Part 2

The Frustration of Needs

Abraham Maslow's famous Hierarchy of Needs (1943, 1971)  effectively describes the sequential levels of needs/goals of the emerging vMEMES. Eg: PURPLE wants to find safety in belonging; RED craves esteem; etc. As Maslow theorised mainly from case studies, rather than the kind of methodological research Clare W Graves (1970, 1971/2002, 1978/2005) undertook, it's hardly surprising that his Hierarchy does not match exactly to the Graves Model. However, the match is close enough  - see the Comparison Map - for us to consider Maslowian concerns and principles from the perspective of vMEMES.

By doing this, we see not the 'theoretical needs' so often associated in a rather abstracted way with Maslow's Hierarchy but living neurological systems within us desperate to be fulfilled.

Maslow's Hierarchy is looked upon by a number of psychologists as a guide to 'ideal mental health'. In other words, if an individual is able to progress up the Hierarchy, with their needs met at each level, then they will move beyond the lower subsistence/deficiency levels and start to meet their 'growth needs'. In Spiral Dynamics terms, they will move beyond the limited visions of the 1st Tier and see through 2nd Tier lens. In Humanistic Psychology, this need to grow is termed the Actualising Tendency  - which Don Beck (2002) pretty much describes in his concept of the Prime Directive.

However, if someone becomes blocked at one level or the needs of a lower level are not met, then this will create problems. Blockage will lead to frustration of the individual's psychological progress; having to attend to the needs of a lower level from a higher position in the Hierarchy will inevitably produce significant behavioural changes, accompanied almost certainly by degrees of anxiety. For example, if the PURPLE love-and-belonging needs of a divorcing couple are shattered by their split-up, then that will tend to destabilise their RED's pursuit of esteem at the next level. Prolonged stress, frustration and anxiety are all likely to lead to Depression.

Don Beck has stated that each vMEME needs to be exercised regularly for it to be healthy – including but also transcending Maslow's idea of needs being met. Correspondingly, suppression of a vMEME will lead to psychological problems.

Of course, expression of a vMEME needs to be in a way which is healthy to the whole of the human Spiral. So, for example, BLUE, in its need to establish orthodoxy and compliance, suppressing RED's need for self-expression, will cause all kinds of problems.

Sigmunds Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory (1923) can be useful here in understanding these vMEME conflicts.

Freud's Id is the basis of the individualistic side of Graves' Spiral - the diversity generators, as Howard Bloom (1997) calls them. Freud's growth of Ego-to-Superego relates to the collective side of the Spiral – Bloom's conformity enforcers.

Freud saw psychiatric disorders - at one level at least - as resulting from the conflict between the express-self Id (at its peak, RED) and the conform-to-expectations Superego (BLUE) when the Reality Principle of the Ego is unable to reconcile these two competing systems. To protect itself, the mind (selfplex) will employ a number of 'defence mechanisms' such as Repression, Displacement, Denial and Intellectualisation.

However, the suppressed problem is likely 'leak' through, perhaps in disturbing dreams and/or abnormal or depressed behaviour.

In a number of his writings Freud expressed concern that the Superego totally suppressing the Id was a principal factor in many cases of Depression.

Reframe Freud's ideas in terms of Graves' Spiral and it becomes more than possible that vMEME conflicts do indeed contribute to psychological disorders, with overdominance of the collective side's conformity enforcers able to push some into acute anxiety and even Depression.

personality?

Psychologists since the time of Carl Gustav Jung (1921) have sought to understand the link between temperament and motivation. For all the interesting results of such research - eg: N N Trauel (1961) found extraverts are much more likely to be disobedient - we still don’t understand how these 2 dimensions of personality link. Yet link they do. In my own desk research, I have found that 3 of the 4 types of behaviour documented by William Moulton Marston (1928) contain both motivational and temperamental descriptors effectively matching PURPLE to Phlegmatic in Marston’s Submission, RED to Choleric in Dominance and BLUE to Melancholic in Compliance.(Marston’s Sagnuine does include some descriptors of both ORANGE and Sanguine but the match is much weaker.)

So, if BLUE can fit with Melancholic to create Compliance, can they also fit together to create a bio-cognitive Diathesis, waiting for its Stress trigger? The PURPLE-Phlegmatic fit to create Submission hardly bodes well for a successful approach to problems either!

It’s interesting that, in his work on Attribution Theory, Julian B Rotter (1966) hypothesised that there is a biological basis (Melancholic personality?) to whether someone tends to have an internal or external locus of control, finding that people with an external locus - ie: they generally felt events were out of their control - tended to indulge in much more negative self-talk (meta-stating from the effects of self-sacrifice/conformist vMEMES?).

How complex the bio-cognitive relationship may be is that both Graves and Maslow declared that the 7th level of thinking (G-T/YELLOW or Self-Actualisation) were effectively free of fear - associated with Neuroticism and the producer of anxiety. So maybe there is something in the idea that working up the Hierarchy/Spiral - Life Conditions permitting - is conducive to good mental health...?

Early & Simplistic Thoughts

These are early thoughts and, in a sense, quite simplistic. I have not attempted to look at how vMEME harmonics or transition states might influence any of these elements. (For example, one of the characteristics of the RED-BLUE transition is the development of shame and guilt.)

My intention in publishing this article is to raise possibilities and probabilities as an argument for further research. The Graves Model has been rather overlooked in recent years by Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology and it seems critical to me that the Gravesian systems should be studied in relation to psychopathological disorders.

The current crop of drugs do provide powerful treatments for many forms of mental illness – and even more effective drugs are known to be in the pipeline. (It may even be that a Trytophan-enhanced diet will help some depressives!) However, drugs can produce some pretty unpleasant side-effects and the 'patient' may become ill again when treatment is discontinued.

There may be no real alternative to drug therapy for Endogenous Depression and some forms of mental illness such as Schizophrenia; but, if there are cognitive and biocognitive Diatheses' to develop other forms of Depression, then drugs may not be so appropriate in the longer term and we need to look at the coping mechanisms for the Life Conditions.

Over the years a number of psychotherapies have been used in treating mental illness - from classic Psychoanalysis to Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. Different psychotherapies seem to work for different people at different times. None so far works consistently across the board - even for a single classification of illness.

If we are to take the treatment forward beyond an ever-increasing dependency on drug therapy, then we need to understand how core motivational systems (vMEMES) affect people in ways which can lead to mental illness.

NB: This is the fourth revision of 'Can vMEMES cause Clinical Depression?' since its original posting in August 2004.

The intention is not, as such, to produce an academic paper linking vMEMES to Clinical Depression. The intention is to speculate on how the concept of vMEMES can be woven into some of the major theories about the causes of Depression. This then justifies my call for those with the facilities to do so to undertake serious research around the potential relationship between vMEMES and causes of Depression and other 'mental illnesses'.

My thanks to Barbara N Brown, Hilde Rapp, Rob Geurtsen, Bill Hajdu and Jon Freeman whose comments and criticiquing have helped shape the revision process.

However, it is not only express-self vs sacrifice-self/conformity which provides a platform for vMEME conflicts. Sense of time can be a stimulus for conflict on the same side of the Spiral.

The graphic shows how each of the 1st Tier vMEMES lives in the past and/or present and/or future.

In this kind of scenario, RED, living just for now, could find itself in conflict with ORANGE's wanting to plan for the future - leading to anxiety. (This divergence in thinking fuels the short-termism of the Production role vs the longer-term dreaming of the Entrepreneur role identified via Ichak Adizes' (1989)  Organisation LifeCycle model.) Equally the tradition-oriented thinking in PURPLE will find it hard to grasp the future-focused ecological concerns of GREEN, again leading to anxiety.

Taking this argument further, what kind of anxiety or other mental problems could arise when vMEME conflict is both across sense of time and express-self vs conformity -eg: ORANGE future-focused/express-self conflicting with PURPLE tradition-oriented/conformist?

Biological + Cognitive Diatheses

So far, we’ve looked at vMEMES as contributing to the creation of cognitive diatheses and their conflicting needs creating anxiety at a cognitive level. We’ve also looked at biological diatheses, some of which may hinder the functioning or even development of vMEMES.

What about when a negative cognitive pattern becomes locked with a biological diathesis?

Earlier we mentioned Hans J Eysenck’s Dimensions of Temperament construct, in which the naturally Melancholic personality is created by high Neuroticism being mixed with high Introversion. We also noted that the self-sacrifice/conformity-oriented vMEMES are more likely to lead to the creation of depressive schemas. What if such a vMEME locks into a Melancholic