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JOURNAL OF METAPSYCHOLOGY

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Other-determinism, self-determinism, and pan-determinism make up a gradient of increasing responsibility, increasing causativeness. But another way of increasing responsibility is to increase one's scope of activities. A person may undertake a very small task or a very large one. His task may involve finding the right kind of chewing gum in a candy store, or it may involve trying to prevent World War III. He may even decide to work unceasingly until "the last blade of grass attains Buddhahood."

It is convenient to divide the scope of causativeness into six concentric spheres of responsibility, or "domains":

Definition: A domain is a sphere of responsibility. There are six domains: self, intimates, groups, mankind, life, and the Infinite. These domains are concentric; each successive domain contains the previous ones, with the self at the center. Each domain has a subjective or mental side and an objective or physical side, reflecting the polar relationship between a person and his world.

I am indebted to my friend Marian Dreher, director of the Clear Center of Ann Arbor, for pointing out the two-sided nature of each domain.

On the objective side, the first domain contains one's body, clothes, tools, and other personal property. On the subjective side, it includes oneself as a person, and one's thoughts, hopes, abilities, emotions, and mental pictures. A person who only takes responsibility for himself is at a relatively low level of causativeness. He is concerned only with his own well-being and survival.

This includes sexual partners and other people to whom a person is very close, including family members and close friends. The objective side of the second domain includes the physical characteristics of close friends and family, their bodies, the sexual act itself, physical nurturing and caretaking, the household, and other shared property. Subjectively, it includes those individuals as people, their personal characteristics and abilities, and their state of mind. A person operating in this domain is concerned with improving his close personal, familial, and sexual relationships and with the physical and mental well-being of his friends, family, and household.

This includes all groups other than close family groups with which the person is associated and with which he identifies himself. These include racial, business, social and political groups. Such groups can be very large or very small. Objectively, this domain includes the bodies of group members, the property owned or used by each group, and the physical activities and products of the group. Subjectively, it includes the persons who comprise these groups and their subjective characteristics, as well as group agreements, policies, and culture. A person operating in the third domain is concerned with the survival and well-being of the groups of which he is a part and with furthering the purposes of those groups.

This includes the entire human race as a group. On the objective side lie all human bodies, all physical tools, and all physical products of Man's civilization and technology, On the subjective side lie basic aspects of human nature, including mental or spiritual characteristics, and all human aspirations and ideas. A person operating in this domain is concerned with the survival of the human race -- with eliminating war, poverty, and disease, and with the education and enlightenment of all men.

This domain includes all forms of life. Objectively, it includes all the flora and fauna of the planet and possibly extraterrestrial life as well, if such is conceived to exist. Subjectively, it includes all consciousness and intention, all thoughts and experiences of all conscious beings. A person operating in this domain is very concerned with ecology (on a physical level) and harmony (on a subjective level) amongst all forms of life.

This domain includes everything in the universe, the "All-That-Is". On the objective level, it includes the entire physical universe; subjectively, it includes Universal Consciousness or God. There is no limit to what this domain can contain, so it is called the "Infinite" domain. A person operating in this domain is concerned with his relationship to God and to the universe as a whole.

It has been said that, as one steps further and further back, renouncing aspects of the "ego" and seeking one's "True Self", one can reach a point of ultimate enlightenment where one sees no separation between oneself and the entire universe, because all particular identity is eliminated and only the universe exists as an identity. On the other hand, it is said that if one is able to expand one's identity to include the whole universe, there is likewise no point of separation between the self and the Infinite. Many Eastern religions teach that the "Self", in the truest meaning of the word, is God, or that one reaches one's true self by attaining unity with the universe.

Therefore, it might be said that the concentric spheres of responsibility and identity that comprise the domains actually form not an ordinary sphere but a hypersphere, whose outside surface turns around and becomes its center. Like a Moebius strip or a Klein bottle, the outside ultimately becomes the inside.

In order to operate effectively in a given domain, one must operate effectively in the domains that lie below it. A person cannot truly have a good marriage and family life until he himself is in reasonably good condition, mentally and physically. Moreover, one is unlikely to have good work relationships when one's intimate relationships are in a state of turmoil. And one has to be able to function well as a group member in order to be effective in creating any meaningful beneficial effect on mankind or on planetary ecology. As a person's condition begins to deteriorate, he begins to retreat from the upper domains toward the lower ones. When a person is failing at his job, he can then, perhaps, function only as a friend and family member. Failing as a family member, he is thrown back on a concern for his own survival. But what happens when he begins to fail in his goals for himself?

At this point, the person's concerns may become "inverted". Now, instead of being interested in what he can cause in the domains, he is concerned with needing to receive certain effects from them. Part and parcel of this move from cause to effect is that the person retreats from the mental or subjective side of the domains and becomes primarily concerned with the physical or objective side. Personal causation, however, originates on the subjective side. When this side is not considered, a person is bound to conceive of himself as being an effect rather than a cause. When a person considers he has failed in the first domain, he may first retreat from the subjective aspects of that domain and become concerned with his body and with physical possessions. He may become a "health nut", and he may be obsessed with financial survival. When he starts to give up on the first domain, he may become obsessed with, and dependent on, sex, family, and friends. When he fails to receive the wanted effects from the second domain, he may seek effects from the third domain. He may become a "workaholic". Since he is unable to function as a friend or family member, he may dive into his work or into other groups as an escape from his first and second domain failures. If he fails at his work or ceases to be accepted as a group member, he may obsessively become interested in achieving recognition as a benefactor of mankind. Here lies the person who hates people but has an abstract "love of mankind". In an inverted fifth domain, a person, having given up on people, may be obsessed with pets or plants. Finally, a person may escape even from those concerns to an obsession with religion, where his only hope lies in receiving some kind of effect from a Supreme Being.

It is easy to distinguish a person in an inverted domain from one who is truly functioning in that domain. A person in a non-inverted domain will be mainly concerned with being causative in that domain. His activities will tend to further well-being in that domain. A person in an inverted domain is concerned with receiving effects from that domain, and his efforts will tend to be destructive to the well-being of that domain, or at least not constructive. A person operating in a non-inverted domain will also be operating well in the lower domains, whereas a person who is in an inverted domain will be inoperative or operating poorly in lower domains.

A friend and colleague, Julie Grimes, pointed out to me that a person who had been able to operate successfully in the sixth domain might "evert" (the opposite of inverting) and take up the first, the second, and each of the lower domains on a completely new, more positive, and more spiritual basis. In discovering God, one could have new realizations about oneself and about one's relationships to others. There is possibly no limit to the number of eversions of the domains one may enjoy.

If a person is found to be in an inverted domain, it is important to begin by helping him attain functionality and causativeness in the first domain, even though his attention may be elsewhere. Most people with marital problems are, in fact, mainly suffering from personal problems. These problems usually need to be addressed before the marital problems can be resolved.

The domains also function as a useful way of categorizing experience with a view to handling it. One can address the domains individually, using various procedures, and handle each thoroughly, in numerical order from first to sixth.

In mastering the domains, one is, in effect, mastering one's life.

Frank A. Gerbode, M.D.
Director, IRM