BB
14-08-2006, 07:34 AM
After some of our recent discussions on the thread "Oh my God, I finally got it!" (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2529) I have been doing some thinking about expectations.
I was thinking about need states and expectations.
In the book, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by Ramachandran he talks about face blindness. It is a condition in which a person will, when they see their mother for example, they recognize that the person in front of them looks exactly like, sounds exactly like, dresses exactly like their mother, however will say that it must be an imposter. It is a condition in which a person loses the ability use emotion to mark context (I don't feel like I do when I see my mother).
The reason I bring up this example, is to make the point we must have explanations. In absence of normal function, an explanation will still be formed. "This must be an imposter, because they look and sound exactly like my mother, yet they are not." And, as is evident by the face blind, is not always reliable. I know this is a point that Barrett makes occasionally.
There is another example in Joseph Ledoux's book, The Emotional Brain regarding split brain patients.
In the other thread, I brought up the possibility of what I think may be 2 different need states (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1394) that we see in the clinic that can be blurred in our evolutionary need for social grooming. My suggestion is that we may be seeing a need state for pain, as well as a need state for social grooming. Satisfying one does not necesarily satisfy the other.
I quote Randy:
The distinctions between psychological, emotional and physiological needs aren't neatly compartmentalized as we might like them to be.
I take this to mean that regardless of what need states are present, people come in with expectations, period.
Since our brains seem to require explanations (as evident in the face blindness example), I'm wondering if expectations are an output of need states, placing them in a context that is accessible to our consciousness, in the same way that explanations fill this role. We don't have conscious awareness of the implicit workings of need states, but we do have awareness of thier consequences. I wonder if expectations are the consequence of need states. Think about how if you are hungry (a need state) you would expect to be satisfied if you ate.
Since we don't have conscious access to the inner, implicit workings of need states, all of our expectations are the explicit result of all our various need states, but we don't have the ability to know which expectation goes with which need state all of the time.
And if this process is occurring in the same way that we form explanations, it is unreliable (as in the face blindness example). So, our expectation is not a reliable guide to satisfying our need states. So, if someone expects that burying a rubber chicken in the backyard will cure their baldness, that doesn't mean that it will.
Finally my point:
We may not be able to distinguish what expectations coordinate with which need states, and our patients don't come in neatly compartmentalized. They present as a big ball of expectations, and that is all we have access to.
What makes it tricky for us Human Primate Social Groomers who are attempting to satisfy need states, is that we must also still satisfy those pesky expectations, even if they are unreliable.
So can we meet unreliable, unrealistic expectations and still fulfill the need state of pain?
Is our best bet to, instead of attempting to meet their expectations, attempt to elicit new ones, then meet those?
Or, is that being manipulative?
Sorry, way long post!
I was thinking about need states and expectations.
In the book, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by Ramachandran he talks about face blindness. It is a condition in which a person will, when they see their mother for example, they recognize that the person in front of them looks exactly like, sounds exactly like, dresses exactly like their mother, however will say that it must be an imposter. It is a condition in which a person loses the ability use emotion to mark context (I don't feel like I do when I see my mother).
The reason I bring up this example, is to make the point we must have explanations. In absence of normal function, an explanation will still be formed. "This must be an imposter, because they look and sound exactly like my mother, yet they are not." And, as is evident by the face blind, is not always reliable. I know this is a point that Barrett makes occasionally.
There is another example in Joseph Ledoux's book, The Emotional Brain regarding split brain patients.
In the other thread, I brought up the possibility of what I think may be 2 different need states (http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1394) that we see in the clinic that can be blurred in our evolutionary need for social grooming. My suggestion is that we may be seeing a need state for pain, as well as a need state for social grooming. Satisfying one does not necesarily satisfy the other.
I quote Randy:
The distinctions between psychological, emotional and physiological needs aren't neatly compartmentalized as we might like them to be.
I take this to mean that regardless of what need states are present, people come in with expectations, period.
Since our brains seem to require explanations (as evident in the face blindness example), I'm wondering if expectations are an output of need states, placing them in a context that is accessible to our consciousness, in the same way that explanations fill this role. We don't have conscious awareness of the implicit workings of need states, but we do have awareness of thier consequences. I wonder if expectations are the consequence of need states. Think about how if you are hungry (a need state) you would expect to be satisfied if you ate.
Since we don't have conscious access to the inner, implicit workings of need states, all of our expectations are the explicit result of all our various need states, but we don't have the ability to know which expectation goes with which need state all of the time.
And if this process is occurring in the same way that we form explanations, it is unreliable (as in the face blindness example). So, our expectation is not a reliable guide to satisfying our need states. So, if someone expects that burying a rubber chicken in the backyard will cure their baldness, that doesn't mean that it will.
Finally my point:
We may not be able to distinguish what expectations coordinate with which need states, and our patients don't come in neatly compartmentalized. They present as a big ball of expectations, and that is all we have access to.
What makes it tricky for us Human Primate Social Groomers who are attempting to satisfy need states, is that we must also still satisfy those pesky expectations, even if they are unreliable.
So can we meet unreliable, unrealistic expectations and still fulfill the need state of pain?
Is our best bet to, instead of attempting to meet their expectations, attempt to elicit new ones, then meet those?
Or, is that being manipulative?
Sorry, way long post!