Meanings, significances, and imagery

THE MEANING OF MEANING

Why do so many students of human nature and

its aberrations turn away from conscious meanings?

Meaning provides the richness of life; it transforms a

simple event into an experience. Yet, contemporary

systems of psychology and psychiatry either

completely disregard meanings or go to extremes in

seeking esoteric ones. Behaviorism detours around

thoughts and "mentalistic concepts." Classical

psychoanalysis, dissatisfied with "superficial"

meanings, takes flight into an elaborate infrastructure

of symbolic meanings that are contrary to commonsense meanings of an event.

Despite their many differences, behaviorists

and psychoanalysts are similar in their reluctance to

accept a patient's description of his psychological

processes at face value; both schools are skeptical of

"common-sense" explanations of behavior. The

behaviorists dismiss people's reports of their

"subjective" experience as unreliable because the

experiences cannot be verified by other observers.

Psychoanalysts assume conscious ideation is simply a

product of unconscious forces which work to disguise

the "real meaning" of events. Neuropsychiatrists are

content with notions such as, "under every twisted

thought is a twisted molecule." The psychological

meaning of the aberration does not interest them.

In contrast to the "hard-headed" behaviorist

and neuropsychiatric attitudes and the abstract

classical psychoanalytic position, the cognitive

approach is concerned with conscious meanings as

well as external events. The person's reports of his

ideas, feelings, and wishes provide the raw material

for the cognitive model. Furthermore, his various

interpretations of events are accepted as basic, rockbottom data-not as a superficial screen over "deeper"

meanings such as the psychoanalysts postulate. At

times, it may be necessary to sift the automatic

thoughts and other introspective data to delineate the

intricate pattern of meanings and connotations. The

formulation is then "tried on for size" and may have

to be reworked until the patient determines that it fits

his particular construction of reality.

To understand the emotional reactions to an

event, it is necessary to make a distinction between

the dictionary or "public" meaning of an occurrence

and its personal or private meaning. The public

meaning is the formal, objective definition of the

event - devoid of personal significance or

connotation. A boy is teased by his friends: The

objective meaning of the event is simply that they are

goading him. The personal meaning for the boy who

is teased is more complex, for example, "They don't

like me" or "I am a weakling." Although he is aware

of this special meaning, he generally keeps it to

himself because he knows that if he admits his

private reactions openly, his friends will probably

tease him even more. A girl who receives the best

grade in her class may think, "This shows I am better

than the other students," but she not likely to express

this special meaning lest she antagonize her

classmates. Special meanings are evoked when an

event touches on an important part of a person's life,

such as acceptance by peers, but they frequently

remain private and unexpressed.

Private meanings are often unrealistic because

the person does not have the opportunity to check

their authenticity. In fact, when patients reveal such

meanings to their psychotherapist, this is frequently

the first chance they have had to examine these

hidden meanings and to test their validity., A

successful salesman in his mid-fifties became

intensely anxious when told he must enter a hospital

for treatment of pneumonia. Although he acknowledged the usual conception of a hospital as a place

where illness is treated, his private notion (as

revealed by his automatic thoughts) centered on

anticipations of being anesthetized, cut up, carted off

to a morgue. His anxiety was produced by the

personal meaning-not by the socially accepted

definition of a hospital.

At times we find that a person's reactions to an Meaning and Emotions Page: 2

event are completely inappropriate or so excessive as

to seem abnormal. When we question him, we often

find that he has misinterpreted the situation. His

misinterpretation comprises a web of incorrect

meanings he has attached to the situation.

Interpretations that consistently depart from reality

(and are not simply based on incorrect information)

can be justifiably labeled as deviant. As we shall see,

the deviant meanings constitute the cognitive

distortions that form the core of emotional disorders.

A person may have to concentrate on his

stream of thoughts or images at the time of an event

in order to pinpoint its personal meaning. For

example, a medical student experiencing horror at

seeing a patient bleeding during an operation was

unable initially to understand his exaggerated

reaction. However, after prodding his memory, he

recalled that, at the time, he had experienced a visual

image of himself bleeding and also remembered

having had the thought, "This could happen to me!"

The fantasy and thought rather than the sight of the

patient were the key factor in evoking horror.

Observing the same sight during subsequent

operations no longer produced either the unpleasant

feeling or the fantasy.

Meanings, significances, and imagery comprise

what bas been called "internal reality. Psychoanalysts

have made Herculean efforts to explore it, but,

reluctant to accept patients' reports at face value, have

recast the ideational material into theory-derived

constructs. Even when meanings are elusive,

however, careful introspection and reporting of

internal experiences help to expand a person's

awareness to encompass a continuous flow

...