[Neurons] 2011 Meta Reflections #55

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2011  #55

Nov. 28, 2011

 

This is a long article and will soon be

posted on  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

 

 

 

 

TWO MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 

 

 
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

 

 

"The two modes of consciousness, observer and participant, are very much
present in every part of science." (p. 95)   

William Byers (2011) Science and the Crisis of Uncertainty.

 

 

 

In NLP we recognize two modes of consciousness-two ways that you can view
something.  The traditional NLP words for this (which I dislike intensely
and do not use myself) are "associated" and "disassociated."1  So during my
research of cognitive thinking styles within the field of Cognitive
Psychology led us (myself and Bob Bodenhamer) to generate an encyclopedia of
60 Meta-Programs.  You can find that list in Figuring Out People (1997/
2005) where I rephrased these two modes of consciousness as inside the movie
and outside (Meta-Program #20).  Here I will introduce two additional terms.
These terms not only extends this distinction, they also enable us to work
with this critical distinction in a much more expansive way.

 

In practice, every situation comes with a point of view.  Whether an
observer or a participant, you always have a point of view.  In one mode of
consciousness, your perspective is that of being the subject of your
experience.  You are inside the representations that you have accessed
and/or created, and so emotionally you are fully associated into the
experience of your thoughts.  In the other mode of consciousness, your
perspective is that of viewing your experience as an object to your
awareness.  Now you have stepped out of the experience, out of being the
subject of the experience, and now the experience is an object to you that
you can observe, reflect on, and emotionally you can experience other
thoughts and emotions about that object.

 

This subject-object dynamic offers a more accurate vocabulary and also
describes a dialectic for how we mentally organize ourselves and the world.
In his book In Over Our Heads, Robert Kegan defines object and subject in
the subject-object relationship as follows:

Object: Those elements of your knowing or organizing that you can reflect
on, handle, look at, be responsible for, relate to each other, take control
of, internalize, assimilate, or otherwise operate on.

Subject: The elements of your knowing or organizing that you are identified
with, tied to, fused with, or embedded in.  You have objects, you are
subject.  You cannot be responsible for, in control of, or reflect upon that
which is subject.  Subject is immediate; object is mediate.  Subject is
ultimate or absolute; object is relative. (p. 32)

 

Figure 1

 

                        Inside - Subject
Outside - Object

                First level mode of consciousness.
Second level+n mode of consciousness.

                You are subject of your experience.
Your experience is an object to you.

                Your previous experience is the object of your next
experience.

 


                You emote (feel) the experience directly.             You
emote (feel) about the experience.

                Primary experience, inside it.
Secondary experience, outside it.

                Directly involved in experience.
Transcend experience to next level.

                Participant mode.
Observer mode.

 

 

What is especially valuable and insightful is that the dialectic movement
from subject to object describes how we develop mentally, emotionally,
socially, etc.  We always begin as subject, then develop the ability to step
back from that experience and reflexively realize that what we were subject
to is now an object of our perspective.  Each successive level of
development subsumes or encompasses the prior level.  In this way, that
which was subject becomes object to the next level.  All of this makes the
dialectic relationship between subject and object as transformative,
qualitative, and incorporative as you and I grow and develop.

 

 

The Step Back

The big NLP misunderstanding centers in labeling the meta-move as
"dissociation."  This is profoundly wrong on numerous accounts.  When you
step out of an experience, it does not mean that you have become
dissociated!  It does not mean that you are non-emotional.  It does not mean
that you are no longer able to feel something about the experience that you
are observing.  The move from being associated in an experience to the next
stage is one of being able now to reflect upon, observe, and treat the
associated experience as an object for a broader perspective.

 

Question: What do you feel when you step out of an experience?  Answer: What
you specifically feel depends.  It depends on the state that you step back
into!  There's a reason for this: You are always in some state.  True
enough, when you typically step back to "observation," the emotional affect
of that state is lessened and the quality of the state is more neutral.  But
not necessarily.  You could just as well step back into a state of
curiosity, fascination, intrigue, passion, excitement, etc.  For that
matter, you could step back into fear, anger, guilt, shame, regret and a
host of negative emotional feeling states.  The key is the state you step
into when you step back and out of your previous state to now experience the
first state through the lens and filters of the second.

 

Dichotomous or Dialectical?

Most people think about the choice between these two modes of consciousness
as an either-or choice.  Either you are inside your representations and
experience or you are outside.  One or the other.  You are perceiving from
the inside perspective or from the outside perspective.  I think that I can
safely say that most of us frame these perspectives in this dichotomous way.
But it does not have to be an either-or choice.

 

In fact, to move to a higher level of consciousness, and do so holistically,
you can do this in a dialectical way.

Take the inside perspective, and now holding on to that view, step out and
take the observer view, and holding that, you can step back in and see it
with that awareness in mind.

 

The inside experience view is the perspective that we commonly use in
everyday life.  We are participants-subjects-and so we adopt the participant
perspective.  People who do not do this typically have either tabooed their
emotions or experiences as they seek to avoid their emotions or they have
adopted the scientific perspective to such a degree, that they have
habituated the observer perspective and now simply lack flexibility.

 

The outside view is the one that classic science has adopted, practiced, and
developed to a high level which has enabled us to create sciences apart from
our biases and beliefs.  It has enabled us to truly observe using a general
commitment to what is true without any specific commitment to a particular
creed.  Obviously both of these are equally valuable and valid.  Not only do
each offer a very different view of reality, life, and experiences, each
also is inadequate if used by itself.   For a holistic perspective, we need
both.  Yet this is not easy.  William Byers in Science and the Crisis of
Uncertainty writes:

"It is intrinsically difficult to simultaneously adopt the position of
observer and participant." (2011, p. 95)

 

Levels of Development:  From Subject to Object to Subject to Object

Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan (1982) Evolving Self, uses these two
modes of consciousness to describe the process of human development as we
actualize more and more of our human potentials.  He uses it to describe the
levels of growth that we all go through from infancy to maturity.

 

As a result he has identified levels of development using the ongoing shift
from subject to object.  That is, we grow, develop, and actualize our next
level of development by continually transcending from subject to observer.

>From fully participating and experiencing a level of being subject to a

process, we rise up and include that within a new larger perspective of
observing.  

 

This is meta-stating.  First you accept and welcome and participate fully in
an experience- you are subject of the experience.  Then when you are ready,
you step up to become aware of your participation, you make the experience
an object to you.  You transcend and include the participation experience
inside a broader perspective so that you can simultaneously recognize and
observe that experience.

 

Kegan uses these subject-object relations to define the process of
development that we all go through.  In this dialectic, we experience a
succession of qualitative differentiations of self as we transcend our
present world to the next higher world of consciousness.  As we are embedded
in one world, we are subject and participant.  Then we rise up from the
embedment so that we can truly and cleanly observe that world.  Now we can
hold two views simultaneously.  It is like being born into a new world.  You
experience what you were subject to as a qualitatively more extensive
object.  Each is a successive triumph of "relationship to" rather than
"embeddedness in."

 

Subject-> Object Development

The Incorporation Self Stage:  At birth when it all begins, we are all
subject, there is no object.  At birth, a baby is his or her experience, is
subject to life and life's experiences.  And that's all there is.  There is
no "self" that is distinct from one's subjective experience.  There is no
differentiation, not even of one's body.  From birth to one year old, prior
to the develop of the brain's ability for "constancy of representation," it
is all sensory-motor experience.  The baby is fully incorporated in
experience- the baby is the subject of experiences.

 

The Impulsive Self Stage: Differentiation begins in earnest around the first
year, the infant is in the impulsive stage of being a subject in an object
world.  It is here that the birth of self, of "I" as an object occurs.  For
the infant, perception is reality, map is the territory.  The infant is a
subject of his or her impulses, there's no "I" who can "have" the impulses.
Impulses have the infant.  In this stage, the infant projects out onto the
world his or her perceptions and impulses.  This is the foundation of
mind-reading.

 

The Imperial Self Stage: Around the age of two comes the Imperial Self.  Now
the world becomes an object to the child's perceptions and reasoning.  Now
the child perceives a permanence to the world, a permanence that transcends
perceptions.  No longer is something that is "out of sight, out of mind."
When an object is presented, the infant will keep searching for an object
even when hidden or out of sight.  Yet at this stage, the infant is still
embedded in the world and a subject of it.

 

The Interpersonal Self Stage: As a child grows, the child slowly becomes
aware that his or her perceptions are just that-perceptions.  This evokes
the next level transcendence as these perceptions now become an object to
the child.  The child realizes that others also have perceptions and they
may be different from his.  This initiates the interpersonal stage.  The
child is no longer a subject of perceptions, but as he or she transcends the
perceptions they become objects to observe.

 

The Institutional Self Stage: From the interpersonal the next dimension is
that of "institutions"- families, schools, government, etc.  The child now
realizes that there's a larger world beyond the house.  So, no longer the
subject of the Interpersonal, the interpersonal now becomes an object.

 

The Inter-Individual Self Stage: With this next stage, the institutions
become an object to observe.  This allows for us to become aware of and
critical of the institutions we have been subject to.  Now there's the very
real possibility of transcending our culture and becoming a citizen of the
world.

 

With the emergence of each new level, we experience ourselves more and more
fully.  With each level acquired, a new self emerges, there is a new
expansion beyond the former subjective view of self and world.   Yet the
former stage is not repudiated, it is re-appropriated.  It is seen in a new
light and so becomes different as you move to the next level of
independence.   Every time you transcend a given subject-level, you create a
new object level.  This re-embeds you into a new perspective.  As your
perspective grows, changes, you see more, and there is more.  Your world
becomes larger and richer.

 

How do you "know" yourself at each stage of your self development?  At each
level you transform your epistemology.  You liberate yourself from that in
which you are embedded.  You make what was subject into object so that you
can "have" it rather that "be had" by it.  Kegan comments, "This is the most
powerful way I know to conceptualize the growth of the mind."

 

What happens to your values as you transcend one subject-level and include
it into the next level?  Answer: Your values expand.  You begin to see what
it valuable and important from a higher perspective.  And you are able to
observe your values rather than merely be subject to them.  This means you
are now able to subordinate and regulate your values and ideals.  You can
now relate to your values and ideals as objects rather than the subject of
your knowing which poses the danger of being a fanatic.  You can now make
your beliefs and ideology explicit.  Each level reflects a distinct order of
consciousness as you enter into different relationships between what is
subject and what is object in your way of knowing. 

 

Participant Subject and Observer Object

Your two modes of consciousness then are the participating mode and your
observing mode.  Kegan says that he finds it interesting that the positions
of observer (object) and participant (subject) are not symmetrical.  So
while you can observe your state as a participant, but you cannot
participate in your observation.

            1) You can be a participant.

            2) You can observe (be aware of) yourself as participant.

            3) You can observe your observation of yourself as participant.

4) And so on.

 

The participant level is unique in that here you are active and involved-
you are participating.  Yet it is not iterative.  You cannot meta-state it.
You cannot be active about being active, participating about participating.
Yet when you transcend from embedded within an experience as subject to
observing the subject as an object, you can iterate that.  And you can do so
level after level after level.  So while the experience of participation
stands alone, observation can be iterated.  For me this explains much of the
NLP confusion between these two states or experiences.

"This makes the former unitary and foundational, whereas the latter is
intrinsically bifurcated and therefore capable of a kind of infinite
refinement." (In Over Our Heads, p. 99)

 

In other words, participating as subject to an experience is foundational.
In Neuro-Semantics we say that you ground your state as you fully associate
into the experience and are subject to it.  Then upon that foundation, you
can keep qualifying it layer upon layer as you meta-state it, that is, as
you step aside from it to observe it as an object of your perception.

 

The Observer Mode of Consciousness 

The observer mode occurs when you step back from life and your experiences
and you adopt a more "objective" point of view.  The term "objective" has
two meanings.  One, objective means "not subject to personal feelings or
opinions" and the other is that objective is "not depend on the mind for
existence."  In the first sense, you have an objective perspective if you
are not using your present feelings and opinions to understand.  In the
second sense, you are being objective if your observations and reports are
independent of needing a human mind to acknowledge or interpret it, but that
it can be recorded by a machine or indicator of some sort.  

 

The philosophy of science operates from the point of view of an observer.
What science (traditional science) typically does not do, and mostly seeks
to avoid, according to William Byers, is to include the self-consciousness
of the observer in a description of science.  Why?  Because that creates
layers of complexity.  That's why we create double-blind studies and do
everything we can so that a participant in an experiment doesn't know what
the experiment is about or what the experimenter is seeking to discover.  If
he knows, his knowing messes it up.

 

The Participant Mode of Consciousness 

By way of contrast, you live your everyday life as a subject.  In everyday
life you are on the inside of your experiences.  You are the subject of your
experiences and so your perspective is one wherein you are subject to
something as up participate in something.  Then, from your subjectivity you
reach out to embrace the objective world.

 

Quantitative science goes in the opposite direction.  It brings the outside
world into your subjective comprehension.  Now classical science focuses on
operating from an observation state and so seeks to be "objective."  It
seeks to avoid any hint of the participatory mode of consciousness.  Yet to
truly and fully succeed in science, our science must be written from both
the inside and the outside of an subject.  It must include both quantitative
and qualitative research processes.  "It is intrinsically difficult to
simultaneously adopt the position of observer and participant." (p. 95).
And, in the end, creativity is a function of both modes of consciousness.

 

Wrapping Up

Subject-object theory does much more.  Kegan says subject-object is a
"constructive-developmental" approach to human experience (p. 199).  As a
theory, it brings together two powerful lines of intellectual discourse that
have influenced the field of psychology and nearly every corner of
intellectual life.  These two lines of thought are constructivism, the idea
that people or systems constitute or construct reality and developmentalism,
the idea that people or organic systems evolve through qualitatively
different eras of increasing complexity according to regular principles of
stability and change.

 

The relations between subject-object explicates the clumsy expression in NLP
between associated and dissociated.  The description maps out human
development and especially identity development as well as epistemological
development.  It offers yet another view of grounding as a subject and
transcending to include the subject in a new and higher object identifies
how the levels of perceptual positions work in NLP.

 

 

Note References 

1. I've written about the unfortunate use of the term dissociation numerous
times.

 

MovieMind (2002, page 129): [In psychiatric terms, this is often called
"dissociation."  We dis-associate from our normal and typical thoughts and
feelings ... due to the unpleasantness or pain of such.  If we do this
around our sense of identity, we create a dissociative identity
disordering.]

When we step out from a painful memory, we frequently turn on a movie that
psychiatrists call "Dissociation."   They think it's a bad movie.  They even
list it as a "personality disorder" in their bible that records all of the
ways to get messed up (the  DSM-IV).  They assume that when you step out,
you have to forever stay out of all emotions. Foolish doctors.     

Dissociating, or stepping out, from an ugly memory enables you to not signal
and therefore not process all of the body sensations with the corresponding
emotions of the memory.  You can see and hear the information while
maintaining a calm, mindful, resourceful perspective.  And that, in a
nutshell, is the structure of the way to resolve or cure a phobia.  To do
this we operate from the radical idea of accessing our best resources when
we deal with the information that involves thinking about horrible things
without confusing those thoughts with the reality of being there.  We can
just think about them.  And we can do such thinking from a state of
resourcefulness-   with courage, confidence, esteem, calmness, etc.

     

Meta-States (2007, p. 240):  In Neuro-Semantics we describe this as stepping
back or stepping aside from an experience, and do not use the term
"dissociate" or "dissociative."  The idea of dissociation was another design
flaw in traditional NLP.  Neither Richard Bandler nor John Grinder were
therapists or psychologists and so they were not aware of the error of
describing this as "dissociation."

Actually, the term "dissociate" is just a metaphorical and conceptual way of
speaking.  We do not do this literally-we do not literally step out of our
bodies.  There is no actual dis-embodiment!  In using the term
"dissociation" we refer to the felt sense of no longer being inside a
painful memory.  Yet we are still inside of our bodies when we experience
this feeling of "dissociation."  I mention this due to some of the
over-literalization that some theorists, psychologists, and NLP
practitioners have fallen victim to assuming that the "dissociation" label
is the territory or at least describes a real thing.  It's just a way of
talking about a shift in feeling.

Here's another NLP myth.  Moving to a meta-level this does not equate to
being "dissociated."  Actually, many higher meta-states, far from being
bereft of feeling, involve even more feelings-joyful learning, excitement
about falling in love, anticipation of feeling confident, etc.  We often
experience more emotion when we move to meta-levels.  Consider the negative
meta-states of self-contempting, self-despising, unforgiveness, and
personalizing and the intensity of emotion these involve.


Associating and dissociating are relative terms.  They speak about stepping
into an experience and stepping out of another.  In fact, every time we
associate into one state, we thereby "dissociate" from another.  And every
"dissociation" implies an "association."

 

2. Object/ objective: the root of "object" ject refers to a motion, to
throwing, hence "thrown from, thrown away from."  An object is some motion
which has made separate or distinct from something else. 

 


 

Book References:

Byers, William. (2011).  The Blind Spot: Science and the Crisis of
Uncertainty.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 

 

Kegan, Robert. (1994).  In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern
Life.  London/ Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Kegan, Robert. (1982).  The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human
Development.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

 

Author: L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. is a psychologist, trained and educated in
the Cognitive Behavioral models but now focusing on modeling and expanding
the Self-Actualization Psychology models.  An NLP Trainer and contributor,
developer of Neuro-Semantics, prolific author of 41 NLP books.

 

 

 




 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                             ----
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

1 970-523-7877                                               ----
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

 

     

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Reflection articles by Dr. Hall are sent out every Monday (Colorado time).
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Wednesdays.   Contact Dr. Hall at  meta at acsol.net  

 

 

 

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