HOW META CREATES YOUR PSYCHO-LOGICS

In the last article in the Meta Series, I mentioned that “going meta” is dynamic. It’s a dynamic process with lots of hidden and unconscious things occurring within it. I ended that article alluding to the process of how your internal psychological-logic works: “And as a dynamic process, moving to a meta-position about other internal experiences (thoughts, feelings, ideas, memories, decisions, imaginations, and on and on) then puts them into new categories and classes and creates an internal psychological-logic.”

“Psycho-logics” came from Science and Sanity. In 1933 Alfred Korzybski took the word psychology and hyphened it; that created psycho-logics and psycho-logicians. By separating the term, he then described more fully the kind of logic (or logics) that is inherent in psychology. He noted that “the logic” any given person uses for thinking about and reasoning about something was almost never formal logic. Instead it was the unique and idiosyncratic “logic” or the thinking that each person does at any moment of time. That’s why it is plural— logics.

The particular psycho-logics that you use to make sense of something, understand it, reason about it depends on the kind and quality of thinking that you bring to it. Bring a child’s way of thinking and presto, you use childish “logic” that will make sense to a five-year old or thirteen year old, and which will be full of cognitive distortions. Any given person’s psycho-logics depends on that person’s use of his thinking patterns as he “makes sense” of things. He goes meta with his thinking patterns— using them to reason about, interpret, and explain things through those lens.

Example. A mother gives a little boy a slice of chocolate cake when he brings home a B on his report card. “You’re such a good boy, you did so well, I’m so proud of you— here is a slice of chocolate cake to show my love.” Seems innocent enough. The mother is simply thinking, “Reinforce good behavior, give a reward.” But how is the boy thinking? It depends on his internal psycho-logics. Suppose with his childish mind he thinks, “Getting a slice of chocolate cake means being loved; I feel loved as I receive the cake.” He could be thinking all of that unconsciously. Consciously, he just feels good and associates “chocolate cake” with “love.” Cause-effect.

Forty years later, the boy is a 48-year old man, overweight, in bad health, and cannot resist sweets, especially slices of chocolate cake. The therapist says, “What comes to mind when you think of a slice of chocolate cake?” Eventually self-awareness reveals his psycho-logics. “Love.” “Being cared for, appreciated, rewarded.” Ah, the secondary gains for his sweet tooth and unable to deny himself desserts. Well, we call them “secondary gains.” Actually, they are first level gains— the meta-level values that he has established in his mind about sweets. He has

meta-stated “a slice of chocolate cake” in such a way that it is now an item in the category of Love. It is a member of that class. And if it is the only member of that class, then he is really in for some difficulty in terms of changing.

Your logic and logics (the way you reason, interpret things, make sense of things) is a function of having gone meta where you established your beliefs, values, criteria, references, etc. It is almost never logical in the sense of formal logic (Aristotelian logic, syllogisms, etc). It is almost always an emotional logic, a value logic, a subjective logic that arises from your history of experiences and the learnings that you have made from them.

This process of psycho-logics explains how each of us lives in our own unique world of meaning. It explains why you never know what meaning structures you’re going to find with any given person. One person hears “failure” and he has meta-stated it to mean that he is worthless and no good. Another person hears “failure” and thinks, “Great! This means I’m about to learn something new and useful!” It’s not the thing itself that has meaning, it is the meaning-maker who imposes meaning upon things. May you meta-state some great meanings this week and develop a healthy and vigorous psycho-logics for yourself!