Chapter 2

SYSTEMATIC VARIATIONS IN THESE POSITIONS

It is not necessary to replicate a position exactly in order that it be recognizable and communicative. It must be replicated within an allowable range of variance. This condition provides a good deal of latitude for manipulating and accommodating a unit performance.

In Session I there were obvious variations in each recurrence of each type of position. But it was possible to relate these variations to particular dimensions of the context, so we can claim that the variations were systematic and not random. In this chapter I will compare the various occurrences of each position.¹

SYSTEMATIC VARIATIONS IN THE LARGER LANGUAGE POSITIONS

In Phase I (the first twenty-three minutes) of Session I, the more durable positions which featured language and listening recurred five times. They were from one to several minutes in duration.

Mrs. V's explaining was addressed to the men who listened to and questioned Mrs. V. Marge sat huddled up against her mother and passively protested what the older woman said. (I will call this constellation of positions Period 1.)

This Period 1 would last a minute or so and then give way to a configuration of contending and defending, which I will call Period 2. Marge would initiate a Period 2 by standing up and then sitting down close to Whitaker and challenging her mother's story. Mrs. V would defend the story. The women thus argued, but one of them usually backed down rather quickly.

Malone would rock forward and intervene. Then Marge would act bizarrely and Whitaker would turn away from her. Marge would then stand and sit down in her original position near Mrs. V. This juncture behavior ended Period 2.

A few minutes later the Period 1 constellation recurred. Thus there were five oscillating cycles of these arrangements in Phase I (Figure 2-1).

Figure 2-1:Cycles and Periods in Phase I of the Session

Regularities from Recurrence to Recurrence

The positions were recognizably the same at each recurrence.

A Period 2 first occurred at 0 minutes: 54 seconds. Since the initial minutes of Session I were not filmed, I do not know exactly how long this interval was from the first encounter. After this first occurrence the Period 2 constellation appeared about every five minutes as follows:

One can start the film at any point and immediately see whether a Period 1 or a Period 2 is in progress.

Mrs. V's Use of the Positions

Mrs. V assumed positions in each Period 1 and each Period 2 which were strikingly alike. She assumed almost exactly the same posture for her narrative, sitting erect and slightly forward, hands on her lap, ankles crossed. Her facial expressions and gestures seemed automatic. Her voice qualities varied littie. The story sounded as though it had been practiced.

In defending her story she also repeated a routine. She would first look to the men and try to make light of Marge's accusations. When Marge persisted, Mrs. V would uncross her ankles, turn to Marge and argue, then rationalize her part in the difficulty.

Mrs. V would uncross her ankles and lean slightly forward each time she assumed the position of defending. She appeared about to stand up. Then when Marge would sit near her again and fall silent, she would recross her ankles and resume her narrative (Figure 2-2).

Figure 2-2:Ankle-crossing as the Marker of Mrs. V's Positional Sequence

Each time Mrs. V shifted positions she returned to the same baseline. Thus we could depict her performance as a simple oscillation from explaining to contending and back again.

But each time Mrs. V explained she spoke about a different episode in the history of Marge’s illness and the V family. To do this, of course, she had to alter the language structure of her narrative. This is a common type of systematic variation. The basic narrative posture and orientation are repeated over and over and each recurrence does feature language, but the particular subunits of language are systematically varied to compose a different topic and meaning (see Chapter 4).

Marge's Use of the Positions

Marge's behavior was more complicated. She kept intercalating the brief positions of resigning and interfering in her longer positions of passive protesting and contending. In the transition between a Period 1 and 2 she intercalated an appealing position directed at Whitaker and then she and Whitaker engaged in Kleenex-play and hand-play sequences that ended in tactile contact. I will come back to these brief positions later in the chapter and confine the description here to her major narrative positions of passive protesting and contending, which oscillated with Periods 1 and 2.

Regularity in Passive Protesting and Contending

Marge addressed her passive protesting to the floor, the ceiling, and to the men. She addressed her contending to her mother. So each occurred in the same context relationship.

There was no difficulty in distinguishing passive protesting and contending on the basis of form.

In passive protesting Marge tended to look away from the others. She appeared dissociated and all of the clinicians agreed that she was schizophrenic. She mumbled and insinuated and made inferences. She held her body hypotonically and did not appear either attentive, alert, or sexual. She sat back on the sofa and held a posture near and like that of her mother's.

In contending she changed her behavior markedly. She directly addressed her mother. She appeared alert and clinicians did not consider her behavior schizophrenic. She spoke clearly and directly. And her body was hypertonic. She appeared to be in a courting state that we might expect of a young woman. She sat forward on the sofa in a posture like that of Whitaker’s and as close to him as the furniture arrangement would allow.

Regularities in Marge's Juncture Behavior

One of the most remarkable and interesting repetitive sequences appeared in Marge's behavior at the shift from passive protesting to contending. The sequence provided a characteristic and recognizable juncture. As noted above, this juncture occurred five times. I will describe here only the first, second, and fourth recurrences. The third and fifth were the same basically, but they were interrupted several times, reinitiated, and therefore complicated.

At each repetition Marge performed the following sequence:

She would first sit up and place her feet together on the floor.

Then she would sprawl and quickly sit up again.

Then she would wave her Kleenex or drop it.

Then she would lift her skirt and cross her legs in the manner of ‘cheesecake,’ quickly uncrossing them again.

Then she would stand up and sit down like and near Whitaker.

Then she would cross her left ankle over her right;

Then sprawl on the sofa;

Then wave her Kleenex.

Then cross her legs in a bizarre, inappropriate way;

Then sprawl again.

Then she would again stand up and this time sit down near and like her mother — thus ending Period 2.

Then she would cross her ankles right over left.

Notice in Table 2-1 that these behaviors are listed in the left column. In the three columns on the right are the recurrences which I am describing. The times of each recurrence are listed in seconds beginning at zero (time zero was the moment when Marge stood and shifted to the Period 2 position of sitting with Whitaker). If the behavior did not occur, a dash appears on the table.

TABLE 2-1

The time of occurrence (in seconds) of Marge's juncture behaviors on three recurrences. The times are recorded from the zero point of shifting her posture from passive protesting to contending.

The time sequence of these behaviors is plotted in Figure 2-3. I plotted the occurrences on the magnetic board, marking the time of occurrence for each behavior with an arrow, and photographed the plot (see Appendix B). Notice that twelve suecessive behaviors are plotted on the rows I have included. Certain behaviors which the others performed are also plotted in order that their relation to Marge's shifting behavior can be seen. The heavy vertical bars identify the sequence as it occurred at each period shift.

Figure 2-3:Plotting of the Juncture Behaviors which Occurred Between Period 1 and Period 2

Variation in Marge's Positional Performance

Hence, there is no doubt that each recurrence of passive protesting and contending belong to classes of positions which were repeated again and again. But there were marked variations with each replication.

Marge, like Mrs. V, verbalized a different topic in each recurrence (see Chapter 6). She also changed the qualities of performance at each replication. She spoke more and more aggressively, sat farther forward, and sat closer and closer to Whitaker each time.

The duration of each Period 2 increased:

It is clear that these successive variations were systematically progressive. She stepped up the tempo and frequency of contending step by step. Also she did not return, as Mrs. V did, to her original baseline posture after Period 1 was completed. In successive Period 1’s she sat less and less close to her mother.

Variation Due to Incomplete Performance

Marge's behavior also showed a less systematic, a more contingent variation. Depending on whether Malone intervened, for example, and whether Whitaker lexically supported her position, Marge would vascillate in her positional performance in either period. If Whitaker looked at her in a Period 1, for instance, she would try to initiate a position of contending. Hence, there were abortive Period 2 behaviors in Session I.

For example, Marge would sit up and put her feet together — the first behavior in any junctural shift to Period 2. She would wave her Kleenex, expose her legs, and mutter a challenge.

If Whitaker took up her insinuation, she would lean closer to him. If, however, Malone started to rock forward or Whitaker turned away, she would sprawl back on the sofa, dissociate herself from the others, and resume passive protesting.

Similarly, when Marge was contending she would often resign for a few seconds, then come back to the posture of contending, but withhold speaking. In a sense she would freeze for a second, then go on and escalate the sequence by another challenge to her mother.

The pattern of her behavior would thus hold and loop. She would perform steps A-B-C, for instance, then hold at C. Or she might backtrack and enact A-B-C, then B-C, then go on to D. This is a common configuration of sequencing, which we can also relate to the supporting or noncooperative behavior of others in the transaction.

Thus we can distinguish between progressive, programmed variation, and variation, which is contingent upon other events in the context. If the enactment of a position is interrupted or broken off, the position will appear in an incomplete form. Thus abortive or abbreviated positional units appeared in Session I.

In Session I Marge repeatedly tried to interrupt her mother and gain support for contending. She would mutter an accusation, start an appeal to Whitaker, and so forth. In many instances the men ignored her and she sprawled or addressed the camera. On five occasions she developed a well-advanced initiation of contending and seemed ready to stand up and sit near Whitaker, but Malone rocked in and intervened.

Similarly, Malone did not complete some of his intervention positions. He would start to rock in, but Marge would fall back and turn away. We might judge that Malone did not have to complete the position, since Marge responded to his preparation.

Later in Session I, after Whitaker had explained the Session, Malone started an explanation, but all three of the others interrupted him after a few words. He had taken the typical posture of explaining, sitting erect and forward, and addressing Mrs. V. There was little doubt what position he was initiating, but we did not learn what explanation he was going to offer.

Representations of Positions

In established relations full positions may come to be reduced to the simplest representative abbreviations. Thus a mother may signify a long harangue on the irresponsibility of her children who are leaving her to her death merely by placing her hand over her breast and sighing. This was exemplified in Session I: When Marge misbehaved Mrs. V would uncross her ankles and lean forward, shifting her weight to her legs. We could guess she was taking the first steps to standing up. We might conjecture that this is an abbreviated performance of a longer routine in which she may have once stood and punished Marge. Maybe in time the preparation to stand represented the whole and served to monitor the unacceptable behavior. When Mrs. V uncrossed her ankles, Marge would stop exhibiting her thighs, although she did not give up her challenges.

Whitaker's Progressive Use
of Listening and Questioning

Whitaker maintained a posture of listening and questioning throughout Phase I. At 23 minutes he took over the floor, made an explanation, and turned to make brief physica! contact with Marge. But his position of listening was punctuated by periodic postural shifts, each of which brought him a few inches closer to Marge.

At his third shift he had to actually shift his body weight to his legs, so we must consider the second and third variations of the moving-in series as a different position. Notice that one can lean forward with balance only so far without uncrossing his legs and establishing a leg-buttocks tripod.

The sequential progression was effected by escalating three dimensions of the postural orientation. First, the body was brought successively into a vis-á-vis orientation. Thus Whitaker and Marge started the session at right angles, but turned more and more toward each other at each step in the progression. Second, they moved forward and toward each other, becoming closer at each move. Third, Whitaker progressively uncrossed his arms and legs. He started the session with his legs and arms crossed, then uncrossed his arms at six minutes and uncrossed his legs at 12 minutes.

At the beginning of a transaction, when the participants are strangers, they will ordinarily keep their distance and hold their arms and/or legs crossed. I will call such a posture closed — a term that refers to the relative nonpreparedness for engagement. As the participants engage more and more actively they will progressively turn to face each other, uncross their extremities, and often lean closer to each other. I will call this positional variant open (Figure 2-4). In psychotherapy this sequencing has been institutionalized for the formation of rapport (Chapter 11).

Figure 2-4:Open and Closed Postures in Session I

Whitaker did not gradually inch forward toward Marge. He stayed exactly the same distance away until the sixth minute interval, at which point he made the move.

The shifts were also regular in clock time. They occurred about every six minutes as follows:

Each step in the progression was associated with an increased directness in Whitaker's challenges to Mrs. V's story and in his overt support of Marge. As I will describe in Section E, the moving-in shifts corresponded to the progressive application of Whitaker’s tactics of psychotherapy.

These regularities appeared also in the other sessions filmed: in the other sessions with Marge, Malone took up this same progressive sequencing. He moved in at six, twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four minutes and he established tactile contact with Marge at 12 and 24 minutes in each of these sessions. We also filmed three sessions which these men conducted with a male patient, and one therapist moved in every five minutes in these three sessions.

Another interesting regularity occurred in the Whitaker-Malone sessions at the eighteenth minute when the therapist made his third move-in shift. At this point some participants — a different one each time — told the others about a day dream he had had. When he did this he made a characteristic gesture. He held his hands together, palms up, and formed a bowl-like configuration. This gesture occurred with the 18-minute shift in all three filmed sessions and not at any other time (Scheflen 1967).

It is thus apparent that certain behaviors of Session I were highly regular in clock time. This is often the case in a transaction. For example, the duration of the classical psychotherару session itself, like the duration of a classroom lecture, is established by custom at fifty minutes.

The duration of certain microsequences is also sometimes regular. For example, Marge, then Malone, engaged in a preening ritual at the beginning of Session IX. In each case the ritual took exactly 11.6 seconds (see Chapter 3).

On the other hand, some patterns of behavior are highly irregular in astronomical time. They take as long as is necessary for thei r completion and this may vary markedly depending on such contingencies as the experience of the participants.

Regularity in Malone's Behavior in Phase I

Malone's behavior, too, was strikingly repetitive in Phase I. He held the basic position of listening and questioning with remarkably little movement, except for his periodic interventions. Malone made ten such interventions and each of these was highly repetitive in form and content (see Chapter 1). Each of these positions occurred in the same context — i. e. , whenever Marge contended her mother's story.

REGULARITY IN THE BRIEF INTERCALATED POSITIONS THAT MARGE PERFORMED

Marge periodically resigned by sprawling back on the sofa, and from time to time she stood up and interfered with Mrs. V's account. These behaviors appeared to occur contingently. They did not occur at regular intervals, did not vary progressively, and were intercalated both in Period 1 and in Period 2.

Resigning

Marge performed resigning eleven times in full development, and on six other occasions she performed an abortive version. She would sprawl in a characteristic context — at times when her mother indicated that Marge's psychosis was insignificant or was not Mrs. V's fault, and also in Period 2, when Mrs. V denied or rationalized an accusation or challenge that Marge had made.

Standing Shocked

On four occasions Marge stood up and made a startling statement, assuming a facial expression of shock as she did so (see Chapter 1). On seven other occasions Marge enacted this behavior without standing, so these occurrences were not positions, but a subunit performance in passive protesting or contending.

Marge performed this position in a characteristic context. She would address a number of appeals to Whitaker and a series of insinuations without response from the others. Then she would put her hand on her mother’s arm and make a more direct accusation. If Mrs. V did not respond she would stand shocked. By contrasting four positions which Marge used, we can identify four degrees of activeness in her interventions:

In resigning she would sprawl back and dissociate.

In passive protesting she would sit back and protest indirectly.

In contending she would sit forward and directly confront her mother.

In standing shocked she would actually stand between Mrs. V and the man Mrs. V was addressing.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN POSITIONAL PERFORMANCE

In a number of cases several participants made use of the same type of position. Whitaker and Malone, for instance, both used a remarkably similar version of listening and questioning. And in Phase II, Mrs. V performed a position very like passive protesting. Obviously, each person will perform a conventional position in the particular styles of his ethnic background, class, gender, and so forth. And each participant can manipulate and accommodate his performance according to his plans and the situation. So we speak of individual differences in positional enactment. This issue will concern us in detail in Sections С and D.

The Temporal Occurrence of Positions in Session I

The temporal occurrence of many of the positions in Session I can be visualized by examining Figure 2-5.

Notice that the arrows in row 1 show the occurrence of Marge's leg-crossing behaviors. Roughly, the interval between the pairs of leg crosses demarcates the appearance of Period 2. In row 2 the occurrence of Marge’s high bodily tonus also corresponds to her position of contending. In rows 3 and 4 are plotted occasions when Marge sat with Whitaker and Malone. The occurrence of the Kleenexand hand-play sequences is plotted in row 5. In rows 6 and 7 certain subunit behaviors of Whitaker and Malone are plotted for reference. At the occasions of the arrows, Whitaker said something in support of Marge's allegations or Malone attacked these.

The moving-in progression of Whitaker is plotted in row 8, and Malone’s interventions are plotted in line 9.

Figure 2-5:The Occurrence of Some Positional Variables in Session I

COMMENT: THE DEFINITION OF A BEHAVIORAL UNIT

I have been claiming that certain configurations of behavior, which I have called positions, occurred again and again in Session I. In communication, meaning depends upon the recognition of such customary unit forms of behavior, so the issue is critical and we had better take time to define the unit.

Segmentation of the Stream of Behavior

Suppose we go back for a moment to the first step in observation. When we screen the film we notice that each participant performs a stream of behavior simultaneously. In fact, he performs several streams of behavior simultaneously. He speaks, gesticulates, changes facial expression, smokes, and SO on.

Each of these streams of behavior is segmented. The activity occurs in bursts. The participant speaks, then falls silent, then moves, and then is still for a time. He shifts posture, holds the new posture, then shifts to another posture. I have called these stops and shifts, junctures, and the bodily posture held between them a transfix.

The Paradigm of a Position

Consider the kinesthesiology of taking a position. The participant holds a posture of the entire body, but he moves certain bodily subregions. ²

The total body is positioned on a substantial b ase which acts as a fulcrum. Either the person stands on firm ground or sits on his buttocks, though other stances occur in different cultures and in informal activities. From such a position he can move some bodily subregion, e.g. , the head or upper torso and hands (or his upper leg if his legs are crossed and he is seated). He can move these bodily regions without shifting the base position of his whole body. Thus:

A.the participant stations his head, addresses someone and speaks an utterance; and

B.he stations his torso and uses his hands to gesticulate or carry out a physical task.

Notice that I am not describing things. I am describing relations of movement and utterance. By constructing the following paradigm of the position, we can visualize these relations. A participant takes a given posture and orientation; while holding this position, he:

1)speaks and gestures in a recognizable way

2)addresses this and other behavior to another person; and often

3)smokes or performs other physical tasks.

Then he shifts his posture and orientation and begins other sequences of activity.

The Hierarchical Structuring of Behavior

Notice that the actions which a participant performs while holding a posture are subunits of the total position. He speaks a number of sentences and gestures which are elements or components of his total behavior in that sequence.

Actually the behaviors in a position consist of successive divisions of subunits and sub-subunits. For example, the utterance is one subunit of a position and the utterance in turn is divided into syntactic sentences, and each of these syntactic sentences are divided into words, and so on. In a systems model we speak of such an arrangement as a hierarchy of levels of integration. (Each component or division is said to be a ‘lower’ level of integration than the whole in which it occurs. ) The subunit behaviors of the position will be described in Section B.

By the same token the position is but one element in some still larger integration of behavior. Through time, for instance, each position is one step or component in the total format of behavior which that individual uses. And at any given time the position of each participant is related to or addressed to the positions which the other participants are using.

Note this relation as shown in Figure 2-6. If one examines the behavior of Malone, alone, his posture can be termed a transfix — in this case the posture which marks the duration of his rocking forward. But examined in relation to the other participants, his posture can be seen as an address or orientation. In this case his position is addressed to Marge. Thus at the social level of observation Malone's posture is but one element in a unit of Marge-Malone relationship.

Figure 2-6:Malone's Postural Transfix in Isolation and the Same Posture as an Orientation or Address

So the hierarchical structuring of behavior extends to larger integrations such as the total behavior of a role, relationships, the transaction as a whole, and so forth.

All levels of integration more complex than the one which we are examining at the moment are called contexts. Thus the position is a context of the utterance, and the relationship and transaction are contexts of the position. In fact, all larger integrations (even society as a whole, culture, and evolution) are less immediate contexts of any behavioral occurrence.³

We can now expand the paradigm of the position to include the idea of contexts. At the level of the position, then, the paradigm can be stated as follows:

This structuring appears to be general for behavior of any kind. In music a given number of notes are contained in a measure. There are a fixed number of syllables to a haiku poem and fourteen lines to a sonnet. A book is divided into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. The actions of a sport are segmented by units such as downs, innings, quarters, and games. A play consists of acts, which are performed in a prearranged sequence. Each act is made up of scenes and so on to the smallest units of dialogue. The symphony consists of movements, which are made up of passages, which consist of measures, which are made up of notes. In a church service there is a hierarchy of acts in a step of the liturgy, a number of such steps to a service, a schedule of services, and so forth. In carpentry, holding a nail is a subunit of hammering, which is a subunit of nailing up the frame, which is a subunit of framing the house and so on.

“A” Behavior

We can therefore speak of "a" behavior or "a" behavioral unit as a patterned sequence of changes which are performed while a basic posture orientation is held.⁴

Such an entity is less tangible than a physical system, but no less real. It is a patterned change in a physical system — in this case, the organism. ⁵ It has a duration in time, a location in space, a direction, an extensiveness of bodily involvement, and a consistent morphology from one replication to another. Such a definitive event can be described, measured, and photographed.

The position is the smallest unit which can naturaUy occur. It is not possible to perform any behavior, however small or simple, without positioning the total body in some way or other. Thus all units smaller than the position are heuristic isolates.

Seeing a Sequence as a Unit

Multiple sequences of behavior may be very complicated and we quickly get tangled up if we try to describe the many simultaneous actions that occur. So we may wish to visualize, as a single entity, the totality of events which occur while the transfix is held. We ignore time and conceptualize the segment from juncture to juncture as a unit of behavior. This operation is carried out as follows:

Consider the data in Chapters 1 and 2. I have shown that a participant has taken a position which he holds until some moments later when he shifts his entire bodily posture. We examine his movements and speech during this interval and identify them as recognizable Gestalten which occur regularly.

Represent each movement or utterance with an arabic number and each shift in bodily orientation with a slash, thusly:

/1-2-3-4/1-5-6/1-7-8-4/ ... /...n /.

Since each of these sequences is a unit, we can represent it as a whole with a single symbol:

A= B= C=

//(1-2-3-4-/) (1-5-6-/) (1-7-8-/)//

The double slash is the larger juncture of a position. This entire sequence is also a unit, so we can simply call it position I. A hierarchical diagram results which looks like this:

ADDENDUM TO SECTION I: REVIEW OF THE POSITIONS

I would like to add certain data about the positions of Session I which I omitted from the text to make it more readable, I will first review the criteria for determining that two positions are isomorphic and therefore replications of the same unit form. Then I will schematize and depict the positions which recurred again and again in Session I, so they can be reviewed at a glance. Then I will provide some simple statistics about their frequency and indicate diagrammatically their times of occurrence.

Criteria for the Isomorphism of a Position

In Appendix В I will describe the operations for identifying any behavioral unit. Here I will simply mention the criteria for deciding that certain positions are indeed replications of some customary unit,

It would not be possible to classify unit performances if the occurrences shaded into each other according to a continuum of variability. Identification depends on the occurrence of fairly clear-cut and contrastable forms. This has to be the case if communication is to occur. A given form must be recognizable and identifiable to have an assignable meaning. There are, of course, transitional forms, but a participant cannot perform many ambiguous and transitional positions if he is to engage in communication. Thus the theoretical basis for finding behavioral isomorphism is the necessity of patterned regularity in communicative behavior.

Operationally we proceed as follows: The film is screened again and again and those positions which look alike are identified tentatively and isolated by rephotographing them or splicing the film. All of the probable recurrences are then compared by description of their common features. Some of these can be measured.⁶

To explicate the criteria we make use of the schema of hierarchical structuring. Isomorphism must occur at three levels of integration, as follows:

1. The Gestalten of the form. If the posture is a familiar one we recognize it and know when it is completed. Customary positional performances are familiar in common culture. For example, when the novelist speaks of such things as a menacing posture, a compromising position, and an aggressive stance, we can picture the behavior he refers to — at least in a general way. In an analogous way I have characterized positions of explanation, contention, and so on in Session I.

2. Regularity in the type of subunit or content. If the form is unfamiliar we have to delineate it by context analysis (see Appendix В). We must show that a pause in activity, a postural shift, and a characteristic form of juncture behavior occurs.

The subunits of a given position will be of the same logical type at each recurrence. They will consist of narration, for example. In Chapter 2, I showed that these criteria held for the nine positions which occurred in Session I.

3. Recurrence in a particular context. A given type of position will ordinarily recur each time in the same general type of context or in some limited range of different contexts. For example, Marge's passive protesting appeared whenever her mother started to explain and whenever the men listened to the older woman. And Malone interfered each time Marge contended or started to contend.

ADDENDUM TO SECTION A:
REVIEW OF THE POSITIONS

THE FREQUENCY OF POSITIONS IN SESSION I

Thus, the four participants in Session I used nine types of positions. Actually they took a total of seventy-two positions in the whole session. So they repeated certain positions a number of times.

Passive protesting occurred six times (five times by Marge and once by Mrs. V) ; listening and questioning was discontinued and begun again sixteen times (once by Mrs. V) ; explaining occurred six times (once by Whitaker) ; contending occurred five times, defending ten.

Marge performed resigning eleven times. She interferred by standing shocked on four occasions. Malone intervened ten times. Appealing occurred three times, and contacting twice.

These behaviors also occurred a number of other times as subunits of a position. In these cases the entire body was not involved, but the behaviors were performed as a subunit in some other position. I will describe such occurrences in Section B.

There were occasions when a position occurred so transiently that it was difficult to determine whether it was a position or a subunit of a position. There were eleven such instances in Session I which I did not count as positions in the totals above.

At levels below the position the subunit forms were sometimes difficult to classify. The enactment would be ambiguous, especially when Marge used the behavior in question. She would sometimes combine two different kinds of subunits, so it was not possible to distinguish the type. But this ambiguity did not characterize the positions and the problem of categorization was not very difficult.