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BOOK REVIEWS
The War with Words: Structure and Transcendence, by Harley C. Shands, Mouton, The Hague and Paris, 1971, 128
pp. $9.50.
I can easily remember the time when I heard a lot of talk about finding a single, unified explanation for human behavior.
The "principle of parsimony" was held in great esteem during my undergraduate years (early sixties). It used to be put forth
as a strong point of psychoanalytic theory, one reason why the Freudian approach was preferable to other theories trying to
make their way at the time.
Now it seems that all the hopeful, singular explanations of human conduct have fallen into disrepute. We are
uncomfortable with reductionist arguments, and we are well aware that the positions taken by most behavioral scientists are
well-coached pledges of allegiance to notions well-anchored in sociohistorical time and place. A stance taken generally tells
us more about the vicissitudes of professional affiliation than about the behavior it purports to explain.
The problem with striving toward the principle of parsimony is that in seeking the simplest explanation for the most
human events, the competing views primarily challenge each other rather than examine their own epistemological
foundations. A look at the roots by an outsider is sufficient to be satisfied that growth will be limited.
Consequently, what we have witnessed in the recent past is not simply a change in the preference for theories of
explanation, but the realization that the most basic assumptions, the "root metaphors" of most early theoretical systems,
have been inadequate in the least, and disastrously erroneous in the extreme.
In our chagrin we have turned from constructing theories of immediate explanation to the development of
"meta-theories," or new dialects within which more delimited theoretical discourse can be spoken. The development of a
transactional view based upon a fascination with the process of communication is a leading example. To my mind, the two
figures who have given us most to think about, as we enter this new domain, are Gregory Bateson and Harley Shands.
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Shape
After introducing us to the problem, Shands unfolds a series of chapters, which culminate in an awesome exposition of
transcendental experience. Along the way he draws upon ideas and data from a variety of quarters, quoting split-brain
research and Emily Dickenson with equal ease. His material is arranged in such a way that apparently discrete bits of
information become amenable to an ordering in which we recognize the communalities and patternings that he sees. In
poetic fashion, his own literary style and logic of presentation reflect the structure of the natural events he explains.
The central and unifying concept throughout the book is that of shape. What Shands impresses upon us is that whether
we investigate the subject matter of physics or of the symbolic process, shape, or "pure shape" or form or pattern are
precisely what we are concerned withshape as abstracted, described, and serially metamorphosed. He writes comfortably
about physiology and symbolism in the same paragraph having realized that it is not the "object" with which science is
basically concerned, but the shape of objects as predictably described by verbal shapes (or by mathematical symbols),
which again are themselves shapes of line or shapes of breath.
Instead of two different universes, one characterized by introspectively experienced "feelings" and the other by
objectively describable "things," Shands works in one, dealing with significant form. Throughout the book this notion of
shape becomes the crucial determinant of "reality," whether "substantial" or "insubstantial."
One of my favorite examples conveying a sense of the way Shands calls attention to similarities and differences of shape
in distant quarters compares ideas with viruses:
The similarity of verbal code and biological code is thus apparent, but the difference is equally important. Because
the verbal code, translated into written form, can be both externalized and internalized through appropriate coding
and decoding operations, it appears to be independently "existent." In fact, the verbal code differs from the natural
code primarily in its susceptibility to consensual validation, not in its "independence." The analogy is perhaps most
clearly demonstrable in comparing the relation of a verbal code to its setting with that of a filterable virus to a cell.
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A virus is very nearly "pure code" in that its whole function is to assure its own reproduction. Under suitable
conditions, the virus molecule may be crystallized and storedin a bottle on the shelf, the virus is similar in some
of its potentialities to the legendary genii in oriental folklore. When the virus is liberated from its passive state and
enters a susceptible cell, it immediately takes over that cell's reproduction machinery for its own use. A parasite, the
virus becomes master in its new "home." In quite similar form, an idea or a system framed in a verbal code may
"exist" in stored form in a book on a shelf until it encounters a susceptible "host." The reader, taken over by the
message of the book, may turn himself into an evangelist dedicated to the dissemination of the message, to its
replication in a group of followers (22).
That viruses are "substantial" and ideas "insubstantial" makes no difference when we pay attention to form and process, and
to the informational impact resulting when a particular shape encounters a potentially receptive host.
Symbolic Operations
A number of additional themes and ideas can now be introduced. My aim is simply to provide some initial access to
Shands' intellectual universe. I must forewarn you that, although it is written in a clear and excellent style, this book is so
saturated with creative formulations rendered in an unfamiliar terminology that only a close, thoughtful reading from cover
to cover contains the promise of clear understanding.
Early in the book Shands introduces the paradox that life is a continuous process of movement, but that grasping it
requires stopping that movement through the application of verbal description. Central to his argument is that describing
never effectively grasps "reality," while the only reality we can grasp is through description. Here he clearly shares the point
of view identified with General Semantics in the tradition of Korzybski. "The map is not the territory," but all we have are
maps.
A complementary conception is that it is impossible to describe the circular patterning that defines behavior, or "being,"
because the nature of symbolic operations, that is, describing, is different from the nature of physiological operations. He
suggests that we are stuck but find it easier to distort observations so as to reinforce the notion of linearity implicit in the
linguistic method than to cope with the ambiguity implicit in circular physiological patterning. Observing this dilemma,
Shands remarks, "It takes a long time for human beings to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the linear mode." (33)
Here and elsewhere, we are struck by the similarities to the insights of Marshal McLuhan.
Communications Theory
Aspects of a theory of human communication can be found in several discussions throughout the book. In an early
chapter, Shands reviews analog and digital coding, describing how the two forms complement each other in a wide range of
communicative process, from the basis of neural transmission to the mental operations specified by Piaget. Later he moves
from the more technical concepts to a theory of the self based in the communicative process.
What is interesting about this book is that we find discussions here and there that call into mind such diverse sources as
general semantics, systems theory, McLuhan, Piaget, Goffman, and more; but Shands lends significance to familiar themes
through his own method. What we find is a variety of respectable ideas woven together in such novel fashion that we being
to see the outlines of a larger, intellectual system. (Is this the hazy outline of the "meta-discipline" concerned with
communication that Shands has talked about?) What grows steadily familiar is a "way of talking" or a "way of knowing"
that encompasses a good deal of what we have heard spoken before, in a variety of tongues.
Consensus
Shands is further preoccupied with the notion of consensus, and we find him emphasizing the requirements of achieving
and sustaining it as basic to the human condition. The shape-name complexes used in description are the distinct property
of the human access to reality. Signs and symbols represent abstract patterns that are communicable. They receive meaning
only in some group or community. The meaning of meaning is basically consensus.
Shands is concerned with this process in both kinds of groups under study: the social system as an organized human
group, and the symbolic system as an organized group of tokens. In comparing the two systems and describing their
interdependence, he says:
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Both groups are characterized by complex, highly integrated sets of rules: the human group demonstrates cultural
rules, the symbolic group demonstrates grammatical rules. Neither the symbol system nor the social system can
have meaning except in close association with the other systems, and both systems are constantly involved in
accommodative and assimilative processes through which they interpenetrate in integrative fashion (47).
Portable Reality
This enchantment with the interdependence of linguistic and social structures gives a new wrinkle to Bloch's "portable
reality" notion. In its original form this concept referred to human replicative capabilities. Under the heading of portable
realty, Bloch specifically dealt with the processes whereby persons modeled responses in new social settings that were of
the same experiential shape as those of earlier settings, particularly the family of origin. Extending the trend against the
early conceptions, which emphasized the "intrapsychic conflicts" and "traits" a person carries from setting to setting, Shands
suggests that what is portable are symbolic representations sustained by group consensus.
He explains that in animals, the significant context is a "territory." In human beings, because of symbolic operations, it
becomes possible to feel "in context" through purely symbolic maneuvers. The human context is transportable, even
internalizable to a remarkable degree.
Where the solid, obviously present earth gives to an animal a predictable, regular background upon which to carry
out his activities, in human beings much of the same regularity and predictability is made possible by symbolic
processes and social conventions (50).
The extent to which the human reality is both transportable and at the mercy of an exquisite kind of consensus,
reaffirmed or denied during each and every encounter, is nowhere better illustrated than in the work of Erving Goffman.
Like Goffman, Shands has great respect for the invisible power of mutually carried, repetitively enacted conventions and a
keen sense of the vulnerability of every individual to the ritual code.
While the symbolic method is portable, the "reality" it makes possible is reconstructed at every turn. This is so whether
we refer to relations between one another (in which our self-esteem can be shriveled up at the slightest glance) or to the
very basis of our identity. The "I" is inferred from the sequence in which we find it possible to communicate with past
occasions of acting and speaking. "Any memory is a communication to a current self from a putative self of a former time."
What persuades us of the existence of "I" is the unbroken series of such rememberings.
The question of memory then becomes subordinate to that of communication. Instead of the question, "How do we
remember past experience?" we can ask, "How do we communicate with a previous occasion of experiencing?" The
notion of a personal identity rests upon the conviction that the "person"whoever he may be, including the selfis
a sequence of experiences bound together by the conviction that the sequence involves sameness (86).
Mutual Inhabitance
In the first chapter, Shands states that, "The antithetical meaning of primal words is the basic paradoxical foundation of
the human condition." (20) For example, we say, human beings join with friends against a common enemybut we say
equally precisely that we fight with the enemy. Using words we convert the circular reality into a linear formulation; but no
sooner have we done so than we find words betraying us by converting the linear statement into verbal paradox. Thus we
must resolve and re-resolve paradoxes such as those of Zeno, and pseudo-problems such as the primacy of chicken or egg.
Exploring the portability issue a bit further, we find just this kind of slipperiness in the following statement by Shands,
identical to the central position taken by R. D. Laing: "At the point of sophisticated acculturation, we find then a central
paradox: the human being lives in a system which in an important sense lives only in him." (68)
It is indeed unfortunate that Shands does not develop this assertion further. For unlike Laing, who rejects the systems
terminology and gives emphasis to the "family" as one's idea of the family, Shands touches upon the point of
interpenetrating systems, emphasizing the linguistic-symbolic system itself as what "lives" inside us. The important
difference here is that Shands is talking about a more "content-free," internal system than is Laing. Although I like Laing's
idea that what we internalize are not "objects" but whole little "scenarios" involving ourselves and significant others, I like
even more Shands' idea that what we internalize are the rules for patterning our behavior with others in the first place,
permitting us to reconstruct reality wherever we employ the symbolic method.
I wish Shands had developed this idea further because it opens up the one area that has been most inadequately dealt
with in the theoretical formulations of human systems theory. As I see it, the central problem for the systems-ecological
approach today is that it has not made explicit an adequate model of the person. That is, it has not described the nature of its
elements or "constitutional determinants." When we look closely at the kinds of assumptions many systems theorists are
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Human Feeling
We can further elucidate how Shands uses language and consensus to make sense of what have been traditionally
considered "inner" processes by examining his treatment of feeling. In the characteristic style and pattern of his thought, the
following statement resounds like a cannon shot:
The point appearing time after time is that feeling as we use the term in any sophisticated sense is not a matter of
expression but rather a matter of training. The human being learns how to feel; the emotion is primarily
characterized by significance, not by relief (81).
Shands further notes that one develops human feeling in its mature form through a protracted history of intense
relatedness to a series of "preceptors," all of whom demonstrate a certain consistency in the way they "view the world,"
which means, essentially, "the kinds of feelings they have." This observation could not be more strategic to a view that has
been reformulating a conception of human feeling from the diverse writings of James, Dewey, Mead, Sapir, C. Wright Mills
and Piaget to the recent work of Richard Rabkin. Taking account of emotion and feeling in a transactional field, this
changing view emphasizes that the activity of feeling, like thought, undergoes a structuring and development within a
specific sociolinguistic context. When we say someone "expresses himself," we mean he is acting through language (with or
without words) and that this linguistic behavior must be approached, not by referring to private states "in" individuals, but
through observing both its personal and social functions.
Shands has now added to an additional dimension that rescues the study of feeling and motives from exclusive treatment
at the level either of "sociology" or "private states." With the recognition that the self is a symbolic construction, Shands
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emphasizes the point that the linguistic alternatives that become available to a person, that is, his "vocabulary of motives,"
or "dialect of feelings," serve not only as the coordinates and predictors of action within the significant group, but also
provide continually recurring options for the individual to reconstruct the meaning of events and maintain a balance of
order in his everyday life.
Bringing this conceptualization into the practical setting, one explanation for much of the personal misery we suffer, as
we are torn apart routinely by our daily experiences, rests on the fact that the "series of preceptors" referred to above share
increasingly less and less of a "common world view" with each other and with the human novice. The background of
consensus required to sustain a feeling of wholeness and unity has dwindled around us. We are left conflicted and
continually distracted, not only about who we are and how we relate to the world, but about the least minutia and trivia as
well.
We feel "together" and we feel peacefully free when we have the unnoticed conviction that our choices and daily
movements come from within rather than from some alien system of control imposed upon us. What this means for Shands
is that we share with the significant others in our lives the desire to be and to do what they would have us be and do. That
we can now seldom share such convictions with the extended groups around us is increasingly apparent.
A good illustration of the wreckage resulting from this deterioration of consensus is the rage expressed in David
Cooper's futile book, The Death of the Family. Here, the "common view" or "common tongue" among groups and between
generations can be seen to have been ripped asunder. It is clear that Cooper, and others for whom he speaks, feel victimized
by family and community efforts of "control." Cooper describes being pushed and pulled into molds alien to him. He has felt
forced to do violence unto himself in order to conform to the familial needs and expectations, which he ultimately disowns.
Where did the "him" now alien to his family come from?
What Cooper apparently does not see (or accept) is that his problem is primarily one of broken consensus and competing
instructions from the pluralistic groups in which he must move as a self-conscious "member" ofLord knows
whatModern Western Society. He seems to believe that, left to himself, he would unfold and develop into someone who
is already there, in some sense, within, ready to "be" if given a chance, but who is ultimately suppressed and contorted
through participation in a family.
Shands' book is an effective antidote to this kind of native, Rousseauian image of the nature of man. Rather than
characterize the self and human feeling as toothpaste, squeezing itself from a tube, Shands invites us to look at the
experience of self and personal conflict through an examination of the integration and behavior of the relevant,
socio-linguistically bound group. He gives us the outlines of a method more cordial toward natural history, building upon
what is unique about the human species.
The paradox evident in the pursuit of the comprehensive liberation of satori and similar states is the route of
discipline. To liberate oneself, one has to submit to ritual demands of the system in which he is working. The
freedom attained is not so much freedom of action as it is freedom from conflict and distraction (70).
Every system interested in indoctrinating novices or scholars in a meditative method uses verbal methodsa
feature in common through all variants of "higher learning." The goal of the meditational effort, however, is clearly
that of getting past the verbal process, moving through and beyond words to a conviction of a deeper, intense,
nonmediated communicative statea state of communion. The state achieved is transcendent, surpassing,
immediate. In another apparent contradiction, the religious and philosophical systems oriented toward transcendent
states universally emphasize discipline, often in a rigid, formal, ritual fashion (96).
Envoi
Finally, in a convincing and poetic close we discover that we have been led all the way to the attainment of transcendence
only to be told we can't have itat least not to keep. For the very achievement of a timeless present is not only difficult (if
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not impossible) to sustain physiologically, it is ultimately dysfunctional to both person and group. It seems that were it
possible to extend the period of ecstatic communion, the system itself would be seriously threatened:
The briefness of moments of communion is of importance, since such a state of so undifferentiated a peace threatens
the function of an information-processing apparatus. If there is no difference, there is no novelty, and thus no
information, so that a data-processing apparatus becomes functionless in principle. It is of considerable interest that
states of mystical, ecstatic, or orgastic intensity which uniformly convey a notion of merging or unification are
sharply limited in time. Further, since the moment of communion is so still, it is not possible to describe it while it is
taking place. The descriptions which we have are all descriptions retrospectively put down. The describing
resembles that of reporting a dream, looking backward through a rapidly closing porthole at a disappearing scene as
the ship speeds on its course (118).