REPRESENTATIVE EXPOSURE AND THE CLARIFICATION OF VALUES Steven R. Brown Department of Political Science Kent State University Kent, OH 44242-001 +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Abstract: Representative exposure is a procedure introduced by | | Harold Lasswell and designed to assist in elucidating the charac- | | ter and impact of values, especially as they play a role in the | | clarification of goals in the policy process. The connection of | | representative exposure to psychoanalytic free association is ex- | | amined, and Lasswell's one worked example is scrutinized for | | guidelines about how to utilize this procedure. An illustration | | focuses on the issue of law in post-apartheid South Africa, and Q | | methodology is incorporated to provide operational substance for | | the principles involved. | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Read at a meeting of the Policy Sciences Institute, Yale Univer- | | sity School of Law, New Haven, Connecticut, 28-30 October 1994. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ... no man's intelligence is contin- ually dominant; fatigue or surprise him, and habits and emotions take control. (H.G. Wells) The concept of representative exposure is briefly discussed in two short paragraphs in Harold Lasswell's 1958 paper on "Clarifying Value Judg- ment." In that paper, Lasswell distinguished two major kinds of princi- ples, both of which he considered requisite for the thorough clarifica- tion of values: The first he referred to as principles of content, and the second as principles of procedure, and representative exposure was one of the procedural principles. To set the stage, value clarification is formally associated with the first of the five intellectual tasks: goal specification. Lasswell points out that there are two primary modes for clarifying value judg- ment. The first focuses on what is said and is referred to as content analysis: this procedure is logical in nature and mainly involves apply- ing the higher intellective capacities to the corpus of material that is already available for scrutiny. Its aim, as Lasswell said, is "to im- prove the adequacy of definition, of rule making, of propositional anal- ysis" (p. 87). Typically, content analysis takes the form either (1) of expanding the grounds of a value judgment (e.g., "I support the new South African government because it is the institution closest to my belief in human dignity for all peoples of South Africa"), or (2) of specifying more de- tail (e.g., "By the term 'South African government' I am referring less to the set of institutions per se than to the obligations of the 1988 Freedom Charter"). We should note that a value judgment can be grounded empirically, as when its author speaks on his or her own authority and takes responsibility for marshaling reasons and assembling evidence. Or a judgment can be grounded transempirically, as when the author of a statement invokes God's will or other forces of a theological or metaphysical kind. Our preference is for the empirical.(NOTE 1) While the principles of content restrict the ego to "the limits of conscious experience" (p. 92), the principles of procedure are aimed at the utilization of existing resources on the one hand, or, on the other, at enlarging the scope of considerations and the pool of available in- formation. The principle of representative exposure is best suited to the widening of scope, whereas that prong of procedure related to uti- lizing existing resources Lasswell referred to as configurative think- ing, which places emphasis on goal and context. Empirically-grounded value judgments imply choice, hence are necessarily related to an evolv- ing context of possibilities which serves as backdrop for the choices made, and which can only be ignored at the risk of omission and incon- sistency. As is well known, configurative thinking includes trend analysis, which brings the time factor explicitly into the picture. The system- atic analysis of conditions helps clarify those cause and effect con- nections that impede or facilitate the realization of preferred goals. Projections facilitate clarification of possible future states of af- fairs relative to preferred outcomes if nothing is done to interfere with current conditions. The invention of alternatives is the window through which creativity and inventiveness can enter the process in such a way as to influence outcomes. Although Lasswell's 1958 paper provided the most extended treatment of value clarification to that date, there is abundant evidence that this matter had been of concern to him from the earliest years of his career. In his 1924 book with Willard Atkins, for instance, there is the following very-Lasswellian statement: To state the existence of attitudes is not a difficult mat- ter; to explain why an attitude is what it is, calls for an analysis, which is often difficult to make, and yet which should not be sidestepped. We must, as part of our study, expose our- selves to ourselves. (Atkins & Lasswell, 1924, p. 7) And a few years later, in a 1930 paper entitled "Self-Analysis and Judi- cial Thinking," Lasswell sought to elucidate the procedure of judicial previewing and recommended ways to detect prejudices and their distortive effects on decisions. In that paper, he advanced the thesis that "exclusive emphasis upon the importance of logical thinking inca- pacitates, rather than equips, the mind of the judge" (Lasswell, 1930, p. 355). This is due to the fact that an initial desire for consistency with precedent, for instance, foreshadows the conclusions and restricts the mind to filling in the details between presupposition and desired outcome. The "paradox of logical thinking," as he called it (p. 358), is that it eventually impoverishes itself by destroying its own source of sustenance by screening out those contents of the mind that threaten to deflect the arrow of logic. In particular, he said that "logical procedures exclude from attention the most important data about the self" (p. 358), and that logic stands impotent before those inconsisten- cies and irrationalities of mind that are relatively immune to reason. For theoretical justification, Lasswell relied on Freud, who had shown that the harder we try to penetrate our repressions the more resistent our defenses. Freud therefore recommended the indirect route of weaken- ing the defenses rather than confronting them head-on, and for this pur- pose he used devices such as hypnosis, free association, and dream analysis. It might be noted in passing that this phenomenon of reaching one's goal by reducing efforts to achieve it is well known in science, and in life generally. The French mathematician Poincare (1914) recounts how he struggled unsuccessfully for a solution to a problem on which he was working: And then "one day, as I was crossing the street, the solution to the difficulty which had brought me to a standstill came to me all at once" (p. 54). And how many times has the name which we cannot remem- ber, despite prolonged efforts at recollection, suddenly and effort- lessly appeared? As a procedure supplemental to logic, Lasswell recommended the tech- nique of "free phantasy," which he borrowed from Freud and which serves to illuminate the concept of representative exposure. But before going into technical detail, it is important to note that the 1920s and early '30s was a period during which intellectuals of all kinds were incorpo- rating Freud's insights into their own specific pursuits. In 1927, for instance, in his novel Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse recognized the multi- ple and unintegrated tendencies of the human mind when he wrote that... ... it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again. The judge who sits over the murderer and looks into his face, and at one moment recognizes all the emotions and potentialities and possibilities of the murderer in his own soul and hears the murderer's voice as his own, is at the next moment one and indi- visible as the judge, and scuttles back into the shell of his cultivated self and does his duty and condemns the murderer to death. (Hesse, 1927/1969, pp. 66-67) Hesse then goes on to say that if those who come to realize that we are made up of "a bundle of selves" are so bold as to proclaim it in public, they will be locked away so as to save humanity from having to hear the cry of truth.(NOTE 2) And in her 1928 novel Orlando, which has recently been released as a video, Virginia Woolf wrote in a similar vein: For if there are (at a venture) seventy-six different times all ticking in the mind at once, how many different people are there not -- Heaven help us -- all having lodgment at one time or another in the human spirit? Some say two thousand and fifty-two. So that it is the most usual thing in the world for a person to say, directly they are alone, Orlando? (if that is one's name) meaning by that, Come, come! I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another. Hence, the astonishing changes we see in our friends. But it is not altogether plain sailing, either, for though one may say, as Orlando said (being out in the country and needing another self presumably) Orlando? still the Orlando she needs may not come; these selves of which we are built up, one on top of another, as plates are piled on a waiter's hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own, call them what you will (and for many of these things there is no name) so that one will only come if it is raining, another in a room with green cur- tains, another when Mrs. Jones is not there, another if you can promise it a glass of wine -- and so on; for everybody can mul- tiply from his own experience the different terms which his dif- ferent selves have made with him -- and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all. (Woolf, 1928, pp. 308-309) And finally, in his 1921 poem "Snake," D.H. Lawrence reveals in his own self the many conflicting feelings that can arise with respect to a single event. In this lengthy poem, Lawrence observes a snake drinking from his water trough, and while he watches the snake drink, he hears a multitude of voices from his past -- e.g., the voice of his education saying that the snake (which is poisonous) should be killed, while other voices say he should kill it so as to prove his manhood. Lawrence's di- alog with himself then goes as follows (Lawrence, 1964, p. 350): But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured. And yet those voices: If you were not afraid, you would kill him! And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth. Affection, gladness, cowardice, perversity, honor, fear -- all in the course of four short stanzas, hence the conflict and ambivalence that characterize Lawrence's poem. But even before Freud, psychologists were aware of our multiplicity of selves, or of our "manifold being," as Hesse referred to it. In his Principles of Psychology, published in 1890, William James asserted that "a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him" (p. 294), and that these selves fall into classes according to the various groups to which we show our different sides: And from this, James wrote... ... there results what practically is a division of the man into several selves; and this may be a discordant splitting, as where one is afraid to let one set of his acquaintances know him as he is elsewhere; or it may be a perfectly harmonious division of labor, as where one tender to his children is stern to the soldiers or prisoners under his command. (p. 294) The problem to which multiplicity gives rise -- if it can, indeed, be referred to as a problem -- is that it implicates diverse identifica- tions to which are attached feelings and cognitions that create swirls and eddies in the mind, and potentially dangerous swells of sentiment which can interfere with the decision-maker's efforts to navigate to the calm harbors of prudent conclusions. We recognize this phenomenon under the rubric identification -- i.e., a shared perspective on a person as a participant in an interactive collectivity (Lasswell, 1972, p. 4). As Hesse, Freud, Woolf, Lawrence, James, and Lasswell all knew, we are all made up of bundles of tendencies to which we owe different allegiances, and that ebb and flow and occasionally erupt depending on circumstances. The complications which accompany diverse identities are perhaps most dramatically revealed in the dissociative state referred to as mul- tiple personality disorder (MPD), in which two or more distinct person- alities are thought to exist within the same person, each with its own characteristic mode of feeling and thinking, and each capable of taking over the person's entire motor apparatus. A case in point is that of Gretchen, as she referred to herself at the time of the 1993 HBO docu- mentary in which she was featured (Home Box Office, 1993). Gretchen, at age 35, testifies to more than 90 separate personalities in her entourage, although only a few seem to play significant roles. When the names of these 90+ selves were assembled into a Q sample and each of six prominent selves was asked to Q sort them in terms of their "similarity to me" (where "me" referred to each of the six selves in turn), the sub- sequent factor analysis of these perspectives revealed the self segmen- tation displayed in Table 1.(NOTE 3) Table 1: Self Segmentations Selves 1 2 3 ________________________________ Gretchen X Strat X Myself X Julie X Sadie X Butterfly -X ________________________________ X=significant loadings As the results show, Gretchen occupies a perspective unto herself. A second perspective is occupied by two other personalities, Strat and a figure referred to as Myself. Strat (which is short for Strategy) is about half Gretchen's age: he has a keen sense of responsibility and superior planning skills, and he frequently takes over when Gretchen feels overwhelmed. Myself is Strat's age and is a saucy fun-lover who used to disdain Gretchen and even hurt her physically, but who in recent years has taken a more positive role. The third perspective is polarized. Together at one end of this dimension are Julie and Sadie, two pre- to early-adolescent girls, both of whom are antagonistic toward Gretchen: they differ in that Julie is the self-appointed guardian of the family honor whereas Sadie is an under-socialized carouser who likes to humiliate men. Opposed to them is yet another child -- Butterfly, age 8 -- a colorful, mirthful, and friendly little girl who often comes out when the body is at risk. The ontology of multiple personality is controversial, some observ- ers considering the phenomenon to be based on little more than false re- collections.(NOTE 4) For our purposes, however, the graphic details of this and similar cases are not as important as the principle which they document and make vivid -- namely, that subjectivity is typically di- vided against itself, often in a variety of ways, and that each of these self-segments demands and receives a degree not only of sovereignty, but also loyalty for that perspective which it represents. And it is this phenomenon -- Hesse's "manifold being" -- that pre- sents a two-edged sword to the policy process. On the one hand, multi- plicity can contribute creatively to that intellectual task devoted to the invention of alternatives, for each self-segment has a fresh per- spective, hence the potential for suggesting something new. On the other hand, multiple loyalties within the same person can be sources of resistance and distortion that may obstruct access to potential sol- utions. It was in response to this latter danger that representative exposure was apparently invented -- i.e., as a procedure for exposing the decision-maker to a representative set of situations designed to bring forward for more careful scrutiny any otherwise obscure and possi- bly conflicting tendencies that might threaten the comprehensive consid- eration of viable alternatives. Having a degree of partiality for or against a particular proposal is conventionally referred to as bias or prejudice, and is implicated in the so-called "value problem." Lasswell, of course, was not the first to notice the existence of values and the way in which they can inter- fere with one's outlook, nor was he the only one to suggest that some- thing be done about them. In his book The Political System, for instance, David Easton (1953) acknowledges that "values are an integral part of personality" (p. 225) that are apt to remain with us, but wants to know how to make them ex- plicit "as a kind of moral prelude to our main empirical theme" (p. 228). How might moral awareness be achieved? Easton states that "we are not unambiguously aware of our ultimate preferences, of their gen- eral ranking or hierarchical arrangement, and finally, of their specific ranking in a concrete political situation" (p. 229), and he suggests two ways in which we can achieve clarity in this regard. The first is through actual experience, i.e., involvement in concrete political action that requires us to make choices, hence to reveal to ourselves the value premises of those choices. But most realistically-available political opportunities involve door-to-door campaigning for a candidate or running for the school board, and so unless history hands a person the responsibility for reconstructing an entire political system, it's unlikely that the full range and organization of that person's values will be revealed. As a more realistic alternative, Easton turns to political theory and suggests that we can incorporate the range of our moral views, and reflect on and analyze them, through projection into "an image of the kind of political system that flows from our moral premises" (p. 230). This Easton refers to as the constructive approach so as to distinguish it from mere avowal and explicit exhortation of value, which he calls the formal approach. This might be a good strategy for political theo- rists specifically, but it can't serve as a general recommendation for persons without theoretical training but who nevertheless find them- selves in the political arena and called upon to choose. Essentially the same dilemma was addressed by Ralf Dahrendorf. In his chapter on "Values and Social Science," Dahrendorf (1968) asks what the sociologist might do to protect against the distorting effects of ideology. He offers three suggestions, one of which is equivalent to Easton's formal approach, i.e., the explicit declaration of one's own values. Another is the encouragement of criticism by other scientists. Neither of these is especially new, nor apt to be particularly effec- tive: biases are not easy to locate and own up to; and once they're an- nounced, we're more apt to defend them than to relent before the presumed superiority of scientific criticism. A third option which Dahrendorf discusses draws nearer to Lasswell's procedure of representative exposure: It is that the observer strive for detachment "with the assistance of psychoanalysis and the sociology of knowledge" (p. 13). However, Dahrendorf leaves us somewhat in the dark as to how this is to be accomplished. Nor, it must finally be admitted, has Lasswell himself been espe- cially helpful in providing concrete guidelines for carrying out the op- eration self-examination as a prophylactic against bias. In their volume The Interpretation of Agreements and World Public Order (subti- tled Principles of Content and Procedure), McDougal, Lasswell, and Miller (1967) lament that "The absence of procedural devices explicitly recognized and sought for the purpose of reducing or totally nullifying individual bias reflects the neglect of many procedural principles by international tribunals" (p. 359), but aside from a passing reference to the method of free fantasy (p. 77), no other sign-posts are visible. The authors do mention various procedural principles -- such as taking context into account -- but nothing that really equates with represen- tative exposure or other procedures akin to free fantasy. And the same can be said of other writings in which principles of procedure are men- tioned (e.g., McDougal, 1974, pp. 404-405; 1978, pp. 40-42; McDougal, Lasswell, & Chen, 1980, pp. 420-422; cf. Little, 1974; Weston, 1976, pp. 125-126). The one partially worked example which Lasswell left behind appears as the epilogue to Arnold Rogow's 1961 compilation The Jew in a Gentile World (Lasswell, 1961). Rogow's collection of commentary by Gentiles about Jews stretches from 419 B.C. to 1959 A.D., and after reading and reflecting on this corpus of diverse perspectives, Lasswell elaborates rules of procedure for the purpose, as he says, of "realizing at least some of the potential importance of this volume for future policy" (p. 376). He begins, characteristically enough, with goal clarification by as- sociating himself with human dignity in Gentile-Jewish relations, and then goes down the list of the other tasks -- trends, conditions, projections, and alternatives. He notes, however, that observations such as these have an argumentative tone, and so he recommends a method similar to psychoanalytic free association, but without therapeutic pre- tentions. He refers to the procedure as "psychosocio-analysis," which, despite its differences from psychoanalysis, has a similar aim -- namely, enabling the reader to get beneath defenses. His recommendation reads as follows: Permit the mind to imagine and recall freely, with minimum direction, as new statements are read, whether the manifest con- tent of a statement is acceptable or not. (Lasswell, 1961, p. 379) This I take it is the sum and substance of what three years earlier he referred to as representative exposure. Rogow's collection of essays can be said to have served as a representative stimulus situation cover- ing all manner of perspectives, both positive and negative, hence expos- ing the reader's self in its myriad manifestations to the equally diverse image of the Jew. The feelings and perceptions dredged up then became the material upon which the logical mind could operate. Lasswell notes that a psychoanalytic look at free associations gen- erated in this way could lead to distortions since the focus would likely be on the history of the individual ego and its conflicts. By focusing on the associations in the context of the social process, how- ever, the observer is in a better position to overcome the sense of uniqueness and to see the self in terms of subjective and non-subjective sequences of events. One association which Lasswell shared was of an event in his social fraternity when he was in college: it consisted of a fraternity brother who broke his engagement when he discovered that his fiancee's mother was Jewish. Lasswell did not reveal much about the incident, aside from the degree of indignation which he felt toward the fraternity brother. However, he did leave a systematic list of questions which could be asked about any thoughts and feelings which a method such as this might generate (Lasswell, 1961, pp. 382-384). 1. The cultural question: How representative was the incident among young men of the age and cultural background of this fraternity brother (who happened to be Prussian)? Was he a model specimen of the cultural forces acting upon him, or a rebel against them? 2. The social class question: How typical was his reaction pattern in relation to young men in upper-, middle-, or lower-class contexts? 3. Interest groups: The young man might have been involved in church, athletic, and social groups which might have influenced his conduct. What were the norms in groups such as these, which cut across class distinctions? 4. Personality: Was the young man driven by a desire for money, sta- tus, physical gratification? What were the inner tensions, if any, whose equilibrium was threatened by his fiancee's Jewishness? 5. What was the crisis level? This particular case was exacerbated by tensions in the inter-war period, and effects of this kind can obvi- ously leave their mark on conduct. 6. What values was it to the young man's net advantage to maximize? Self respect against domineering parents? Desire to inherit the family fortune? Affection for the woman in question? I had occasion to discuss this paper of Lasswell's a few years ago (Brown, 1987), and I suggested then -- and do so again now -- that the procedures of representative exposure and psychosocio-analysis can be strengthened through the incorporation of Q methodology. Representative exposure and free fantasy are indispensible methods for bringing unac- knowledged biases and associations into the light of day, but they aren't especially helpful in revealing how those associations are struc- tured. The process of organizing unearthed material is, of course, fa- cilitated by other principles of procedure -- such as contextualism, economy, manifest focus, etc. (McDougal, 1974, pp. 404-405; 1978, pp. 40-41) -- but the structural connections among the results of applying these procedures can likewise be enhanced through the application of Q methodology. Let me supplement my demonstration of a few years ago with another, this time focusing for illustrative purposes on Winston Nagan's essay on "Law and Post-Apartheid South Africa" (1989). In that essay, Professor Nagan notes the differences between the optimistic white perspective on law compared to the pessimistic black view: The blacks, for instance, viewed talk of human rights as a political hoax, an optiate of the people. He then went on to discuss the nature of law in an unjust state, and addressed the crux of the Hart-Fuller debate -- i.e., whether law in an unjust state is really law. He then introduced a conception of law as a process of decision-making that is both controlling and au- thoritative. Eventually, he considered conceptions of law and the pol- icy process embedded in the Freedom Charter of 1955 and in the U.N. Charter and contrasted these with the manifest perspective of the Afrikaner regime. Scholarly essays and other forms of expressed outlook contain a cer- tain level of factual material, but they are mainly suffused and held together by value-laden contentions of one kind or another, and it is within this domain that values are expressed. The social and economic condition of the masses, the connection of law to coercion, the charac- ter of authority and control, public sentiment, principles of partic- ipation...: these and many other topics received attention from Professor Nagan, during which time comments such as the following were made: (a) The legal system is a negation rather than affirmation of the idea of law. (b) The mass of the people is trapped in poverty. (c) Human rights represent a kind of secular religion, an opiate of the masses. (d) The public order is based more on power than on authority. And so forth for many more. Statements such as these were collected from Professor Nagan's essay, and 32 were selected for inclusion in the Q sample, with care being taken to include commentary touching on each of the value sectors (power, enlightenment, wealth, well-being, skill, affection, respect, and rectitude). Statement (a) above, for example, addresses power, (b) addresses wealth, and (c) rectitude. This operant phase of value clarification consists of the observer's providing Q sorts to represent various perspectives at issue, as the ob- server views the situation. In this instance, I performed the sorting in ways that I imagined Professor Nagan would have. It goes without saying, of course, that I have no way of really knowing how he would have approached the task, but this does nothing to undermine the princi- ples involved since, in principle, he could have undertaken this task himself. I hasten to add, incidentally, that I am aware of Lasswell and McDougal's (1992) admonition against the utility of ranking values, and that I am in agreement with the criticism of the particular procedure which they describe. However, I would remind that the ranking involved in Q sorting is not aimed at determining a value hierarchy good for all time and independent of context; rather, it is a procedure designed to reveal values as they are expressed in contexts. Q technique is there- fore not a container of truths, but a probe -- in this case a probe de- signed to facilitate "the discipline of thinking about social consequences in terms of fundamental values..." (p. 1046). Table 2 summarizes the 10 Q sorts which were performed -- one to represent the state of affairs that would exist in "the good society," one to represent the black perspective (circa 1989), another for the white perspective, another for human dignity, and so on for the Afrikaner position, the Freedom Charter, the controlling situation, what an authoritative position would look like, and one each to represent the view of Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk (as described by Glad and Blanton, 1994). Table 2: Operant Perspectives Perspectives A B _____________________________________ good society X S.A. blacks -X S.A. whites X human dignity X Afrikaner nationalism X Freedom Charter, 1955 X controlling -X authoritative X X Nelson Mandela -X F.W. de Klerk -X ________________________________________ X=significant loadings It should be apparent that additional perspectives could have been added to the mix. The view of P.W. Botha could have been introduced (as described by Geldenhuys and Kotze, 1985), for example, as well as the views of other stakeholders -- e.g., Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi or conservative Eugene Terre'Blanche -- this in keeping with the procedural principle of "manifest (provisional) focus" (McDougal, 1978, p. 40). Speculative outlooks could also be represented, e.g., pictures of alter- native future possibilities, or pictures of states of affairs in times past. Freely-fantasized circumstances could likewise be incorporated. In short, the self of the observer could be exposed to any and all thinkable representations, with factor analysis then pointing to con- nections among the perspectives introduced. The 10 performances noted in Table 2 are sufficient to illustrate what is involved, and in this case factor analysis indicates that the perspectives segment into three operant categories: Those defining the positive pole of factor A, those defining the negative pole of factor A, and those defining factor B (which is unipolar). We note first that factor A is defined by the observer's conception of the good society, his conception of human dignity, his conception of the spirit of the 1955 Freedom Charter, and, in part, his conception of what would be an authoritative position. And when we examine the propo- sitions receiving the highest scores in this collection of perspectives, the following top the list: All people have the right to participate in the governing of the country. The economy serves the common interests of all. Discriminatory ideas and practices are not permitted. The people share in the country's wealth. The rights to speak, organize, and meet together are guaranteed. This is the observer's conception of a good society, which not surpris- ingly comports with human dignity, and these ideals are embedded in the Charter. This position, too, would facilitate legitimacy and authoritativeness. It is countered by the controlling perspective, which in this case is the obverse of authoritativeness. Characterizing statements for this position are as follows: The mass of the people is trapped in poverty. Power relations are defined by race and class relations. There is widespread fear that the majority will abuse its power. The privileged position of the wealthy few serves to preserve the status quo. Law is an instrument of coercive oppression. This controlling position is presumably the perspective of black South Africans, at least to judge by Professor Nagan's observations: This is not their preference, of course, but their perception of the ways things are, i.e., the way in which control is exercised. This is also the view of Nelson Mandela, theoretically, and of F.W. de Klerk. Media images of South Africa during the past few years could lead one to suppose that the polarity represented by factor A tells the en- tire story, but the existence of factor B suggests the possibility of other perspectives standing outside that polarity. Table 2 reveals that factor B is defined by the view of South African whites (as relayed in Professor Nagan's essay) as well as the position of Afrikaner nationalism; in addition, that position that might be considered author- itative is also partially associated with this factor. The propositions gaining the highest scores in this perspective are as follows: It is the policy to promote the growth of a single national identity. There is widespread fear that the majority will abuse its power. The state recognizes the linguistic and cultural diversity of the people. People enjoy freedom of belief and conscience. The right to speak, organize, and meet together are guaranteed. If a degree of interpretative license can be granted at this point, it could be said that the view of the observer -- and it bears repeating that this is only a simulation of Professor Nagan's view -- is that the white South African and Afrikaner outlook is dominated by fear of the majority (which represents a threat to well-being) and that from a dy- namic standpoint, actors holding this view are endeavoring to justify their position and ward off expected opposition and aggression by claim- ing to promote a common identity (affection), by claiming that the state recognizes cultural differences (respect), by publically advocating the right to speak (power) as well as the freedom of conscience (rectitude). That the Q sort representing an authoritative view is also associated with factor B is easily understood since an authoritative vantagepoint would incorporate all of these expressions of deference. However, once we remind ourselves that these factors exist in the mind of the observer (i.e., that these are the observer's perspectives on the world), then we can begin to see another dynamic, this time within the observer -- namely, that factor B is experienced as either a conscious justification or unconscious rationalization, but in either case serves as a pretense to distract from the controlling forces and naked power pictured at the negative end of factor A. In short, factor B is an unreal perspective which has been fabricated and which must be penetrated or torn down in order to reveal the reality of coercive power. At the risk of redundancy, let me emphasize that the exercise above is hypothetical and is only introduced for purposes of exemplification, but let me re-emphasize also that its hypothetical status in no way in- validates the principles which it dramatizes: in principle, a real ob- server, whether Professor Nagan or anyone else, could employ these procedues in order to demonstrate to him- or herself, as well as to the rest of the world if need be, the contours of the observer's subjective perspectives, as well as the values at issue. And this is no mean ac- complishment. __________________________ I wish to conclude by providing a recapitulation of main points and ad- dressing some implications. First, it is no secret that values are interlaced in all we do. Hudson and Jacot (1971), to randomly select only one example off the shelf, have shown that graduates of prestigious English headmasters' conference schools are more prone to gravitate to higher-status medical specialties, to specialties dealing with the head rather than with the lower trunk, and to specialties dealing with the surface of the body rather than with the insides; and that obstetricians and gynecologists have more children than other specialists. These are not accidents, and values are presumed to guide the way. So-called "modern" social critics have sometimes proudly claimed to have been among the first to notice that values obtrude, but they have been able to do so only by casting a blind eye on the footprints of those who pre- ceded them. Values can have real effects on the real world, and they can be more pernicious than simply enlarging the families of gynecologists. The problem which confronts the policy sciences consists of gaining access to these values and amplifying them so as to be able more easily to track their course, thereby increasing the volume of intelligence avail- able to those who must decide, especially about policy-relevant features of the decision-maker's own self. Two major, and equally-misleading positions dominate discussion about the "value problem": Critics of science frequently delight in pointing out that values affect everything and that there's no place to hide, so everyone might as well settle down to a life of feminist or post-modern philosophy. The second position, often advanced by the sci- entists, is that values do exist and must be controlled in some way (e.g., by placing one's cards on the table) so as not to get in the way of clear perception. We owe much to Harold Lasswell's creativity in suggesting that val- ues, rather than being impediments to overcome, might themselves be turned into tools of the policy scientist, and we are reminded in this regard about how psychoanalysis has gradually redefined the counter- transference from a distortion into a barometer that helps guage cur- rents in the interpersonal field. As Lasswell (1958) said, "emptiness" (in the sense of an absence of desire) can, under some circumstances, be considered "an acquired precondition of vision" (p. 91). The procedure of representative exposure, and the rules surrounding its proper usage, constitute an effort to achieve such a readied state of receptivity. The relatively unfettered mind, when in this receptive state, be- comes a suitable site for undisciplined and only partially-digested thoughts which, once they begin to move, can achieve voluminous pro- portions. We are reminded in this regard not only of psychoanalytic free associations, but also of glossolalia and the "speaking in tongues" as referred to in the Bible,(NOTE 5) and as appears in shamanism and other more primitive practices. Lasswell (1930) contrasts the disciplined and structured thinking of judges with ordinary thought, the latter being "comparable in its episodic, flitting, discontinuous character to the eccentric peregrinations of a grasshopper trying to escape from a faintly illumi- nated molehill" (p. 355). It is this flitting and discontinuous charac- ter which William James (1890, p. 243) referred to as transitive thought, and it so happens that thinking of this kind shares many char- acteristics with quantum mechanics; furthermore, it turns out that Q methodology provides a measure for transitive thought, and that the mathematics of Q factor analysis and quantum mechanics are identical in almost every respect (Stephenson, 1990). Surprisingly, therefore, that "flitting and episodic" feature of judicial thinking which, along with its companion concept, representative exposure, has lain by the wayside these many years, may at last be susceptible to measurement and detailed scrutiny. In 1985, the late W. Horsley Gantt (1985) lamented that "some sub- jective processes ... may be below quantum level and therefore theore- tically never recordable by any instrument other than mind" (p. 116); he was therefore of the opinion that "on the same basis as we assess the science of the external universe, we have no adequate science for the internal universe" (p. 115). On the eve of a new century, we are now perhaps in a position to be more optimistic, and to suggest that the principle of representative exposure and the operations of Q methodology may, in tandem, be able to provide the basis for the long sought for science for the internal universe, and for unleashing its creative po- tential for enhancing human dignity. 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Duncan, however, mainly addresses psychological defenses and the ap- peal of criminals to a kind of global unconscious, hence her account lacks the variety of "manifold being" which is found in Hesse's 1927 novel. 3 This study is in progress in collaboration with Noel W. Smith, De- partment of Psychology, State University of New York, Plattsburgh. 4 For recent summaries, see Hacking (1992) and Piper (1994). Glass (1993) addresses social and political implications. 5 "And they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts, 2:4).