Person Model

A Whole Person Model

Body + Emotions + Mind + Spirit + Relationships

This is a constantly evolving model.

Purposes:
My purpose is to develop a model of human behavior that:

Can serve as a unifying place where all of the various systems and models of human behavior can come together for the benefit of all of us.

Each of the over 140 systems I've studied have something to contribute. Many focus on only 1 or 2 aspects of the whole human being. Many are symptom focused. Almost all of them create their own private vocabulary for common terms making it difficult to impossible to share ideas. Several actually want it that way. To enter their special 'club' you must not only speak their special vocabulary, but often take an increasingly expensive series of courses, to obtain higher and higher levels of 'certification'. This is not productive.

Which maintains respect for both individuals and communities.

Covers all aspects or levels of a "person", showing the interaction of social, family, and community contexts, with personal purpose, and the organizing function of the mind, the action function of the emotions, and the limiting and liberating role of our biology, again, so we may not just understand our behaviors and relationships but improve them!

Finally, the model should be thorough enough to understand the full range of behaviors from a Mother Teresa to a Geoffrey Dahlmer, from a Hitler to a Ghandi.

The Need for a comprehensive human model:
When I studied many different schools of psychology and spirituality I realized that most employed a negative model - the removal of symptoms! Many worked to reduce or eliminate ones fears, anxieties, terrors, etc. and suppress or eliminate certain urges and passions. As if once all these 'defects' were removed, one would suddenly blossom forth into a satisfied, healthy, fulfilled human being who both helped and was helped by others.

It didn't happen!

To become a satisfied, healthy, fulfilled human being, takes a lot of work!

Context:

Satisfied, fulfilled people contribute to the happiness of others.
Frustrated people, commit acts of violence, endangering themselves and others.
To transform frustrated people into satisfied, fulfilled people requires that the frustrated individual:
1. Become aware of and understand the reasons and strategies for their current behaviors.
2. Choose more effective strategies.
3. Methodically turn those choices into new habits.

I call this 3 phase process the Metado Process.

Structure:
After 35+ years of researching, experimenting, testing and modifying, here is where my model currently stands. I view each person as a unique individual. Yes, they are constructed from a somewhat standard set of similar parts, arranged in a most individual manner.

Relating this to the 5 Necessary and Sufficient Causes Model, we get:

	Contexts
	Spirit = Person
	Mind = Organizer
	Emotions = Action
	Body = Material
Family	Community	Society

Hierarchical Person Architecture/Model

Explanation:

Contexts: People do not exist as islands, rather we are born, grow, mature, and die within the specific contexts of a particular family, community, society, and nation.
Person: Each person or spirit is both part of larger contexts or groups, families, or communities and at the same time a unique individual. This personal tension, or spiritual conflict, between belonging and being an individual is managed by selecting values, and using those values to chose or make decisions about both how and where to belong and how and where to assert ones individuality.
Mind: is the organizer, or manager which carries out the valued decisions of the person. By storing and recalling events in the physical brain, observing and creating patterns, the mind uses foresight, insight, hindsight and creativity to activate the emotions and other bodily functions to impact one's environments. Current research, 2007, places many of these functions in the cortex of the physical brain. But even if new research moves their location, mind (non-physical) will still convert the orders of spirit into bodily actions. This is critical in recovering from unbalanced living.
Emotions: Apparently carry out their orders by contracting and dilating blood vessels and triggering various glands to secrete their hormones. Although pre-programmed by genetic factors, emotions can be over-ridden by the mind, should the spirit decide to do so, and train it appropriately. Current research, 2007, places much of emotional control in the Amygdala, with input from the Thalamus, controlling or at least influencing the Pituitary, which in turn controls many other glands. Again, new research may move its location, but its function will remain. Emotions also seem to drive the para-sympathetic system.
Body: The body carries out the orders of our minds and emotions, directed by our spirit. Cognitive, mental, control is sent by electrical signals from the cognitive brain to contract and relax various muscles, creating action and impact in the environment, to which the environment may return re-actions. These electrical signals appear to be augmented or diminished by the various chemical secretions of the emotions, which tend to dilate or constrict blood flow to those same muscles. Again, local pre-programmed or instinctual responses can be re-programmed by the mind, should the spirit decide to do so.

Purposeful - Hierarchical Semi-autonomous Nature:
One of the main elements that separates this model from similar ones is the concept of purpose being accomplished by multiple hierarchical levels of control, as well as feedback loops.

Each level of the hierarchy totally controls it's own behavior and strongly influences the behavior of the level below it, yet it can also receive and process feedback from the lower level. Each level is of course, controlled or strongly influenced by the level above it, but can generate and send it's own feedback.

By semi-autonomous I refer to the fact that higher (or newer in the evolutionary sense) levels can over-ride lower functions, but only by keeping a constant pressure on them, this is critical. A simple example of this is when we enter a coma. When the 'higher' functions are dis-abled, the 'lower' functions regain control. I'll refer to this as the 'Thumb on the Button' metaphor.

A Hierarchical example:
When the brain sends a signal to a muscle to contract, the muscle will contract, it cannot say "no I won't contract". It can however, send a feedback signal to the brain, saying something like, "This hurts, please stop". The brain, based on values from spirit and contextual information may, tell the muscle to stop contracting or it may not! (Not hearing the feedback signal, or not responding to it may contribute to cramps.)

Semi-autonomous example 1: (Brain over muscles)
Using your brain, you can hold your breath. However, when this causes a reduction in oxygen level to the brain, the brain stops functioning and the lungs resume breathing. Likewise, many bodily functions continue to function and regulate themselves while a person is in a coma.

Semi-autonomous example 2: (Spirit or mind over brain)
We have witnessed countless individuals who believing in certain abstract "Causes" will allow or even cause the destruction of their own bodies.

Mind <---> Emotion Interactions:
This is perhaps the most contentious and least understood relationship. My current view is that both personally and evolutionary, emotions started out by over-ruling mind. In a child, emotion, with its genetic wisdom, rules the mind. However, as one matures, if one chooses to do so, one may use mind to redirect the emotions into more effective ways of accomplishing the desires of the spirit or person. Redirection, is not suppression. I see all emotions as valid, and recognize that appropriate expressions are needed if those emotions are to serve rather than hinder the purposes of one's spirit or person.

For example:
Rage is an appropriate reaction to abuse and neglect. Suppressed it leads to ulcers, cancer, PTSD and other stress related diseases; expressed effectively, it might eliminate many of the ills of our current society.

This model is a dynamic model, and NOT cast in stone.

Its purpose is not to say "here is how we function", but to provide an organized structure or architecture for all the many facts, theories, hypothesis, conjectures etc. that we have created over the last century and will continue to create over the next century.

I believe the usefulness of this architecture will be enhanced by:

More Precise definition of terms.

Replacing Statistical Correlation with Necessary & Sufficient Causality as a research tool.

Adding the Dynamic Threshold or Relative Absolute scale as a more accurate way to record individual observations.

Use KnCells to store and exchange Meanings hence incrementally improving knowledge.

Organize, Test, and Share Knowledge through an ESS - an Experience Sharing System.

Ok, if that is a basic person, what is a totally fulfilled, balanced, contributing person?

What is the goal that I believe we should be striving towards?

Let's look again at the 5 levels from this perspective:

Spirit - It is at this level that the person exists. People are, in my opinion, individuals who have biological leanings, personal preferences, acquired beliefs, and most importantly personally chosen values. The single most important function of spirit is to make decisions or choices, based on our chosen values.

Many religions have tried to suppress spirit, believing obedience to a higher authority is more important. Their underlying belief seems to be that people, not restrained, suppressed or manipulated and left to their own devices, will behave in the worst of ways. I disagree. I choose to believe that people, not restrained, or suppressed, or manipulated but empowered to the fullest, when left to their own devices, will behave in the best of ways.

To handle what I consider the most fundamental spiritual conflict, between belonging and being an individual, I find the metaphor of a psychiatrist friend of mine, Bill Gray, to be most useful. He uses the metaphor of the locksmith: locks are meant to keep some people out while allowing others to enter.

Some of us feel "locked out" of our communities, and the good life; we need to find legitimate ways to "break in" and become part of our communities.
Others of us feel "locked in" or smothered and need to "break out" or express our individuality.
We can do it in ways that help or ways that hinder, it is our choice.
Mind - I see our minds as the implementers of the decisions that our spirits make. I believe absolutely, 100%, that we need to think our own thoughts! Thought manipulation, from sophisticated brain-washing to everyday advertising, to religious coercion destroys the finest part of us. In the middle is the manipulation and coercion of much of formal education to indoctrinate us, to follow the common mind or accepted wisdom, the very wisdom which has led to our current sad state of affairs.

Emotions - I believe ALL of our emotions are valid. We need to feel them all, and also learn appropriate, or value aligned and balanced, ways of expressing them. When someone is severely abused, or neglected, rage is a most appropriate emotion to feel. Whether it is expressed by blowing up a shopping mall or working to change basic legislation is our choice.

Body - A complex expression of spirit, mind, and emotion. It suffers and often expresses conflicts between spirit and mind; between spirit and community; between what we were taught and what we believe, based on experience. Since it is caught in a conflict of ideas, beliefs, and chemistry it is often difficult to decipher its messages. To view it exclusively from the perspective of chemicals and material forces is to miss the point completely.

This is perhaps my most critical departure from most other whole person research. I see our bodies as the end result of spirit, mind (non-physical), and emotions; Not as cause!

In extreme conditions, see my Dynamic Thresholds Model the reverse may be true. Typhoid can kill you, regardless of what you believe, (but why do many doctors and nurses not die?) excessive radiation can also kill you (but many people did survive Hiroshima) my point is that in ordinary everyday experience, our bodies are result not cause, exactly the opposite of much of the bio-medical and pharmaceutical communities viewpoint.

Examples:
1. You are not tense because your blood pressure is high;
  your blood pressure is high because you are tense; you are maintaining conflict between your spirit, mind, acquired beliefs, and your various communities etc.
2. You are not hyperactive because your thyroid outputs too much; your thyroid outputs too much, because you are hyperactive.
3. You are not exhausted because you iron count is low; your iron count is low because you are exhausted by constant struggles between your spirit, your acquired beliefs, and your many communities.

Community - Yet another difficult area, filled with conflicting ideas and opinions. It is my opinion, that we are both members of community and creators of community. We live in a specific community, we follow its directives, yet we also create by our choices, small and large, the community of tomorrow.

For those willing to risk expanding their viewpoints, here is a very engineering oriented approach to understanding human behavior. "Engineering oriented" is not necessarily better than other viewpoints, but it offers the kind of precision of terms and concepts, that allowed us to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth.
A Person Kit

Related pages:

A Narrative Description is at Founder's Narrative
An outline or summary in slide format is at: Overview Slides
And if you're still with us after those intro's, a more detailed map of the various Models, Theories, related articles etc. is at: Sitemap

Boundaries
Natural and Trauma Learning
A Person Kit
Bob's Blog
World Views blog entry

Feedback:

Certified RFR - Rat Free Research:
All my studies have been conducted with humans, by humans, and for humans.
No rats have ever been harmed or even inconvenienced.

Last Updated: Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007 5:20 PM

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