chapters

Reification & De-Reification

Umpire #1 —  I call's 'em as I sees 'em
Umpire #2 —  I calls 'em as they are
Umpire #3 —  They ain't nothin' until I calls 'em

Children are not born with knowledge of the world; they tend to believe what you tell them. For example, during the holiday season the media is full of cartoons and advertisements showing Santa driving his reindeer through the night delivering presents to good boys and girls. It's not surprising that young children, unaware that these images are fiction and not an accurate depiction of objective reality, believe that Santa is real. The real-ification [reification] of Santa seems harmless; in fact, children seem delighted by it.

We are more sophisticated now than we were young. During the developmental passage into adulthood, we have de-reified the obvious fictions of childhood such as Santa and the tooth fairy. We allow children to buy into such fictions because they produce more joy than harm. However, we appreciate that children's tendency to confuse made-up stories with concrete reality makes them so vulnerable to predators that preying on their gullibility is considered immoral and, in some cases, illegal.

Gullibility— acting as if a created fiction was objectively true when such action is counter to your interests —is the ultimate cause of self-sabotage. While you no longer reify obviously childish beliefs such as Santa, you continue to reify whatever you believe to be true—even when doing so reliably causes bad outcomes.

If you think that only children are gullible enough to be taken in by improbable fictions, consider: Suicide bombers who sacrifice their own lives and the lives of others for a 72- virgin payoff on the other side; the success of pyramid schemes and unethical politicians; problem drinkers and gamblers who sincerely believe that this time they will be able to control their incentive use.

Reification is most obvious when it causes harm, but it is not necessarily harmful. Some would say that early buyers of Bitcoin or Apple stock were gullible; they reified the predictions that these investments would increase in value. Their speculations about future events might have turned out otherwise, but in this universe these investors are now considered prescient, not gullible. Whether you are wise or foolish to buy into a fiction depends on whether acting as if that fiction was true leads to good outcome or bad.

Intellectually, we may appreciate that our map [the mind's representation of the objective world] is not the same as the territory [the reality the mind is attempting to represent]. However, to cope with our complex and rapidly changing environment we have to act as if it is—we could not respond rapidly enough to survive if we had to vet every perception, belief, and appraisal. The downside of acting as if your representation is valid and complete shows up when your map repeatedly leads you to places you don't want to be. The fact that following your map brings about bad outcomes and despite this you don't modify it— or even question it — shows that you have reified it. [Reification refers to regarding an abstraction the mind creates to represent reality as though it was the authentic reality].

Grifters, salesmen, and stage hypnotists design elaborate scripts with the goal of influencing people to act as if their BS was actually true. Getting someone to act as if something you made up was true has been a popular form of screwing people since interpersonal communication became possible. But this gambit is not restricted hoodwinking others, reifying handicapping fictions is how you screw yourself.

The solution to the puzzle of why you act counter to your interests and principles is shown in the middle column of the Personal Research Tool. Acting as if this premise was true is what caused you to react as you did.

Examples of Handicapping Reifications

  • Barry believes, “The people at the party are not going to like me." His socially withdrawn behavior at the party shows that he has reified this premise. The damage does not stop there. His impaired social behavior has an effect objective reality. By accepting his premise as true he has, to coin a term, real-ified it—that is, he has made it real. Barry, as well as the others at the party, observe his social performance and react to it. As a result, Barry and the others form judgments of his social competence and expectations about his future performance. Barry's social performance. along with the appraisals elicited by Barry and the others, have become part of world history and provide evidence for Barry to support the reification of his handicapping beliefs.

  • Mr. Hyde gets mad when thinking about his wife "who is always belittling me." [For more on the sinister serum of reification and its antidote, de-reification see: Jekyll and Hyde: A Strange Case of Reification].

  • Ironically, Desiree's obsession with foods she has forbidden herself is maintained by her unforgiving dietary restrictions. She reifies her negative appraisal of herself for rebelling against her rigid restrictions by escaping the painful experience of thinking such self-critical thoughts by becoming absorbed in the pleasure of eating.

  • Your pathogenic reification goes here — If you have used The Personal Research Tool, you will find the premise responsible for your unwanted reaction in the middle column. The reification—the cause of the problem that you have the power to change— is acting as if this abstraction that you created is valid and complete (it's not).

De- Reification

The suffering that you can avoid is the result of acting as if some abstraction that you made up is a concrete reality. The way to avoid unnecessary suffering is to De-Reify these pathogenic fictions.

While De-Reification of harmful beliefs is usually the goal of psychotherapy Reification, when used intentionally, can be a powerful therapeutic tool as well. In these writings, I have purposely reified some abstractions. For example, the concept of traps for the soul was used to illustrate the workings of psychological cause-and-effect principles. These traps are not assumed to exist as concrete contraptions. They are merely abstractions—models—that help make sense of things, rather than a valid and complete description of the complex and finely-grained reality. [Likewise, the client examples presented throughout this course are used as fables that omit the complexity of the actual case, but still, hopefully, provide useful lessons for the reader].

The cure for functional psychological disorders is to De-Reify the harmful fictions and Reify the helpful ones. Now that you appreciate how your trap works—that is, you know what causes your excessive and counter-productive reactions, you are ready to extricate yourself from this recurring pattern. The next step is to choose a method to De-Reify the perspectives and premises that causes you to react in ways that are counter to your interests.

There are many schools of thought, each of which has its way of conceptualizing the psyche and each is associated with a discipline designed to restructure the space between stimulus and response. The sections that follow describe several of these ancient and modern approaches and invite you to explore how things look and feel from these different perspectives.

 

 

 

 

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