1.07 - Cybernetics and Psychopathology

classes ::: Cybernetics, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Norbert Wiener, chapterIt is necessary that I commence this chapter with a disavowal.,
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object:1.07 - Cybernetics and Psychopathology
subject class:Cybernetics
book class:Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
author class:Norbert Wiener
class:chapterIt is necessary that I commence this chapter with a disavowal.
On the one hand, I am not a psychopathologist nor a psychia-
trist, and lack any experience in a field where the guidance of
experience is the only trustworthy one. On the other hand,
our knowledge of the normal performance of the brain and the
nervous system, and a fortiori our knowledge of their abnormal
performance, is far from having reached that state of perfec-
tion where an a priori theory can command any confidence. I
therefore wish to disclaim in advance any assertion that any
particular entity in psychopathology, as for example any of the
morbid conditions described by Kraepelin and his disciples, is
due to a specific type of defect in the organization of the brain
as a computing machine. Those who may draw such specific
conclusions from the considerations of this book do so at their
own risk.
Nevertheless, the realization that the brain and the com-
puting machine have much in common may suggest new and
valid approaches to psychopathology and even to psychiatries.
These begin with perhaps the simplest question of all: how the
brain avoids gross blunders, gross miscarriages of activity, due
to the malfunction of individual components. Similar questions200
Chapter VII
referring to the computing machine are of great practical impor-
tance, for here a chain of operations, each covering a fraction
of a millisecond, may last a matter of hours or days. It is quite
possible for a chain of computational operations to involve 10 9
separate steps. Under these circumstances, the chance that at
least one operation will go amiss is very far from negligible, even
though, it is true, the reliability of modern electronic apparatus
has far exceeded the most sanguine expectations.
In ordinary computational practice by hand or by desk
machines, it is the custom to check every step of the computa-
tion and, when an error is found, to localize it by a backward
process starting from the first point where the error is noted. To
do this with a high-speed machine, the check must proceed with
the speed of the original machine, or the whole effective order
of speed of the machine will conform to that of the slower pro-
cess of checking. Furthermore, if the machine is made to keep
all intermediate records of its performance, its complication and
bulk will be increased to an intolerable point, by a factor which
is likely to be enormously greater than 2 or 3.
A much better method of checking, and in fact the one gener-
ally used in practice, is to refer every operation simultaneously
to two or three separate mechanisms. In the case of the use of
two such mechanisms, their answers are automatically collated
against each other; and if there is a discrepancy, all data are trans-
ferred to permanent storage, the machine stops, and a signal is
sent to the operator that something is wrong. The operator then
compares the results, and is guided by them in his search for the
malfunctioning part, perhaps a tube which has burnt out and
needs replacement. If three separate mechanisms are used for
each stage and single misfunctions are as rare as they are in fact,
there will practically always be an agreement between two ofCybernetics and Psychopathology
201
the three mechanisms, and this agreement will give the required
result. In this case, the collation mechanism accepts the major-
ity report, and the machine need not stop; but there is a signal
indicating where and how the minority report differs from the
majority report. If this occurs at the first moment of discrepancy,
the indication of the position of the error may be very precise.
In a well-designed machine, no particular element is assigned
to a particular stage in the sequence of operations, but at each
stage there is a searching process, quite similar to that used in
automatic telephone exchanges, which finds the first available
element of a given sort and switches it into the sequence of oper-
ations. In this case, the removal and replacement of defective
elements need not be the source of any appreciable delay.
It is conceivable and not implausible that at least two of
the elements of this process are also represented in the ner-
vous system. We can hardly expect that any important message
is entrusted for transmission to a single neuron, nor that any
important operation is entrusted to a single neuronal mecha-
nism. Like the computing machine, the brain probably works
on a variant of the famous principle expounded by Lewis Carroll
in The Hunting of the Snark: “What I tell you three times is true."
It is also improbable that the various channels available for the
transfer of information generally go from one end of their course
to the other without anastomosing. It is much more probable
that when a message comes in to a certain level of the nervous
system, it may leave that point and proceed to the next by one
or more alternative members of what is known as an “internun-
cial pool." There may be parts of the nervous system, indeed,
where this interchangeability is much limited or abolished, and
these are likely to be such highly specialized parts of the cortex
as those which serve as the inward extensions of the organs of202
Chapter VII
special sense. Still, the principle holds, and probably holds most
clearly for the relatively unspecialized cortical areas which serve
the purpose of association and of what we call the higher mental
functions.
So far we have been considering errors in performance which
are normal, and pathological only in an extended sense. Let
us now turn to those which are much more clearly pathologi-
cal. Psychopathology has been rather a disappointment to the
instinctive materialism of the doctors, who have taken the point
of view that every disorder must be accompanied by material
lesions of some specific tissue involved. It is true that specific
brain lesions, such as injuries, tumors, clots, and the like, may
be accompanied by psychic symptoms, and that certain mental
diseases, such as paresis, are the sequellae of general bodily dis-
ease and show a pathological condition of the brain tissue; but
there is no way of identifying the brain of a schizophrenic of one
of the strict Kraepelin types, nor of a manic-depressive patient,
nor of a paranoiac. These disorders we call functional, and this
distinction seems to contravene the dogma of modern material-
ism that every disorder in function has some physiological or
anatomical basis in the tissues concerned.
This distinction between functional and organic disorders
receives a great deal of light from the consideration of the com-
puting machine. As we have already seen, it is not the empty
physical structure of the computing machine that corresponds
to the brain—to the adult brain, at least—but the combination
of this structure with the instructions given it at the beginning
of a chain of operations and with all the additional informa-
tion stored and gained from outside in the course of this chain.
This information is stored in some physical form—in the form
of memory—but part of it is in the form of circulating memories,Cybernetics and Psychopathology
203
with a physical basis which vanishes when the machine is shut
down or the brain dies, and part in the form of long-time memo-
ries, which are stored in a way at which we can only guess, but
probably also in a form with a physical basis which vanishes
at death. There is no way yet known for us to recognize in the
cadaver what the threshold of a given synapse has been in life;
and even if we knew this, there is no way we can trace out the
chain of neurons and synapses communicating with this, and
determine the significance of this chain for the ideational con-
tent which it records.
There is therefore nothing surprising in considering the func-
tional mental disorders as fundamentally diseases of memory, of
the circulating information kept by the brain in the active state,
and of the long-time permeability of synapses. Even the grosser
disorders such as paresis may produce a large part of their effects
not so much by the destruction of tissue which they involve and
the alteration of synaptic thresholds as by the secondary distur-
bances of traffic—the overload of what remains of the nervous
system and the re-routing of messages—which must follow such
primary injuries.
In a system containing a large number of neurons, circular
processes can hardly be stable for long periods of time. Either,
as in the case of memories belonging to the specious present,
they run their course, dissipate themselves, and die out, or they
comprehend more and more neurons in their system, until
they occupy an inordinate part of the neuron pool. This is what
we should expect to be the case in the malignant worry which
accompanies anxiety neuroses. In such a case, it is possible that
the patient simply does not have the room, the sufficient num-
ber of neurons, to carry out his normal processes of thought.
Under such conditions, there may be less going on in the brain204
Chapter VII
to load up the neurons not yet affected, so that they are all
the more readily involved in the expanding process. Further-
more, the permanent memory becomes more and more deeply
involved, and the pathological process which occurred at first at
the level of the circulating memories may repeat itself in a more
intractable form at the level of the permanent memories. Thus
what started as a relatively trivial and accidental reversal of sta-
bility may build itself up into a process totally destructive to the
ordinary mental life.
Pathological processes of a somewhat similar nature are not
unknown in the case of mechanical or electrical computing
machines. A tooth of a wheel may slip under just such condi-
tions that no tooth with which it engages can pull it back into its
normal relations, or a high-speed electrical computing machine
may go into a circular process which there seems to be no way to
stop. These contingencies may depend on a highly improbable
instantaneous configuration of the system, and, when remedied,
may never—or very rarely—repeat themselves. However, when
they occur, they temporarily put the machine out of action.
How do we deal with these accidents in the use of the
machine? The first thing which we try is to clear the machine of
all information, in the hope that when it starts again with differ-
ent data the difficulty may not recur. Failing this, if the difficulty
is in some point permanently or temporarily inaccessible to the
clearing mechanism, we shake the machine or, if it is electrical,
subject it to an abnormally large electrical impulse, in the hope
that we may reach the inaccessible part and throw it into a posi-
tion where the false cycle of its activities will be interrupted. If
even this fails, we may disconnect an erring part of the appara-
tus, for it is possible that what yet remains may be adequate for
our purpose.Cybernetics and Psychopathology
205
Now there is no normal process except death which com-
pletely clears the brain from all past impressions; and after death,
it is impossible to set it going again. Of all normal processes,
sleep comes the nearest to a non-
pathological clearing. How
often we find that the best way to handle a complicated worry
or an intellectual muddle is to sleep over it! However, sleep does
not clear away the deeper memories, nor indeed is a sufficiently
malignant state of worry compatible with an adequate sleep. We
are thus often forced to resort to more violent types of interven-
tion in the memory cycle. The more violent of these involve a
surgical intervention into the brain, leaving behind it perma-
nent damage, mutilation, and the abridgment of the powers of
the victim, as the mammalian central nervous system seems to
possess no powers whatever of regeneration. The principal type
of surgical intervention which has been practiced is known as
prefrontal lobotomy, and consists in the removal or isolation
of a portion of the prefrontal lobe of the cortex. It has recently
been having a certain vogue, probably not unconnected with
the fact that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier.
Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial
care still easier. However, prefrontal lobotomy does seem to have
a genuine effect on malignant worry, not by bringing the patient
nearer to a solution of his problems but by damaging or destroy-
ing the capacity for maintained worry, known in the terminol-
ogy of another profession as the conscience. More genei:ally, it
appears to limit all aspects of the circulating memory, the ability
to keep in mind a situation not actually presented.
The various forms of shock treatment—
electric, insulin,
metrazol—are less drastic methods of doing a very similar thing.
They do not destroy brain tissue or at least are not intended to
destroy it, but they do have a decidedly damaging effect on the206
Chapter VII
memory. In so far as this concerns the circulating memory, and
in so far as this memory is chiefly damaged for the recent period
of mental disorder, and is probably scarcely worth preserving
anyhow, shock treatment has something definite to recommend
it as against lobotomy; but it is not always free from deleteri-
ous effects on the permanent memory and the personality. As it
stands at present, it is another violent, imperfectly understood,
imperfectly controlled method to interrupt a mental vicious cir-
cle. This does not prevent its being in many cases the best thing
we can do at present.
Lobotomy and shock treatment are methods which by their
very nature are more suited to handle vicious circulating memo-
ries and malignant worries than the deeper-seated permanent
memories, though it is not impossible that they may have some
effect here too. As we have said, in long-established cases of men-
tal disorder, the permanent memory is as badly deranged as the
circulating memory. We do not seem to possess any purely phar-
maceutical or surgical weapon for intervening differentially in
the permanent memory. This is where psychoanalysis and other
similar psychotherapeutic measures come in. Whether psycho-
analysis is taken in the orthodox Freudian sense or in the modi-
fied senses of Jung and of Adler, or whether our psychotherapy
is not strictly psychoanalytic at all, our treatment is clearly based
on the concept that the stored information of the mind lies on
many levels of accessibility and is much richer and more varied
than that which is accessible by direct unaided introspection;
that it is vitally conditioned by affective experiences which we
cannot always uncover by such introspection, either because
they never were made explicit in our adult language, or because
they have been buried by a definite mechanism, affective though
generally involuntary; and that the content of these storedCybernetics and Psychopathology
207
experiences, as well as their affective tone, conditions much of
our later activity in ways which may well be pathological. The
technique of the psychoanalyst consists in a series of means
to discover and interpret these hidden memories, to make the
patient accept them for what they are and by their acceptance
modify, if not their content, at least the affective tone they carry,
and thus make them less harmful. All this is perfectly consistent
with the point of view of this book. It perhaps explains, too,
why there are circumstances where a joint use of shock treat-
ment and psychotherapy is indicated, combining a physical
or pharmacological therapy for the phenomena of reverbera-
tion in the nervous system, and a psychological therapy for
the long-time memories which, without interference, might re-
establish from within the vicious circle broken up by the shock
treatment.
We have already mentioned the traffic problem of the ner-
vous system. It has been commented on by many writers, such
as D’Arcy Thompson, 1 that each form of organization has an
upper limit of size, beyond which it will not function. Thus the
insect organization is limited by the length of tubing over which
the spiracle method of bringing air by diffusion directly to the
breathing tissues will function; a land animal cannot be so big
that the legs or ether portions in contact with the ground will
be crushed by its weight; a tree is limited by the mechanism
for transferring water and minerals from the roots to the leaves,
and the products of photosynthesis from the leaves to the roots;
and so on. The same sort of thing is observed in engineering
constructions. Skyscrapers are limited in size by the fact that
when they exceed a certain height, the elevator space needed
for the upper stories consumes an excessive part of the cross sec-
tion of the lower floors. Beyond a certain span, the best-possible208
Chapter VII
suspension bridge which can be built out of materials with given
elastic properties will collapse under its own weight; and beyond
a certain greater span, any structure built of a given material or
materials will collapse under its own weight. Similarly, the size
of a single telephone central, built according to a constant, non-
expanding plan, is limited, and this limitation has been very
thoroughly studied by telephone engineers.
In a telephone system, the important limiting factor is the
fraction of the time during which a subscriber will find it impos-
sible to put a call through. A 99 per cent chance of success will
certainly be satisfactory for even the most exacting; 90 per cent
of successful calls is probably good enough to permit business
to be carried on with reasonable facility. A success of 75 per cent
is already annoying but will permit business to be carried on
after a fashion; while if half the calls end in failures, subscribers
will begin to ask to have their telephones taken out. Now, these
represent over-all figures. If the calls go through n distinct stages
of switching, and probability of failure is independent and equal
for each stage, in order to get a probability of total success equal
to p, the probability of success at each stage must be p 1/n . Thus to
obtain a 75 per cent chance of the completion of the call after
five stages, we must have about 95 per cent chance of success
per stage. To obtain a 90 per cent performance, we must have 98
per cent chance of success at each stage. To obtain a 50 per cent
performance, we must have 87 per cent chance of success at each
stage. It will be seen that the more stages which are involved, the
more rapidly the service becomes extremely bad when a critical
level of failure for the individual call is exceeded, and extremely
good when this critical level of failure is not quite reached. Thus
a switching service involving many stages and designed for a
certain level of failure shows no obvious signs of failure until theCybernetics and Psychopathology
209
traffic comes up to the edge of the critical point, when it goes
completely to pieces, and we have a catastrophic traffic jam.
Man, with the best-
developed nervous system of all the
animals, with behavior that probably depends on the longest
chains of effectively operated neuronic chains, is then likely to
perform a complicated type of behavior efficiently very close to
the edge of an overload, when he will give way in a serious and
catastrophic way. This overload may take place in several ways:
either by an excess in the amount of traffic to be carried, by a
physical removal of channels for the carrying of traffic, or by the
excessive occupation of such channels by undesirable systems
of traffic, like circulating memories which have increased to the
extent of becoming pathological worries. In all these cases, a
point will come—quite suddenly—when the normal traffic will
not have space enough allotted to it, and we shall have a form of
mental breakdown, very possibly amounting to insanity.
This will first affect the faculties or operations involving the
longest chains of neurons. There is appreciable evidence that
these are precisely the processes which are recognized to be the
highest in our ordinary scale of valuation. The evidence is this: a
rise in temperature within nearly physiological limits is known
to produce an increase in the ease of performance of most if not
of all neuronic processes. This is greater for the higher processes,
roughly in the order of our usual estimate of their degree of
“highness." Now, any facilitation of a process in a single neuron-
synapse system should be cumulative as the neuron is combined
in series with other neurons. Thus the amount of assistance a
process receives through a rise in temperature is a rough measure
of the length of the neuron chain it involves.
We thus see that the superiority of the human brain to others
in the length of the neuron chains it employs is a reason why210
Chapter VII
mental disorders are certainly most conspicuous and probably
most common in man. There is another more specific way of
considering a very similar matter. Let us first consider two brains
geometrically similar, with the weights of gray and of white mat-
ter related by the same factor of proportionality, but with dif-
ferent linear dimensions in the ratio A:B. Let the volume of the
cell bodies in the gray matter and the cross sections of the fibers
in the white matter be of the same size in both brains. Then
the number of cell bodies in the two cases bears the ratio A 3 :B 3 ,
and the number of long-distance connectors the ratio A 2 :B 2 . This
means that for the same density of activity in the cells, the den-
sity of activity in the fibers is A:B times as great in the case of the
large brain as in that of the small brain.
If we compare the human brain with that of a lower mammal,
we shall find that it is much more convoluted. The relative thick-
ness of the gray matter is much the same, but it is spread over a
far more involved system of gyri and sulci. The effect of this is to
increase the amount of gray matter at the expense of the amount
of white matter. Within a gyrus, this decrease of the white matter
is largely a decrease in length rather than in number of fibers,
as the opposing folds of a gyrus are nearer together than they
would be on a smooth-surfaced brain of the same size. On the
other hand, when it comes to the connectors between different
gyri, the distance they have to run is increased if anything by the
convolution of the brain. Thus the human brain would seem to
be fairly efficient in the matter of the short-distance connectors,
but quite defective in the matter of long-distance trunk lines.
This means that in case of a traffic jam the processes involv-
ing parts of the brain quite remote from one another should
suffer first. That is, processes involving several centers, a num-
ber of different motor processes, and a considerable number ofCybernetics and Psychopathology
211
association areas should be among the least stable in cases of
insanity. These are precisely the processes which we should nor-
mally class as higher, and we obtain another confirmation of our
expectation, which seems to be verified by experience, that the
higher processes deteriorate first in insanity.
There is some evidence that the long-distance paths in the
brain have a tendency to run outside of the cerebrum altogether
and to traverse the lower centers. This is indicated by the remark-
ably small damage done by cutting some of the long-distance
cerebral loops of white matter. It almost seems as if these super-
ficial connections were so inadequate that they furnish only a
small part of the connections really needed.
With reference to this, the phenomena of handedness and
of hemispheric dominance are interesting. Handedness seems to
occur in the lower mammals, though it is less conspicuous than
in man, probably in part because of the lower degree of orga-
nization and skill demanded by the tasks which they perform.
Nevertheless, the choice between the right and the left side in
muscular skill does actually seem to be less than in man even in
the lower primates.
The right-handedness of the normal man, as is well known,
is generally associated with a left-
brainedness, and the left-
handedness of a minority of humans with a right-brainedness.
That is, the cerebral functions are not distributed evenly over
the two hemispheres, and one of these, the dominant hemi-
sphere, has the lion’s share of the higher functions. It is true
that many essentially bilateral functions—those involving the
fields of vision, for example—are represented each in its appro-
priate hemisphere, though this is not true for all bilateral func-
tions. However, most of the “higher" areas are confined to the
dominant hemisphere. For example, in the adult, the effect of an212
Chapter VII
extensive injury in the secondary hemisphere is far less serious
than the effect of a similar injury in the dominant hemisphere.
At a relatively early age in his career, Pasteur suffered a cerebral
hemorrhage on his right side which left him with a moderate
degree of one-sided paralysis, a hemiplegia. When he died, his
brain was examined, and he was found to be suffering from a
right-sided injury, so extensive that it has been said that after his
injury “he had only half a brain." There certainly were extensive
lesions of the parietal and temporal regions. Nevertheless, after
this injury he did some of his best work. A similar injury of the
left side in a right-handed adult would almost certainly have
been fatal and would certainly reduce the patient into an animal
condition of mental and nervous crippledness.
It is said that the situation is considerably better in early
infancy, and that in the first six months of life an extensive injury
to the dominant hemisphere may compel the normally second-
ary hemisphere to take its place; so that the patient appears far
more nearly normal than he would be had the injury occurred
at a later stage. This is quite in accordance with the general great
flexibility shown by the nervous system in the early weeks of
life, and the great rigidity which it rapidly develops later. It is
possible that, short of such serious injuries, handedness is rea-
sonably flexible in the very young child. However, long before
the child is of school age, the natural handedness and cerebral
dominance are established for life. It used to be thought that
left-handedness was a serious social disadvantage. With most
tools, school desks, and sports equipment primarily made for the
right-handed, it certainly is to some extent. In the past, more-
over, it was viewed with some of the superstitious disapproval
that has attached to so many minor variations from the human
norm, such as birthmarks or red hair. From a combination ofCybernetics and Psychopathology
213
motives, many people have attempted and even succeeded, in
changing the external handedness of their children by educa-
tion, though of course they could not change its physiological
basis in hemispheric dominance. It was then found that in very
many cases these hemispheric changelings suffered from stut-
tering and other defects of speech, reading, and writing, to the
extent of seriously wounding their prospects in life and their
hopes for a normal career. We now see at least one possible
explanation for the phenomenon. With the education of the
secondary hand, there has been a partial education of that part
of the secondary hemisphere which deals with skilled motions,
such as writing. Since, however, these motions are carried out in
the closest possible association with reading, speech, and other
activities which are inseparably connected with the dominant
hemisphere, the neuron chains involved in processes of the sort
must cross over from hemisphere to hemisphere and back; and
in a process of any complication, they must do this again and
again. Now, the direct connectors between the hemispheres—the
cerebral commissures—in a brain as large as that of man are so
few in number that they are of very little use, and the interhemi-
spheric traffic must go by roundabout routes through the brain
stem, which we know very imperfectly but which are certainly
long, scanty, and subject to interruption. As a consequence, the
processes associated with speech and writing are very likely to be
involved in a traffic jam, and stuttering is the most natural thing
in the world.
That is, the human brain is probably too large already to use
in an efficient manner all the facilities which seem to be anatom-
ically present. In a cat, the destruction of the dominant hemi-
sphere seems to produce relatively less damage than in man,
and the destruction of the secondary hemisphere probably more214
Chapter VII
damage. At any rate, the apportionment of function in the two
hemispheres is more nearly equal. In man, the gain achieved by
the increase in size and complication of the brain is partly nul-
lified by the fact that less of the organ can be used effectively at
one time. It is interesting to reflect that we may be facing one of
those limitations of nature in which highly specialized organs
reach a level of declining efficiency and ultimately lead to the
extinction of the species. The human brain may be as far along
on its road to this destructive specialization as the great nose
horns of the last of the titanotheres.

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