Introduction:

SYNTHESIS AND THE SOCIAL LEVEL OF OBSERVATION

Having described the constituent positional units in Section A and the subunits (at the level of the point) in Section B, we now tackle the job of synthesis. We ask how these units were integrated to form the total transaction. Operationally the process consists of showing how each unit was related to the others, but we will do this level by level.

We quickly see that each unit in Session I occurred in two kinds of relations.

1.It had a place in a sequence of units which that participant performed. It was therefore a step in a format for that person’s part or role.

2.It had simultaneous relations to the enactments of the other participants. The unit was addressed to someone and referred to someone. It was performed with and in accommodation to the unit performances of the others.

We have, therefore, options of procedure in describing the synthesis. We can start with sequencing of points and positions through time and describe the total performance of each participant. Then we can go back and describe how each unit step was related to the unit performances of the other participants. Or else we could describe the simultaneous relations of each point as we go along and then describe the sequences in which the relations appeared (see Addendum, Section C).

I will do both, level by level. In Chapter 6 I will describe both the sequential and interpersonal relations of points in a position and cycle. Then in Chapter 7 I will describe the relations of positions in the phases of Session I. As I describe the behavioral integration here in Section C, I will emphasize the behavioral features which would ordinarily appear in any transaction of the conversational and narrative type. Then, in the subsequent sections of Part II I will retrace my steps and describe features which relate to the cultural background of the women to schizophrenia and to the tactics and strategies of psychotherapy.

When we examine relations between the behavior of various participants, we are making observations at the social level of organization (Redfield 1942; Bertalanffy 1950, 1960; Miller 1965). To do so we must simultaneously watch multiple people, instead of watching one person at a time as we do at the organismic level. It takes some practice to do this. We are used to looking only at the upper body of the main speaker. But the skill can be acquired with conscious effort and the film makes it possible to go over and over the events looking at each participant’s contribution.

Relations at the social level are characterized by the same regularities of form which we observed in the less complex units of behavior, because relations, too, are traditional and the agenda of psychotherapy is institutionalized. So the larger integration of behavior is governed by conventions that we can abstract as rules of technique, ettiquette, and ethics comparable to the rules of syntax at the level of the sentence.

As a consequence we cannot explain behavior in a transaction with simplistic conceptions of expression or response alone. A participant does react to others and he does behave metacommunicatively but he also goes on with the enactment of some customary format prescribed for his part in the transaction.