R is for

Role

From Self-Liberation by Luis Amman

ROLES: Fixed or codified habits of behavior formed by the experiences in the different environments a person happens to live in. A certain role will be expressed when a stimulus provokes a particular range of human behavior as a response to that stimulus (see Behavior, Factors That Intervene In; see Response). Roles are directly related to the internal level and manner in which one’s self-image and the image of the given situation are represented. These representations are organized in layers of different depths within the system of representation of the internal space.

ROLES, Error in: a) One may select an incorrect role for a given situation, or b) one may incorrectly apply an old role in a new environment, and thus generate behavior that is poorly adapted to the stimulus.

ROLES, Function: The roles save energy and reduce the resistance one encounters in the environment. They are codified after being learned through trial and error.

Roles give place to either typical or atypical responses; a response is typical if it is well adapted to the situation or agrees with what is normally accepted, and atypical if it is not. Either one may produce either increasing or decreasing adaptation.

The compensating image of the reverie nucleus, as well as giving a general response to the requirements of the environment, also compensates the basic deficiencies and shortcomings of the system of roles.

From Silo’s Psychology Notes 1 (in his Collected Works Vol. 1).

*bolded text and underlining added by me

Personality

The individual’s systems of response (there are no isolated responses) organize a personality, a mediator with the environment which, to improve its dynamic, articulates different roles as codified systems of response.

The personality fulfills a precise function: it searches for the least resistance in the environment. This organization of roles that allows the fewest difficulties in relationship with the environment is codified on the basis of learning by trial and error. The accumulation of behavior organizes a system of roles linked to different situations, in which certain roles appear while others are hidden. This is a clear illustration of a system of adaptation. Over time what might be called “circles of personality” become organized in strata at different depths. These circles are articulated in accordance with signals from the reveries and the habitual environments.