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Other Index 7: Psychiatric applications

Other Index | 1: Natural Selection | 2: Society | 3: Multistable System | 4: DAMS | 4½: DAMS II | 5: Epistemology | 6: Higher geometry of fields and matrix theory | 7: Psychiatric Applications | 8: Conditioned Reflex | 9: Oddments | 10: Unsolved Problems | 11: Quotations | 12: Subjective | 13: Personal Notes | 14: Slogans and Aphorisms

This section shows that Ross considered writing a book about the psychiatric applications of cybernetics.

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  1. Divider: 7
  2. Section Title: Psychiatric applications
  3. (Some of the applications are themselves major researches. They are included here, not so that I can make them but so that I can describe them clearly to the world of possible experimenters - Ph.D. candidates looking for a subject, etc.)
  4. (Remember that with psychiatry goes a large amount of neurology.)
  5. Objection that some disease states are characterised by an inability to vary or respond adequately, 2300.
  6. Masserman's principle of Deviation and Substitution, 2045.
  7. Drug addiction as instability 2292.
  8. Schizophrenic patients showing increased reaction to disturbance 2300, 2301.
  9. What happens when an animal is faced with a painful environment it cannot get away from, 2826.
  10. Davis' theory of neurosis as instability 2247.
  11. Causalgia as due to vicious circle 2636.
  12. The value of each unit if used with maximal efficiency, 2964.
  13. Collected list 2652.
  14. Neurosis resembles two armies struggling, 3456, 3462.
  15. Nature of neurotic symptoms, 3480.
  16. An arrangement possibly leading to conflict, 3591.
  17. A list of possibilities, of abnormality in the brain's self-correcting parameters to the variables, 3650.
  18. Why are psychoses rare in children? 3672.
  19. Schizophrenia might be due to an unfixing of memories that ought to stay fixed 4013.
  20. Consequences of faults in the system with variety-amplifier.
  21. According to Russell Davis, melancholia may be a self-locking condition 4183.
  22. Possible cures when essential variables compete, 4289.
  23. Messages heavily contaminated with noise may be best ignored. 4419.
  24. Some applications were discussed in correspondence with Dr Byrne, Aug '53, q.v.
  25. How reactions are corrected and how this shows. DIAGRAM (1) Primary need given (2) Essential variables feedback acts essentially as a sample way, acting by veto.
  26. Conflict between two essential variables, 4284.
  27. Hidden 'pain' as a possible cause of psychosis, 4080.
  28. If one part of a system is pushed to an abnormal state, the remainder, if able to learn, will, from then on, start to adapt to this and may tend to stabilise at the wrong value.
  29. Secondary disturbances that come from a primary.
  30. Alcohol, if it raises threshold, will tend to split up complex adaptations into simpler ones 1976.
  31. Delusions possibly due to averaging over only a few cells 2276.
  32. Systems that have many states of equilibrium can be permanently affected by a trajectory of parameter-changes that ends where it began.
  33. Learning systems can be permanently altered by a change round of external conditions that comes back to where it started.
  34. The system that "solves" its problem by shutting out further information is self-locking. ?Melancholia.
  35. Art of getting near to instability - dog and sheep.
  36. Possible for two systems each unstable to form a stable pair.
  37. Actual example of two human reactions which are unstable when joined (sleep and agression) 1708.
  38. Aggression and frustration forming vicious circle 2260.
  39. Two stable systems (stable in constant conditions) may well form an unstable pair.
  40. The abnormal regenative circuit that possesses a machine as a self-locking system 4183.
  41. We think dynamically, not logically, 3554.
  42. Information, with therapist as regulator.
  43. Main thesis: There are certain principles that apply to all dynamic systems – we show how they should guide the therapist in whatever treatment he is applying.
  44. (Finally) Check up against Sargant and Slater to make sure there are no discrepancies.
  45. (When written). Check up what was said in my earlier articles in J. Ment.Sci. to make sure I an not contradicting myself.
  46. Detail the signs that a parameter is changing and is bringing the system nearer to frank instability and a runaway.
  47. There will be no intention to teach the clinician in detail what he should do.
  48. The book should contain abundant illustrative clinical material. (rather like Henderson and Gillespie, or Stekel.)
  49. The book works by amplifying: I give some information, in such a form that the clinitian can supplement with his own knowledge of each case.
  50. Make the theme of multiple causation all pervading.
  51. Proper place for treatment by trial and error.
  52. ? Give an introductory section on the theory of control in general.
  53. Treatment is an act of control, and is therefore subject to the laws of communication.
  54. Discuss fully the implications of schizophrenia being genetic.
  55. Discuss whether an "inborn" characteristic can be treated.
  56. The brain can be affected by (clases are not exclusive): Visual stimuli, auditory stimuli, etc, Surgery, E.C.T., Pyrexia, Toxins, Chemicals in blood, Sedatives, Psychotherapy, Daily life, Volume of blood supplies, amount of glucose in blood, Vitamin supply, Convulsants, Deliriants, X-rays
  57. (continued) Ultra-sonics, Old age, Mechanical shock, Heat and cold direct, Removal of cortex, Cutting of white tracts, Electrolysis.
  58. Therapist must define the goal he wants, for if this is complex only a complex treatment can in general, achieve it.
  59. Explain how loss of information may occur when therapist acts on patient..
  60. Explain applications of the law of requisite variety: the therapist cannot (in general) construct a complex structure in the patient except by complex activities.
  61. (Method: Take some standard text-books, read their treatments and advice, and then use this material to write one's own advice.)
  62. As the book will not be out for at least two years, it can refer to the Introduction as reference and basis.
  63. Get a list of all possible ways of affecting the brain.
  64. Inborn mechanisms tend to have only one state of equilibrium for given external conditions. Therefore any permanent change of equilibrium must be induced by permanent change externally.
  65. Cerebral mechanisms can be divided into un-learning / learning. The "imprinting"type needs special consideration as peculiar.
  66. Given a general survey of what is meant by "cause".
  67. Schizophrenia as an inability to sustain the distinctions between logical types - Bateson's view. Reprint 143.
  68. Is schizophrenia characterised by increasing noisiness? 5268.
  69. Call attention to new forms of mental disorder, recognisable on the hierarchy of regulators yet not yet observed clinically.
  70. Predict further actions of drugs for the pharmacologist to test.
  71. Cybernetics may be able to predict what class of treatment should be used in a given case, without specifying the particular details.
  72. Study the actions of various drugs.
  73. Explain why the prognoses of the various conditions are as they are.
  74. Revue the known treatments and see how they should be modified.
  75. Explain why certain symptoms (e.g. elation and flight of ideas tend to go together). (First collect a list of such purely empirical pairings).
  76. Demonstrate that trauma to the environment will produce some of the classic symptoms of trauma to the head!
  77. Go through a list of symptoms; some of them, hitherto mysterious in origin, may be readily explicable.
  78. I may clarify what is meant by "classification", e.g. take the list on Henderson and Gillespie pp16-18 – what does this list do?
  79. Apply cybernetics to give a rational classification of the disorders according to the level at which the first abnormal regulation occurs in the hierarchy. (Introduction to Cybernetics, chapter 14).
  80. Occupational therapy can be seen from the cybernetic point of view, and commented upon.
  81. Cybernetics has deep comments on the topic of criminal responsibilty.
  82. Obsessions as a manifestation of peculiar stability.
  83. Take a suitable case and discuss it cybernetically, so that a new light is thrown through an old subject.
  84. Develop tests of the "regenerative" type, that eventually depend almost wholly on the patient's nature and hardly at all on the initial state given.
  85. Certain anatomical features (e.g. fanning for dispersion) should be explainable).
  86. Identify those disorders in the mechanisms that learn and those in the mechanisms that are inborn.
  87. Cybernetics may suggest tests as being suited for various conditions.
  88. The whole of Design and the Introduction, by showing how things go right, also shows the complement: how things may go wrong. All man has to do is deny each axion, and trace the consequences.
  89. Since E.C.T. can hardly do anything at first but increase disorganisation, a case with retention of urine, given E.C.T., should:- if retention to due to disorganisation at the basic (hypothalmic, homeostatic) level make it worse, if retention is due to elaborate abnormal organisation in the cortex, make it better (by removing this factor).
  90. The effect of E.C.T. can be reviewed as a possible source of de-habituation.
  91. Graph "severity of symptoms" against time on any reasonable scale. Many patients will show a graph of form: DIAGRAM i.e. small but distinct abnormality over a long time and then a sudden rush up. This is prima facia evidence of runaway.
  92. This work yields applications to psychiatry as by-products. 5570.
  93. Review of the points at which applications to psychiatry can occur. 5651.
  94. Symptoms produced by attention at the gating or distributing mechanism. 5763.
  95. Injury that should lead to increased retroactive inhibition. 5765.
  96. Blitz-therapy. 6061.
Other Index | 1: Natural Selection | 2: Society | 3: Multistable System | 4: DAMS | 4½: DAMS II | 5: Epistemology | 6: Higher geometry of fields and matrix theory | 7: Psychiatric Applications | 8: Conditioned Reflex | 9: Oddments | 10: Unsolved Problems | 11: Quotations | 12: Subjective | 13: Personal Notes | 14: Slogans and Aphorisms


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