| Abstract
The self-sealing doctrine, a defensive maneuver used to
protect cherished beliefs from disconfirmation, is discussed. Most evident in
doctrinaire religious groups, the self-sealing doctrine may also appear among
scholars and practitioners, and it can be discerned on both sides of the heated
debate over recovered memory. The author advocates critical thinking and a
willingness to test rather than protect cherished beliefs.
Theories are useful maps, but they can create problems if
misused, as for example, when they are transformed into an ideology pure and
universal, a pretext justifying any means, or a transference object too
precious to question. It was this awareness that led Jacobs (1994) to revisit a
painful chapter in the history of transactional analysis to consider the way in
which reparenting theory may have contributed to excesses in reparenting
practice.
When theory becomes ideology, it is no longer safe to
question or express doubts about its tenets (Hoffer, 1951). One powerful
defensive strategy that is often applied to protect a theory against
disconfirmation is the self-sealing doctrine. The self-sealing doctrine has
been employed by cranks, frauds, scholars, and theoreticians. It consists of
arming one's belief system with one or more tenets that explain away
inconvenient evidence. For example, the disgraced American televangelist Jim
Bakker, after being arrested for embezzling his followers' donations, claimed
that he had been sincere in his efforts to create a devout community of the
faithful, but a diabolical enemy had destroyed it: "Something so beautiful was
being built, the devil got mad." In this light, the very holiness of Bakker's
intentions provoked his downfall. Another example is self-proclaimed messiah
David Koresh, who, when confronted with his misdeeds, explained that even
though he was the perfect savior, he had to partake of sinful human nature in
order to be on earth at all.
The concept of the self-sealing doctrine originated to
describe such religious Moebius strips. "If an acute appendicitis is not cured
by the power of the patient's prayer, this merely proves that his faith was not
strong enough and his demise therefore vindicates rather than invalidates
the teaching [italics added] of Spiritual Healing. Open-ended, self-sealing
systems win either way" (Watzlawick, 1977, p. 305).
More recently, Hughes (1990) studied a sect whose founder,
Hobart E. Freeman, preached faith healing even though he himself limped from
childhood polio. This discrepancy was dismissed by his followers: "He has been
healed," said one member, "but God has just not chosen to manifest that healing
yet" (p. 109). Freeman proclaimed that modem medical practice was evil and that
true believers healed through faith alone. Some of his followers and their
children died from lack of medical care. When the state began to prosecute for
child abuse, Freeman did not deny that misfortunes were occurring to his
followers; he simply took them as further proof of his doctrine. The fault lay
in the parents, he said, whose faith was just not strong enough. According to
him, "Their trials were the condition for entering the Kingdom of God. He
complained that during the trials some members of Faith Assembly were accepting
medicine, falling back into the Satanic realm, and coming under a curse" (p.
109).
Such excuses are not limited to right-wing sects. The
followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru, explained away the
contrast between his teachings of love and the paranoid, violent atmosphere of
his compound in Oregon.
They were, for example, able to convince themselves that the
watch towers and the 150-member police force armed with semiautomatic weapons
were devices employed by Rajneesh to make them aware of their aggressive
impulses by showing them what could happen when such impulses were exaggerated.
(Karlson, 1988, p. 68)
In short, everything is a teaching, and the master is never
wrong. Tobias and Lalich (1994) point out that followers who love the leader
find it hard to believe their love could be returned with abuse. "It therefore
becomes easier to rationalize the leader's behavior as necessary for the
general or individual 'good' " (p. 76). This is a primitive defense
mechanism, like denial, splitting, and blaming. The desire to be a follower is
not limited to cult members, however; Deikman (1990) found it everywhere in
American culture, including in politics, the military, and corporate life. When
people who want to follow meet people who want to lead, the "match of
adulation" may result (Riebel, 1993). In its most pernicious forms, the
master/follower script includes bystanders and is played out in an unfolding
drama of conscription, ideology, and symbiosis (Jacobs, 1987). A theory
that can be protected from questioning makes the players' path that much
smoother.
However, in some times and places the self-sealing doctrine
is a matter of survival. In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn
(1973) gave a terrifying account of the workings of paranoia and terror.
During Stalin's headlong rush to industrialize a farm economy, delays were
blamed on saboteurs called "wreckers": "Every industry, every factory, and
every handicraft artel had to find wreckers in its ranks, and no sooner had
they begun to look than they found them, with the help of the secret police"
(p. 44). One would think that working loyally would save one from such
accusations. But no - working too hard was just as dangerous. It might
be a front, hiding a secret plot to destroy; it just showed "What accomplished
villains these old engineers were! What diabolical ways to sabotage they
found!" (p. 44). One official appeared to be devoted to the new regime and
ordered train freight loads increased. Later, when rail lines began to
deteriorate, he was accused of being a wrecker because obviously he secretly
intended to overload and wear out the whole system. The next superintendent
raised the loads even higher, but anyone who protested this was a "limiter,"
another kind of traitor (pp. 44-45). There was no way to disprove such
accusations except by blaming someone else. The price of being disbelieved was
Siberia.
Self-Sealing Doctrines in the History of Psychology
As the aforementioned examples show, the self-sealing
doctrine resists disproof not by denying troublesome facts, but by
incorporating them. This permits one to give the appearance of
responding to facts or engaging in debate, which is important if one claims to
be impartial. For example, when the idea of white superiority was threatened
early in this century by the new intelligence tests, explanations were promptly
devised by researchers to defend it. Early studies showed black children scored
higher, but one researcher solemnly declared, "The apparent mental attainments
of children of inferior races may be due to lack of inhibition and so
witness precisely to a deficiency in mental growth" [italics added]
(Anderson, 1978, p. 78). Another researcher's white subjects performed
more slowly, but he praised them anyway: "Their reactions were slower because
they belonged to a more deliberative and reflective race"" [italics
added] (p. 78). In the self-sealing mind-set., a new tenet can be
generated to suit every emergency., or the relative importance of established
tenets can be shuffled. In this instance., pure intelligence was prized until
it provided undesirable results - oops! inhibition is more valuable.
Intelligence is good but - hurray! deliberation is better.
Equally laborious explanations have been devised to protect
the conviction that humans are superior to animals. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould
(1991), an eminent critic of errors of thinking., quoted the writings of
an early naturalist:
Burrell wrote (1927), "Man ... has escaped the need
for specialization because his evolution has been projected outside himself
into an evolution of tools and weapons. Other animals in need of tools and
weapons must evolve them from their own bodily parts; we therefore frequently
find a specialized adaptation to environmental needs grafted on to primitive
simplicity of structure." You can't win in such a world. You are either
primitive prima facie, or specialized as a result of lurking and implicit
simplicity! (p. 278)
Gould's point - "You can't win in such a world" - is
exactly the function of the self-sealing doctrine: to prevent the questioner
from winning and to protect ideas that are crucial to the believer's identity,
worldview, or economic advantage.
Examples abound in the history of psychoanalysis. The
classic bind is: If you agree with the analyst's interpretations, he is right,
but if you do not, you are repressing. As we shall see, this exact dilemma is
being replayed with high stakes today by proponents and critics of the concept
of recovered memory. And repression is not the only self-sealing tenet found in
psychoanalysis. For example, one analyst came to Alfred Adler greatly excited
because he had located evidence of the Oedipus complex in dogs. His puppy
preferred to sleep in the same basket with its mother, although the father dog
had a basket in the same room. On inquiry, Adler found that the mother dog's
basket was larger and advised the analyst to switch the adult dogs around to
see what the puppy would do. The puppy got into the basket with his father when
he occupied the larger basket. Undaunted, the man said, "Shouldn't that prove
to you that the puppy has now reached the second stage of sexual growth and
become homosexual?" (Bottome, 1939, pp. 117-118).
Hilde Bruch, a pioneer in the treatment of eating disorders,
recalled the days when anorexia was seen as conversion hysteria springing from
fear of oral impregnation.
This view dominated the field during the 1940s and
1950s, and has not yet completely departed. I looked eagerly for such
fantasies in my patient. When I did not find them, I reassured myself that she
had not stayed long enough at the Clinic for them to be discovered. I was sure
that they were there somewhere. The literature reveals that experienced
analysts too would offer similar explanations if they failed to expose these
specific psychodynamics, so firmly established was their "factual" existence.
(Bruch, 1985, p. 8)
Thus, the self-sealing doctrine has been used both by
deranged or unscrupulous charismatic leaders and by conscientious,
well-meaning scholar/practitioners. Far from being a lunatic delusion, it is
one of the self-deceptions or defenses by which we protect our worldviews.
Paranoia and Paradigms
I have described the self-sealing doctrine as used by many
groups (paranoids, cultists, therapists, scientists) and in several forms
(Riebel, 1979). The believer can:
- set appearance against reality, simply renaming the data
- concede human error on minor points while holding fast to
major ones
- use ad hominem arguments, impugning the questioner's
integrity or competence: he or she is lying, belongs to the conspiracy, is not
among the saved, is repressing his or her psychosexual impulses, has not
learned experimental method or used it long enough
- attribute the unexpected to unseen superhuman beings who
have the capacity to change their minds
- draw dogmatic conclusions from ambiguous data
- elaborate the theory, presenting the universe as more
complicated than originally thought, requiring new corollaries
Point 6 is particularly important to scientists, whose
mandate is to seek truth whatever the cost, and who have designed stringent
rules of research and interpretation to reduce or account for bias. The
"supreme rule" of science is that its concepts remain open to disproof,
according to philosopher Karl Popper (1959), who said, "The other rules
of scientific procedure must be designed in such a way that they do not
protect any statement in science against falsification" [italics added] (p.
54). That is, to be considered science, a hypothesis must be capable of
being proved false; if not, it is merely dogma. Falsifiability requires that a
theory be testable and that its proponents be willing to admit legitimate
disproof. The entire apparatus of academic and professional psychology, with
its degree programs, conferences, journals, and advanced training, rests on the
assumptions that theories are falsifiable and professionals will accept good
evidence.
Even scientists, however, may fail to maintain an open mind
about their conceptions. The historian of psychology Edward Boring (1950) said,
"There are certain limitations in the progress of thought which an individual
cannot readily overcome. He may modify and revise with the utmost honesty, but
the farther he goes on, the less able is he to change direction radically or to
check the weightier line of his development. It is a psychological law of
inertia" (p. 399).
This inertia applies also to groups. The defended scientific
structure was described by Kuhn (1970), who depicted members of scientific
traditions as people so committed to the dominant paradigm that they adhere to
it even after it has begun to crack under the stress of accumulated
disconfirming evidence. Kuhn's description of the lurching, discontinuous
process of change within the scientific enterprise is a developmental model for
intellectual change on a collective level and one of the most widely cited
texts in the last quarter century.
Unfortunately, even sophistication about paradigms and their
life span has not eliminated self-deception. Cohen (1994) argued with some
exasperation that psychology's primary vehicle of confirmation, the null
hypothesis significance test is not only weak but also generally misused,
giving researchers a false sense of certainty about the value of their
findings. Despite 30 years of criticism, it remains the accepted mechanism of
proof. On another front, theory can simply be amplified. According to Kuhn
(1970), scientific revolutions are customarily preceded by a stage of
increasing complexity of models. One might suspect we are in for a paradigm
shift in diagnosis judging by the growing intricacy of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association,
1994).
Harming and Healing
Transactional analysis began as a set of observations about
patterns of interacting and interpreting. The self-sealing doctrine is another
such pattern, at work in both individuals and groups. Perhaps, in keeping with
transactional analysis's colloquial tradition, one could say, "Self-sealing
means never having to say you're wrong."
The self-sealing doctrine of Cathexis Institute, a
residential reparenting program, was described to me by a former resident. She
recalls that the family of origin was seen as the source of patients' problems,
and contact with them was discouraged. She telephoned her brother and was
rebuked: "Outsiders can't understand what we're doing here." When she
persisted, she was told, "Your problem is that you aren't committed to getting
better." At Cathexis, she found that any technique that did not produce
expected results was defended: "If you had done it correctly, it would have
worked."
The self-sealing doctrine is important for the practicing
clinician to understand. Occasionally, for example, an active cult member comes
into therapy. Disputing a cultist's belief on its merits is usually a fruitless
exercise, so how is one to engage? Hughes found an ingenious way to neutralize
a dogma: he quoted a different one of the cult's own sacred texts. He reminded
members of Freeman's faith-healing cult that in the Old Testament, God excused
Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac and sent a ram to take his place. Hughes
(1990) reassured anxious cult members about medical care for their children:
"With faith one greets birth as a time of joy, fulfilling the great biblical
declaration: Never again will the God of Abraham demand child sacrifice" (p.
115).
This adroit maneuver might be called a therapeutic
self-sealing doctrine. It creates breathing room from within the belief system
itself and resembles the classic therapeutic principles of pacing and leading,
that is, joining clients where they are so that one may begin to influence
them. Sirkin (1990) described another one, useful for initiating dialogue with
true believers:
One may say to cultists that if they choose to remain in
the group after treatment, they will be better members for the experience
[italics added]. Paradoxically, in avoiding an overt struggle with parents
[about the cult], the individual can more freely question the cult involvement
from all perspectives. (p. 122)
The Disciplined Thinker
Correcting error among scholars may be at once more easy and
more difficult than it is among laypersons. The price of intellectual honesty
is eternal vigilance, a tireless willingness to question assumptions and
relinquish erroneous ideas, no matter how attractive or convenient they seem.
Gould (1985, 1991) models this intellectual discipline, combining a
flair for detecting errors of taxonomy and logic with an ability to reimagine
human history. In essay after essay, he recounts the psychological drama of
discovery, laying out examples of the human passion for classifying even in the
absence of sufficient data, of people's attachment to their ideas, and of the
painful saga of self-aggrandizing fantasies reluctantly abandoned. His accounts
should help us recognize the imperfect individual in the mirror, while Kuhn's
portrait of paradigm shifts should help us recognize the developmental stage
that affects our collective enterprise.
The self-sealing doctrine provides many cautionary tales
about the dangers of exalting certainty. In teaching graduate-level psychology,
I find myself regularly deflating my students' grandiosity and their naive
proclamations of certainty, not to reinforce hierarchy or to induce students to
look up to me, but rather endeavoring to instill in them the same caution about
knowledge that I have acquired, to bring them down to my level of educated
humility.
Integrity Put to the Test:
The Recovered Memory Debate
The capacities to examine, doubt, and discard faulty theory
are indispensable in the current anguished debate over recovered memory, in
which two camps accuse each other of dreadful crimes - child sexual abuse on
the one hand, and malpractice on the other. Some critics charge that gullible
or unscrupulous therapists implant false memories and new "personalities" in
clients that they then proceed to treat. The self-sealing doctrine has been
used to defend this controversial practice, as described by Ofshe and Watters
(1994) in their survey of the literature. The simplest method is simply
to call disagreement "denial" or "resistance." Ofshe and Watters quote one
author as writing, "The existence of profound disbelief is an indication that
memories [of abuse] are real" (p. 108). Other explanations are that the abuse
must have been more serious than originally thought (p. 177), thus requiring
even deeper denial, or that a satanic cult programmed the person to deny it (p.
180). One client became skeptical and asked her therapist, "Don't you
think it's odd that no one is getting better and that everyone wants to cut and
kill themselves after they get into therapy with you?' The therapist replied,
"Which personality am I talking to now?' (p. 223).
Thus it seems that some proponents of the theory of incest,
cover-up, and repression have occasionally used the self-sealing doctrine.
However, their critics do not always model rigorous thinking either. Making
Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria, Ofshe and
Watters's (1994) book, is deeply flawed and replete with undocumented
assertions, misrepresentations, and fallacies of its own. But its description
of the circular reasoning and uncritical thinking used by some proponents of
the validity of repressed memories is supported by others (e.g., Loftus,
1993; Pendergrast, 1995). Nevertheless, authors on both sides of the
debate must resist the temptation to use self-sealing arguments to protect
their convictions.
Unfortunately, the domain in question is a sitting duck.
Memory is now understood not as a simple if imperfect recording device, but
rather as a complex, dynamic, and inherently subjective interpretive mechanism.
As a result, some clinicians have given up searching for truth and are
satisfied with utility (Fowler, 1994). Given the high stakes involved in
the recovered memory debate, I think this takes Kuhn's constructivism rather
too far and gives carte blanche to uncritical belief.
Of all the iatrogenic effects that psychotherapy is charged
with creating, the possible misuse of memory is doubtless the most serious and
the one that demands our most urgent attention. Some initial attempts at
theoretical and clinical guidelines have been proposed (Denton, 1995; Rutzky,
1995), but it is beyond the scope of this article to offer practical
solutions to this predicament. However, perhaps we can take inspiration from
physicist Richard Feynman (1991):
It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great
progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great
progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of
this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and
discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.
(p. 248)
This exhortation applies also to practitioners. Facing such
explosive issues as past crimes, the existence of repression, and therapist
integrity, we need to tolerate uncertainty, to develop a "satisfactory
philosophy of ignorance." We need educated humility, a willingness to hear both
sides and to antagonize true believers if necessary, and the patience to
examine each case.
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Copyright
© Linda Riebel, all rights reserved.
See also the 1999
addendum by Alan Jacobs, editor...
About the Author
 Linda Riebel, Ph.D, is a licensed psychologist
and marriage, family and child counselor in the San Francisco Bay Area, where
she has practiced for 18 years. Her doctorate is from Saybrook Graduate School,
where she is now on the adjunct faculty. She has published two books on eating
disorders and many journal articles on a variety of professional issues.
Currently, she is interested in the evolving field of ecopsychology, believing
that psychologists have a crucial role to play in persuading people to develop
sustainable practices for living and working.
*This article was
originally published in the Transactional Analysis Journal, vol.
26, no. 1, January 1996, pp. 40-45. |
