More Pavlov per dollar

[David Morris]

--- Al X <boggle_king at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Anyway, I'll use rats and buttons and food as an example, because if I use
Slothrop and the rocket and Imipolex G, things will quickly start making some
not-sense around here.

A wise choice.
>From the following it seems that the RESULT of being pushed to the
Transmarginal phase is total maleability.

http://www.amphigory.com/sentence-ov-desire/volume-2-issue-2/volume-2-issue-2-article-2.html
"TRANSMARGINAL INHIBITION
William Sargant, in his book The Mind Possessed makes a thorough examination of
possession-type experience. He believes that the key to this phenomena lies in
an 'abnormal' response to extreme stress which was identified by Pavlov as
Transmarginal Inhibition. Sargant describes this reaction as having three
stages, the Equivalent, Paradoxical, and Ultraparadoxical. The Equivalent stage
is characterised by a response whereby the individual's reaction to both weak
and strong stimuli is the same. In other words, a person suffering from
depression may react to both significant and trivial experiences in the same
way. The Paradoxical phase occurs when weak stimuli produces stronger positive
responses than strong stimuli. An example of this phase is the depressed person
who does not react when verbally threatened, but can be motivated by a gentle
command. The third phase, the Ultraparadoxical, is characterised by the
appearance of responses that are diametrically opposed to those which have been
previously conditioned or habituated, and new beliefs and behaviours may be
implanted. Sargant also notes other phenomena associated with this state. These
are: increased suggestibility to beliefs and stimuli which would not normally
be paid much attention; the isolation and inhibition of certain thoughts and
behaviour from memory, and the "inhibitory collapse" which wipes recent
behaviour from memory.

Sargant sees the possession experience very much in terms of the above process.
He points out that possession is very much an abreactive, cathartic experience,
and notes that in some societies, possession, when brought on through dancing,
drumming and chanting, serves to release accumulated tension in the celebrants.
He cites his own work with patients suffering from shell-shock; the inability
to release a traumatic experience from consciousness. Sargant and his
colleagues deliberately subjected clients to an extremely stressful reliving of
the initial trauma, to the point where they collapsed. Afterwards, it was found
that the trauma had released its hold upon them."

http://www-home.cc.duq.edu/~thames/humcomm/physio.htm

Ivan Pavlov. According to Pavlov, the response of all organisms to overwhelming
stress is transmarginal inhibition (TMI). He conceives of TMI as a protective
response to overwhelming stress–a physiological circuit breaker. It may
manifest itself locally (blindness or partial paralysis) or totally
(catatonia). TMI quickly and almost totally erases existing stimulus-response
patterns and thereby makes possible the quick imposition of new ones. The
process can be com-pared to that of transforming sulfur from one crystalline
structure into another by melting and then cooling it in a different physical
environment. 

An organism can be driven to TMI quickly by a number of procedures: (1)
increase stimuli, (2) vary the time interval between negative stimuli, (3)
reverse positive and negative stimuli, (4) physically debilitate the organism.

The route to TMI passes through stages in which normal stimulus-response
patterns are increasing altered: 

(1) Equivalent phase. Normally the size of the response corresponds to the size
of the stimulus; big stimuli elicit big responses. In this phase all response
is the same regardless of the size of the stimulus; big stimuli and small
stimuli elicit the same response. 

(2) Paradoxical phase Big stimuli elicit small responses and vice versa–a
quantity reversal. 

(3) Ultra-paradoxical. Negative stimuli elicit positive responses and vice
versa--a quality reversal. (See William Sargant for a thorough discussion of
Pavlov’s work.) 





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