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Copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999 The Places Wherein You Live Your Life and the Routes You Regularly Take The way Degrees of Structure in your ‘places’

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Presentation on theme: "Copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999 The Places Wherein You Live Your Life and the Routes You Regularly Take The way Degrees of Structure in your ‘places’"— Presentation transcript:

1 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
The Places Wherein You Live Your Life and the Routes You Regularly Take The way Degrees of Structure in your ‘places’ effect your behavior. How your family effects your life. How your work and work place effects your life. How your forms and places of recreation and social affiliations effect your life. What kind of impact those public and private agencies and organizations with which you may be involved effect your life. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

2 Exercise Instructions
On some of the following pages the ideas are expressed as questions. Include the Slide number at the top of your response. You may also want to put your own address in the “To:” section so you retain a copy of your response for yourself. Instead of just reading, you are asked to be brutally honest with yourself, search your memory and your ‘soul’ and try to answer the questions on that page. When you click the hyperlink, you are taken to an new message to me. Put your answers on this . You can arrange the questions and the as two resized windows so as to keep track of the questions as you answer them. These should be extremely thought provoking and difficult exercises and should take a considerable amount of time. This is the only way to receive the full benefit from the messages entailed in each section. You may keep my address on the and add yours to retain a copy for yourself, or just address the to either just yourself or just me. If you want to use these lessons to help you change your life and life style, the next step would be to set a plan for yourself to enact whatever the message of the lesson and the insights you derive from your answers in your real life. Experimenting to see the consequences of altering your patterns should prove to be beneficial. Provide your responses to these questions by clicking here. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

3 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
The Topology of Life Examining the “Places” of Your Life and Their Relation to Your Therapy and Self Enhancement Success in psychotherapy or in attempting modern psychological self enhancement training depends upon addressing multi-level and multi-dimensional issues as integrated networks of causes and forces maintaining ineffective life patterns, the whole of which requires alteration. The places we live in and through and the components and characteristics of those places play an over-arching role in shaping and maintaining our personalities. Altering the topographical features of your life is of unequivocal importance if you are to change and enhance your life. The Natural Systems approach has demonstrated that profound and enduring positive changes can take place in a well-structured institutional environment that calls out positive behaviors and shapes the individual’s personality toward maturity and strong character along with self acceptance and a sense of self worth and self esteem. For psychotherapy, in the unstructured, free environment, to get the same results, it must find a way to assist the client to address these same issues even while the client is living in an uncontrolled, unstructured environment that is persistently geared to reinforce the person’s habitual self defeating patterns. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

4 Constraints on Patterns Within the Topology of a Life
Society has predefined domains which all citizens are required to enter and be subject to if they are to survive in this culture. Within each domain there are preferred routes and less preferred, alternate routes which people can choose, be chosen for, or restricted to. Within each alternative route there are variant paths. Once a person enters a particular route and path, they tend to remain within them with only slight deviations within the fixed route and path being possible or permitted. Complex networks of expectations are imposed by roles and relationships within the routes and paths that restrict change and constrain people’s patterns within relatively fixed parameters. This phenomenon holds true whether the person’s pattern is considered positive or negative for themselves, by themselves, or by people in the complex network of expectations. Work Domain Approved Route Alternative Route Alternate Route Paths Patterns Paths Family Domain Point of origin Family Paths – Next Generation Topology and Life Patterns Recreation Social Domain Approved Route Alternate Route Paths Patterns Public/Private Institutions Domain Approved Route Alternate Route Paths Patterns 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

5 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Exploring the Routes and Paths of Your Life As Determined by the Conditions of Your Origin Within the Four Major Domains of Life Ask yourself to recall critical aspects of your early life. How did these aspects determine where you could or would not go and with whom you could or would not associate. What doors were closed to you? What doors were you restricted to? How did these aspects affect your interests and goals? What was your family’s station in life? How did this define or restrict your own station in life? How did this open and close doors? How did this funnel the direction of your life? How did it funnel your selection of friends? Of intimate relationships? Of possible careers and ambitions? Of types of entertainment and recreation? Did your family’s station in life define borders in society you were not supposed to cross and borders you were to stay within? Did this affect with whom you would speak? How you would speak? How you would express your emotions, your desires? Have these early parameters continued to shape the direction of your life and your behavior? If you contemplate breaking out of these parameters and restrictions, how does it make you feel? Did any unusual events or factors in your early life serve to alter these early routes and paths? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

6 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
The Effects Of Degrees Of Structure On The Degree And Type Of Freedom Of Expression HI Structure With Rigid Restrictions Work/ Service & Control Results in MED Structure With Positive Avenues Rec. & Social Org. Increasing structure Home Alone LO Structure Uninhibited Behavior: Private Person Dominant, Repressions surface Channeled Behavior: Adjusting, Acquiring New Behavior Patterns and Personality Repressed Behavior - Public Persona Dominant:. Tension,- Restraint of Fantasies, Anger, Depression, Impulsivity and Compulsivity Psychotherapy takes place with a single individual for one hour a week. For the rest of the week, the client is subjected to the influence of pressures to maintain their status quo from: Structured domains that exert an overwhelmingly powerful tendency to maintain the client’s personality and behavior at its the status quo and resists attempts to make positive changes. Structured domains include a myriad of trigger situations that elicit deeply rooted emotional reactions and habit patterns with long and entrenched histories, some dating as far back as their early childhood, which have to be suppressed. Unstructured domains in which the client is at the mercy of all of their emotional problems and habit patterns. Unstructured domains evoke Chains of elaborately interconnected inner processes that trigger each other even in the absence of external cues. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

7 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
I. Assessing Your Behavioral, Mental, and Emotional Patterns in Relation to Degrees of Structure What happens to you emotionally and mentally in places where there is minimal structure? If you move to a new city where you know no one, how does this affect the way you feel? What kinds of thoughts are you likely to have? How might you behave differently? If you go alone to a completely unfamiliar place in your home town, how are you likely to feel? What kinds of thoughts are likely to go through your head? What might you do? If you are at home alone and it is late at night or just before time to go to sleep, what kinds of feelings and thoughts might come over you? What are you likely to do in response to these experiences? If you go to a party where people are supposed to socialize and you do not know anyone there, how are you likely to feel? What kinds of thoughts might occur to you? How might you behave? What might you feel and do after you leave and return home? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

8 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
II. Assessing Your Behavioral, Mental, and Emotional Patterns in Relation to Degrees of Structure What happens to you emotionally and mentally when you are in places where there is a moderate degree of structure? Suppose you go to a party with all of your best friends and/or family, how are you likely to feel, what kinds of thoughts might occur to you, and how might you act? Suppose you go to a familiar social or religious organization where the people are friendly, nothing unusual is expected of you, the organization is fairly flexible, you and everyone else know how to engage in the various activities, you know the purpose of the organization, everyone is readily accepting and readily gives recognition for each other’s positive actions and contributions. How are you likely to feel while there? What kinds of thoughts are likely to occur to you? How are you likely to behave? Suppose you go to a similar place, but the characteristics there are generally the opposite to the first place and, objectively speaking, those characteristics are negative? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

9 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
III. Assessing Your Behavioral, Mental, and Emotional Patterns in Relation to Degrees of Structure What happens to you emotionally and mentally when you are in places where there is a high degree of structure? Suppose you work where the job requirements are clearly specified and unvarying and the code of behavior is strict. How do these work conditions make you feel? When some incident or situation triggers strong emotion, how do you handle it? Suppose you feel you are not being treated equally or fairly, or like you are being singled out in an extremely negative or positive way in the presence of peers, or deliberately ignored and snubbed. What kinds of feeling would these patterns produce in you? How would you deal with these feelings? What would your behavioral reactions be? Suppose you are in some type of social or recreational organization and these same conditions are present. How would you feel and act now? Suppose you are on a jury, or at a doctor’s office, or attending a religious ritual and are suddenly faced with something highly stimulating in a highly negative or positive way. How would differ in terms of the expression of feelings, thoughts, or behavior? Can you recognize these kinds of conditions as you recall all of the places and settings you visit in your life? Can you recognize how the characteristics of the varying types of places tend to elicit different feeling patterns, thought patterns, and behavior patterns? If you were to plot optimal routes and paths for the topography of some other person’s life, would you put them in these same settings, or would you design a different topography? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

10 The Encompassing Environment
Without Our Being Aware of It, the Places, or Domains, within Our Encompassing Environment that Shape Our Lives Are Simply ‘There’ with Signposts Directing Where We Will Wear Our Grooves as We Create Ruts, Which Ruts, Then, Enduringly Maintain the Patterns of Our Personalities The Encompassing Environment IV. Institutions and Public and Private Services Domains Settings – Situations – Requirements – Recipient of Services - Transitory Formal Roles I. Home - Family -Extended Family Domain Settings – Situations – Roles (Informal) - Relationships III. Domains of Recreation and Social Organizations Settings – Situations – Activities – Relationships – Roles (Formal and Informal) - Settings – Positions – Goals - Tasks - Roles – Compensation - Benefits - Situations – Roles (Informal) - Relationships II.Work Domains 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

11 Exploring Your Relations to Your Encompassing Environment
What adjectives would you use to describe your nation? Your city? The business you work for? The organizations to which you belong? The places you go to for recreation? The police, government, justice system, healthcare system, educational system? How would you describe your immediate family? Your extended family by generations? What are these various units like? Are they all the same? Would you describe some as opposite in nature to others? How would you describe life in general? People in general? The opposite gender in general? The same gender in general? Much older people or much younger people in general? How do you feel you tend to be treated by people in these different categories? Do they all seem to treat you the same way? Do some treat you very differently than others? Taking these various categories one by one, how do feel each of them tends to treat you? Considering how each tends to treat you, how does it make you feel? How does it make you feel about yourself? How does it make you define yourself? Is it very positive or very negative? Or, is it very positive in relation to some aspects and negative in relation to others? For example, does your family make you feel one way about some aspect of yourself and work or recreation, etc., make you feel very differently about that aspect? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

12 I. Home - Family -Extended Family Domain Intentional Processes
Structural Factors Shaping Life Topography and Personality-behavior I. Home – Family – Extended Family Domain Unconscious Influences External Systems Internal Systems Structural Influences I. Home - Family -Extended Family Domain Settings – Situations – Roles (Informal) - Relationships Support and Control Social-Recreational Work Intentional Processes Inner Person Influences Components of Self History and Future 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

13 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: I a. Families In each of the four major domains of life there are networks of expectations that hold in place the roles, relationships, and behavior that shape the inner personality of the individual person. Departing from expectations for patterns in any domain ultimately results in reactions throughout the network that is designed to maintain the status quo pattern of the individual and group, whether it be for good or ill. Changing one’s own pattern requires either a superhuman will or requires changing one’s environmental topography. Families have a culture, or expectations, that consists of patterns of behavior that: Exhibit an interlocking system of informal roles, Have relatively stable and uniform ways of treating its members, Characterize the identities of its members, Exhibit patterns of stable degrees of closeness and harmony between combinations of relationships, Express beliefs, values, and conventions and demonstrate requirements for varying degrees of adherence or conformity to these beliefs, values, and conventions, Exhibit a family style of life consisting of type, amount, and quality of socializing, level of involvement in each others’ lives, general level of activity and temporal pace, and formulas for distributing material resources, Exhibit a style of distributing and scheduling of family tasks and activities matching, in varying degrees, their individual interests, skills, and traits. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

14 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Examining the Characteristics of the Major Domains of the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: I b. Families Try to step back and look at your family, and your self in it, objectively. How would you describe the ‘culture’ of your family? Now try to recall if and how your family and you have changed over time. Take each of the factors listed on the preceding slide and use them to characterize your early family up to your current family. Next, take each factor and use it to describe what your life was like in that family, from the beginning to the present. What was your informal role in your family? Has it remained consistent over time? How were you treated? Has that remained consistent over time? What was your identity in the family? Has that remained consistent over time? What were the degrees of closeness between you and the various other family members? Has that remained the same over time? How would you characterize your family’s beliefs, values, and conventions? To what degree did the family require its members to conform and be similar? Has that changed over time? How would you characterize the sociability of your family? How involved were they in each other’s lives? How physically, verbally, and mentally active was your family? How did they deal with time and schedules? How were the family’s material resources distributed? Have these changed over time? Did your family distribute household responsibilities and tasks: formally, informally, or with no discernable pattern? Did they tend to distribute tasks on the basis of each individual’s interests, skills, traits, or some other factor, e.g. as punishments or rewards? Has this changed over time? Looking back at your life in your family, how do you feel the structure of that family may have shaped or influenced the kind of behavior, feelings, values, and personality that you now have? Try to pull out, from this mass of information, the factors you feel to be the most powerful family influences on the way you have turned out and your life has turned out. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

15 Intentional Processes
Structural Factors Shaping Life Topography and Personality-behavior II. Work Domain Unconscious Influences External Systems Internal Systems Structural Influences Settings – Positions – Goals - Tasks - Roles – Compensation - Benefits - Situations – Roles (Informal) - Relationships II.Work Domains Family Social-Recreational Support and Control Intentional Processes Inner Person Influences Components of Self History and Future 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

16 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: II a. Work Work Environments Typically Have a Culture That Consists Of: Degrees of clarity and specificity with respect to its reason for existence, A set of hierarchically arranged levels and categories of positions, each of which has degrees of clarity for specified required skills and traits supposed to match duties, Degrees of clarity and specificity of rules for interaction between occupants of positions and between employees and non-employees, Degrees of clarity and specificity (including degrees of autonomy) for the ordering of time and schedules, Degrees of clarity and specificity with respect to compensation for performance. In addition, work environments exhibit degrees of complexity with respect to networks of informal roles and relationships. Typically the people occupying a position change. The specifications for rules of interacting remain the same for the position. As a new person assumes a position, ‘the position’ requires that they adapt their traits and rules of interaction to the job description. These new requirements inevitably alter the person’s personality traits as well as the nature of their informal roles and relationships. They adjust their personality and relationships to suit the position. The company is typically not concerned with the personal beliefs, values, or personal life styles of its employees as long as they abide by the rules of work and maintain a required level of job performance. The force of the work environment can shape the personality in such a manner that it can become so different from the personality known to family and friends outside of work as to make them question whether this is the same person. Such dramatic differences can seem liberating or offensive and oppressive to the person and to others. Occasionally the person’s personality in different settings can crossover and intrude into one another causing degrees of identity crisis for the person as well as the perceived identity their audiences have of them. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

17 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Examining the Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: II b. Work Try to step back and gain a distant, objective perspective on your place of work. Using the eight factors on the preceding slide, how would you characterize your work place? How is it structured? How do you change as contrasted with home, social, recreational settings, or when involved support services or control agencies? How does it affect your emotions, you thoughts, your behavioral patterns? If you have worked other places, how does your life at work in the current one differ from former work situations? Do you have the feeling that you understand what your company is about? Do you feel comfortable with working here? Do you understand the chain of command and your place in it? Do you feel clear and comfortable about exactly to whom you are responsible? What are your thoughts and feelings concerning the way you are managed, for example, given assignments and duties? Does the way you are managed affect the manner in which you behave and carry out your duties? Are you preoccupied with the nature of this relationship after you leave work? Do you understand how your company expects you to interact with those above, below, and at the same level as you in the hierarchy? How do these rules or expectations affect the way you feel, think, and behave? Do you often find yourself acting in a manner that does not conform to those expectations or do you feel constrained and inhibited, suppressing strong feelings and thoughts? Do you feel that there is an expectation for how fast you work and how much you produce? Is this pace natural and comfortable for you, or do you feel bored or rushed? How do you handle lack of synchronization or similarity with what is natural for and preferred by you? Do you understand the company’s policy on compensation for performance in the job? Does it correspond to what you would expect and feel is equitable? How does this factor make you feel? How does it make you feel about the job? How does it make you feel about and evaluate your self? How do you handle these thoughts and feelings? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

18 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Examining the Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: II b. Work [CONT.] Try to step back and gain a distant, objective perspective on your place of work. Using the eight factors on the preceding slide, how would you characterize your work place? How is it structured? How do you change when there as contrasted with home, social or recreational setting, or when involved support services or control agencies? How does it affect your emotions, you thoughts, your behavioral patterns? If you have worked other places, how does your life at work in the current one differ from former work situations?[CONT.] You may have many formal roles that are a part of your carrying out your various duties. Do you feel comfortable with the way you have to interact with others when enacting these roles? Beyond the formal roles, you have informal roles with the other employees, whether of higher, lower, or equal rank. How would you characterize these informal roles? Do you feel that they were created by you because they flow from your personality or were they imposed by the needs of others to have you take those informal roles? Do you feel these informal roles are healthy for you and/or for the others and the company? What feelings, thoughts and behaviors are generated by these informal roles? To what extent do you feel that your past interpersonal history, for example with family members, carried over into this work place and exert a degree of influence on your informal role behaviors? How do these informal roles make you feel? Are you preoccupied with them after work? Have you noticed that when you or some other person newly assumes a position that the interactions with people change? Are these changes difficult for you or comfortable? How do these changes make you feel about yourself and others involved in the changes? Do you feel your company requires or expects you to espouse certain beliefs or values or conventions for behavior? If so, does this present a problem for you? If so, how do you handle it? How does the way you handle it make you feel about yourself? Do you ever get the feeling that the company extends its expectations concerning your life style beyond the work situation? If so, how does this make you feel? How do you handle it? When you review your examination of how your work situation affects you, what can you conclude about yourself and your life? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

19 Intentional Processes
Structural Factors Shaping Life Topography and Personality-behavior III. Recreation and Social Affiliations Unconscious Influences External Systems Internal Systems Structural Influences III. Domains of Recreation and Social Organizations Settings – Situations – Activities – Relationships – Roles (Formal and Informal) - Family Support and Control Work Intentional Processes Inner Person Influences Components of Self History and Future 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

20 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: III a. Recreation and Social Affiliations Recreational and Social Affiliations, with the Exception of Commercial Games and Sports and some Groups of Zealots, Have Cultures in Which There Is: a minimum of offices or official personnel; a simple, powerless hierarchy and governance is either loosely democratic or laisez-faire; participation is optional but may require levels of skill or knowledge to be able to participate or play; participants typically can choose their own activities and in some cases are chosen to participate, but can refuse, and, even in some cases, they can choose their own roles; and, there are typically no restraints against withdrawing; membership may involve criteria or fees but in most cases is simply a matter of choice; and, resigning membership is typically a matter of choice; agendas and time schedules for attendance or participation are much more (relative to other domains) subject to choice by individual members or subject to influence by the membership as a whole rather than some hierarchy; performance is not compensated except, in some cases, by non-material, social forms of recognition or token awards; however, individuals or ad hoc groups do engage in informal social comparisons of performance which has strong negative or positive valences to the objects of such comparisons and this is prevalent in many such settings; informal roles and rankings and personal relationships are far more influential in determining agendas, policies, topics, and activities; and, personal prominence is often coveted; no one has enforceable powers over rules of interaction or manner of participation in activities, informal roles, relationships, or other behavior and seldom any power to punish. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

21 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Examining the Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns III b. Recreation, Leisure, Social Life and Social Affiliations Recreation, Leisure, Social Life and Social Affiliations: can provide means for satisfying one’s need to belong in a familiar, comfortable setting with minimal demands; type and degree of participation usually depends upon what one is ready for; when one is or is not ready for public enactments; and, there are always avenues for more safe, vicarious participation; can provide a place to meet new people, often of the opposite gender, with minimal risk, or to meet familiar people and friends where expectations and barriers are minimal and even recreation in the guise of self- improvement or competition typically imposes very little or no threat or crucial test of the person; can provide a place to enact preferred informal roles and scenarios that are not possible elsewhere. These settings typically have few constraints and are temporary or ephemeral, which makes it easier to elicit cooperation in their scenarios from each other; can provide a means to escape from overbearing conditions in the enduring ‘real’ world of other domains; as a place for escape, it can free the person to express, in fantasy or for-play, behaviors that are usually suppressed and to live out secret, hidden negative, or even positive, desires; with suspension of the rules that apply to other domains, such acting out avoids the consequences of the ‘real’ world; or, in some cases it provides a place to do things that are intrinsically satisfying when the rest of real life demands in the other domains are odious but inescapable; while there may be greater freedom to depart from one’s public identity, choices of types of recreation and socializing are, nevertheless, usually important adjuncts to one’s identity and attending may, also, be for the sake of affirming a ‘wished-for’ identity or for validating one’s social status; nevertheless, since it is exempt from real world constraints, it can also be easily disavowed; broadcasting one’s recreational, leisure, or socializing preferences and activities is for many people a way of securing or enhancing social status, like invisible ego badges. Recreation, nevertheless, provides a safe place to experiment with new associations, new interests, and new personality traits, behavioral patterns, roles, values, and even beliefs. If a person starts to take this latter stance, growth can occur. When people establish a pattern in this domain, it is often difficult to break out and explore new avenues since this domain is completely voluntary and, since its purpose is to provide relaxation, relief, and safe, self-enhancing adventures, people seldom venture into novel, uncertain environments that actually might be very emotionally taxing or even embarrassing. Progress in self enhancement is contingent upon exploring new avenues to learn new behaviors. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

22 Intentional Processes
Structural Factors Shaping Life Topography and Personality-behavior IV. Public and Private Support and Control Agencies and Institutions Unconscious Influences External Systems Internal Systems Structural Influences IV. Institutions and Public and Private Services Domains Settings – Situations – Requirements – Recipient of Services - Transitory Formal Roles Family Social-Recreational Work Intentional Processes Inner Person Influences Components of Self History and Future 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

23 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: IV a. Public and Private Agencies and Institutions Public and Private Organizations and Institutions providing support and control for citizens have cultures in which the officials and employees have jurisdiction over and responsibilities for all citizens by governmental unit or for special groups within a general population. With respect to the organization: The ostensive purpose of such agencies or institutions is to protect, regulate certain activities and resources, maintain order, serve, or provide support. Their operational purpose is typically to maintain the policies and procedure of the institution and to perpetuate the status quo of their existence . They rarely have to deal with accountability to the population they serve or regulate. The principal source of feedback and pressure to correct inadequate or inappropriate functioning is the media. Those employed in the official agencies and institutions have complementary offices to one another and to the citizenry and the citizens for whom they are responsible have complementary assigned positions and roles with respect to and specific to each agency or institution. The official side of each agency and institution, that is the elected and appointed officials and the employees, works within well organized hierarchies and as such are designated as bureaucracies. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

24 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: IV a. Public and Private Agencies and Institutions [CONT.] With respect to those (the citizens) subject to these support and control agencies: The unofficial, client side subject to the bureaucracy, most conspicuously consists of the non-conforming or unfortunate persons and secondly students in public educational institutions, while less conspicuous are those subject to commerce and professional regulation and those paying various types of taxes, and those who do not fall under the unfortunate-nonconforming category yet are receiving benefits and protection. The latter tend to feel a sense of entitlement and feel proprietary toward public and private agencies, their employees, and the non-conforming-unfortunates under their support and control. Even though they, too, receive benefits, they consider themselves to be in a distinctly different category, exempt from the pejorative implications of being in the ‘other’ category. The unfortunate and non-conforming persons enter bureaucratic systems singularly and at the mercy of or under the control of the official side. They become, to varying degrees, segregated from or labeled and stigmatized by the rest of the citizenry. Unfortunate persons who seek service from the private sector are typically ‘not’ stigmatized. The persons on unfortunates’ side, who require supportive services, have no organizational structure nor do they belong to any group that represents them as a group. Nevertheless, they are negatively referred to in the aggregate. The same is true for the non-conforming population, except they enter involuntarily and their lives become subject to near complete control by the bureaucracy. Along with the complementary roles of unfortunate, non-conforming citizens vis-à-vis support and control bureaucracies, they are labeled and stereotyped by the general public as inferior, contagious, offensive, pariahs who must be avoided, ostracized. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

25 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Characteristics of the Major Domains Constituting the Topography of Your Life and Their Role in Maintaining Your Personality Patterns: IV a. Public and Private Agencies and Institutions [CONT.] With respect to those (the citizens) subject to these support and control agencies: There are prescribed, complementary behaviors for citizens who come under the jurisdiction of bureaucracies and to a certain extent for those served for similar reasons by the private sector. Their life choices are either restricted or fully controlled by the officials. They are required to be obedient. Once in these systems, their relations with family and community is severed and they are dis-empowered. Both sustenance and punishment are dispensed independent of merit, performance, or status. Once they enter a control or support institution, they are treated similar to small children. Typically the only recognition they receive is for failure to adhere. Regardless of what they were before, in their home communities, they become what their complementary role vis-a-vis the specific agency requires them to be. Ironically, the many of the same constraints and conditions are true for those occupying the complementary official positions. Even in supportive agencies, but especially in control agencies, officials and employees and their wards or clients become mirror reflections of each other in two highly regimented, opposed groups. For citizens not subject to support and control agencies, yet still subject to regulation by bureaucracies, the agencies simultaneously represent a source of protection and emotional support on the one hand and on the other hand represent an abstract but highly influential and emotionally threatening set of limitations and requirements which, if they cross, could put them in with the pariahs, outcast from their native group and vulnerable to the horrifying lot of the other outcasts. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

26 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Exploring Your Feelings in Relation to Control and Support Agencies IV b. Public and Private Agencies and Institutions People on SES strata tend to have select and specific types of reactions to types of public and private, support and control agencies. Lower strata people, particularly minority people: tend to have a sense that support agencies such a welfare, EEOC, free medical clinics, public transportation, multi-purpose centers, and housing authority, food stamps and assistance programs, and head start types of child day-care are cushions to fall back on; tend to feel resentment toward them for mistreatment, unfairness, and disrespect; tend to decommission related parts of their egos when relying upon them. tend to be intimidated by control agencies such a police, child protective services, legal services, courts, animal control, public schools, street and garbage maintenance, etc.; tend to feel and react in a suspicious and belligerent way toward both these control agencies and toward helpful public social services such a Family Services, Community Mental Health Centers, Community Health Clinics, Welfare, etc.; nevertheless, tend to use threats of invoking or reporting to these agencies as weapons of self defense. Middle strata people: tend to feel that public and private support and control agencies and services are there for their assistance, protection from others, orderly regulation, self and family enhancement, and health. tend, to a minor extent, feel support and control agencies also keep them on course and within socially acceptable boundaries and can be used to remind family and friends of the consequences of straying outside boundaries. tend, to a minor extent, to treat support and control agencies as authorities with respect to the related function in their lives and to surrender ego functions related to specific agency functions to the respective agency, thereby preventing them from learning, growing, and becoming proficient in those areas. They tend to have an implicit trust in the value and reliability of these agencies. Upper strata people: tend to feel that support and control agencies are accountable to them and in some sense under their jurisdiction. tend to take a critical posture toward these public agencies, much as if they were their own employees whose inefficiencies are a cost to them. tend to rely on private counterparts to the public agencies for their own needs. The interaction between SES strata and the functions of public and private support and control agencies produces distinctly different values, knowledge, personalities, behavior, and even mental abilities, cognitive skills, and intentional processes. Identities of persons are partially shaped by their SES and their SES as it stands in relation to other SESs. Attitudes of persons in an SES are shaped by knowledge of their relations to support and control agencies. Attitudes toward individuals and groups of others are shaped by knowledge of the other’s SES and their relations to support and control agencies. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

27 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Exploring Your Feelings in Relation to Control and Support Agencies IV b. Public and Private Agencies and Institutions Distributions Resulting From the Structure of Cultural Trends and Public Policies Differential effects of the structure of control and support services in shaping personality and behavior: Laws, police, courts, places of incarceration, and attorneys for the affluent: minimize negative consequences for affluent and maximize negative consequences for the impoverished. Structure of economy, capital-accumulated-based free enterprise, competition based on advantages, inheritance of wealth, and the size of corporations: maximize affluence, advantage, and control for those already at the top and maximize depersonalization, hardship, and lack of access to opportunity for those at the bottom. Medical care, psychological and educational assistance, medical insurance authorization of care regulated to maximize profits of insurance companies and minimize cost for Medicare: means quality and types of assistance are dispensed according to strata and affluence. Size of cities, and structure of governments insulated from the lower strata yet making decisions determining their lives, results in increasing depersonalization, decreasing direct control by the people, and maximizing exposure to chaos and hardship for the inner city ghetto, lower strata. Organization and distribution of goods and services for the lower strata according to principle of lowest production costs produced in homogeneous masses results in short-shelf-lived-inferior products, a sense of and identity as homogeneous, impoverished, anonymous, powerless, easily dispensable, undeserving, and insignificant. Media and information disseminated by upper strata producers on the principle of maximum significance for upper strata and minimum significance for lower strata means the lower strata’s world view validates the upper strata, preferences are kept primitive and unhealthy yet satisfied, while operational knowledge for them to understand and attempt to overcome their condition of life is unavailable, confining them in the deteriorated and inferior state for which the upper strata looks down on yet exploits them, while condemning and punishing them. Upper SES Distribution of Connections, Advantage, Knowledge, Expertise, Status, and Power by Wealth I.Q. Bell Curve By Family Heritage Occupants of SES strata do not know each other and project their negative attributes on each other and blame and resent each other, thereby justifying negative postures and acts toward each other, forming their own identity and the identities of those in the other stratas. Income Distribution Structure of Culture shapes Strata and Strata shapes misperceptions which maintain the structure of cultural trends and the conditions within each strata. Lack of Advantages, Lack of Opportunity, Ignorance, Powerlessness, Dependence, Fear Lower SES 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

28 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Example: Structural Explanations for Hypertension and High Blood Pressure among Blacks and Hispanics. At a recent international conference on Genetics, a renowned Geneticist being interviewed by a reporter was reported as saying, “Contrary to previous research, genetics only contributes a small percentage to the fact that blacks and Hispanics have high rates of hypertension and high blood pressure. It is more likely that this phenomenon is explained by diet and life style.” It seems strange that, in this day and time, a well educated, highly intelligent scientist would not find more plausible explanations in 1] social prejudice; 2] occupational discrimination; 3] a high percentage of these minorities living in over-crowded, under-maintained housing projects; 4] substandard health care; 5] and the effects of being targeted by police on the basis of skin color; 6] with diet and life style making a minor contribution as a result of their being a by-product of 1] through 5]. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

29 Late Adolescence to Early Mid-Adulthood
Structurally Pre-determined Routes and Paths Within Each Domain Have Uniform, Age Related, Transition Points for Routes and Paths In the early stages of life our routes can make sudden dramatic changes. From young adulthood through late middle age route variations diminish greatly, topographic patterns become increasingly rigid. At pre-determined transition points, routes and paths can change abruptly. In later life, the number of routes decrease rapidly, but the direction becomes even more rigid. For each domain, there are age related phases that introduce and remove routes in structurally predetermined ways. Personality changes take place in near perfect synchrony with structural changes. Structural change opens new paths and likewise are the major force shaping changes. Persons are unaware of the determinants of their change. Sample Projected Life Span Range of Variation in Routes and Paths and their Changes by Domain Points of Origin Late Adolescence to Early Mid-Adulthood Middle Age Family, Home ROUTES Occupation PATHS Recreation, socializing Support / Control agencies 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

30 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Living a Life of Dread of Stepping Out of the Bounds Pre-Established for Person’s From One’s Background When a person steps out of the light center into the shaded sides, they have stepped into routes and paths that are either taboo or unsafe for a person from that type of background. Getting out of bounds can result in shunning from some in their reference group and shame or humiliation for the person themselves. Given the person’s conditions of origin, the filled rectangular background for the person’s life span patterns represents the parameters within which that person’s routes and paths can vary in each of the domains. <Boundary> 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

31 Factors Involved in the Structure of Work and Institutional Environments vs. the Unstructured Environments of Home and Recreation Structured Settings and Situations Strict Chain of Command Structured Work Tasks Structured Roles and Relationships Structured Environment Keeps Unruly Anger, Desire, Fear Restrained Structured Mode of Self Expression Structured Time Un Structured Environment Unleashes Unruly Anger, Desire, Fear Un Structured Modes of Self Expression Un Structured Time and Pace Un Structured Roles and Relationships Un Structured Activity and Work Tasks Minimal Adherence to a Chain of Command or Authority Un Structured Settings and Situations 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

32 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Characteristics of Settings and Their Role in Maintaining Personality and Behavior Patterns Setting Propositions  I. Work, Home, Social and Recreational, Support and Control Institutional Environments all exist within more encompassing environments. In turn, they are encompassing environments for Domains and Settings. These each can be characterized by formal factors, such as: Policies and Procedures, Tables of Organization, Job Descriptions, Performance Evaluations, Standard Forms and Reports for Responsibility and Accountability, Budgets, Schedules, Office or Personal Room Locations, etc. This level of encompassing environment includes within it or subsumes levels of less encompassing environments or Settings. Each level exerts continuous but formal control or influence over the less encompassing environments or Settings. II. The more encompassing the Work, Home, Social and Recreational, Support and Control Institutional Environments the: 1) more resistant it is to immediate and short term extraneous or irregular influences, 2) more slow to change, 3) more likely to return to the status quo after 'newly' achieved change, yet 4) more resistant to change once a 'new status quo' has been fully achieved – than are the less encompassing environments. III. Less encompassing environments, such as the immediate interaction between people or physical aspects like furnishings, are more observable and more capable of being influenced by some immediate and short term impact. They are are more susceptible to the influence of personal factors. IV. On the other hand, these less encompassing environments, such as immediate interpersonal interactions, are the medium through which relationships between people can become either deeper and more bonded or more shallow and alienated. V. By changing the formal factors of more encompassing environments, such as the structure of settings and programs, conditions can be created through which people can develop more positive, deeper, and more bonded relationships and can develop new, positive, social skills. VI. The structure of Settings, which are an intermediate level of encompassing environment, can be redesigned in a manner that either calls for or discourages certain types of situations, informal roles, relationships, and communication and behavioral interactions. 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

33 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Analysis of Factors and Dimensions Used to Characterize Settings within Domains Select one of the four Domains characterizing the topography of your life. Name and write a General Physical Description of a troublesome Setting within that Domain. For example, list and briefly describe its Occupants, Unusual Objects or Furnishings, Spatial Arrangement, Atmosphere, Sounds, etc.). In other words, describe the flavor of this Setting. Describe the Purpose of this Setting and your purpose for being there. Describe the temporal aspects, like Schedules for arriving, duration, leaving. How are Transitions into, during, and out of this Setting handled? Who are the key figures involved in handling the transitions. What Policies and Procedures are you aware of that are Specific to this Setting? What explicit or implicit Rules are applicable and expected to be followed? What kinds of Typical Activities or Tasks usually take place here? What is your part in these activities or tasks. Who, typically are the participants? How many are usually present? Do the participants have formal or informal roles? What is, if any, your formal or informal role(s)? Is there a hierarchical organization for this Setting? Are there official Staff? Or, is there an informal hierarchical organization? How would you characterize the organization of the people usually involved? What kinds of Situations typically arise or occur in this Setting? Why do you think these kinds of situations then to occur here? What is your involvement in these situations? How do they affect you? What kinds of Social Skills do these situations call for? How would you describe your proficiency with respect to these skills? Which types of situations are the most difficult for you? What kinds of feelings and tendencies do these troublesome situations evoke in you? Can you identify systems of interaction within this Setting? Can you identify anything about the structure of this Setting that would tend to evoke these characteristic systems of interaction? Can you identify typical dynamic patterns or systems of Communication within this Setting and among its occupants? What is your pattern in this dynamic Communication system and how do you feel about it? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

34 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Exploring Your Awareness of Your Changing Patterns As You Move From Setting to Setting Normally, people are not aware of how they change in different settings. In one setting they are uninhibited and in another they are extremely inhibited. When asked, they show that they know they are different from one place to the next. In everyday life, people do not compare how they behave or feel in different settings. There is no need to. When in one setting, you are simply in that setting, and that’s that. Here, the point is being made that awareness of structures of settings is of prime importance. After the preceding analysis of settings, you may now be more aware of how particular Settings affect you, what it is about the Setting and what it is about you in this type of Setting. Try comparing the way you feel, act, communicate, interact in one Setting versus another. Find those Settings in which the differences are the most extreme. First, try assessing which of these Settings you prefer to be in. Second, try to determine how often you select and/or remain in those Settings which you prefer and do not prefer and which bring out the best in you versus bring out the worst. Are you involuntarily bound to those which are not preferred and/or have negative effects on you? If you could change to different Settings, ask yourself why you do not change? If you know of Settings which would be better for you and in which you would feel better, what do you think is preventing you from changing? Write out a hypothetical plan for leaving negative Settings and entering or joining prospective, new, positive Settings. How might you feel if and when you made these transitions? How might you feel once you were fully established in the new Settings? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

35 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Exploring Your Patterns in Settings With Reference to Changes in Feelings and Behavior in Different Settings As They Change in Degree of Structure, When You Assume Formal Vs. Informal Roles, and As You Face Critical Trigger Situations What is it about certain settings, situations, or roles that are particularly significant for you? Structure, novelty, inclusion or exclusion in a communication and activity loops, prominence or insignificance and invisibility, having a formal role in a hierarchy, having a particular kind of informal role or place in the pecking order of an informal role system, facing situational dilemmas? How do you feel or act in these various conditions? What happens to you when conditions change? Do you tend to find yourself in some of these conditions often? Do you seem to be repeatedly involved in them and repeatedly engaged in the same behaviors? Do you find yourself experiencing the same kinds of feelings repeatedly over your life span, even when moving to distant or entirely new places ? To what do you attribute the repetition of these conditions, feelings, and scenarios of behavior and communication? Do you tend to attribute to the people in these settings, to aspects of the organization, to some obscure fate or spiritual force? Do you tend to attribute to some aspect of yourself, some flaw, handicap, or weakness in you? What if you were to leave the familiar types of Domains and Settings and begin afresh in an entirely new set of circumstances such as entirely new social organizations, recreational activities, work setting or even occupation, new set of friends with very different characteristics? What if you were to radically alter your relations with family or family members? What if you were to choose, learn, practice, and enact entirely new ways of handling those circumstances that keep repeating themselves? What if you were to do both? That is, what if you were to both change: the topography of your life with respect to family, friends, place and type of work, how you relate to and manage you time, your social affiliations, and recreational activities, and at the same time change yourself: your perceptions of the world and others, your feeling reactions, communication patterns or social skills, behaviors, types of formal and informal roles you will and will not assume, types and ways of relating to others, and even your life goals? 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,

36 copyright, Ed Young, PhD, 11-1999
Understanding and Handling Trigger Situations and Transitions Between Settings How would you characterize your formal and informal roles vis-a-vis persons in structured vs. unstructured settings? In the work setting, how would you characterize your formal and informal roles within official relationships at work? ongoing intimate relationships and close relationships at work? your typical recreational settings? social organizations to which you belong? Outside of the work setting, how would you characterize your informal roles with close friends and with acquaintances from work? How would you characterize your informal roles in family settings, with selected family members, and with close friends? with close family members? with extended family members? in relation to intimate partners? Is there a contrast or similarity between your interaction patterns as you cross from one setting to another. For example, from work to home or with friends? What is it about your way of behaving and communicating in these various formal and informal roles and relationships that is not be good for your self enhancement? What negative behaviors and feelings seem to be brought out when you are with certain key people and in these settings? Do you notice changes taking place when the setting changes? When the characters change? When certain situations arise? If you dispassionately look at the topography of your life, can you see larger patterns? For example, if you have unresolved troublesome situations and feelings in a setting and then enter another setting, do those feelings carry over and affect your feelings and expression of feelings in the new setting? If so, what is it about the succeeding setting that releases or evokes these expressions of feeling or these actions? Are there situational ‘triggers’ for these patterns that are troublesome to you? What, specifically could you change in yourself so that you could avoid these trigger situations or handle them more effectively if still presented with them? Click to send to Dr. Young Click here to return to the parent page> 3/25/2017 copyright, Ed Young, PhD,


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