States of Consciousness
Charles T. Tart
9. Individual Differences
Inadequate recognition of individual differences is a methodological
deficiency that has seriously slowed psychological research. Lip
service is paid to individual differences, but in reality they
are largely ignored. Psychologists, caught up in the all-too-human
struggle for prestige, ape the methods of the physical sciences,
in which individual differences are not of great significance
and the search is for general fundamental laws. I believe this
failure to recognize individual differences is the rock on which
psychology's early attempts to establish itself as an introspective
discipline foundered. Following the lead of the tremendously successful
physical scientists, the early psychologists searched for general
laws of the mind, and when their data turned out to be contradictory,
they quarreled with each other over who was right, not realizing
they were all right, and so wasted their energies. They tried
to abstract too much too soon before coming to terms with the
experiential subject matter.
Figure
9-1. Problems arising when individual differences are ignored.
Charts A, B, and C are experiential mappings of the sort done
in Figure 5-1. The other two charts are summary charts, as explained
in the text.
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We psychologists all too often do the same thing today, albeit
in a more sophisticated form. Consider, for example, the procedure
described in Chapter 5 for mapping a person's location in experiential
space. Suppose that in the course of an experiment we measure
two variables, X and Y, in a group of subjects. To concretize
the example, we can define X as the degree of analgesia (insensitivity
to pain) the subject can show and Y as the intensity of the subject's
imagery. Tempted by the convenience and "scientificness"
of a nearby computer, we feed our group data in a prepackaged
analysis program and get the printout in the lower
chart of Figure 9-1—a straight line fitted to the data and indicating
a highly significant (thus publishable) correlation coefficient
between variables X and Y. It looks as if ability to experience
analgesia is linearly related to intensity of imagery, that in
this region of experiential space there is a straight-road connection:
if you do whatever is needed to enhance imagery, you automatically
increase analgesia.
If we distrust such great abstraction of the data, we can ask
the computer to print out a scatter plot of the raw data, the
actual position of each subject instead of the abstraction for
all subjects. This new printout (lower left-hand chart of Figure
9-1) apparently reassures us that the fitted curve and correlation
coefficient are adequate ways of presenting and understanding
our results. The straight road is somewhat broad, but still basically
straight. More imagery goes with more analgesia.
We have extracted a principle (more imagery leads to more analgesia)
from group data that is based on one pair of observations from
each subject. Suppose, however, that we actually go back to our
subjects and test some of them repeatedly, obtain samples over
time, an experiential mapping, of their simultaneous abilities
to experience analgesia and imagery. Then we find that our subjects
actually fall into three distinct types, as shown in the upper
charts of Figure 9-1. Type A shows either a low degree of both
analgesia and imagery or a fair degree of analgesia and imagery,
but no other combinations. Type B shows a low to fair degree of
analgesia and imagery or a very high degree of analgesia and imagery,
but no other combinations. Type C shows a high variability of
degree of analgesia and imagery, a much wider range of combinations.
For subjects of type C, the conclusion, drawn from the group
data, of a linear relationship between intensity of imagery and
intensity of analgesia, is valid. But how many type C subjects
are included in our group? Subjects of types A and B, on the other
hand, do not show a linear relationship between analgesia
and imagery. There is no straight road, only some islands of experience.
For type A subjects, analgesia and imagery cluster together at
low levels or at moderate levels of functioning, but show no clear
linear relationship within either cluster. For type B subjects,
analgesia and imagery cluster at low to moderate or at very high
levels, and again show no clear linear relationship within either
clustering. Indeed, subjects of types A and B show the clustering
used in Chapter 5 to define the concept of multiple d-SoCs, while
subjects of type C seem to function in only a single d-SoC.
Thus the conclusion drawn from the grouped data about relations
between analgesia and imagery in this region of experiential space
turns out to apply only to some people and to misrepresent what
others experience. Indeed, the error may be more profound: people
may be only of the A and B types, but combining their results
as subjects when some are in one part of experiential space and
some in another gives us a set of numbers that spans the whole
range. This leads us to the straight-road or linear relationship
concept, even though that concept actually represents no one's
experience.
It is hard to realize the full impact of individual differences
because of the deep implicitness of the assumption that we all
share a common d-SoC. Since we are members of a common culture,
this is generally true, but the more I come to know other
individuals and get a feeling for the way their minds work, the
more I am convinced that this general truth, the label ordinary
d-SoC, conceals enormous individual differences. If I clearly
understood the way your mind works in its ordinary d-SoC, and
if you understood the same about me, we would both be amazed.
Yet because we speak a common language, which stresses external
rather than internal events, we are seldom aware of these differences.
Psychologically, each of us assumes that his own mind is an
example of a "normal" mind and then projects his own
experiences onto other people, unaware of how much projecting
he is doing. For example, most of us have imagery in our ordinary
d-SoC that is unstable and not very vivid, so that trying to visualize
something really steadily and intensely is impossible. Some people
report that in d-ASCs their imagery is much more intense and controllable,
steady. Yet the inventor Nikolai Tesla had such intense, controllable
imagery in his ordinary d-SoC. When Tesla designed a machine,
he did it in his head, without using physical drawings: nevertheless,
he could instruct a dozen difference machinists how to make each
separate part, to the nearest ten-thousandth of an inch, and the
completed machine would fit together perfectly. Tesla is also
reported to have tested wear on his machines through imagery.
He designed the machine by visualization, put the imaged parts
together into a complete machine, started it running in his mind,
forgot about it, resurrected the image thousands of hours later,
mentally dismantled the machine, and inspected the parts for wear
to see what needed reinforcement of redesign {43}. Regardless
of how one evaluate the accuracy of such imagery, Tesla's procedure
is a good example of what for most of us is exotic imagery associated
with d-ASCs, but what was for him the imagery of his "ordinary"
d-SoC.
On those occasions when we do recognize great differences in
the mental functioning of others, we are tempted to label the
differences weird or abnormal of pathological. Such blanket labels
are not useful. What are the specific advantages and disadvantages
under what circumstances for each individual difference of pattern?
This tendency to project implicitly the workings of one's own
mind pattern as a standard for the working of all minds can have
interesting scientific results. For example, controversy rages
in the literature on hypnosis over whether the concept of a d-SoC
is necessary to explain hypnosis, or whether the hypnotic "state"
is in fact continuous with the ordinary "state," is
simply a case of certain psychological functions, such as suggestibility
and role-playing involvement, being pushed to higher levels of
activity than they are under ordinary conditions. A chief proponent
of this latter view, Theodore X. Barber {4}, can produce most
of the classical hypnotic phenomena in himself without doing anything
special.[1] The phenomena
included in his ordinary d-SoC encompass a range that, for another
person, must be attained by unusual means. How much does this
affect his theorizing? How much does anyone's individual psychology
affect his thinking about how other minds work? Again consider
Figure 9-1. Whereas A and B type people may have two d-SoCs, one
that we call their ordinary d-SoC and a second called their hypnotic
state, the ordinary range of consciousness of type C people includes
both these regions. Thus it may be more accurate to say that what
as been called hypnosis, to stick with this example, is indeed
merely an extension of the ordinary range of functioning for some
people, but for other people it is d-ASC.
I cannot emphasize too strongly that the mapping of experience
and the use of the concept of d-SoCs must first be done on
an individual basis. Only then, if regions of great
similarity are found to exist across individuals, can common names
that apply across individuals be legitimately coined.
This idealistic statement does not reflect the way our concepts
actually evolved. The very existence of names like dreaming state
or hypnotic state indicates that there appears to a fair degree
of commonality among a fair number of individuals. Though I often
speak as if this commonality were true, its veracity cannot be
precisely evaluated at the present stage of our knowledge, and
the concept is clearly misleading at times. Several d-ASCs may
be hidden within common names like hypnosis or dreaming.
In addition to the large individual differences that may exist
among people we think are all in the same d-SoC, there are sit
from one d-SoC to another. In discussing stabilization processes,
I mentioned that some people seem overstabilized and others understabilized.
The former may be able to experience only a few d-SoCs, while
the latter may transit often and effortlessly into d-ASCs. Understabilized
people may undergo breakdown of the ordinary d-SoC and be unable
to form a new d-ASC, unable to organize consciousness into a stable
coping form. Some types of schizophrenia may represent this understabilized
mode of consciousness.
Besides the sheer number of simultaneous and reinforcing stabilization
processes, the degree of voluntary control over them is important.
To the extent that your stabilization processes are too powerful
or too implicit to be altered at will, you are stuck in one mode
of consciousness. These dimensions of stabilization, control,
and ability to transit from one d-SoC to another are important
ones that must be the focus of future research, as we know almost
nothing about them now.
Footnote
[1] As discussed in Chapter 12, some individuals may transit so
rapidly and easily between d-SoCs that they do not notice the
transitions and so mistakenly believe they experience only one
d-SoC. This case is ordinarily difficult to distinguish from that
of actual continuity through a wide region of experiential space.
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