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JOURNAL OF METAPSYCHOLOGY
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Article 88
November 25, 1991

Power and Empowerment

In JOM Article 37 "Affinity and Intention", I introduced the following definition of "power" (in the sense of "personal power"):
Definition:  Power is the combination of drive and ability.
One can have a great deal of ability. but if one lacks drive -- the capacity to desire things -- that ability will never be used and the person, however able, cannot be considered powerful. On the other hand, if a person is forceful but inept, he cannot be considered powerful because, for all his drive, he will be ineffectual. So personal power requires both ingredients.

I also have pointed out that ability can be divided into receptive and creative. The ultimate end product of receptive ability is understanding, so the ability to receive is essentially the same as the ability to understand. Further, creative ability is the ability to make changes in one's environment, i.e., to control it. Ability, then, can be defined as follows:

Definition:  Ability is the combination of control and understanding.
And power can be defined as follows:
Definition:  Power is the combination of drive, control, and understanding.
Drive, control, and understanding together make up a triad. Increasing one member of this triad increases the other two:
Drive
When one has an increase in drive, one is motivated to engage in a greater number of creative and receptive actions, i.e., to increase one's control and understanding. If you have an intense interest in music, you will engage in making music and listening to music; a person who is not interested in music will not.
Control
Control, in turn, augments drive and understanding. Once you have established control over an entity, you have a greater drive towards doing something to or with that entity. We tend to be most enthusiastic about areas of life over which we have the greatest control.

 
Also, if you can exercise control with respect to an entity (not necessarily control of that entity), you can come to understand it better. What you need to control in order to achieve greater understanding depends on what you are trying to understand. You may need to control the entity itself, surrounding entities, or your means of perceiving the entity. Being able to control a microscope improves one's ability to see and understand microscopic objects. As I use a guitar more and more, I gain a greater understanding of the instrument and skill in its use. The more control you have in an area, the better you will understand that area.
Understanding
With more understanding, one sees more possibilities for control. By understanding the functions of the different parts of an automobile, one is able to control an automobile better. By understanding, one knows which tools to use to achieve which effects.

 

 
 
 

It is also true that having a greater understanding of a subject enhances one's enthusiasm for that subject (drive). Music appreciation courses enhance one's interest in engaging in musical activities.

The Ascending Power Triad

When you increase one side of the triad, the other two will go up. But when the other two go up, the first side will then also go up, and so you get a positive feedback loop, the result of which (all else being equal) is to cause a greater and greater quantity of all three members of the triad -- in other words, a greater quantity of power:
Increased drive --> increased control and understanding
 

Increased control --> increased drive and understanding
 

Increased understanding --> increased control and drive

So we can now offer a broader definition of power:
Definition: Power is a combination of drive, understanding, and control that characterizes aperson's relationship with the entities that constitute his world. Under normal circumstances, it forms an ascending triad, with an increase in any member of the triad leading to an increase in the other two.
The easiest entry point to this triad is understanding. It is hard to have desire for, or to control, something one does not know anything about and does not understand. But understanding can come from acquiring data in a variety of ways, not just by controlling something. For instance, before I am willing to handle a band saw, I will want to have some data about it. Once Iknow how it works, how to use it, and what it can do, it will seem both safer and more useful than it did before. In other words, I will now have somedesire for it and will be willing and inclined to approach and control it. Then, when I begin to control it successfully, I soon get a better understanding of it, and the triad continues to ascend.

Triad of Debilitation

On the other hand, the power triad may go downward. If something happens to me that makes a band saw seem unsafe (e.g., I cut myself on it), then the lowered desire or increased abhorrence that results will lead to my having a diminished sense of control over the band saw and a diminished certainty about it (less understanding). If, for some reason, I stop using the band saw (controlling it) then my practical skill and certainty about it (understanding) will diminish and I will not be as willing to deal with it (less drive). Finally, if I forget what I've learned about it (if I have less understanding), or if someone convinces me that I do not know as much about itas I thought I did, then I will have less desire to use the band saw and also less control. This sequence describes a descending triad of debilitation.
Definition: Debilitation is a relative absence of drive, control, and understanding with respect to entities. It forms a descending triad, with less drive leading to lesscontrol and understanding, less control leading to less understanding and less drive, and less understanding leading to less drive and less control.

Power and Empowerment

An interesting facet of drive, control, and understanding is that they have an intimate relationship with pleasure, order, and heuristics, respectively. The latter are the principles a person uses to decide which interpretation of experience to accept or what kind of experience to create.

Figure 3: Components of power and their worldly counterparts.

Figure 4: Components of debilitation and their worldly counterparts.

From Figure 1, it is obvious that drive is simply that, on the person side of the person-world polarity, which corresponds to pleasure on the world side. Likewise, control corresponds to order and understanding to heuristics. In general, power on the person side corresponds to empowerment on the world side.

The opposite manifestations are shown in Figure 2. Entities a person cannot learn from he will see as monotonous, tedious, or stultifying. Those for which he has an abhorrence he will see as ugly or painful. Those he isunable to control, by which he is overwhelmed, he will see as disordered or chaotic. And, in general, a person feels powerless in areas which contain debilitating elements.

A person will attempt to act so as to bring about a maximum amount of empowerment (pleasure, order, and heuristics, or -- equivalently -- validity and value) in his life, with respect to his world of entities. In other words, a person acts so as to try to enhance his own drive, control, and understanding -- that is, his power -- as much as possible. When he is trying to empower himself by receptive means, we can say that he is trying to increase the validity of his world-view. When he is trying to empower himself by creative actions, we say he is trying to increase the value his world contains. In other words, in using understanding, one seeks to increase validity; in using control, one seeks to increase value. But the same criteria apply to determining value and validity: pleasure, order, and heuristics. All these creative and receptive person-world correspondences are summarized in Figure 3.
 
 

Figure 5: Summary of creative and receptive person-world correspondences.

How successful a person is in accomplishing these goals, how high a degree of enhancement he will be able to achieve, depends very much on the condition he is in to begin with. Above a certain point (ambivalence on the Emotional Scale), all else being equal, a person will enjoy a gradually or rapidly expanding triad of power and empowerment. Below that point, a person will find the empowerment of his life and his own power decreasing gradually or rapidly. The triad can thus be an ascending power triad or a descending debilitation triad, depending on the person's initial condition. Fortunately, it is possible to help a person who is suffering a descending triad to reverse its direction. In fact the various techniques of applied metapsychology are designed to do just that. But any action that results in a major increase in drive, control, or understanding can help reverse the descending triad.

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