is anyone able to get someone to do something they don't want to do. In this sense of power, a power trip is a bad trip for anyone. Except at a very defensive level, no one wants power. When people seek inside for "what I want to do" at any level of depth or significance, they find they want something other than power. The want for power, like many other defensive wants, is surely an illusion. Put in another way, each person has all the power he or she wants or needs all of the time: power in the sense of ability to get into the flow of the TORI processes. This is the significant meaning of the concept.
Flow is a liquid word. It has more room for the fuzzies than the prickliest It has little room for boxes, rubrics, and logic-tight compartments. It is uncomfortable with rigid rules, square edges, arbitrary boundaries, walls, and facades—with anything that isn't natural/growing. It is organic, smooth, easy riding. It is poetry without punctuation, sinusoidal projections, kite flying, a jam session, commedza dell'arte, a windblown hair style, organic architecture, holistic living, a child at play, free form, freedom, being, modern dance, a book you can dip into.
Flow is a participle rather than a noun. Flowing. Perry Como singing. Finding my own rhythm. Inside.
The best theory is one that flows.
Some theories appropriately contain a statement about technology and technique in the general principles of the theory. TORI theory is not tied in with any implications about technique. It is method-free and technique-free.
It does not suggest, demand, or create techniques. But it is open to those that may be helpful. Thus, any technique, method, experience, technology, or set of operations, procedures, interventions, or actions that increase functional trusting and/or that reduce fear levels are appropriate to TORI theory.
The above statement is true to a degree. In another sense, TORI theory has clear implications that "techniques", in and of themselves, tend to reduce trust levels. A technique is a depersonalizing process, tends to disengage the person, to put the technician in role, to remove participants from each other. Role-playing and psychodrama were instituted by Moreno and his associates for precisely this reason, that they did allow the person to disengage himself or herself from the "reality" of the situation and get into presumably safer states of "irreality". Appropriate irreality is thought to reduce the threat of the situation and make it easier to work through issues and relationships than is the greater heat of reality.
Research and experience with trust level indicate that a primary factor in increasing trust is the degree of personalness in the relationship. One problem with professional training in all of the helping and managing fields is that professionals who learn methods, techniques, strategies, and procedures—the usual tools of the trade—tend to lose themselves in the process. Their behavior becomes characterized by role-taking, and they are seen by those they manage or help as being "in role", impersonal, practiced, to some degree superficial, disinterested, and thus distant or "not present". There is a growing recognition of this distancing and depersonalizing process in professional training in psychiatry, clinical psychology, teaching, counseling and managing.
I see a counter-tendency in my consulting: Professionals, with growing experience and confidence, begin to free themselves from techniques and to enter relationships as persons. Inexperienced, insecure, and less competent persons continue to rely upon techniques as the basis for accomplishing the professional task.
There are several possibilities for weaning professionals away from the use of techniques:
There is an instant recognition by listeners and readers of the possible validity of TORI theory. Everyone has an experience with trust and fear as feelings and as powerful forces in their lives.
There is considerable advantage in viewing the theory as being valid if it is designed to be practical and has been constructed to be used. This immediate recognition has several aspects that create problems, however.
Listeners or readers fill in the theory with many immediate assumptions, taken from common experience, about fear and trust relationships. The assumptions, laden with feelings and stereotypes, form quickly. I recall a three-hour presentation / discussion that I gave to a group of government executives in which I gave many illustrations from my experiences with government agencies, many instances which were dramatic, emotional, controversial—and which illustrated the body of Trust-Level theory. During the talk I noticed several intense positive and negative reactions shown by members of the group. During the three hours there was considerable interaction with members of the group, with a give-and-take about issues, questions, and concerns. Two intense reactions to the presentation and interaction illustrated the process that I am referring to here: 11 l one executive was angry, frustrated with me, and finally said at the end of the session: "Your theory is nothing but pure Communism, and I resent it"; (2) another executive, present during the same presentation and discussion, was somewhat bored, passive, mildly negative, and ended the session with the statement: "All you are doing is just making a pious statement about simple Christianity; I can't see that you are saying anything new." Each person was apparently bringing some intense feelings and assumptions to the session and projecting these into the emotion-laden concepts of the theory. And, of course, they were reacting to me and to my presentation and feelings about the theory.
The theory hooks people. Community experiences, designed to allow persons several days to experience their own trust and fear, allow people plenty of time to face the intense feelings and doubts mentioned above. Participants face these in a warm, accepting climate in which they discover that everyone else has similar feelings and doubts. Living with these, sharing them with others, understanding them, exploring alternatives, and other community activities provide opportunity for self-determined learnings that are essential to the problem of human problems.