Sampling Normal and Schizophrenic Inner Experience

Transcription

1 Sampling Normal and Schizophrenic Inner Experience

2 EMOTIONS, PERSONALITY, AND PSYCHOTHERAPY Series Editors: Carroll E. Izard, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware and Jerome L. Singer, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut Current volumes in the series THE COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS OF PERSONALITY TRAITS Shulamith Kreitler and Hans Kreitler THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN: Physiology, Neuroanatomy, Psychology, and Emotion P. V. Simonov EMOTIONS IN PERSONALITY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY Carroll E. Izard, ed. FREUD AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY Volume 1: The Emotional Basis of Mental Illness Volume 2: The Emotional Basis of Human Behavior Helen Block Lewis GUIDED AFFECTIVE IMAGERY WITH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS Hanscarl Leuner, GUnther Horn, and Edda Klessmann LANGUAGE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: Strategies of Discovery Robert L. Russell, ed. THE POWER OF HUMAN IMAGINATION: New Methods in Psychotherapy Jerome L. Singer and Kenneth S. Pope, eds. THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS Jack George Thompson SAMPLING NORMAL AND SCHIZOPHRENIC INNER EXPERIENCE Russell T. Hurlburt SHYNESS: Perspectives on Research and Treatment Warren H. Jones, Jonathan M. Cheek, and Stephen R. Briggs, eds. THE TRANSFORMED SELF: The Psychology of Religious Conversion Chana Ullman A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual ship ment. For further information please contact the publisher.

3 Sampling Normal and Schizophrenic Inner Experience Russell T. Hurlburt '1')'1 University of Nevada, LaS' Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada Plenum Press New York and London

4 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hurlburt, Russell T. Sampling normal and schizophrenic inner experience / Russell T. Hurlburt. p. cm.-(emotions, personality, and psychotherapy) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Schizophrenics-Case studies. 2. Introspection-Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. RC514.H '8209-dc CIP 1990 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher

5 To my wife

6 Foreword What are the basic data of psychology? In the early years of experimental psychology, they were reports of ''brighter'' or "heavier" or other estimates of the magnitude of differences between the sensory stimuli presented in psychophysical experiments. Introspective accounts of the experience of seeing colored lights or shapes were important sources of psychological data in the laboratories of Cornell, Harvard, Leipzig, or Wiirzburg around the tum of the century. In 1910, John B. Watson called for the objectification of psychological research, even parodying the typical subjective introspective reports that emerged from Edward Bradford Titchener's laboratory. For almost fifty years psychologists largely eschewed subjective information and turned their attention to observable behavior. Rats running mazes or pigeons pecking away on varied schedules of reinforcement became the scientific prototypes for those psychologists who viewed themselves as "doing science." Psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists sustained interest in the personal reports of patients or clients as valuable sources of data for research. For the psychologists, questionnaires and projective tests that allowed for quantitative analysis and psychometrics seemed to circumvent the problem of subjectivity. Sigmund Freud's introduction of ongoing free association became the basis for psychoanalysis as a therapy and as a means of learning about human psychology. Slips-of-thetongue, thought intrusions, fantasies, hesitations, and sudden emotional expressions became the data employed by psychoanalysts in formulating hypotheses about resistance, memory, transference, and a host of presumed human wishes and conflicts. While these sources of data continue to be useful, there are reasons to seek other ways of learning about human thought. William James had vii

7 viii Foreword early identified the phenomenon of the stream of thought, but he carried out little research on the process. Actually it is from the astute observations of writers in the stream-of-consciousness genre-james Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow-that we obtain some sense of the complexities and variety of ongoing thought. In the late 1950s, John Antrobus and I sought to capture some of this data by systematically interrupting individuals for reports while they engaged in vigilance and signal detection experiments under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. Such a procedure permitted us to identify Task-Irrelevant Thought and Imagery (TUITs) and to determine under what conditions of external stimulation such TUITs were enhanced or reduced, how such thought was related to predetermining conditions (e.g., stress), or to more general personality characteristics. Russell Hurlburt, however, pioneered in the use of electronic paging devices that could be carried by subjects during normal daily activities, who-when beeped on random schedule-could write down and categorize their ongoing thought. This method allowed for systematic quantifiable analysis and met reasonable conditions of rigor. Important theoretical analyses by Eric Klinger were tested using variations of Hurlburt's method. The work of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and his collaborators at the University of Chicago demonstrated that large-scale studies could be carried out employing the thought sampling procedures. A large number of high school students carried paging devices for a month and a useful picture adolescent life emerged. Research by Dan McAdams has shown that persons who show need for intimacy and affiliation as measured by Thematic Apperception Test stories also prove to have more thoughts reflecting affiliative needs when interrupted by paging devices during the day's activities. Now Hurlburt has moved further in providing extremely detailed data on the ongoing thought available for the scrutiny of researchers. The present volume provides us the basic data we need about the naturally occurring thought of normal and emotionally distressed persons. The data come to us in their rich variety and dynamic fluidity. But we also see that methods for analysis of such data within and across individuals are available. This volume provides important clues to the naturally occurring thought of some ordinary people going about their regular activities; but we also obtain some startling insights about the thought world of depressed or schizophrenic persons. The poverty of associations and fragmented quality of the thought reports from schizophrenics confirms more directly what had been inferred from Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Test studies. To talk of schizophrenics as

8 Foreword ix living in a "complex but private world" simply does not hold up, at least for the persons sampled in this book. Ultimately we may get important clues about brain functioning from this new data source that is being tapped by Hurlburt. The method is labor-intensive, yes, but if social science research is to be funded sometime at a level even partially commensurate with natural science, we will be able to accumulate these data. It can be matched against the various new brain-imaging devices with great profit. A comparable method has already been fruitfully employed in cardiovascular research where patients can carry halter monitors, and silent ischemic painless responses on the EKG can be matched to samples of concurrent ongoing thought reports. I began by asking what are the basic data of psychology. Clearly overt acts, questionnaire responses, choices made under laboratory conditions-all are necessary sources of information for scientific evaluation. Now we have a new version of the introspective data that once were derided as "armchair" psychology. The introspective reports obtained by Hurlburt's procedure are free of the explanations and attributions that have been criticized as "after the fact" or unpredictive of behavior by social psychologists. Instead, they are the raw material of spontaneous emotion and imagery or interior monologue that can lend themselves to potentially deep analyses of ordinary thought. What they may lack in the literary attractiveness of a monologue written by James Joyce they make up in their undoubted authenticity. We have the beginnings here of an exciting means for capturing the flow of natural human thought, critical data indeed for a full understanding of human psychology. Jerome L. Singer Department of Psychology Yale University New Haven, Connecticut

9 Preface This book is the result of a very simple intention: to understand directly people's inner experiences. Acting on this intention has proven to be simultaneously both simple and complex: simple in the sense that all that needed to be done was to get in a favorable position to observe inner experience and then report what was seen; complex in the sense that providing ourselves and the reader with assurance that we had done just that is a difficult task in the context of modern psychology. Perhaps studying inner experience has always had this lure of the simple but the disappointment of the complex, because even after several millennia of attempts, thinking has remained stubbornly resistant to adequate description. The present study is the result of yet another attempt to outmaneuver that stubbornness, undertaken because it seems surprising that our era, with its burgeoning interest in things psychological, has remained relatively silent about the very activity that pervasively occupies our lives. There are many people who contributed greatly to this work, both individuals who participated with me in earlier attempts at thoughtsampling and authors who have written about topics directly or indirectly related to the course of this research. They are not explicitly cited here, even though I freely acknowledge their influence. The decision to omit citations is much more an indication of the breadth of influence than a paucity. The final manuscript for this volume benefited greatly from critical comments on earlier versions. I thank Eric Klinger, Jerome Singer, Donald Diener, and especially Susan Melancon. xi

10 Contents Preliminary Comments Designed to Suspend the Introspection Controversy ' Introduction Method Phase 1: The Pre-Sampling Retrospective General Account of the Subject's Inner Experience Phase 2: The Sampling Itself Phase 3: Writing the Descriptions Phase 4: Reviewing Each Sampled Thought Phase 5: Comparing Sampled Thought Descriptions to the Pre-Sampling Generalizations Phase 6: The Follow-Up Sample Method Considerations I. THE NORMAL SUBJECTS A College Freshman with Susan M. Melancon Images Daydreaming xiii

11 xiv Contents Problem-Solving Images Comparison of Images with External Reality Revisualizations of External Details Inner Hearing Inner Speech Wordless Speech and Imageless Seeing Wordless Speech Imageless Seeing Paying Particular Attention Feelings Discussion A Professional Potter Feelings Images Noticing Characteristics Just Doing Body Sense Verbal Thought Discussion A Record Store Manager with Susan M. Melancon 77 Unsymbolized Thinking Feelings Verbal Thought Inner Speech Inner Hearing Speaking Aloud Visual Thought Images Altered States No Thought... " Discussion A Medical Doctor Verbal Inner Experience Inner Speech Inner Hearing... 99

12 Contents xv The Use of a Foreign Language Partially Wordless Speech Wordless Verbalization Reading Word Repetitions Absorbed in Speaking Paying Attention Nonverbal Inner Experience Feelings Unsymbolized Thinking Visual Experience Images Imageless Seeing Other Characteristics of Helen's Inner Experience Multiple Experiences A Graduate Student Sonja Smith Word Repetition Self-Aware Thoughts Images Reverie Taking in Quality of Objects Actions: Doing, Reading, Listening, Talking Comparison with Sonja's Pre-Sampling Expectations The Follow-Up Study Discussion A Research Associate Susan M. Melancon 125 Verbal Thought Inner Speech Inner Hearing Unsymbolized Thinking Images Observing Characteristics Speaking Aloud Active Listening to Other Persons Speaking No Thought

13 xvi Contents Comparison with Sue's Pre-Sampling Expectations The Follow-Up Study Discussion Characteristics of Normal Inner Experience Inner Verbal Experience Images Meaning without Words or Images Other Observations II. THE SCHIZOPHRENIC SUBJECTS A Schizophrenic Woman with IIGoofed-Up" Images with Susan M. Melancon Visual Experience Images Images of External Reality... : Images Related to Current Activities Daydreams Images of Written Words Distortions in Images Role of Color and Movement Verbal Thought Feelings Unsymbol~edThinking No Thought or Forgotten Thought Comments on the Sampling Procedure Discussion A Schizophrenic Man with (Perhaps) No Inner Experience with Susan M. Melancon The Experience of the Beep Being the Beeper The Question of Inner Experience Discussion

14 Contents xvii 13. A Decompensating Schizophrenic with Leny Meertens The Symptom-Free Period Feelings Visual Experience Verbal Inner Experience The Decompensating Period Discussion A Schizophrenic Woman Who Heard Voices of the Gods The Voices of the Gods Visual Experiences Images Verbal Inner Experience Feelings Discussion Implications for Understanding Schizophrenia Discussion A Look at Depression and Beyond Index

15 Sampling Normal and Schizophrenic Inner Experience