INTRODUCTION Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 PART II Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 APPENDIX A APPENDIX B NOTES Notes 1-15 Notes 16-35 Notes 36-44 Notes 45-56

Part II. ZONE #1: The Insides of the Interior (page 3)

Compound Individuals and Compound Networks

     We have seen that, of the relation between an individual and a group/system, the two fundamental views have been that individuals are primarily wholes (or libertarian ends in themselves) versus individuals are primarily parts (of a system or web, which is the primary whole).

     In reference to those two major schools, AQAL metatheory makes several basic moves: it claims that (1) any occasion is neither a whole nor a part, but a whole/part, or holon. It then suggests that (2) there are individual holons as well as communal, collective, or systemic holons; and further suggests that (3) when it comes to individual whole/parts and communal whole/parts, the word "part" means something very different in each case--to be a part of an individual holon and part of social holon is not exactly the same type of partness (nor, therefore, exactly the same type of wholeness). In an individual holon, each larger or higher whole subsumes its juniors as components or elements of its being: whole atoms become parts of whole molecules, which become parts of whole cells, which all get up and walk across the room when Daisy tells them to. Here, the agency of one holon (such as a molecule) is subsumed in and by the agency of the higher holon (such as the cell), so that each larger whole in this sequence means that one agency (or holon) becomes a sub-agency (or subholon) of a larger whole. "Part of a larger whole" in this case means agency-in-a-superagency.²²

     But with a collective holon, society, or system, there is no single superagency that swallows its parts whole (which is what the Leviathan actually did to Jonah, swallowed him whole--there's a lesson in there somewhere). With a system or collective holon (social or cultural), to be a "part of a larger whole" means to be an agency-in-communion, not an agency-in-a-superagency. A system, web, or network of individual holons is a network of agencies-in-communion.²³

     Whitehead, among many others, have pointed to this crucial distinction by using the notion of compound individual (to borrow Hartshorne's elaboration). That is, individual holons (whether interior [UL] or exterior [UR]) are compound individuals, which means that each senior holon is compounded of its junior holons (it contains, includes, or enfolds the junior holons as elements, essential parts, or actual ingredients of its own makeup). We have already seen this general notion--it is "transcend and include" applied to individual holons. A molecule is a compound individual, compounded of atoms, which are compounded of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which are compounded of quarks, and so on.

     What makes a compound individual at any of those levels is that the agency of each of the subholons is, in some important ways, enfolded or subsumed in the agency of the senior holon (e.g., Daisy): multiple agencies are enfolded in one agency (agency-in-superagency, subholons in holons).²⁴ Whitehead wonderfully summarized this as, "The many become one and are increased by one," which captures well both the unification brought by each new superagency ("the many become one") and the emergence of the new superagency itself ("and are increased by one").

     Even though the subholons retain a relative autonomy within the senior holon (e.g., in an organism, cells don't loose their boundaries, they are still relatively independent cells in many ways), nonetheless the agency or autonomy of the junior holons or subholons now also "obey," if you will, the agency of the highest holon of which they are constitutive elements (e.g., Daisy). Whitehead pointed out this crucial feature of compound individuals with terms like "dominant monad" and "regnant nexus": the highest level in the holon becomes a governor (or a "regnant nexus"-- governing pattern) of the subholons that are internal to that holon.

     Whitehead's point is that a society itself is not a compound individual but an association of mutually-prehending compound individuals. A society is a system without a dominant monad; an organism is a system with a dominant monad. (At this point, it is common for Buddhists to say that individuals don't have a dominant monad or a central self, either--the "self" is merely an illusion created by individuals out of ignorance--and therefore both individuals and societies are actually selfless systems. But that still misses the essential point. The "self" might indeed be an illusion; even so, individuals have it, societies don't.)

     The point is that a group of individuals is not itself an individual. A communal holon--a culture, a family, a tribe, an ant colony, the prokaryotic network of Gaia, a weather system, a hermeneutic circle, a society, a crystal, an ecosystem, a system at any level--is not itself a compound individual but a collection, assembly, association, nexus, network, or system of mutually related compound individuals. As we will see, what is internal to systems is not individuals but their intersections (as when Luhmann maintains that societies are composed not of individuals but of communication).

     One of the ways we will be summarizing this is to say that a society/system is a compound network, not a compound individual. The compound individuals in a compound network are indeed mutually interdependent, multidimensional, interlinked, tetra-interpenetrating agencies-in-communions. They do not appear to be, however, parts of a really big critter.

Internal and External

     In order to trace the extraordinary relationships between compound individuals and compound networks, we need one last theoretical item. Several sentences in the previous section contained comments like, "Atoms are internal to molecules, molecules are internal to cells." The notion of "internal" is used by philosophers to indicate that something is an actual part of something, necessary for its identity. The notion of "internal" adds a third dimension to our other spaces of "inside" and "interior."²⁵ These three dimensions (interior/exterior, inside/outside, internal/external) appear to be the minimum requirements for a integral calculus of indigenous perspectives. They are the three major navigational directions, if you will, in surfing the AQAL ocean with any sort of integral adequacy.

     Very briefly, the notion of internal is simply another take on "enfoldment," or transcend and include, or development that is envelopment. One holon is internal to another holon when it is literally an internal component, ingredient, or fundamental element of that holon. The classic example is the series of compound individuals in the UR: atoms are literally internal to molecules, which are internal to cells, which are internal to organisms, and so on.

     As such, if one holon is internal to another holon, that subholon becomes subject to the agency of the senior holon. When Daisy moves across the room, so do those holons internal to her organism. Our simple definition is: a holon (in any quadrant ) is internal to another if it is following the patterns or agency of that holon.

     In a cell, the molecules are some of the actual elements of that cell, or the actual organic ingredients of that cell. So it is not just that molecules are inside cells (which they are), but that they are internal to the cell's actual makeup. Other things can be inside a cell--like an invading parasite--but they are not internal to the cell itself, they are not part of its actual agency, identity, or regnant nexus--they are inside the cell but not internal to it--they are external to its identity, they are external invaders. (Technically, as Varela would put it, the parasite is inside the cell but external to its autopoietic regime.)

     Here's some quick examples of "internal" compared to "inside." When you first eat food, it is inside you (inside your stomach), but eventually much of its nutrients become internal, or an actual part of your bodily organism (some of the food therefore crosses both the inside boundary and the internal boundary). Some of the food does not become internal but is excreted; as it passes through the alimentary system, it remains inside but external to the organism, and eventually becomes outside and external: let's call that fertilizer (but which illustrates another point: the excrement of some organisms serves as food for others. It's not just, as Woody Allen put it, that "nature is one big restaurant," but that nature recycles everything, which means that everything is eventually internal to something.)

     Another way of saying this is that the internal/external axis is simply the axis of a development that is envelopment (or enfoldment). Cells enfold, include, or envelop molecules in their makeup (so that molecules are internal to the cell); likewise, molecules enfold or envelop atoms in their makeup. This is often captured by the phrase: "all of the lower is in the higher, but not all of the higher is in lower" (e.g., all of the atom is in the molecule, but not all of the molecule is in the atom). Again, transcend and include, which establishes an asymmetrical holarchy of increasing inclusiveness, embrace, envelopment, enfoldment.²⁶

     (Notice that this is the same enfoldment that is one of the three integrative principles discussed in Excerpt B, "The Many Ways We Touch." One of the reasons that such a principle is useful in integrative approaches is that it helps us navigate the developmental or evolutionary current in AQAL spacetime. Holographic metaphors, which are an important part of the picture, fail to capture those important aspects of time's arrow, and thus models built merely of holographic metaphors are, ironically, much less than integral.)²⁷

     We saw that interior means any holon seen from within (in a first-person or LH stance; exterior is any holon seen from without in a third-person or RH stance); and inside means anything on the inside of a holon's boundary wherever it is found (in interiors or exteriors). Internal simply means that which is an ingredient or constitutive element in any holon (in any quadrant)--that is, something is internal to a holon if it is following the agency of that holon (and it is external to the holon if it is not). All of those terms--interior/exterior, inside/outside, internal/external--apply to both individual holons and collective holons. For the moment, we will continue to focus on what internal means with compound individuals, but we will soon see that compound networks or systems also have internal ingredients.

     (What are these internal ingredients of a system, or the "parts" of which a system is composed? We have already seen one thing: they are NOT organisms or compound individuals. Rather, what is internal to a system is the communication between its members, or, more broadly, what we will call their "intersections" or transactions--all of the inter-holonic realities involved in the system. These intersections are the actual "parts" or internal components of the system, web, or compound network, as we will see in a moment.)

Internal in the Interior Spaces

     Internal, then, connotes genuine "partness": if one holon is internal to another, then that holon is an actual element of the compound holon, a part of its being, identity, definition. Any holon that is internal to another holon becomes a subholon of the defining agency that holon: enfolded, embraced, enveloped. (Some people, using first-person terms, might call this "agape," but enfoldment will do.)

     We have been using examples of "internal" and of "compound individuals" taken mostly from the Upper Right. But the same internality or enfoldment is operating in the interiors. In the development of cognition in humans, for example, we find images, symbols, concepts, rules, and metarules (among others). All of those are holons that are transcended-and-included in the next senior holon--they are each interior wholes that become parts of larger interior wholes ("the many become one and are increased by one")--so that the holons at one level become subholons at the next (e.g., many images are taken up and enfolded in symbols; many symbols are taken up, operated on, and enfolded in concepts; many concepts are brought together, enfolded, and operated on in rules, and so on). In that interior sequence we again we see fine examples of internality, a regnant nexus at each level of enfoldment, a transcend-and-include movement, agency-in-superagency, and a development that is envelopment.

     We especially see this vertical axis of transcend-and-include with self development. In order to follow this internal development, let's first listen to how inside is used when it comes to an "I" or an interior self-sense.

     "These are the values that I hold. These are things that I identify with. These are the things that I want. No, I do not want that. Yes, I want this. That idea is not something I believe. Don't do that to me, I won't stand for it." This I-boundary is very real, very obvious.

     What is inside my present-I are all of the things that are inside the boundary of my felt I-space.²⁸ Like all interior boundaries, you cannot see this boundary in the sensorimotor or Right-Hand world; you cannot see it with ecology, empiricism, systems theory, or autopoietic theories. But you know perfectly well when something is you, and something is not you. When somebody attempts to push their ideas on you; when they invade your privacy; when they attempt to manipulate you--you can spot a boundary violation almost immediately.

     All holons, including interior holons, are functional wholes, which means that they have ways to register the integrity of their wholeness, or their self boundaries, or the interface where inside and outside touch each other. A healthy interface allows touching; a pathological interface either dissociates inside and outside (pathological agency) or merges and fuses inside and outside (pathological communion).

     The healthy "I," like all healthy interfaces, recognizes what is "I" and what is not "I," while at the same time allowing regulated traffic freely to cross. Each holon has the equivalent of an "immune system," which is part of its capacity to endure and continue in spacetime--aspects of its kosmic habits that allow the holon to persist, and without which it would quickly decease. Of course, one of the more amazing things about an I-boundary and a phenomenological I-space is how fluid they can be; still, to transcend an I-boundary is not to break it but to move beyond it; a broken I-boundary is not transcendence but pathology.

     But even with most normal I-boundaries, as Perls and numerous depth psychologists have often pointed out, what is inside the I is not necessarily what should be there. The psyche has the equivalent of invading parasites (such as false identifications, introjections, and fixated/repressed elements that have not been properly assimilated). In other words, these alien elements are inside my psyche but are not internal to it--they are not a natural, essential, healthy element of my psyche or my self-identity; they are inside my psyche but external to its real identity--a bit of undigested meat in my psychic system--a type of psychological immune disease.

     So we can have inside the self, and we can have internal to the self. How can you tell the difference? Remember that the definition of internal is "something that follows the agency of the holon." The reason that a parasite invading a cell is not internal to the cell is that the parasite is following its own agency (which might in fact be attempting to kill the cell); even when inside the cell, the parasite won't do what the cell's nucleus tells it to. The parasite is inside the boundary of the cell but is not internal to it--the parasite "has a mind of its own."

     Likewise, dissociated, repressed, or "foreign elements" in the psyche notoriously have a mind of their own: they are indeed "alien elements" because they either originated outside the psyche and do not belong inside it (e.g., introjections); or they are elements that were once integrated in (and therefore internal to) the psyche but have now become repressed, dissociated, alienated: they are split off from the psyche and thus take on a life of their own.

     In either case, they refuse to follow the agency of the psyche and instead follow rules of their own--they are still inside the psyche but are external to its agency: they are no longer part of the harmonious operation and agency of the psyche, but pockets of rebellion that refuse desegregation. They might even become dissociated subpersonalities that split off into multiple personalities, or subholons that commit treason, that split off their agency and intentionality from that of the psyche, miniature subjects with their own intentionalities that refuse to become objects of the ongoing "I" and thus refuse to be part of the larger prehensions of the psyche.

     There are, of course, all sorts of variations on those themes, but they all involve various sorts of disruption of the I-boundary, or disruptions of the boundary conditions of internality for the self. In simpler forms, what is repressed or dissociated is a feeling, impulse, image, need, or trait that belongs to the "I" but is not owned by the I, a dissociated and outlawed feeling-complex that is no longer allowed to arise in the I-space and therefore must take on symptomatic and disguised forms in order to do so.

     For example, a man and a woman are in relationship; the man (intentionally or not) violates the emotional space of the woman, which normally would cause the woman to get angry. In many cases, and within limits, anger is a natural and healthy response to boundary violations--healthy anger is the T-cell of the psychological immune system, which protects the integrity of the self-boundary (and the phenomenological I-space). But in this example, the woman is not angry at her lover for being the complete dolt that he is, because she is a nice person and nice people don't get angry; she is, however, and for some strange reason, very sad and depressed. The anger that naturally arose and was directed at another person for having violated her space has now been "retroflected," or turned back on the self, whereupon she proceeds to beat herself up instead, taking an anger meant for another person and clobbering herself with it, at which point "mad" has become "sad." She is allowed to be sad, because nice people can be sad; but she doesn't know why she is sad, or how she got that way, and she has no control over this depression. In other words, at this point she is no longer translating the phenomena within the event horizon of her self or I-space in an adequate and accurate fashion; rather, these events now appear as alien symptoms that baffle her, that require interpretation, that do not obey her agency, that are starting to act with a mind of their own....

     Many psychological symptoms--interior feelings of anxiety, depression, phobia, obsession, compulsion--are the disguised forms of feelings and impulses that, for whatever reason, are too dangerous to the I-space to allow them to arise in their raw and naked forms, and thus they have to be "clothed" in more acceptable fashions. Put bluntly, the psyche lies to itself, becomes false to itself, is no longer being truthful about its own interiors--the price of which is psychological pain and suffering.

     (Truthfulness, recall, is the selection pressure, or validity claim, of the UL quadrant. The types of psychopathology we are investigating here involve violations of this integrity or truthfulness, the price of which is psychological anguish, suffering, angst. When the self is untruthful, it damages its internality codes and boundaries, or the ways to tell with integrity what is true self and what is false self. A history of interior deception, untruthfulness, lying to oneself, deceiving oneself, is the beginning of the creation of a false-self system, the beginning of a kosmic habit as a negative karmic stream of dis-integrity that lives on lies. It is this false self we are briefly examining, which is not to say that other things aren't also happening with psychological dys-eases, including, e.g., UR neurotransmitter imbalances, LL family problems, LR economic factors, and so on. We are here simply focusing on the UL manifestation of the knot in the Kosmos identified as a "psychological symptom.")

     In this example, an original feeling of "anger," which is not allowed by the self's agency, regime, or code (because it is a nice person), is mis-translated as "depression" and thus allowed to arise in the I-space as long as it is wearing that disguise, a disguise that is accompanied by suffering as the price of untruthfulness.

     Different cultures have wonderful variations on this theme, the theme of mistranslating an occasion, which always has tragico-comic consequences--the "trickster" being one of the most common. In America, there is a phrase, "He's the beard for Joe," which means, one person is acting as a front or disguise for another person. The word "beard" comes from fake beards that a person can wear if they are going to a costume party. If I put on a fake beard, I am disguising myself; at parties, this is funny because it so obvious.

     But in other cases it is not as obvious and not as funny. In Hollywood during the '40s and '50s, movie stars were "not allowed" to be homosexual. That behavior was still "outlawed," or not allowed to arise in any public we-space. Therefore, famous male movie stars who were gay--Rock Hudson, Tony Perkins, James Dean--would often appear in public with a woman, and sometimes even marry a woman, as a disguise. The woman, to those who knew, was "the beard"--she was the fake "beard" the man was wearing in public in order disguise his real self and thus be allowed to walk freely in a public we-space. The price to the man, of course, was usually a horrible interior pain and suffering for always having to put up a false front, a false self, in public.

     The same thing happens in an I-space. If I have an impulse that is not allowed, that is outlawed, then that impulse can arise in my I-space only if it is disguised. My psychological symptoms are "beards" for my real impulses and my real self. Those outlawed feelings can arise and walk around freely in my I-space only if accompanied by a beard--only if disguised, the flip side of which is anguish, pain, suffering, torment.

     If this dissociation increases in severity, the repressed and outlawed occasion is projected outside of the psyche entirely and thus actually appears (to the I-space) as a trait belonging to another person onto whom the trait has been projected (i.e., what is actually internal to the psyche is now perceived as being internal to the psyche of another person: I am not angry, because I am a nice person, but everybody else seems to have a lot of anger!).

     Because the immune system of the I-boundary will protect its phenomenological space from disruption, if an internal element (an element that is a genuine part of the actual self) becomes a threat, that element is no longer allowed to enter the I-space unaccompanied; it becomes "outlawed" and thus must either wear a disguise in order to enter in the I-space ("mad" wears a beard called "sad"), or it is banished from the I-space altogether, in which case it can arise in the I-space only if its ownership is attributed to another I-space.

     (Notice that all of this is still happening in interior spaces. If I project my anger, it will be onto another I, and it will then appear, not that I am mad at that person, but that person is mad at me. Anger is not something running around out there in the exterior sensorimotor world, although it has correlates there, but rather is a phenomenon arising within interior I-spaces, and thus when it is displaced, it is displaced within various interiors. Only in severe pathologies is the interior phenomenon projected not only outside and external, but also exterior.)

     In milder forms of dissociation, the repressed occasion appears as an alien impulse (repressed, dissociated, projected). In harsher forms, the repressed occasion is so completely severed from the agency of the I-space that it appears not simply as an alien impulse but an alien "I"--it appears as another I within the psyche, a relatively independent (sub)personality with a mind of its own, an "I" that is actually experienced as outside of my proximate I, another first person residing in my psyche--hence multiple personality disorder. In its severest forms, that dissociated first-person subpersonality in its entirety can be projected not only outside the psyche and external to the psyche but also exterior to the psyche, in which case this split-off personality is hallucinated--but actually appears as--a real person in the exterior world, a person who talks to me, tells me what to do, won't shut up and leave me alone.... This complex is so dissociated that it can appear in my I-space only if it appears as outside and external and exterior to me....

     Whatever the source and degree of these dissociated, outlawed, alienated, and hence "alien" elements, they involve boundary violations and disruptions of various indigenous perspectives of first-, second-, and third-person occasions--confusions about what is "I," what is "you," and what is "it," all focused on the internality codes of the particular self or I-space. Individuals suffering from these symptoms and inner dissociations reflect them in native language by situating the origin of their symptoms as external to them: "These panic attacks just happen"; "I can't control my desire to eat"; "I can't get out of this depression," and so on--the interior problems are phenomenologically experienced as external to the person's will and intentionality (they do not "obey" my will).

     In milder cases, these alienated impulses are external to my I but not yet exterior to my I. For example, the compulsion to eat does not fall on my head like an apple, it does not come from out there--the compulsion to eat comes from somewhere inside me, it just doesn't come from me! I can't control it, I don't want to do it, I hate over-eating, and yet the compulsion, it's stronger than me. The compulsion is definitely experienced as interior, but it is not experienced as internal to my I, not part of my intentionality: it is external to I. Remember that the definition of "internal" is "anything that follows the agency of the holon." Well, this damn compulsion will not follow my agency, my will, my intentionality: it definitely is external to my I (but not exterior or out there). In severer cases, the alienated complex can indeed be projected in its apparent totality into the exterior world, where it might appear as a hallucinated first person.

     The job of depth psychology, of course, is to restore the integrity of the self boundary, its internality codes, its interface of touch, so that introjections can be dislodged, projections re-owned, alien elements eliminated or assimilated.²⁹

     In many cases, the progress of therapy is measured by how successfully individuals can convert third-person symptoms (or "its), which completely baffle them, to second-person occasions that they are beginning to communicate with, to first-person occasions that they now own.

     For example, the person starts out with: "This feeling of depression, it just happens to me whenever I am around Joe. I can't help it." This depression is a third-person occasion or "it" arising in her interior space (a third-person occasion in her first-person I-space). As she feels into this depressed state, bodily and emotionally communicating with it as a real second-person presence that has something important to tell her (a second-person presence that has an intentionality that can potentially be understood), then various felt-meanings will be begin to emerge in her I-space--and will do so without their beards (e.g., real and authentic feelings of anger might emerge in her I-space). At that point, she might be able to say, not that "this depression, it just happens to me," but rather, "I am really angry at Joe"--at which point she is not sad, but fucking furious. She has owned her own intentionality.

     Thus, from third-person "it" to second-person "you" to first-person "I"--the course of befriending a previously alienated subjectivity (thus reversing the course of the symptom's genesis, where an "I" impulse, censored and disallowed, became a third-person dissociated "it").

     Freud famously summarized his version of depth psychology as, "Where id was, there ego shall be." As is now well known, Freud never used the Latin words "ego" or "id," which were words inserted by his major translator (Strachey). Freud himself used the German words "das ich" and "das es," or "the I" and "the it." Freud's actual statement that summarized therapy was, "Where it was, there I shall be"--a truly wonderful summary of therapeutic re-authoring, reflecting well the calculus of indigenous perspectives (from "it" to "I"). That Freud's metatheory is not, shall we say, exactly something to write home about, should not detract from some of the profound phenomenology Freud brought to this therapeutic endeavor. (One of the best ways to track the "I" and the "it" in therapy is to read the works of Fritz Perls, who was an unsurpassed master of tracing the shadow that is untruthfulness as it migrates from "I" to "it" in symptoms and back to "I" in therapy.)

     For the moment, all we need note is how the basic indigenous perspectives, available even to a bacterium, can be traced in my compulsion to eat. The manifest universe does indeed seem to be constructed of perspectives, all the way up, all the way down, linking all sentient beings in endless reflections of each other, an Indra's Net of multiple intimacies.