CHAPTER III
ESCALATION
I do not wish to represent man as he is, but only as he might be.
-Paul Klee
The construct of escalation is helpful in understanding the process of development. "Escalate," a recently coined word, means to raise the level of action by discrete jumps; it derives from moving up an escalator, a flight of stairs or a ladder. When one shifts gears in an automobile, one escalates; this is not just a matter of going faster-more properly, one engages a different service of power.
Escalation is used in this chapter as a concept embracing five different although interrelated aspects of development: succession, discontinuity, emergence, differentiation and integration. Each of these characteristics defines a different facet of escalation, and these will then be used to analyze concept formation in the developing child and the interrelations between cognitive and affective developmental systems in producing mental health and the possibility of creativity. (The cognitive system refers to the rational development of the mind and is covered by Piagetian developmental stages; the affective system covers emotional development and is covered by Eriksonian developmental stages.) The components of escalation are summarized in figure 3.
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FIGURE III. THE COMPONENTS OF ESCALATION
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SUCCESSION
The term "succession" implies that there is a fixed order or hierarchy among developmental processes. The ordered hierarchy in turn implies a continual rise in the level of action at each stage. The order is invariant, although the time sequence is organismic and not strictly chronological. Piaget (Pinard and Laurendeau, 1969, p. 125) calls this property hierarchicization, an accurate although awkwardly translated term, and points out that this attribute at once leads to the concept of decalages (or developmental lags) which depend on personal and cultural idiosyncrasies.
The concept of succession implies that the track of development is fixed, in that a given stage follows and never precedes another. The rate of succession through stages and the extent of development at any stage, however, is flexible since these are influenced by the nature of the organism and its environment. Man likes to think of himself as a free animal wandering over a large range, able to go wherever he wishes and to do whatever he likes. By discovering that we cannot do what we please, we find that modern research suggests that this model is not appropriate to the facts. A better example would be that of a powerful locomotive set firmly on the tracks with few possibilities of switching to other lines. Speed and destination are dependent upon the engineer's decisions and the available fuel. The main degree of freedom lies in his ability to accelerate or slow down the speed with which the engine goes down the track.
DISCONTINUITY
The concept of discontinuity parallels that of succession. One cannot imagine a flight of locks in a canal as other than a succession of discontinuities, each with the water level at equilibrium. The order is invariant. One could not have the first lock, then the fifth, then the fourth, third and second. As a flight of locks contains water at various stages of equilibrium whereas a waterfall does not, so this discontinuity of ordered sequences allows for equilibrium at various stages as a smooth growth curve does not. The term applied by Piaget (Pinard and Laurendeau, 1969, p. 145) to this phenomenon is equilibration (an ordered succession of differing levels of equilibrium).
The concept of discontinuity implies that there is available an additional input of energy to escalate development from one level to the next. This extra increment, as indicated in chapter 2, is similar to the latent heat of fusion in that it is necessary to transform the state and properties of the operand. Just as shifting an automobile into higher gear allows for more efficient use of available power, additional energy is transformed to the freer properties of a new and higher state. Any teacher who has observed a child emerge as an adolescent through the process of sexual maturation has recognized the vast increase in intellectual power and scope wrought by the developmental change. New and complex motivational patterns may also appear as outcomes of this discontinuity.
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EMERGENCE
Emergence, or the debut of new powers, is the third aspect of escalation. As the child progresses from one stage to another in the developmental sequence, qualities which were implicit or covert in a previous stage become explicit or overt in the next or following stage. This bringing out or manifestation of emergent characteristics, some of them unexpected or unrecognized at the earlier level, is seen in many phases of development as the budding or preparation for the next phase.
Each phase contains not only the full explication of qualities which were inchoate previously, but also a prototype bud or other preliminary indication of those which will later become manifest. An example is the intuitive conservation of volume perceived by the child in the third stage (initiative) versus the actual conservation of volume during the fourth (industry) stage. As Piaget observes, the child in the earlier stage will often be able to conserve volume but cannot tell you why, whereas later he can do both. Piaget calls this attribute "consolidation" (Pinard and Laurendeau, 1969, p. 129), in that a given stage is simultaneously a summation of the accomplishments of the previous stages and a preparation for the tasks of the next stage.
The elaboration of an attribute that previously had been only a trace is more than just the cognitive spelling out of an intuition. The explication denotes permanency in development. Earlier, the promised attribute is a "sometime thing," now appearing, now disappearing. For it is a rule in developmental sequence that powers are possessed in a hierarchical order-first, in tenuous form or only at intervals; later on, to be more permanently apprehended. As when a friend comes to visit us, he calls us first on the phone, and we have cognition of him through one sensory channel; we think of him off and on. Soon he arrives in the flesh, and we experience him fully through all sensory channels at once. The Portuguese proverb distinguishes "A trace, a path, a lane, and a highway"; and in a similar manner do we -spasmodically, intuitively, iconically and finally symbolically -apprehend new concepts.
Bruner's sequence of enactive, iconic and symbolic representation of experience hence constitutes an example of emergence (1966, p. 11). What has been a trace at one time becomes more clearly a path at the next level, a lane at the succeeding and a highway at last.
This process of escalation could not occur if there were not at every stage the preparatory process we call "budding." Budding refers to the implicit appearance at every early stage of the growth potential of the succeeding stages. At each stage, development not only unfolds and differentiates the characteristic properties of that stage, but it displays in bud form the epigenesis of the next stage. This aspect of escalation cannot be explained by the history of the individual but by inherent developmental tendencies of the species. It seems ludicrous that the four-year-old boy will form an oedipal attachment toward his mother, but this prepares him, much later in the intimacy stage, for a true genital approach to the beloved person of the opposite sex.
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Erikson (Evans, 1967, p. 21) suggests that the rudiments of character emerge in the autonomy stage and "develop further in each stage as shown on my epigenetic diagram. . . . They become more complex and differentiated, and therefore undergo renewed crises."I Erikson used the word "epigenetic" to mean "upon emergence" in very much the same way that we have employed "escalation "to signify that one item develops on the shoulders of another. Erikson later remarks (Evans, 1967, pp. 40-41) about the one-stage-after-another approach: "It misses the nature of epigenetic stages in which each stage adds something specific to all later ones, and makes an ensemble out of all earlier ones."
DIFFERENTIATION
Differentiation refers to the escalatory attribute which clarifies, "fixates" and modifies the emphasis in developmental processes. It resolves or fixates in the sense that "focusing in" on an object by a zoom camera lens clarifies the optical field. Perhaps due to translational difficulties, Piaget (Pinard and Laurendean, 1969, p. 124) does not find a word which exactly fits this definition. The nearest is "integration" by which he means restructuring and coordination, which would be much like our change of emphasis. Differentiation, however, has been well delineated by Bower and Hollister (1 968), and its contribution to concept formation receives fuller treatment in "Concept Formation and Conceptualization" of this chapter.
Fixation as an Aspect of Developmental Processes
Developmental processes which are loose and inchoate at early stages tend to become bound, defined and fixated at higher stages. The increase in specialism and specificity results in part from the accumulation of habits and conditioned responses. Fixation is more complex, however, than mere conditioning; it involves selection of tempos, pacing, and the development of likes and dislikes of objects and processes. Experiences become organized into value systems which determine choice into similar patterns. A girl at the heterosexual stage of development will be attracted to boys in general; later she will love a particular boy. Fixation not only means that the attribute will be held more tightly, but that it will be apprehended in the same manner each time. The habituation of response tends to put an end to creative play variations on that response; we learn to do something well in a certain way, and it becomes more certain that we will do it in that way without variation. The process is analogous to "type casting" in the theater.
Differentiation as a Shift of Emphasis on Metamorphosis
A striking aspect of developmental sequence is the sudden switch in
emphasis from one stage to another. Almost without warning between stage
three
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(initiative) and stage four (industry) the six-year-old child stops valuing his behavior in terms of bad and good, love and hate, reflecting strong affection for his parents, and literally "cools it" by beginning to start making things instead of making people."
Of a sudden, everything you have said to your child becomes as the blowing wind; he has simply left you and fallen under the evil influence of a neighbor's child. What this young monster says and does is gospel indeed. They wear the same clothes, eat the same breakfast cereal, watch the same TV shows, have secrets from you, and all at once your love and affection is displaced by hobbies, crafts, tree houses, secret clubs, a gang of boys, no display of affection and a general cool outlook toward the world which looks at facts instead of feelings. And he continually pesters you with "who ... .. where ... .. what," "when" and "why."
A similar switch of emphasis faces the parent of a teenager who seems to have outgrown the family and regards himself or herself as an unwilling hostage in prison with only a telephone as a lifeline to his age-mates. These metamorphoses, while traumatic for parents, aye necessary crises in the escalation of development from one stage to another. Were it not for the stress and strain of adolescence, growth would result not in an adult but simply in a monster- sized child. To become an adult, the reorganization and reemphasis of previous habits, attitudes and values are essential.
The problems of differentiation are compounded by the fact that it is by no means certain that early success will help and forward individual developmental escalation. To be sure, failure will not; but too much success at a stage can result in fixation at the stage. Escalation is not simply accretion or more of the same thing; it is a metamorphosis which amounts to a new and different ball game. Often those most successful in one phase will wish to remain there, replaying their successes and refusing to get on with the tasks of the next stage.
An individual who has been only moderately successful in earlier stages can blossom out in a later stage. This is usually because he finds himself and gets personal "hang ups" straightened out. Change of emphasis insures a greater degree of freedom in the developmental pattern, therefore, since the race is not always toward the swift. The process of development is itself therapeutic, and so long as the thrust of development continues, there is also the possibility of self-actualization as well as the probability of improvement.
INTEGRATION
Integration, the final attribute of escalation, synthesizes the others. It is in some respects the mathematical integral of the previous aspects. A mathematical integral of an algebraic function is a related function of the next higher degree with the addition of a constant which must be determined by observation, thus giving two sources of extra freedom and one of greater complexity. It is not surprising that a higher synthesis, greater complexity and new degrees of freedom are characteristic properties of the concept of integration.
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Piaget (Pinard and Laurendeau, 1969, pp. 129-136) describes an attribute called integration, but fitting our scheme better is his term "structuring." The tasks of a stage are not simple accretions of the previous stages, but are interconnected to form a meaningful unit (like the rafters of a roof) which unites into a gestalt called by Piaget "structures d'ensemble. " This is more characteristic of our concept than his "integration" which simply refers to reemphasis. Following are some familiar examples of integration:
(1) The child's interest in various parts of his body seen during stage two (autonomy) now becomes integrated in stage three (initiative) into a narcissistic love of his whole body. The energy of the parts becomes bound into energy for the whole.
(2) In the transformation from child to adolescent, there is increase in complexity of emotion, and such emergent qualities as genital sexual drives, greater capacity for tenderness and feeling and more intellectual range, all of which form a newer synthesis of previously identified aspects and permit new degrees of freedom and choice.
(3) The enhanced ego concept of the third stage (initiative) over previous stages is an illustration of increased complexity. The earlier simple assertion of "me-ness" now takes on a new quality in terms of what "me" can do. (I am the person who can coordinate my body: I am so delightfully winsome that everyone will love me, pay attention to me and revolve their lives around me.) The production of emergent qualities is illustrated by that of creative fantasy in the four year old. Responding to the warm affect of the opposite-sexed parent, the child now dips deeper and deeper into the preconscious to produce creative products to show off to this charming adult with whom he is having his first love affair. The valence of the budding "I-thou" relationship is indeed something new.
Integration also embraces a higher synthesis of already delineated elements; hence it summates the concept of escalation. Who among us has not felt the thrill of driving a geared car on an open road and shifting into overdrive as the highway clears ahead? The car goes faster with less effort, because the gear ratio has been changed and the engine labors less per mile per hour traveled. We can do this and experience the consequent sense of freedom and elation at high speeds only on an excellent road. We feel this way even though there is no more potential power in the auto than there was at rest or backing up a steep grade. We are in a sense selfactualizing the automobile for we are using it at its utmost at the task for which it was built. This top efficiency at any stage of development is reached only through a harmonious psychic-biologic relationship resulting from excellent mental health on the part of the individual which enables him to integrate his total potential or, as we say in current slang, to "put it all together."
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CONCEPT FORMATION AND CONCEPTUALIZATION
Having now completed the definition of five aspects of escalation: succession, discontinuity, emergence, differentiation and integration, let us see how they apply to some of the major processes of development. The first example will be a discussion of their utility in an analysis of concept formation.
Bucke (1929) postulated that there were three types of consciousness: (a) simple consciousness such as that possessed by the higher animals; (b) selfconsciousness such as that possessed by the average rational man; and (c) cosmic consciousness, possessed rarely and spasmodically by few members of the human race. Leaving out the more contentious part of his argument, most people would agree that at least one difference between men and animals is the possession of self-consciousness. While present in every normal adult, it is by no means present in the child at birth, but seems to dawn as part of the ego in the second (autonomy) stage, increasing through childhood to effloresce in the fifth (identity) stage. It is certainly not coincidental that the same period is identified by Piaget for the beginning of the ability to conceptualize. Conceptualization starts when the child can decenter and flowers in formal operations when the youth can reason and deal with cause and effect through hypothesis making.
The chief cognitive method of concept formation involves the ability to form an intellectually negotiable concept, more or less isomorphic to external experience out of a series of encounters with that experience each of which is consensually validated through contact with others. It involves skills of cognition, memory, convergent and divergent production, and evaluation-in short the operational abilities of the Guilford "Structure of Intellect."
Bruner (1966) has brilliantly discussed enactive, iconic and symbolic representation, three prominent ways in which the child develops these skills. In Sullivan's theory (1953, p. xiv) the conceptualization of experience occurs in three modes which he called "prototaxic, parataxic and syntaxic." The crucial role of language in human experience is pointed up by the demarcation between the modes. Experience occurring before symbolization is referred to as prototaxic, private symbols designate parataxic, and syntaxic is used for experience which can be communicated by means of symbols. Sullivan's phrase for this was "consensual validation," and he saw this confirmation of our experience by others, when we are able intellectually to negotiate it, as a great help in reducing the anxiety of the ego in removing experience from the uncanny "not-me" category to that of everyday occurrence.
As each of us tries to make sense out of our conceptualization of the "big, blooming, buzzing confusion" of the external world, we attempt to bring more and more of it within the explanation of rationality, first in that our precepts are perceived by others and second in that our concepts are conceived by others. The concept model will be an aid to our thinking only if it is a viable strategy in the Bruner sense; that is, is it isomorphic with the real world?
Kelly (1955) postulated that our perceptions of the world of experience are constrained by the way in which we anticipate events. Is our experience of the world constrained by the way in which we conceptualize it? Some schools of
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thought believe that the way we conceptualize data governs our selected attention to it, and hence the pattern and meaning of the data is controlled by our conceptualization and is not anterior to it. Since it is data plus meaning which we perceive and conceptualize, it is meaningless for us to talk about the existence of nature before becoming conscious of it, for there is no meaning for us, and hence no semantic reality to nature prior to our conceptualization of it, any more than there is an absolute motion of pure ether. What we call "data" of nature has already been conceptualized or we could not know it. This is why mind cannot accept the possibility of total meaninglessness of the universe.
Following this line of reasoning, we find that the world of nature cannot be described as a discrete series of events independent of any observer, for the only reality we can know lies in our conceptualization of nature not whatever may be before that. The meaning and hence the reality is in the sometimes different, but generally similar, perceptions of events by different observers, each conceptualizing in his own way. Minds oriented to conceptualize in one way will tend to see similar events; minds oriented in another manner will conceptualize differently and hence will report somewhat different events in a somewhat different order in a kind of social relativity. Each is relatively true because it is relatively meaningful. While our language appears to invest reality in natural forms and not in the transactional relationships in our minds (wherein the true meaning lies), there is no final reality or meaning in nature independent of the consciousness which conceptualizes it. Conceptualization, therefore, is not an artifact of culture; it is a necessary condition of being alive and conscious.
Conceptualization involves the use of models and their use is significant not so much because the model is "true" as because it helps us to organize large and complex areas of experience and to predict outcomes. Better that the model be heuristic, leading to useful outcomes, than that it be true, leading to a complete representation of reality. For example, Piaget's logical model of conservation of numbers, involving closure, associativity, identity and inversion may not be explicitly understood by the child, any more than he understands the grammatical structure of English. The model is a useful construct in analyzing behavior because it fits in with other cognitive structures familiar to us and enables us to predict results with some accuracy.
Ibis reasoning brings us close to the classical philosophical argument between the Nominalists and the Realists-the former arguing that reality resides in our structuring of the world and the latter, that there is an independent reality. One of the most reassuring aspects of Piaget's theories is that he takes the middle position of interactionism in attempting a synthesis. There is a relationship between the knower and the known, each affecting the other, so that it is not just the way the environment is conceptualized by the child, it is also his developmental level which affects the reality he perceives and organizes. Hence reality for the child is relative, for he perceives it differently from reality for the adult.
The tremendous contributions of Piaget toward understanding concept formation are related to his assimilation- accommodation model. These as Flavell (1963, p. 44) points out are the two interrelated components of adaptation which together with organization makes up biological functioning.
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Flavell reminds us (1963, p. 411) that Piaget revealed concept development to be a process of extraordinary and unsuspected richness. He adds:
It is to Piaget's credit that he found a way to build so much continuity into so manifestly a stage theory of development. He did it, of course, by the simple expedient of associating the continuity with the functional aspects and the discontinuity with the structural ones.1
Piaget's theories constitute a "roomy" model which affords hypothesis for future research. According to Flavell (1963, p. 417), some of the face-valid measures of cognitive performance over time may result in better and more accurate mental measurements; such tests may prove more predictive of "creative, inventive or innovative capacities."
Indeed, as Flavell concludes (1963, p. 420):
Intellectual development may be conceived as a kind of Toynbeean challenge-response affair; at selected points in his development, the society thrusts the child into new roles and different sets of cognitive demands; the child responds to this challenge by acquiring the new cognitive structures to cope with these demands.2
Piaget's challenge and response view of development is echoed by Bruner (19 59, p. 369):
Logical structures develop to support the new forms of commerce with the world. It is just as plainly the case that the preoperational child, protected by his parents, need not manipulate the world of objects unassisted until the pressure of independence is placed upon him, at which time concrete operations emerge. So the concretely operational child need not manipulate the world of potentiality save on the fantasy level until pressure is placed upon him at which point prop ositionalism begins to mark his thinking.
This concept of constant interaction between environmental stimulation and concept development is easily understood in relation to sports and physical education. No one would expect an Olympic skier or a mountain climber such as Hilary to develop without any training or mountaineering experience. Conversely, an athletic coach, trying to develop such superior athletes, would seek those boys who at an early age had superior physiques. He would then subject them to rigorous training, with frequent testing, and as much success experience as possible, enabling them to progress from one stage of competence to another until eventually they became of international competitive caliber.
Societies concerned with cognitive competence may need to reconsider
the degree of environmental stimulation and early success experiences provided
by their national institutions in the light of what Piaget said about the
development of concept formation. Will the boy, for example, who is facile
with concrete operations at eight (and hence judged to be intelligent),
develop into the young man
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who is equally facile with formal operations or creativity at twenty? What kinds of educational stimulation are most likely to ensure this escalation?
It is all very well to talk about the child's cognitive development through concrete and formal operations to creative functioning, but the child must have something to escalate. To operate, much less be creative, in the symbolic or semantic contents area, the child must master linguistics. In creating, the child gives conceptual order to his experience. Hence the proper organization of matter and material in the prior concrete operations stage is a necessary precursor of verbal creativity.
Order grows out of grouping constructs of semantic contents and then connecting them in meaningful ways. Part of this is categorizing or fitting units into appropriate classes. The diagram:
color
-----------------------------------------------
red
yellow
blue
is such a construct. Here the parameter color takes on discrete values or attributes, each of which is related to the parameter as a child is to its parent or a unit to its class, and each of which has a coeval relationship with its fellow colors. Sampson (1965) and Upton and Sampson (1961) have analyzed this process, which involves the developing use by the child of words and symbols in reification, qualification, classification, operations, analogy and structure analysis. This process is the central tic in concrete operations for it builds an isomorphism between the mental world of the child and the physical world outside. It is necessary before formal operations or creativity can begin. It is, therefore, a part of escalation of cognitive development.
Moreover, the child's cognitive escalation is tied to the modes of grammar.
A glance at the following chart will be helpful:
Developmental stage | Verbal mode |
Trust or sensimotor period | No speech |
Autonomy or preoperational period | Imperative mode |
Initiative or intuitive period | Optative mode |
Industry or concrete operations period | Interrogative mode |
Identity or formal operations period | Subjunctive mode |
When speech arrives, the young child starts the second period with a blunt expression of nascent will-the imperative- but soon finds that the world is not quick to obey his commands. He subsides gradually into the wishful optative "I wish it were . . ." or "Would that I could ... .... and thus fuels the fantasy of the third period. But this intuitive fantasy is soon displaced by the more matter-of-fact questioning, "who," 11 where," "what," "when," "why" of the interrogative mode during the fourth or concrete operations period. Later, around adolescence, the child escapes the tyranny of the fact by discovering the subjunctive mode and the power of hypothesis making through "if-then" relationships during the formal operations of the fifth developmental stage.
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SUMMARY
Development involves escalation; that is, the emergence of a higher and more complex form of organization and synthesis. Just as a musical motif is developed through escalation into more complex choirs and modes, so the child's developing mind in its journey from egocentricity to altruism escalates into forms more complicated and isomorphic with reality. Greater freedom and more possibilities of creative function are therefore open. The concrete-operational child is tied to the tyranny of the interrogative mode-the reality of what actually is. The formal -operational child escapes into the freedom of contingency; he discovers the subjunctive and is thus free to become creative in "if-then" hypothesis making.
A corollary of escalation is that each stage contains the bud or implicit statement of the next stage, and each stage represents an integration or higher resolution of the previous stage. The concept of an equilibrium of discontinuities, or hierarchy of order, which never varies is also implied in the concept of escalation.
This view of developmental stages stresses the interaction of cognitive development with corresponding phases in the affective domain. As Flavell remarks: "Piaget's analysis both complements and significantly adds to Erikson's account" and "A sense of the whole child emerges more clearly in a stereoscopic integration of the two" (1963, p. 414). Indeed, the developing child progresses as on a dual staircase, one foot on the affective and the other on the cognitive risers.
Piaget and Erikson have named the staircases, and in their remarkably corresponding stages have indicated coeval stories. Within each story there are many risers (which Piaget has detailed more carefully than Erikson), and the child almost alternately makes his climb by putting first one foot on an affective and the other on a cognitive advance. The interactional balance of thought and feeling between these results in positive mental health for the whole organism. If a series of risers is missing on one staircase, the child is effectively blocked from advancing farther on either, and we say he is arrested (emotionally) or an underachiever (cognitively). The interaction is reciprocal: emotional difficulties underlie school failure; lack of cognitive competence may create a poor self concept and disrupt relations with others. The dual model has many aspects of strength not possessed by either alone, just as a study of electricity is reinforced by a simultaneous investigation of magnetism.
While Decarie (1965) has attempted to connect Piaget and Freud in developmental process, the book which best centers attention of the transactive effect of cognitive and affective aspects of concept formation is that of Bower and Hollister (1967). Believing that children develop strong egos in the process of becoming effective learners and vice versa, Bower and Hollister concern themselves with concrete ways in which teachers may strengthen ego processes in children through the curriculum. Hollister gives this process the happy name of "stren" which he regards as an anonym of trauma.
Bower and Hollister identify competence in the use of symbols as one ego skill through which the child can organize, bind and utilize knowledge as a tool to understand the world. Symbolization must be precise enough to yield a
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firm construction, yet broad and loose enough to yield creative insights or transformations. Only with ego strength can concepts become organized to the full. In one trenchant passage Bower (1968) observes:
Ego processes not only organize and reorganize knowledge and themselves, but can tie or hold on to much knowledge. Symbols are the tools by which this magic is accomplished. Without the tools of language and numbers, little if any knowledge can be packaged and stored. To tie knowledge effectively into symbols, the symbols need meaningful conceptual glue.
Then in a brilliant section he identifies five ego processes and shows
how teachers can use the curriculum to build these strens. The five processes
are as follows:
a. differentiation (the separation of objects, symbols and feelings)
b. fidelity-distortion (tying symbols to objects, words and actions)
c. pacing versus overloading (regulating inputs and unloading actions)
d. expansion-constriction (seeking new metaphors, meanings and uses)
e. integration-fragmentation (assimilating, interconnecting).
Each of these ego processes enables the child to deal more efficiently with experience. Fidelity, the representation of the experience in its reality, gives a truer picture inside the child's mind about what is going on outside. Creativity rests on the high fidelity of replication of experience. When experience is stereotyped and restricted, little creativity can emerge for it is the high fidelity reproduction of experience, rich with multivaried splendor, which gives the best chance for new combinations or assortments of all the complex parts. Thus the objective of escalation of developmental process is creative functioning.
The child is a creative generalist. He is not specialized for his wonderment is everywhere. Escalation requires that he give his attention selectively to an everdecreasing and more specialized segment of the totality of his experience so that, while his creativity may augment, he has as an adult become "type cast" in an ever-narrowing role. As a college student, he may pick one major; as a graduate student, he will concentrate in one aspect of that major; as a Ph.D. candidate, he will single out a small segment of that area for his thesis; and his later professional writings will be on still more specialized topics. Only rarely does he recapture the omnivorous wonder that besets the child at every turn, and then only when rapture or travel transports him to another vivency.
Jourard (196 8, p. 2) echoes this idea well in stating:
The world of experience is constantly disclosing itself to us as it
gives evidence of continual change. When we form a concept of this process,
we freeze it in time, and the signals from the changing entity which we
are observing cease to be perceived by us. To us the object ceases to disclose
itself because we close our receiving apparatus. Growth is the disintegration
of one way of experiencing following by a new way of experiencing which
includes a new disclosure.1
'From page 2, Jourard, S. M. "Growing Awareness and the Awareness of Growth" in Otto, H. and Mann, J. Ways of Growth, Copyright, 1968, Otto and Mann. Used by permission.
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If this childish sense of wonder and generalism is the creative genius of our species, one wonders if a super-species some say may produce super-children who as adults will retain this complete curiosity during all of life, as well as a generalized attention which will make them masters of many modes. This indeed was the ideal of the uomo universale of the Renaissance, the universal genius of whom Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe are prominent examples. Such men maintain in adulthood (which is like a super-childhood) the same generalized attention to all aspects of the world which continue to utterly fascinate them. These superior individuals may illustrate in their enriched lives the course of evolution for tomorrow and the ages afterward.
Barron (1968, p. 168) sums up this idea very well when he speaks of the usual process of maturation as a personal adjustment that is "normal" but "is achieved at the cost of repression of the spontaneity and wonder of childhood." He feels that the person who is open to experience retains the childhood experience in consciousness and hence integrates its benefits into the total personality.
We may get some insight about the escalation of attention (and the consequent diminution of range) by looking at figure 4 which is designed to represent an individual moving from childhood (left) to seniority (right). The entire power or ability available to the individual is split between two dimensions, a horizontal range or versatility and a vertical mastery or intensity. The cross section representing individual power at any given time is roughly a constant that is, as his range or versatility decreases, his mastery or intensity increases reciprocally. Hence he moves from generalist to specialist with the same total power. Hereditary and environmental influences determine the two personal variables, range and angle of convergence. The result of this life progression is a solid with the top surface curved upward to represent escalation. The child who was a generalist with a wide range of curiosity but low mastery becomes as an adult a specialist with a narrow range of interest but high mastery. If environmental or emotional defects open up the angle of convergence too much, the individual will not have a chance to reach creative heights as an adult before his base becomes so narrow as to preclude further progress. Conversely, if individual interests are narrowed early, he will have a broad enough base to enter higher stages. Hence it is only the superior individual in good mental health who can gain higher states and phases where creative performance can occur.
In this chapter, escalation is described as an aspect of developmental process which involves increasing complexity and embraces five attributes: succession, discontinuity, emergence, differentiation and integration. Succession implies a fixed order within a hierarchy. Discontinuity involves an ordered and discrete sequence of equilibriums. Emergence involves budding and the making of the implicit, explicit. Differentiation refers to the escalatory attribute which clarifies, fixates, and metamorphosizes the emphasis in successive developments. Integration contains a summation of the other attributes into a higher synthesis with greater complexity and new degrees of freedom.
Examples of these processes of escalation were then given with regard to that major task of childhood -concept formation. Duality between cognitive and affective developmental stair cases is featured, and the significance of the
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FIGURE 4. THE ESCALATION OF ATTENTION
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transactive relationship between the cognitive and the affective in the child's development is emphasized. The necessity of these processes as the precursors of creativity in the child is discussed, and the objective of escalation is seen as creative performance in the individual. This performance is the subject for chapter 4.