The Psychologist As Systems Analyst

The Science of the Subjective

     Still you may object, "What of the human spirit, of will, of the soul, of consciousness?" These perhaps emerge transcendent from the workings of brain/mind. Perhaps we need to look elsewhere.

     The logical extension of the postulated Integration System is that consciousness resides in each living cell, not in a fancy brain. This does not solve the problem of consciousness, but reframes it as a fundamental aspect of life and indeed, perhaps of the universe.

     In this view, consciousness is the focal point for the structuring of reality, a sink or source depending on your frame of reference. From a subjective frame of reference, conscious entities are, therefore, defined by their ability to act on the universe, giving rise to a multideterministic causality (Sarmiento, 1972). That is, the universe is structured by multiple sources, namely the interaction of conscious entities.

     Another implication of this view is that the body ultimately runs the biocontroller, essentially making policy decisions. All the cells of the body perform a legislative function, while the brain is the executive branch. From this perspective, issues of will, choice and power are fundamental.

     This is germane in applications of psychology, because the psychologist usually has rather little power over others. In therapy, limited power is evident in the resistance clients show towards therapeutic change. One of the main tasks of the therapist is to sell the client on change. To do this is a matter of persuasion, not force.

     This amounts to determining the access codes for that person. The mind appears to have safeguards to software tampering tied to self‑preservation and self‑interest, fortunately. Similar problems arise in education, training, organizational development and other applications.

     It should be clear from this discussion that a logically consistent information processing approach does not have to adopt an objective frame of reference or strict determinism. Yet, that seems to be the assumption behind the objection that the cognitive approach is mechanistic.

     This confusion may arise from the mistaken identification of hard science with a deterministic causality, such as in Newtonian physics. Perhaps most psychologists are more familiar with this kind of science, less with quantum mechanics (Brant, 1973). The latter recognizes the role of the observer in making measurements, which introduces a fundamental uncertainty in our ability to understand reality.

     Unfortunately, psychologists seem to have largely ignored these developments until quite recently (Wolf, 1985; Marshall, 1989; Goswami, 1990). That is particularly ironic, since an understanding of the mind may well shed light on the nature of scientific theories. Many basic conceptual issues, such as causality and frames of reference, may have more to do with the way the mind works than anything intrinsic to the universe.

     In any event, rather than being a simple mechanistic view, conceiving of the psychologist as a systems analyst can actually highlight the role of will and freedom of choice. This paradigm can encompass the full spectrum of what it means to be human: to love, to laugh, to hunger, to suffer, to strive, to choose, to hope.

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