Paper delivered to the Tenth World
Psychiatric
Congress, Madrid, Spain, 1996
TIME,
ONTOLOGY, LINGUISTICS and PSYCHIATRY
by
Dennis K. Chong and Jennifer K. Chong
In this paper, the male pronoun will
apply to either gender. The plural pronoun will apply to both authors. The
nominal pronoun will apply to the first author.
There exists a deep intuition that there
is a fabric to human subjective reality. The credit for being the first
explorers of this subject belongs to the ancient Greek philosophers. It was
within their philosophical sub-domain of Metaphysics and it was called
Ontology. Thus, from the beginning, Ontology was within the province of
Philosophy. That this connection remains to this day is reflected in the
existence and continuation of the International Society of Philosophy and
Psychotherapy.
To-day, Ontology is clearly within the
ambit of Psychiatry because Psychiatry is concerned with all conditions in
which there are aberrations of ontology.
At its core, Ontology is concerned with
1. the exploration and the discovery of
the nature of the elements or variables that are concerned in determining a
given ontology for a given context
2. the elucidation of the relationship
between theses elements and how this relationship constitutes the syntax or
governance to determine a given ontology. Such relationships constitute the
operant syntaxes that determine the structure of being. There is a presupposition
that they are constant.
3. the nature and structure of the
conditions that must exist for any determining ontological syntax to, in turn,
exist. This is what we call the meta-syntax. There is a presupposition that
this meta-syntax is also constant.
In turn, Ontology (and implicitly
Philosophy) is concerned with how these syntaxes might be changed, altered or
deleted. The logical inference is that if this could be done, then, ontology
would change. In turn if the ontology is aberrant, then it can be amended.
In ancient times, ontology found
explications through Greek theatrical works (and this is a tradition that has
continued by way of contemporary plays, musicals and novels.) One such famous
work that comes to mind is the play about the story of Oedipus. The oedipal
complex was deemed a determinant of human ontology. In more recent times the
play Room at the Top unmasked, amongst others, social and financial ambition
and greed as the principle driving ontological elements in the principal
character of the work.
In time, ontology was to come under the
jurisdiction of religion. When this happened, the ontological propositions of
religion became pre-eminent. Religion understood being human in terms of Adam's
foolish weakness to succumb to Eve's guile in tempting him to nibble the
forbidden fruit. Adam's feebleness was generalized to all men across all time.
She and her entire gender, in turn, was condemned to the ontology of
inferiority and submission to the male. In turn, all of human ontology was,
thereafter, understood in terms of the spinelessness of human beings for things
of the flesh, and hence, the human bent to sinfulness. This state of affairs,
beautifully dovetailed into the idea that the devil has an intractable fetish
to do us all in with him in Hell, to the chagrin of God the Father, His son
Jesus, the Holy Ghost and Mary and all the heavenly host.
Then Freud came along. He offered a schema
by which to understand what were the determining variables for the fabric of
human subjective reality. They included such propositions as the id, the ego
and the super-ego. As a schema it has NOT been incorporated unreservedly into
the general body of Psychiatry. We do not find his propositions at the fore of
D.S.M. IV as a way to explicate the phenomena of ontological anomalies indexed
in it.
What is interesting is that, today,
Psychiatry has turned to the pharmaceutical companies for help. These companies
are apparently able to provide the weaponry to obliterate human ontological
anomalies. For this, Ontology has now come within the ambit of pharmaceutical
companies. From this may emerge a final state in which Psychiatry may have to
bend to the ontological concepts of these companies.
We also notice today that Psychiatry also
turns to a plethora of Ph.Ds., B.As., M.As., B.Eds., M.Eds., D.Eds., R.Ns.,
B.Sc.Ns. and M.S.Ws. to help them via a plethora of counselling and
psychological programs. Along with this, has emerged a plethora of acronyms
that reflect what these programs intend to achieve. Such programs carry with
them their unique presuppositions and hence their unique implicit philosophies.
Psychiatric patients are piped through them, but there is no evidence that such
implicate philosophies have any concordance with the scientific positions of
modern Medicine. Certainly, the place of D.S.M. IV in such programs is not
evident.
In fact, D.S.M. IV, as a learned tome,
fails to proffer a truly valid understanding of the processes entailed in the
phenomenology of human ontology. It fails to do so because it does not satisfy
THE critical test that an accurate comprehension of ontology is to satisfy. The
test is that:
the accurate-to-fact understanding of
human ontology is to entail the way to change or alter the syntax that determines
an ontological irregularity.
In saying this, we are recognizing that
the phenomena of ontological deviations are NOT static events. They are in fact
processes that take place in the continuum of TIME. This, in turn, logically
means that there are underpinning sentient processes for them. Therefore, this
means that the phenomena are outward analogical metaphors or manifestations.
Therefore, evaluation and treatment is NOT for these outward analogical
metaphors, nor for the labels that are given to them. All evaluation and
treatment is to be directed to their dysfunctional underpinning sentient
processes.
Processes determine and underpin the
anomalies of ontology.
There is, in our view, a failure to
recognize this. For this failure, we continue to cling to and depend on the
drug companies to come up with miracle chemicals to correct the ontological
anomalies that confronts Psychiatry. This, in our view, is not a seemly state
of affairs. It is certainly illogical.
Its illogicality is grounded in the FIVE
MINUTE PHOBIA CURE FOR FLYING PHOBICS. This cure and its prescribed steps, was
put forward by the field of Neuro-linguistic Programming. It worked. Till then
such phobics were fated to the either a program of behaviour modification by
desensitization or they were placed on tranquillizers. Either way did NOT
entail a life time CURE.
For the sake of Psychiatry, it would
appear that it might be better NOT to TAKE D.S.M. IV as the definitive
explication of human ontology. We assert this in spite of its elegant scan of
NOUNSN and wordsN. As this paper will show, D.S.M. IV simply does NOT have any
valid claim to a sound grasp of the processes that determine human ontology. We
say this, because all its NOUNSN are, by the science of Linguistics, ALL
ill-formed grammarian violations. For this they are necessarily and logically
SEMANTICALLY ILL-FORMED. Anyone who is a competent linguistic transformational
grammarian will know the validity of what we are saying. In turn, these
semantic violations inherent to the NOUNSN of D.S.M. IV are the conditions of
semantic ill-formedness in the approaches to the amendment of ill-formed
ontologies in psychiatric patients.
Semantic ill-formedness determines
illogicality and irrationality.
This brings us to the issue of human language.
There is a connection between Psychiatry and Ontology. This conception consists
of the threads of human language that braid the two together. In turn, this
braided complex is melded in the glue of TIME.
Time is an implicate or sub-structure
variable that appertains to all matters that concern human reality, our
understanding of it and our responses to that understanding of it. In turn,
this is about human feeling, actions and speech.
Time is an implicate that we are not
normally aware. We are not aware of its power and critical role in our ontology
We are subsumed in it as we live in the medium of Time. Normally, we are not
aware of the medium of air unless someone fans us or there is a breeze. We are
no different from the fish that lives in an ocean trench. Such a fish can never
appreciate the difference of the reality of air.
It is because of this, that we are
normally unaware of the consequences that Time has for us - specifically about
how we think and how we are. For any creature in a medium means that the
creature has to evolve ways to survive in it. For the fish this has meant the
development of gills and fins. In the medium of air we have developed lungs and
limbs. In the medium of Time, we have developed the 'gills' of temporal
functions that exist in the left brain. One pre-eminent example of our capacity
for temporal function is language. Language, as an act, entails the utterance
of one word at one moment in time, to be followed by the next, at the next
moment in time and so on. This, therefore, is an example of temporal activity.
In concordance with this is our capacity
for logical reasoning. This clearly is a temporal act. It is for this that the
left brain determines temporal logic, regardless of whether it is linear or
lateral.
It is for this, when there is injury to
the left brain, as in a cardio-vascular accident, the temporal function may be
impaired or lost. In turn, language and human speech becomes impaired or lost.
This state of affairs is a metaphor for the infraction of our temporal
functions.
However, whilst it would be logical to
infer that our temporal functions to the time moments of NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW,
NOW ... we have the capacity to go beyond NOW. Thus, we can think of the past
that had no beginning and the future that has no end. When we do so in this
way, we have set ourselves in an Absolute Time Frame.
When we are in such a time frame, it
determines a way of thinking and talking that entails such sentences:
I shall love you forever.
My love is never ending.
I shall be with you till the end of time.
However, whilst these hyperboles have a
poetry about them they are UNREAL, because they are clearly
fantastic-to-reality. They are also statements that violate the Einsteinian
axiom:
All physics is local.
This means that what is realistic and
true-to-fact is what can be apprehended within a local time frame. Such a local
time frame has a name to it. It is known as a Lorentzian Time Frame.
It is the operation of the Lorentzian Time
Frame that determines our perception and out language. It is done in unique
ways, just as uniquely if one were in an Absolute Time Frame. Let us example
what we mean. We know that in the past, we have uttered such sentences that
index our perceptions that have come out of being in a Lorentzian Time Frame:
The earth is flat.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the
West.
We are at the centre of the Universe.
The earth is stationary.
All celestial objects orbit in perfect
circles
An object falls in a straight line.
Light travels in a straight line.
Time is invariant.
There is cause and there is effect.
In that other age, when we did perceive as
indexed above, and uttered the forms of language concordant with such
perceptions, we did so with congruent belief. People who did not agree,
sometimes lost their lives. Today, we now know that the earth is not flat. The
sun relative to us is stationary. We are located on the fringe on the fifth arm
of a spiral galaxy. Planetary orbits of the solar system are elliptical.
Objects do not fall straight line but along the track of their geodesic. Light
bends Time measured beyond the equator is slower. All relationships between
variables are not causal but functional as indexed in all mathematical
equations in high Physics.
Here we note that there is a natural trip
wire for our grasp of reality. It is our capacity for false beliefs a la Jim
Jones, David Koresh et alia. Thus, we all too easily tilt for that which is
unreal-to-fact, and inaccurate-to-fact. This is a fascinating ontological
phenomenon. Its consequences and ramifications in terms of aberrant behaviour
is stunning to the human mind.
It is in this context that the instrument
of Language can be the instrument to redress the situation - provided we have a
cogent and effective METALANGUAGE. The concept of the metalanguage was first
raised in the work Change by Watzlawick, Weakland and Fisch of the Mental
Research Institute in Palo Alto, California.
What these researchers were saying was
that to understand what another person is saying you would require a language
ABOUT language. Such a language is a METALANGUAGE. A metalanguage has the
ability to act as a decryption device by which you may then understand the
person is saying.
Yet the odd thing is that neither medical
students, physicians or Psychiatrists are taught the basic rudiments of
linguistics let alone a metalanguage. They know nothing about the very
instrument they use by which they hope to help those in difficulties. Can you
think of a Jumbo 747 pilot knowing NOTHING about the plane he is using to take
passenger from Toronto to Madrid.
Linguistics is a field like other
disciplines that has seen significant expansions in the last ten years. This is
especially so in the sub-speciality of Transformational Grammar.
Every child, who is a competent speaker in
a language, is capable of generating an indefinite number of different
sentences. How is this possible? One possibility is that the child memorized
ALL the possible sentences to say, in his language, in his life time, and for
all possible contexts. This was taught to him by his parents. This is clearly
not real as a possibility in actuality.
(A sentence:
In linguistics a sentence is known as a
TRANSFORM. This word is designated to sentences because every succeeding
sentence in a discourse or dialogue is defined as a transformation of its
predecessor. In turn, what linguists are now researching into are the rules of
grammar that determine such transformational processes. This. in turn, is at
the root of the field study of Transformation Grammar.)
What linguists say today, is that a child
is taught by implicate example the rules by which to transform on preceding
sentence to its succeeding one. Once he has this system of grammarian rules for
such transformations, he can generate any transform from a preceding one. This
would be by his choice and it would be to context.
It is the study and elucidation of these
rules that constitute the field of Transformation Grammar. In turn, it is clear
that Transformational Grammar is one of the critical variables of human
linguistic ontology. The father of this field of study is Noam Chomsky of
M.I.T. It is from Transformation Grammar that we now know what these critical
linguistic processes of :
Nominalization
Identification
Generalization
Substitution
and
Simplification
truly entail.
In this paper, sadly, we cannot deal with
all the above items. We can only deal with Nominalization.
Nominalization is the process that
converts a verb into a noun. We may abbreviate this as follows:
V ± N.
Thus, we can cite this list of examples:
V
to come or coming
to kill or killing
to die or dying
to eat or eating
to feel or feeling
feeling depressed or being depressed
feeling happy or being happy
N
advent
homicide
death
meal
kinaesthetics
depression
happiness
All the above nouns are the products of
nominalizations. By definition, they are linguistic artefact. As linguistic
artefact they, therefore, really have no actuality! As such, they are
unreal-to-fact.
What is real-to-actuality and is
accurate-to-fact is the VERB as it indexes what is the actual living
PROCESS-IN-EXPERIENCE.
The consequence of this is that in
psychiatry, it would be better for us to be sure what we are managing and
treating- the nominalization or verb, ie. the process. What we know is that the
entire tilt of psychiatric medicine is to treat the nominalization thus, we
apply anti-depressants for the nominalization Depression, tranquillizers for
the nominalization Anxiety, soporifics for the nominalization Insomnia and
anti-psychotics for Dementia Praecox. These drugs can determine the apparent
relief of such conditions. They are also known to be able to determine more
complex human behaviours. Thus, with Halcion, people have been known to find themselves
in airports thousands of miles from their home base with no awareness of how
they got there. However, every traveller knows that to do such a thing requires
complex decisions and complex actions. This speaks volumes about the sentient
power of Halcion.
It is the hallmark of all nominalizations
that none can be defined. In this respect we cite that famous nominalization-
LOVE. "Love" as a noun is a nominalization of the process verb
"to love," "loving" or "being in love" as a
nominalization it defies definition. In turn, the corollary is that there are
different definitions of it to the power of n and it is possible to write tomes
n on it.
However, the nature of the verb can be
culled by asking sensory based information about it. This we can do by apply
the current metalanguage that is available. Thus, we can exact the sensory
based information as to what the word Depression entails for Mr. A and Ms B.
and Mrs. C. We find that the sensory based information is unique and different
for each of these different people.
(Sensory based information:
For the nominalization, frustration, one
person will describe it as a band of tightness across his chest. For another,
the sensory based information is that it is experienced as a knot in the pit of
the epigastrium. Similarly there are many different types of sensory based
descriptions for the various nominalizations that appertain to ontological
aberrations.)
Thus sensory based description by people
for the nominalization "Depression." that they share is different.
These differences are, in our view, metaphors for critical differences in their
respective internal processes, and hence, physiologies. There can be little
wonder then that whilst Prozac may work for Mr. A' s "Depression," it
is completely ineffectual for Mrs. B's. However, Elavil is the wonder drug for
Mrs. B's "Depression" but hopeless for Ms. C's.
It is also known that clinicians really do
no have any objective criteria by which to determine which antidepressant to
use for a given case of "Depression". In our evaluation they never
will because the nominalization is indefinable. In turn objective criteria are
impossible.
We, therefore, conclude that this is the
most unscientific of all possible situations. The only way to redeem this
ill-formed situation is to detach from the nominalizations and approach the
whole issue from the point of view of what is real-to-fact and accurate-to-fact.
This is the verb, i.e., the process.
There was a time when the fashion was to
think of human sentiency in terms of the reflex arc as indexed below:
S ± R
where S=stimulus and R=reflex.
This ontological way to understand human
sentiency is NOT tenable now with the exception of the behavioural change of
the simple reflect arc as exampled by the knee jerk. It is not tenable because
we now know from the computer sciences, that the transition as represented by
" - " represent the transformations known as the internal
computations( I.C.) of the system.
What is true-to-fact from the human
modelling research by Artificial Intelligence is not S - R but:
I ± F
where I= Input, F=Feedback and - =
Internal Computations ( I.C.)
Here, for the first time, we can see very
sharply and clearly that human ontology is a function of internal computations
and NOT of labels we append to clusters of patient symptoms. It is for this
that there is nothing random about the phenomena of ontology. You just don't get
Depression, or a Panic State because of the genes or because of some chemical
or a chemical imbalance.
What does it mean to say that genes are
deterministic? Gail Fleischaker, a philosopher of science working in
collaboration with Margulis, points out that while it is common for biologists
to claim that genes are the ordering agent of the organism, that claim is
"altogether unwarranted." Changes in organisms can be correlated with
genetic changes, Fleschaker says, that only shows that the genetic changes can
affect or disrupt the operation of the organism's total system. It does not
show that genetic structures cause the system's operation or run it. No
molecule or type of molecule can be said to determine the order of the system.
John Brigs & David Peat: The Turbulent
Mirror Harper & Robe Publishers 1990 page 160.
Given that ontology is a function of our
I.C. i.e., our internal sentient processes it follows that if we are to
"cure" an ill-formed ontological condition, it is only possible if
we:
1. modify the variables within the syntax
of the I.C.
2. infract across the syntax that
determines form and manner of the I.C.
2. vitiate the meta-syntax that determines
the syntax for a given I.C.
This in turn means that we are to enquire
not only into what are the possible internal syntaxes that constitute all
possible internal computations but also an examination about what is the
sub-structure or implicate variables that determines which I.C. is to apply for
a given context.
We are now convinced that this implicate
variable is the cluster of semantic blueprints that each of us uses to
understand the world in which we live. We call these blueprints the Semantic
Paradigms. For convenience we just use the term Paradigms.
Reality is not given and our understanding
of it is not universally shared. In any context, there is no absolute
concordant commonality, between your understanding of a specific set of verbal
utterances and mine or with anyone else. Thus, for you "a stretch of blue
water" may mean the sun at dusk over an ocean. For me, it is about the
moon glittering over the waters of a lake at midnight. For you. "a fine
beautiful day" is a crisp clear winter's day. For me, it a day on Vulcan,
home of Mr. Spock of Star Trek.
Given this state of affairs, it is a
wonder how we manage to understand each other. There comes a time when this
takes on a very serious order of magnitude. It is when sums of money and
contracts are involved. Under such conditions, the terms of the contract, i.e.
the language, has to be very clear and every possible ambiguity is to be
discounted. This is possible if each transform fulfils what linguists term its
conditions of linguistic well-formedness. In turn, this is precisely what
linguists have determined is something that is barely possible to do.
We now know that how any of us understand
the reality in which we live is a function of the kind of blueprints of life
that we use to do so. These blueprints are termed semantic paradigms. These
paradigms are in the main not in conscious awareness. They are imprinted into
our being, i.e., our body language. There are, therefore, analogical
blueprints. For a given society, the following are the major paradigms:
The Human Body and the History of the
Race.
Transformational Grammar of the language
that a people use to think and speak with and the History of that language.
Culture and the History of the Culture
Religion and the History of the Religion
The Justice System and its History
Social System and the History of the
Social System
Politics and the History of the Politics
The above class of paradigms are
designated as the General Semantic Paradigms. They are termed
"general" because they are shared to a varying degree by all the
members of a homogenous group of people.
Group identity and the existence of a
group is a function of share General Semantic paradigms.
Additionally to the General Paradigms are
the Specific Paradigms. These are designated "specific" because they
are unique and hence specific to an individual. Such paradigms will determine
how a given person will understand the context that he is in and he will
accordingly be constrained to act in concordance with that understanding. Let
us cite some examples. A person may have this specific analogical paradigm -
What will people think of me? Such an imprint can be so compelling as to be the
condition of paralysis. Another may be, I must be sure that people do not think
I am a fool! This is quite different from the specific paradigm I must make
sure that I do not make a fool of myself. One fascinating one that we encountered
recently was in the form of this Virtual Question, What is the minimum I am to
do to get the minimum I need to survive? This eventual determined this
individual to be a liar, thief and a parasite in his life.
These semantic paradigms are not in dispersed
configuration. Human coherency and human consistency, well-formed or
ill-formed, good or evil, is a function of how these semantic paradigms are
welded together in a unity that is hierarchical. In turn, this hierarchy of the
general and specific paradigms are bonded together by a meta-paradigm. This
complex is known as the Hierarchy of Paradigms. (H.O.Ps.). (These propositions
were first delineated in the work Don't' Ask ?!).
The H.O.Ps. is the functional manifold of
human ontology.
From the input of Roland Roye Fraser of
Mystique, Connecticut, U.S.A., we now know that each semantic paradigm is spun
from its philosophy. Since the semantic paradigm is imprinted into the body
language, its concomitant philosophy is also not in conscious awareness. It is
for this that it is very difficult for a Roman Catholic or a Jew to answer the
question, "What is the philosophy of your religion." The philosophy
is virtual or implicate. Therefore, the formal manifold of human ontology is
the hierarchy of Virtual Philosophies (H.O.V.Ps.). This is the engine that
determines the structure of human subjective reality, the loom that weaves the
fabric of it and spins the web of a person's verities - that which he will kill
for or die for. As we have stated above, what we know is that at a pragmatic
level, what is functionally useful in addressing ontological anomalies is to do
so at the level of the H.O.Ps. The applied consequences of these proposition
were examined in the work Power and Elegance in Communication.
We now also know that a metalanguage is to
act as a decryption device for how the ontological manifold spins its language.
The first known metalanguage was The Meta Model. It is to be found in the work
The Structure of Magic by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. It was published in
1995. Today, we know that there are certain structural flaws to it. We have
since corrected these flaws and we have significantly expanded and augmented.
it into The Modified Meta Model. To this we have added these components:
Informal Logic
The No-Y-ian Model of Language
Calibration
Adumbration.
This composite complex is designated The
Gathering Information Module (G.I.M.). It is the definitive metalanguage.
It is the relationship between the H.O.Ps.
and the G.I.M. that is the basis for:
1. gathering information that is germane
and accurate-to-fact.
2. determining the actions to evince
second order change.
From the field of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming, from our personal work and those of others, we now know that
second order change in human ontology is possible. It is possible to do so in a
logical and consistent way. The methodology can be replicated. Thus, this found
its formal corroboration in the work The Knife Without Pain. This work maps out
the methodology to secure a surgical pain free state without chemical
anaesthetics. One only needs to secure a second order change in ontology.
This then brings us to the true domain of
what in our view Psychiatry is to be all about. It is to secure well-formed
human ontological change in an enduring and pervasive manner. It is, however,
an area that is dominated by various schools of psychotherapy. In our view, this
is not a well-formed state of affairs.
This, with the current corpus of
understanding about human ontology through the haze of linguistic
nominalizations of D.S.M. IV means that research in this area is crippled. If
we do not escape from this miasma, we will bend on our knees to drug companies
and their chemists for the wherewithal to manage and contain the conditions of
ontological anomalies.
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