Q Crain’s Reviews > General systems thinking: Its scope and applicability > Status Update

Our central source of difficulty is that, long before we are capable of critical rationality, we must learn how to behave, to evaluate ourselves, to interpret success, and to make our various psychic potentials conform to the patterns we are learning. Because this learning is done at an emotional or affective level, an intimate connection evolves between our emotional development and our capacity for self-evaluation.

"We arrive at adulthood with a patched-up psyche that manages on top of compartmentalizations, conflict, and all sorts of unfinished business as long as our environment is sufficiently supportive to keep us afloat."

Great chapter on the psyche system!

"As long as the individual is reasonably successful and enjoys sufficient social validation, processes of partial reinforcement supported by rationalism and other defence mechanisms keep many unrealistic solutions intact."