Dennis K. Chong and Jennifer K. Smith Chong^©

In this paper, the male pronoun will apply either gender. The nominal pronoun will apply to the first author. The plural pronoun will apply to both authors.

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. As a study, it was within their philosophical sub-domain of Metaphysics. 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 human ontology.

At its core, Ontology is concerned with

1. the exploration and the discovery of the nature of the elements or variables that are the condition for a given ontology to exist in a given context. Thus, what must exist for a person to go into panic.

2. the elucidation of the relationship between theses elements and how this relationship constitutes the syntax or governance to determine what a given ontology is to be. Such relationships constitute the operant syntaxes that determine the structure of being. There is a presupposition these syntaxes are constant. How is it every time, with one look from a parent a child or even an adult appears totally demolished.

3. the nature and structure of the conditions that must exist for any determining ontological syntax to, in turn, exist and operate. This is what we call the meta-syntax. How is it possible for one person not the grieve the death of his mother and yet others are crying their hearts out?

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. Here it is possible to demonstrate the famous FIVE MINUTE PHOBIA CURE that came out of the discipline of Neuro-Linguistic Programming or the FIVE MINUTE STUTTERING CURE that came out of Neuro-Semantic Programming or the SEVEN DAY CURE for nail biting. (Nail biting is of course an example of an Obsessive Compulsive disorder.)

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. Sentient processes determine human semantics. These 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 tranquilizers. 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 Nominlaization. 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:

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, tranquilizers 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 " => " represents 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.
3. 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.
Religion and the History of the Religion
Social System and the History of the Social System.

Culture and the History of the Culture
Transformational Grammar

The Justice System and its History
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.

Bibliography

Noam Chomsky: Aspect of Syntax M.I.T. Press 1976
Noam Chomsky: Syntactic Structures Mouton and Co. Publishers 1975
Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Chong: Don't Ask WHY?! C-Jade Publications Inc. 1991
Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Chong: Power and Elegance in Communications C-Jade Publications Inc. 1993
Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Chong: The Knife Without Pain C-Jade Publications Inc. 1994
Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co. 1980
Ronald Langacker: Language and its Structure Harcourt Brace and World Inc. 1968
John R. Searle: Speech Acts Cambridge University Press 1980
Benjamin Lee Whorf: Language Thought and Reality M.I.T. Press 1979
Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland and Richard Fisch: Change W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. 1974