The Unity Model of Marriage Lecture Notes Dr. Leon James, Instructor Spring 2006 G24

This seminar on the unity model in marriage will give you the opportunity to examine gender behavior in the context of marriage by identifying the sub-components of gender habits in men and women within the three domains of behavior: affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. We will use the phrase "threefold self" to refer to these three levels of human activity. Our focus will be on identifying the differences in the mental structure of husbands and wives so that we may gain a rational understanding of how they manage to actually form a pair or a unit (also called "one flesh"). In order to form a perfect functioning and fulfilling pair or unit, women and men must have reciprocal mental traits to allow them to conjoin mentally, and thus to reach conjugal intimacy. The happiness and fulfillment of both wife and husband depend on the attainment of mental intimacy in which they are best friends to each other. This is also called being "soul mates." We will use the expression "conjoint self" to refer to the reciprocal union of the marriage relationship, when it is based on the unity model. We will use the concept of "model" to refer to the principles, beliefs, and attitudes that husbands and wives use to govern their behavior in the marriage relationship.

The purpose of the course is to give you an opportunity to examine in detail the unity model of marriage proposed here, which focuses on the instructor's current research and thinking on marriage and gender relations. The model is influenced by the Writings of Swedenborg (1688-1772), in particular his book Conjugial Love (sometimes translated Marriage Love) (1768), available online: www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/CL/clintro.htm or else here:

www.theheavenlydoctrines.org/static/d6295/1.htm

The overall model we will focus on is the idea that a man and a woman can form a special and unique relationship in marriage in which they can become unified at all three levels of the threefold self--in sensory and motor behavior (sensorimotor self), in thinking operations (cognitive self), and in feeling states (affective self). When they are unified at all three levels, husband wife are best friends to each other and can be called "soul mates functioning with a conjoint self (instead of each with his and her independent selves). This is the ideal, the plan, the human potential.

But there are barriers or resistances to overcome with each level of the unification or conjoining process. We need to examine these barriers, and especially, the inherent and cultural resistance men have to the unification process. Women see the conjoint self of soul mates and best friends, as the ultimate happiness, the ultimate fulfillment, thus, heaven itself. Men do not at first see the conjoint self as a heaven, but as a kind of hell in which the wife is always encroaching on their mental space of freedom and comfort. So husbands frequently oppose the unification process of proceeding to more intimate levels, while wives constantly fight for pulling the husband into such intimacy. We will examine this classic and traditional fight by observing and monitoring the behavior of boyfriends, husbands, TV characters, and literature. You will read the reports of prior generation students in this course in which they present some of this evidence, Your reports will be similarly studied by future generations of students. You can access the reports from the links given in the Readings section at the end.

The first level of unity may be referred to as sensorimotor consociation and involves what the couple do together externally or socially. The second level may be called cognitive affiliation, involving how they each think and to what extent they agree in definitions and beliefs. The third and deepest level may be called affective conjunction, and involves what they feel for each other and whether they are striving for the same goals. This includes what they are motivated to achieve, whether for instance, they are willing to make their unification as the most important element in their life, more important than anything else. For instance, it is common for husbands to devote more time, attention and importance to other activities like children, career, parents, old friends, activities, etc. This means that achieving affective conjunction or intimacy is judged less important to the husband than to wife. This basic opposition forms the psychological dynamics of the marriage relationship -- its healthy progression or its gradual degradation into abuse and failure.

The hypothesis to be examined throughout the course is that the marriage relationship between husband and wife begins at a natural level and can add a spiritual level of relationship once the natural level is well established. We shall introduce the new concept of spiritual marriages which is based on what Swedenborg called conjugial love. He made a distinction between the two words -- conjugal and conjugial. Conjugal is the ordinary word that refers to natural marriages while conjugial is a new word he coined to refer to spiritual marriages. Natural marriages follow the model "Till Death Do Us Part" while spiritual marriages follow the model "Till Endless Eternity."

In other words, the word "spiritual" will be used in this course to refer to the afterlife. Couples who are soul mates to each other, and have achieved a relationship of mental intimacy at all three levels of the threefold self,

are able to sense by inner rational insight, that death cannot separate them. Hence they are united to endless eternity. Until the Swedenborg Reports, scientists were not able to introduce the concept of spiritual marriages and the concept of the afterlife. There was no scientific proof of the existence of the afterlife that takes place in a world of eternity, outside time and space, also called "the spiritual world" and "heaven and hell." These ideas were relegated to religion or folklore. But this changed with the Swedenborg Reports written and published in the 18th century, as will be explained and discussed below.

The Swedenborg Reports present empirical proof of the existence of the afterlife in the spiritual world of heaven and hell. The unity model of marriage is based on Swedenborg's detailed empirical data which he gathered in the spiritual world. These data include the many interviews he conducted with married couples in heaven and hell. It may at first surprise you that we are talking about heaven and hell in a psychology course! Nevertheless you will see that it is possible, due to the Swedenborg Reports. More will be said on this as we progress, including how you can examine these reports yourself. Nothing here is based on religion or belief. Everything is based only on the objective evidence to be found in the Swedenborg Reports.

You are not asked to believe anything. You are asked to evaluate rationally and scientifically the evidence presented. This means examining it, before you reject it. To reject it before you examine it, will be discussed below as the negative bias in science, while to examine it before you reject, in order to see if you should reject it or accept it, will be discussed as the positive bias in science.

That marriages continue in the afterlife is good news because true love strives to be eternal, and not to die at some point in the future. Swedenborg shows that the truly human must be immortal and that to think of ourselves as mortal, is to remain below our true potential.

Some marriages remain what they started out to be, namely an external bond that is legally and socially recognized. It is also a psychological bond because married partners rely on each other and support each other in joint pursuits like parenting, financial resources, lifestyle, retirement, and so on. But note also that this external bond -- legal, social, psychological -- is not sufficient to stabilize the marriage and insure unending growth. Instead, half of the marriages fail in divorce and separation, and much of the other half fails to supply the intimacy, friendship, and romance, that wives crave for from their husbands. After examining the evidence for this situation, our conclusion will be that external "natural" marriages are necessary but not sufficient for achieving true affective conjunction or intimacy, and hence not sufficient for fulfillment and endless growth together.

We will follow this up with the concept of "spiritual marriages" which is based on Emanuel Swedenborg's Writings (see Reading List). We will examine the hypothesis that the bond between the wife and the husband can become spiritual, in addition to natural. The difference is illustrated by the marriage vows. Our culture involves the idea that marriage is dissolved at the death of one of the spouses. This is correct of course -- from the legal point of view, and also from the religious point of view for most people. It is a common belief we acquire in our socialization that marriage ends at death, hence the familiar phrase in the vows: "Until death do us part." But according to the hypothesis we are examining, the marriage bond need not end at death, but can go on forever in "heaven." Some couples who know nothing about the "afterlife" nevertheless have the instinctive feeling that they are "soul-mates" and can never be separated, even by death. Some spouses are so "close" that when one of them dies, the one remaining insists that that their spouse is "with them" mentally, psychologically, spiritually.

So this is not a new notion. Though in a minority group, to be sure, some couples seem to have a bond of mental intimacy that seems to go beyond the physical body and the socio-legal-psychological bond of "natural" marriages. We will call this type of marriage bond "spiritual" in the specific sense that the bond survives the physical separation of the spouses by death. Marriages that are external and limited to the natural world and the physical body will be called "natural marriage" or "external marriage." A natural marriage becomes a "spiritual marriage" when the married couple's idea of their bond changes from "until death do us part" to "until endless eternity."

Of course to take this step the partners have to know or assume that there is an afterlife, that they are both immortal human beings, and that they will be fully equipped with an eternal or spiritual body through which they can once again be together, be intimate sexually, live in a house, have a social life, and continue an endless heavenly existence in their immortality.

This knowledge of the afterlife is not available to most people today. It is flatly denied by materialistic science, and many religious dogmas are taught that deny marriages in the afterlife. Yet our culture supports many widespread activities around the idea that there is a spiritual world (or "heaven"), though nothing substantial is known about it, only wildly differing speculations. No wonder therefore that science cannot rely on this folklore about the afterlife. As a result, psychology does not know about spiritual marriages that occur right here on earth. Some couples have entered the spiritual dimension of their mental intimacy, but when they are studied by scientists, the spiritual dimension is neutralized or eliminated from focus. Hence the research literature on marriage in psychology does not mention spiritual marriages and the afterlife. The negative bias in science acts as an intellectual barrier for researchers to investigate the mental intimacy that is real, but not detectable in interviews and videotapes of the couple's interactions.

This was the intellectual climate I was immersed in when I started studying the marriage relationship. But in 1981 my wife and I were browsing together the shelves in Hamilton Library, and we happened to come across a shelf containing a collection of around 30 volumes, all by the same author: Emanuel Swedenborg. This really intrigued us since we never saw so many volumes by one author. We each checked out one volume and started reading. We could not stop at one volume but went on to read the entire collection. What we found was amazingly stupendous!

You can read about Swedenborg's Writings in detail by consulting the Theistic Psychology Lecture Notes for Psych 459 at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/459-g24-lecture-notes.htm

This is truly wonderful and amazing news! We live our immortality in eternity, which is our mental world, not as a dream specter or ghost, but as a full fledged bodily human being. Swedenborg lived in this world of spirits constantly for 27 years, from age 57 to 82 in the years 1745 to 1772, while at the same time he maintained his busy schedule as scientist, government engineer, legislator, traveler, international publisher, and frequent invited guest at the Swedish Royal table where his amazing stories were greatly appreciated and admired. This man of impeccable reputation all his life, a greatly admired genius in science and philosophy, wrote that he had been prepared by God from earliest childhood to be the vehicle for what God wanted the human race to know regarding marriage, and how women and men are to achieve their highest potential through an eternal marriage as soul mates.

At first this sounds to most of us as a kind of fantastic child-like story, introjected right in the middle of a research seminar in psychology by a professor who must be terribly naive, or worse. I am attributing these words to you so that you may gain some perspective on the content of this course. I am trying to show that I am aware of the fantastic quality of my proposal.

Nevertheless, please hear me out and continue your examination and study of the facts being presented. To think that this proposal is fantastic, is a common reaction for most people. To me, this common widespread negative reaction, shows that it is a group practice that we all learn, and that when we are exposed to this kind of a proposal, a trained reasoning process is set in motion in each of our individual minds, and we react as expected by thinking that this is fantastic science fiction, rather than science. And it is pretty easy to start listing all the reasons why we think that it is fantastic and not science. And if we compare all these reasons given, we will find that almost everybody has given the same reasons. Again, this fits with what I am saying, namely that the resistance is a built in learned reaction against any proposal in science that makes mention of the afterlife, heaven and hell, or how God is managing events, and especially, that God appeared to Swedenborg at age 57 and prepared him to be conscious simultaneously in both worlds, and also that he talked to the people there, including Aristotle and Newton, and other historical figures we read about in literature. All this kind of thinking strikes us at first as being fantastic due to our socialization and education.

But note this: although we are thinking that this Swedenborg's proposal is fantastic and impossible, we are not able to prove that it is false and fantastic, or even, that it is not science. This is why I call it the negative bias in science -- Swedenborg's dualist proposal is rejected automatically without a need to examine it. For further discussion along this line, please consult Volume 1 of Textbook of Theistic Psychology at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/

Quoting from Swedenborg's book Conjugial Love (1768):

CL 42. To this I will append two narrative accounts from the spiritual world. Here is the first:

One morning I looked up into the sky, and I saw above me expanse upon expanse. And as I looked, the first or nearest expanse was opened, and shortly the second, which was above it, and finally the third, which was the highest of all. By the light coming from them I perceived that on the first expanse were angels of the first or lowest heaven, on the second expanse were angels of the second or middle heaven, and on the third expanse were angels of the third or highest heaven. I wondered at first what was happening and why. But shortly I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of a trumpet, saying, "We have perceived, and now see, that you are meditating on conjugial love. Moreover, we know that so far no one on earth knows what true conjugial love is in its origin or in its essence, and yet it is important for them to know. Therefore it has pleased the Lord to open the heavens to you, that the inner faculties of your mind may receive an influx of illuminating light and thus perception. "Among us in heaven, especially in the third heaven, our heavenly delights come principally from conjugial love. Consequently, by permission granted us, we will send a married couple down to you, in order that you may see."

[2] And suddenly, then, a carriage appeared, coming down from the highest or third heaven, in which I saw a single angel. But as it drew near, I saw that it held two. The carriage shone before my eyes in the distance like a diamond, and harnessed to it were young horses as white as snow. And the couple sitting in the carriage held in their hands a pair of turtledoves. And the couple called out to me, "You want us to come closer. But beware, then, of the flashing light coming from our heaven, the heaven we descended from. It is a blazing light, and you must take care that it does not penetrate interiorly. By its influx, indeed, the higher ideas of your understanding are enlightened, ideas that, in themselves, are heavenly. But these same ideas are inexpressible in the world in which you live. Receive the things you are about to hear, therefore, in rational terms and so explain them to the understanding." I replied, "I will take care. Come closer." So they came, and behold, it was a husband and his wife. And they said, "We are married. We have lived a blessed life in heaven from the earliest time, which you call the golden age, remaining forever in the same flower of youth that you see us in today."

[3] I looked at the two of them closely, because I perceived that they represented conjugial love in their life and in their adornment - in their life as shown in their faces, and in their adornment as shown in the garments they wore. For all angels are affections of love in human form. The essential, dominant affection shines out from their faces, and they are given clothing on the basis of their affection and in accordance with it. Consequently, in heaven they say that everyone is clothed in his own affection. The husband appeared to be between adolescence and early manhood in age. From his eyes flashed a light sparkling with the wisdom of love. His face seemed to be inmostly radiant with this light, and because of the radiance from within, outwardly his skin virtually shone. As a result, his whole facial appearance was singularly one of dazzling good looks. He was dressed in a full-length robe, and under the robe he wore a blue-colored garment, which was tied about the waist with a golden girdle bearing three precious stones, two of them sapphires, one on each side, and a garnet in the middle. His stockings were of shining linen, into which had been woven threads of silver; and his shoes were made entirely of silk. This was the representational form that conjugial love took in the case of the husband.

[4] In the case of the wife, however, it took the following form. I saw her face, and did not see it. I saw it as the very essence of beauty, and did not see it because the beauty was beyond expression. For there was in her face the bright glow of a blazing light, like the light possessed by angels in the third heaven, and this light dimmed my vision, so that I was simply stupefied by it. Noticing this, the wife spoke to me, saying, "What do you see?" I answered, "I see only conjugial love and a picture of it. But I see and do not see." At this she turned at an angle away from her husband, and then I could look more intently. Her eyes flashed with the light of her heaven, which is blazing, as I said, and so takes its quality from the love of wisdom. For wives in the third heaven love their husbands on account of their husbands' wisdom and in response to it, and the husbands love their wives on account of and in response to that love directed towards them, and so they are united.

The wife had her beauty as a result of this, such beauty that no artist could reproduce it or portray it in its true form, for a flashing of light like that is not possible in the painter's colors, nor is such loveliness expressible in his art. Her hair was attractively arranged in a style to match her beauty, with jewels in the form of flowers inserted into it. She had a necklace of garnets, from which hung a rosette of peridots. And she had bracelets of pearls. She was dressed in a scarlet gown, and under it a purple bodice fastened in front with rubies. But what surprised me, the colors kept changing depending on which way she was facing in relation to her husband, and their sparkle also kept changing accordingly, being now more, now less - more when they faced each other, and less when she faced away at an angle.

[5] When I had seen these things, they spoke with me again. And when the husband spoke, he spoke as though he spoke at the same time on behalf of his wife, and when the wife spoke, she spoke as though she spoke at the same time on behalf of her husband. For such was the union of their minds, from which comes their speech. It was then that I heard as well the way conjugial love sounds, how it was inwardly together with, and also the result of, the delights of a state of peace and innocence. Finally they said, "They are calling us back. We have to go." They then appeared to be again riding in a carriage, as before, and they were borne off along a road stretching out between flower gardens, from whose beds rose olive trees and trees full of oranges. And as they drew near their heaven, young women came to meet them and welcome them and take them in. (CL 42)

CL 43. After this, an angel from that heaven appeared to me, holding in his hand a sheet of paper, which he unrolled, saying, "I saw that you were meditating on conjugial love. This sheet of paper contains secrets of wisdom hitherto undiscovered in the world. They are disclosed now, because it is important. In our heaven there are more of these secrets than in the rest of the heavens, because we live in a marriage of love and wisdom. But I predict that none will make that love their own except those who are received by the Lord into the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem." Saying this, the angel sent the unrolled sheet of paper down, and one angelic spirit took it and placed it on a table in a particular room, which he immediately locked. And handing me the key he said, "Write." (CL 43)

(if you want to see the continuation, check the book here: www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/CL/minh.htm )

1. Part B

Now we may reply, Yes, we cannot prove that the Swedenborg reports are not empirical, but neither can we prove that the Swedenborg reports are empirically objective and valid observations. This is correct. And that is why I call my proposal "the positive bias in psychology or science."

So here we are. Either way we go -- negative bias or positive bias in science -- we must adopt a bias. In this proposal you are being asked to adopt the positive bias, and to hold the negative bias in abeyance, until the end of the course, at which time you can bring it back, should you still want to. By adopting the positive bias now, you are giving yourself the opportunity to examine the evidence in seriousness rather than in mockery. In order to examine what I am presenting in seriousness, you need to act like in your mind, that you are adopting for the moment, the positive bias in science for the sake of the potential benefits being claimed for learning this new knowledge.

We also want to realize in clear awareness and consciousness, that our initial preference for the negative bias position in science, is not due to our own thinking, but to the accepted thinking that we do by habit about science, with borrowed attitudes from our socialization, and especially definitions in our science education in high school and in college. We are told over and over again that God and science don't mix because you can't investigate God by observation and experiment. Hence it is outside the realms of science. We all received this notion. But notice that we were not told that this is the negative bias in science. Instead we were told that this is science. Why, do you think?

My answer is that those who hold the negative bias in science cannot see that it is a bias. They only see the positive bias as a bias, and not as science. So the negative bias in science creates a science knowledge culture that is dead set against anything that is not definable by physical measurements and abstract derivations thereof.

But those who argue for the positive bias in science are putting up a valid challenge. As in my case in this proposal, I am saying that it is possible to examine the Swedenborg reports rationally and impartially, in order to decide whether they are empirically valid and rationally meaningful, or not. I have done so myself and found them rational, empirical, valid, scientific, and highly useful to know about. As a result I set out to present to you the content of these reports in the form of a textbook of theistic psychology. Of course our semester is limited to 17 weeks and therefore I have selected from that material for your examination and evaluation. You can always continue your study and evaluation on your own after the course is over.

In this seminar on the unity model of marriage we will discuss Swedenborg's unique experience to some extent, enough that you may gain a rational and scientific idea of the afterlife. The religious view on the afterlife will not be examined in this course. Swedenborg was a respected and well known Swedish engineer, scientist, and legislator (1688-1772), known for his wide ranging set of discoveries in mining engineering, crystallography, chemistry, physics, anatomy. His science was unusual in that he always tried to include God as the creator and manager of all phenomena, while other well known scientists and mathematicians like Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, Darwin, only mentioned God in the Preface of their book, acknowledging Him as the Creator of Nature. But then they never mentioned God again in the rest of the book that contained their scientific theory. Swedenborg on the other hand kept bringing God into all of his scientific theories. It is clear to me as I read all of Swedenborg's works and Writings that God has the status of a scientific concept. This is totally unique, I believe, to Swedenborg's Writings. God in science (not religion). God as a scientific concept, not religious. Hence Swedenborg's science can be called "theistic science" to indicate that God has a conceptual status in that approach to science.

At age 57, Swedenborg had a vision experience in which God as a Divine Human Man appeared to him and told him that Swedenborg had been unconsciously prepared since early childhood to become a theistic scientist and to build up the scientific knowledge and theory in which God could be incorporated as an objective concept and made part of the scientific explanation of events. Now that Swedenborg had formed the natural basis for a theistic science, he was ready for the spiritual laboratory he needed to provide the objective evidence for dualism in science. Swedenborg's "substantive dualism" refers to the philosophical and scientific theory that human beings are born into two worlds simultaneously -- with a temporary physical body in the natural world of time and space, and a permanent or eternal spiritual body in the spiritual world not in time and space (called "eternity").

The physical body and the mental body are connected so that our sensations, thoughts, and feelings occur in our spiritual body, as the physical body exists and moves around in the natural world. At the death of the physical body, the spiritual body is freed from any connection with the world of time and space. We then continue our life of immortality in the spiritual world. Swedenborg was able to confirm this by direct observation, when at age 57 his encounter with God left him conscious simultaneously in both worlds. We are all dual citizens, like Swedenborg, but we don't get to be conscious in our spiritual body until the death of the physical body. Swedenborg observed thousands of people being "resuscitated," which occurs about 36 hours after the death of the physical body. He talked to many people immediately after their resuscitation. Most of them were extremely surprised to find themselves alive in the spiritual world.

Swedenborg visited the people who had been in the world of spirits for untold ages. He described their cities and lifestyles. He talked to people whom he personally knew and had passed on. He talked to people he had read about in literature like Aristotle or Luther. He described the lifestyle in the "heavenly" and "hellish" cities and societies that he found there. His dual citizenship lasted for 27 years until age 82 when he passed permanently into the spiritual world. During those 27 years he published almost 40 volumes of reports on the spiritual world. One of the most amazing piece of news: people in the afterlife are in a spiritual body that is youthful (around age 20) and in heaven everyone lives as a married couple. His book Conjugial Love (1763) is a detailed description he observed of the relationship between husband and wife in the eternity of their heaven. Each couple is called "an angel" because from a distance they appear as one angel, but close up they are seen as a husband and wife.

The unity model of marriage in this course is based on the empirical descriptions that Swedenborg gives of the "angel couple" which is what married partners are called in the afterlife of their heaven. But Swedenborg also described the "infernal marriages" of people who are in the hells of their mind -- and that is pretty ugly and awful! Swedenborg also describes and explains why people choose to be in the heavens or in te hells of their mind -- for he found that in the afterlife, everyone chooses their own preference of life.

What Swedenborg discovered empirically by direct observation, multiple times in the course of daily observations for 27 years, is that when people are resuscitated in the world of spirits a few hours after the death of the physical body, they appear not as filmy gaseous spirit ghosts, but exactly the same as in their physical body!

They have solid bodies that he could touch, shake hands with. He ate with them. He talked to couples who had been husband and wife for untold ages, who told him they were doing in their heaven everything they did on earth with their physical bodies, except that here, their sensations were much keener and stronger than they had in their physical bodies. In other words what Swedenborg saw and confirmed many times in different ways, is that our afterlife of eternity is spent in a real body that is immortal and cannot die. This real body of immortality is what I call "the spiritual body" or "the mental body." We could also call it "the rational ether body" because it is a body constructed out of rational ether, which is the substance out of which all things are made of in the world of eternity, which is the mental world of the human race (see Section xx).

This makes sense since the world of eternity = the mental world of self and consciousness.

We are born dual citizens, with a temporary physical body on earth, made of the physical materials of the natural sun, and a permanent spiritual body, or mental body, that is made of the spiritual substances of the Spiritual Sun (see Section xx). I always capitalize "Spiritual Sun" because it is nothing but the aura of spiritual light and and spiritual heat that surrounds the visible Divine Human. Hence the Spiritual Sun is the infinite Divine Human proceeding from Himself into the created universe (see Section xx). Any person who ascends in consciousness to the Third Heaven in their mind, can visually see the Divine Human surrounded by the Spiritual Sun as an aura (see Section xx). Swedenborg at age 57 suddenly became able to become conscious through the entire range of the human mind, from the bottom of the mind called hell, to the top of the mind called the "Third Heaven." Everyone he met in the Third Heaven was able to see visually the Divine Human inside this Divine aura called the Spiritual Sun. Hence the Spiritual Sun is part of God and is consequently Divine. Therefore I capitalize it, like I do for God, Divine, Divine Speech, Sacred Scripture, Divine Love and Wisdom, Divine Providence, Divine Psychologist, and so on (see Section xx).

I capitalize Heaven even though it is part of the human mind, outside and below the Spiritual Sun. This is because when our conscious awareness operates from the Third Heaven in our mind, we inhibit our own sensations, thoughts and feelings, and become open to experiencing the Divine Human's Personality of sensations, thoughts, and feelings -- as adapted uniquely to each person. Our personality in our Third Heaven is from God directly, rather than from God indirectly, as it is below the Third Heaven in our mind. As our conscious awareness travels outward and into the lower regions of the mental world, we are less and less like the Personality of the Divine Human, and more and more like the personality of animals and beasts (see Section xx). So it makes sense to distinguish always between what is directly from the Divine in the operations of the mental world, and what is indirectly from the Divine and distorted in the operations of our mind. We capitalize what is directly Divine, and not what is indirectly from God and constructed by our own capacities.

All of this may sound like a naive fairy tale, not science! If you want to find our more how this is indeed science, and not a fairy tale or religion, I invite you to read a little further on "the negative and positive bias in science" available in these two documents:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/409b-g24-lecture-notes.htm

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy24/459-g24-lecture-notes.htm#topic1

This is a research seminar focusing on a specific approach to marriage. It is not a survey of various theories and approaches on gender behavior and marriage. I am presenting a model based on 18th century writer E. Swedenborg (1688-1772). The articles in the Reading List include his articles as well as contemporary articles written by people interested in Swedenborg's Writings. We will also review the research studies of linguist Deborah Tannen on gender differences in discourse or talk, and the views of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, well known radio therapist, through one of her popular books, as well as other authors.

2. Mental Anatomy and the Individual's Threefold Self

Section 2

2. Part A

The immortal spiritual body with which we are born, contains our mind, that is, our mental organs called the affective organ, the cognitive organ, and the sensorimotor organ (see Section xx). These three organs are in the spiritual body or the mind in the same way that the physical body contains the circulatory system, the respiratory system, and the nervous system. The circulatory system includes the heart and all its veins and capillaries reaching and permeating every organ and cell of the body.

The circulatory system corresponds to the affective organ whose operations give us the subjective life of feeling. Feelings in the spiritual body, or the mind, are like the circulatory system in the physical body, because feelings nourish the life of experience. Feelings give us

an affective consummatory life such as needs, wants, desires, satisfactions, pleasures, interests, attractions, etc. (and their opposites)
and
an affective optimizing life such as intentions, motives, purposes, endeavors, resolve, compassion, love, etc. (and their opposites)

The respiratory system corresponds to the cognitive organ whose operations give us the subjective life of thinking. Thoughts in the spiritual body, or the mind, are like the respiratory system in the physical body, because thoughts give social and cultural content to our life of experience. Thoughts give us

a cognitive appraising life through memory, imagination, words, meaning, concepts, topics, knowledge, logic, common sense, conversation, etc.
and
a cognitive planning life through rational reasoning, inventiveness, predictions, hypotheses, fantasies, schedules, blueprints, management policies, etc.

The nervous system corresponds to the sensorimotor organ whose operations give us the subjective life of sensing the environment outside the body and of acting upon that environment through motor determinations. Sensations and motor determinations in the spiritual body, or the mind, are like the nervous system in the physical body, because sensations give us the life of experiencing the world outside of us and motor determinations give us the ability to make our bodies move and interact with the environment. Sensations and motor determinations give us

a sensory noticing life such as seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, pleasure, pain, heat, cold, etc.
and
a motor execution life such as moving, pushing, pulling, dancing, chewing, verbalizing, writing, drawing, etc.

Here is then a summary of the exact correspondence between mental anatomy and physical anatomy (try to memorize this after you studied the details given above):

an affective consummatory life in the spiritual body (= circulatory veins in the physical body)
an affective optimizing life in the spiritual body (= circulatory arteries in the physical body)
a cognitive appraising life in the spiritual body (= respiratory inhaling in the physical body)
a cognitive planning life in the spiritual body (= respiratory exhaling in the physical body)
a sensory noticing life in the spiritual body (= nervous afferent input in the physical body)
a motor execution life in the spiritual body (= nervous efferent output in the physical body)

The affective life of feelings cohere together as a cumulative whole called the affective self.

The cognitive life of thoughts cohere together as a cumulative whole called the cognitive self.

The sensorimotor life of sensations and motor determinations cohere together as a cumulative whole called the sensorimotor self.

Every person can therefore be studied, described, and understood as a threefold self.

2. Part B

Gender behavior in marriage is defined in this course along all three interacting domains of the individual's threefold self. The individual's affective self operates the feelings and motivations we maintain in dating or in marriage relationships. The cognitive self operates the thinking and reasoning we do in these relationships. The individual's sensorimotor self operates the sensations, perceptions, and motor acts we perform in gender relationships. The category of "motor acts" includes overt verbal behavior (discourse, talk) and non-linguistic behaviors (expressions, appearance, style). Be aware however that motor acts and talking occur not from themselves but from cognitive acts (our thinking and lifestyle philosophy), and these in turn occur from our affective acts, which are motivations and needs that guide our thinking towards goals. Sensorimotor acts, cognitive acts, and affective acts form a perfect synergy between feelings, thoughts, and actions. This is called the threefold self or person.

In other words, each of us is involved in gender relationships in which we operate along three interconnected domains of behavior. The deepest and most influential is the affective operation in which we maintain selected motivations and desires in accordance with our primary needs and satisfactions. These affective operations in our mind are the most influential or determinative because they select and guide the other two domains. Affective operations guide and influence the direction of operations in the cognitive self, so that what we think or how we justify things cognitively, is selective and responsive to our affective motives. We entertain and prefer a way of thinking that will support and promote our motivations and feelings. In other words, our cognitive behavior adjusts itself to support our affective behavior. The affective and the cognitive domains together select and determine the sensorimotor behavior that eventuate in our overt actions, appearance, words, and styles. What we do and say amounts to our overt gender behavior, which is the result of what we think, and that is the result of how we feel and what motivates us.

Note that we are often more aware of what we think than of how we feel (or what motivates us). In relationships between a man and a woman, women get more practice in becoming aware of their own feelings and motivations than men, who in comparison, tend to be less aware of their own feelings and motivations. This is because women are more motivated to spend time and focus to figure out how they really feel or what they really want. Women tend also to be more aware of the man's feelings and motivations than the men are of their own feelings and motivations. This is because women are motivated to form a united couple, while men tend to be more motivated to maintain their independence and options. However, this does not mean that men have less feelings than women, as it is sometimes misrepresented in gender stereotyped thinking. It means that men are less motivated to discover their feelings and the feelings of women. However, as we shall see, men can learn to acquire this interest, habit and practice.

Note well this principle: Both men and women have the same amount of feelings and emotions. This fact can be observed when you analyze how men behave and react to things moment by moment--with surprise, or with anger, or being pleased or displeased, feeling like talking or feeling like keeping quiet, being in a good mood or bad, getting excited when telling a story, picking a fight, feeling resentful, liking something, appreciating something, feeling happy about something, walking out on an exchange, being terrified to commit, being worried about their success, lacking confidence or feeling very confident, getting excited in games, etc. These observations prove that men equally with women have feelings and react with emotions all the time. Living means having emotions and feelings. Hence it is invalid to say that men have less feelings than women, or that men are less emotional then women. Instead, we need to think that men express their feelings and emotions differently than women, and we shall study these differences.

Emotional reactions and feeling motivations are a necessary part of all thinking and acting. It is not possible to act and react in a conversation or interaction without feelings and motivations being present all the time, at every instant. Nevertheless there are differences between men and women as to how aware or conscious they are of their own feelings and emotions from moment to moment, or of the emotions of their partner. Women tend to specialize in becoming aware of feelings and emotions of their partner. They are motivated to practice more than men in focusing consciously on feelings in gender relationships. This is because women are motivated to conjoin to the man of their choice as intimately as possible, while men are motivated to keep their independence emotionally and in their feeling life.

This difference in the skill of gender perceptiveness between a man and a woman creates an active gender dynamic in which the woman is motivated to prod her man to become more aware of his and her feelings and motivations. The man tends to resist this "affective prodding" and finds it unpleasant and objectionable. This creates a constant strain on the developing relationship. The woman feels that the man doesn't want to "commit" and is resisting the process of conjunction and wanting to maintain independence and distance, thereby keeping the couple in a state of division and conflict which is not totally satisfying to the woman. Nevertheless, all men can learn to be motivated to understand and recognize their feelings and those of their partners. We will examine the methods men can use to be successful in this fundamental change in their gender character.

Both men and women can gain understanding of the initial oppositeness between the sexes--women striving to conjoin, men resisting the process. The analysis of how men and women talk to each other reveals this dynamic opposition between men and women, as exemplified in the studies reported in our textbook by Deborah Tannen--Gender and Discourse. Analyzing verbal interactions between men and women is a powerful method for bringing out the differences between how they use talk to either oppose each other or to gain deeper intimacy and mutual support. Some of your activities in this course will include observing the talk and interaction of men and women in real life and on television (see Instructions for Report 1).

The views of "Dr. Laura" in her book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands presents the point of view that men are in general "simpler creatures" than women, and that a wife needs to treat her husband in a certain way in order to keep him happy and well functioning. This is a different model of marriage than the unity model because it establishes an unequal status between men and women. This point of view puts less of responsibility on the men to change and more responsibility on the women to learn to live with it. The wife is told to adjust to this unequal status rather than to seek equality or unity.

The individual's threefold self in gender relationships is a joint product of biology, socialization, culture, and spiritual make up. As children we acquire the relationship style of our parents, other adults, and the media (TV, movies, songs, magazines, cartoons, commercials). By the time we begin adolescent or adult relationships, men have been exposed to years of stereotyped gender behaviors in all three domains of the threefold self:

(a) exploitative feelings and intentions (affective self) towards girls and women, whom they view as the "opposite" sex

(b) sexist thoughts (cognitive self) that stereotype women in a negative content

(c) injurious or hostile actions and words (sensorimotor self) against women

These affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor patterns of negative gender behavior by men create an atmosphere of discord and conflict in dating and marriage, even as the partners strive to love each other and become a functioning and satisfying unit.

2.1 Mental Anatomy of Women and Men

Section 2.1

2.1 Part A

The expression "mental anatomy" at first sounds like a metaphor about the mind. We are used to hearing about the anatomy of the physical body. But regarding the mind, it is common for us to imagine that it either doesn't exist, or if it does exist, it is something gaseous or transparent, not solid, just as "a spirit" or "departed person," is often portrayed in literature or television. But we are also familiar with the portrayal of angels who appear on earth and have physical bodies while they are here. But we imagine that after they return to "heaven," they no longer have a real body for being married. We all have been exposed to the various fantasies or imaginings that people have about the afterlife, including our own. This is why it is essential that we stick with the facts and the actual observations. Swedenborg was the only scientist in history who was allowed by God to be conscious in his spiritual mind before resuscitation, and therefore he is the only scientist in the history of the world who can give us factual information about the spiritual world of the afterlife in eternity. This is looking at the Swedenborg Reports with the positive bias in science perspective.

It is fascinating to discover what married couples are like when they reach the heavens in their mind. Swedenborg's observations of the relationship between husbands and wives in heaven give us factual information about the future we can have in our immortality after we are no longer connected to the physical world. People who find their way into the heavens of their mind, are married, to symbolize and reflect their mental unity. Amazingly, when Swedenborg saw a conjugial couple from a distance, he saw but one person walking or standing. But when he came nearer to the couple, they were a husband wife (see Section xx). The fact that they appear as one person is an outward representation of their inward mental unity.

From Swedenborg's description of the difference between men and women, I constructed various visual charts to picture their mental anatomy. By studying the details pictured in somewhat different way, it might be easier for you to gain a more detailed knowledge and understanding of how men and women differ in their spiritual anatomy. Remember: spiritual = afterlife of eternity. So the anatomical difference between the mind of men and women remains forever to distinguish them from birth to eternity.

This diagram is from an article I wrote on "spiritual genes in marriage" and is available here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow2.html

Spiritual Gender Genes

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dowfig2.gif (8222 bytes)

2.1 Part B

The following diagram is from an article on "The Spiritual Psychobiology of Marriage" and is available here:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow1.html#biology

The diagram immediately above shows the two phases or stages of marriage. Initially, the man's consciousness of externalizing truth, which is the truth he knows, conjoins itself with the wife's externalizing good. That is the wife's externalizing affections conjoin with the husband's externalizing cognitions. Thus they form an externalizing marriage or bond. It is externalizing because the man's truth and the wife's affections are both in the externalizing or lower degrees of their consciousness. However, if the two partners continue to grow together and conjoin more deeply within, then they enter phase 2 which is an internal union or conjunction. Now their internalizing parts are conjoined or united--the man's internalizing good and the woman's internalizing truth. Now for the first time the man becomes truly a husband and the woman truly a wife.

In the diagram below, the same process is portrayed. The externalizing union in stage 1 is shown to bond the man's externalizing truth to the wife's externalizing good. This is not so much a true union as a partnership since it resides in externalizing (or lower) parts of the consciousness. Husband and wife as partners are adjoined to each other by externalizing natural life and family, but they are not yet conjoined from within by inner or spiritual life. But in stage 2, the husband's internalizing good is conjoined to the wife's internalizing truth. Now the marriage consists of his affections covered over with her truths. This is a true conjunction or union because it resides in the higher or internalizing regions of their consciousness and life. Only when this stage of internal conjunction is achieved can they be regenerated into a heavenly marriage and live together in eternity.

Couples who do not progress to an internal union of minds or spirits remain separated in their internals, and when they meet again in the other life, they live with one another again for a brief period. They then can become aware of each other's internal character and disposition, and these separate them. Each is then given another partner with whom they can enter into an internal marriage in heaven. But this happens only when both have been regenerated while still in the physical body. If they are unsuitable to each other by internal disposition or genius and separate, the one who is regenerate goes to heaven with the newly given conjugial partner or soul mate, while the other who is not regenerated goes to hell where they enter into an infernal concubinage with a partner. These infernal marriages are purely externalizing and both partners are "devils" who hate each other's guts yet are forced to endure each other in a marriage made in hell.

3. Three Levels of Unity in the Marriage Relationship

Section 3

3. Part A

Research and personal observation confirm that most couples report experiencing oppositional or negative feelings, and at times acting upon them by exploiting, abusing, or injuring their partner. When couples have a disagreement or fight, physical and mental abuse is practiced by men more than by women in the majority of societies and cultures. When people reason under the influence of exploitative motivations, they tend to misinterpret the intentions of their partner and tend to use stereotyped, inaccurate, and prejudiced thinking. Our verbal behavior will reflect this style of biased thinking. So will our other actions.

There is an advantage in gaining control over our gender behavior in the three domains--affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. We can avoid those cultural and psychological traits and habits that interfere with adaptive, successful long term marriage relationships. The benefits of a stable successful long term partnership are extremely attractive. We will explore a particular principle in marriage relationship called the conjoint self.

According to the "unity" model of marriage, the perfection of unity in a marriage increases through differentiation and reciprocity of behavior in the threefold self of the two partners, and is a spiritual union that lasts to eternity. In a unity marriage, the husband and wife develop a conjoint self, while their former individual self recedes into the background and no longer operates.

The unity marriage is not achieved by promise or desire alone. There are developmental levels of unity that married partners must go through with each other, like a growth process that takes many years of dedicated effort. The "conjoint self" refers to a husband and wife who have achieved unity at all levels of the threefold self (as explained below). Each individual has been changed, dropping off some traits and acquiring new ones that can fit together. This is called growing together in reciprocity. The husband has to abandon some traits he cherished since childhood because these habits caused opposition and disunity. The wife has to abandon some traits that she perceives do not fit with her husband's character. Both have to acquire new traits that could fit together as a unit. The old traits that were abandoned and the new traits that were acquired consist of sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective traits in the threefold self. That is: habits of external activities, habits of thinking, and habits of internal feeling.

Levels of unity are ordered from external to more and more interior unity, as will be explained below. For instance, an external level of unity between marital partners involves their sensorimotor portion of the threefold self. They like and enjoy to do things together like dancing, touching each other, partying, camping, watching movies, eating out, driving, talking about their favorite topics, and so on. These overt "external" activities involve sensory and motor interactions, including verbal, which is an overt motor activity. Of course every sensorimotor activity involves thinking and feeling but these cognitive and affective operations are not visible, and the focus of the two partners at this stage is on the external activity of the other. There is less focus or concern on what the other is thinking or feeling.

Note that these joint external activities do not necessarily mean that the two partners are in agreement with each other's way of thinking, each other's attitudes, or feelings and motivations. The cognitive and affective self of each partner may not be in agreement, and they may even be competitive or hostile to the other. What is on the inside that is not visible (affective and cognitive self) may be in opposition and even hatred against the partner, while what shows on the outside--the sensory-motor activity, may appear harmonious and compatible. This underlying disagreement or dislike becomes visible when there is an overt fight during which the two partners show their anger, resentment, and disrespect for one other. Afterwards they make up, and the cognitive disrespect and affective dislike recede again into the underlying invisible state, lurking there, until the next fight at which time the abuse and disrespect come out again.

There is therefore a first level of the conjoint self, and this is external, involving sensorimotor reciprocity and joint achievement, without necessarily there being an interior agreement and respect for the partner. Women, more than men, tend to experience this external phase of the relationship as unsatisfactory, painful, and injurious. Women often have to bond with other women to support and reassure each other during this phase of disharmony with their husband or partner.

Men tend to bond with other men by complaining about women and speaking about them with disrespect. They also keep secrets from their women and do things they want to hide from them. Men do this in order to obtain sexual favors. This deception is a method of exploiting women and dehumanizing them. At this external level of unity, men feel more comfortable than women because they exercise more control in the relationship. Men tend to resist closer, more intimate relationship phases, in order to maintain their cognitive and affective independence. A man ordinarily dislikes giving up independence in his private thinking and feeling, while a woman is generally motivated to conjoin her thinking and feeling with her man--if only he lets her. A woman strives to achieve mutual and reciprocal dependence, while a man strives to retain independence. This creates a conflict dynamic between them, especially in the first level of unity which is external, involving the sensorimotor self only.

This intrinsic difference between women and men occurs at all levels of their humanity: biological, mental, and spiritual. Biologically, women make themselves dependent on men for reproduction, parenting, and lifestyle habits. Mentally, women love and enjoy the man's intelligence and inventiveness, and adopt his ideas and philosophies as her own. Spiritually, women represent inner wisdom surrounded by external love. Men represent inner love surrounded by external intelligence. Women and men are thus born reciprocals of each other, so they may better fit into a perfect unity.

If women and men were similar in these fundamental traits, they could only form external relationships and could never achieve the married state of the conjoint self. Their selves would remain separate because like cannot conjoin with like. Like can be adjoined to like, but only reciprocals can conjoin. For example, think of the shape of reciprocals and how they would not be able to fit together if they were similar instead of reciprocal: pot and handle; key and key hole; shoe and lace; button and button hole, snaps, window and window sill, picture and frame, etc.

Couples begin their relationship together by sensorimotor reciprocity: talking to each other, eating, dancing, driving, doing fun things, etc. This is the first level of unity.

3. Part B

The second level of unity is deeper in that it involves the cognitive self of the two partners. This includes how they think, how they reason, how they justify things, what they consider acceptable or unacceptable, what information or knowledge they have, what philosophy of life and religion. These cognitive behaviors and habits are more resistant to mutual adaptation and reciprocity in the relationship. For instance, a man and a woman can be married for years and yet maintain contradictory attitudes, beliefs, and judgments. The external sensorimotor level of unity does not necessarily lead to a more interior unity of thinking and reasoning (cognitive habits). Yet many couples achieve a cognitive level unity by joint involvement in running a home and raising children together. They see 'eye to eye' on many things and enrich each other's thinking process by mutual stimulation and interest. When a man and a woman achieve this second level unity, they can love each other more deeply and the relationship continues to grow and become more satisfying and enriching.

Achieving cognitive reciprocity is often easier for women because they are mentally oriented towards conjunction. They desire to become a conjoint self more than they desire to retain their own ideas and philosophy. But men generally are in love with their own thinking and ideas and resist change for the sake of the conjoint self. Men see the conjoint self as giving up selfhood while women see it as gaining togetherness.

However, when a wife perceives that her husband's thinking is corrupt, she tries to change the man's thinking instead of adopting it for herself. A wife has a keen perception of what is her husband's corrupt thinking, even while he himself is blind to it. This is because spiritually, a woman is inner wisdom covered over with love, while a man is inner love covered over with external intelligence. So a woman perceives more with her inner wisdom while a man with his outward intelligence. Inner wisdom can see corrupted thinking where outward intelligence cannot. Outward intelligence is motivated by sensorimotor goals while inner wisdom is motivated by affective goals. But when the husband's allows his outward intelligence to be influenced by the wife's inner wisdom, his outward intelligence is elevated or made more excellent, so that he too can then perceive corrupt thinking in himself and others.

The inmost level of unity involves the partners' affective self -- their feelings, motivations, loves, ultimate goals of happiness and togetherness. Affective reciprocity is the basis of an eternal unity between husband and wife. Only conjoint feelings, loves, desires, or goals are allowed to remain operational in their mind. This is achieved by a systematic and long term effort in reciprocal growth. The partners abandon their feelings, loyalties, goals, or involvements that are not conjoint and exclude the other partner. Affective reciprocity or conjunction would be weakened if one partner reserves an area of their mind or involvement that excludes the other partner. For example, some husbands spend socializing time with male friends. The activity is such that they don't want wives or girl friends around, even if they are not cheating on them or doing something bad. But the fact that a husband's wife is excluded, not wanted there, means that he is retaining independent involvements and loves. These affective habits and enjoyments are not reciprocal. They do not contribute to unity in marriage, but slows the process down or acts against it.

However, this principle does not apply to women in the same way. Women have loyalties and friendships with each other for different goals and feelings than men have with each other. The affections and involvements that married women have with other women is for supporting the marriage, not resisting it. Men have an inborn resistance to marital unity which they have to fight against most of their life. Their male friendships that exclude the wife respond to their desire to escape total unity with their wife. This is not so with married women since they have an inborn desire and need for total unity with their husband.

4. Unity Through Reciprocity and Differentiation

Section 4

There are two principles in this model of "conjugial love" described by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).

First Principle--Differentiation: No part of a woman is like any part of a man and vice versa.

Second Principle--Reciprocity: The perfection of unity increases with the diversity of its composing elements.

Third Principle--Eternity: The unity marriage relationship is eternal, continuing in the afterlife of heaven.

According to the first principle of marital unification the threefold self of men and women are biologically and spiritually different. This is maximum or total differentiation or diversity in every part. According to the second principle of marital unification, the diversity becomes unified through reciprocity by which the traits of a woman can harmonize or fit together with the traits of a man, and vice versa. According to the third principle, marriage is a spiritual union of mind and spirit that is not just for this world -- "till death do us part," but is eternal, since the spirit of a person is immortal (for more on this topic see the Psych 459, G21 Lecture Notes on Theistic Psychology: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic ).

Here are some illustrations of these two principles acting together. Consider where we are familiar with unity through differentiation and reciprocity (though not with eternity). At the physical level we can see how a bolt, nut, and washer work together structurally to achieve a tight grip on some object. The form of the nut must fit exactly the form of the bolt. The bolt is different in form from the nut, and it is the particular way they are different that makes them work together, reciprocally. They would not work together as a unit if there was no differentiation and reciprocity between them. Consider the same principle operating in other functionally related objects like a hammer and nail, or like a purse and its strap, or a fork and knife, or glove and hand, show and foot, etc. When you dance, your partner must make the reciprocal steps -- not the same steps, as you are making, or else you step on each other. In a four-part harmony with men and women, in a quartet or other choir, the singers are differentiated into soprano, alto, tenor, and base. This differentiation is combined into a unity when they sing reciprocally according to the arrangement prescribed for each part. The result is a harmony that is rich and attractive but which cannot be achieved in any other way.

In the sensorimotor domain of gender interactions we can see how a woman's body is differentiated from a man's body, and how the parts of the man are shaped to fit the parts of the woman. No doubt this is the analogy upon which electrical objects are designated, as for instance the wall receptacle is called the female and the plug is called the male. They act together to form a unit through differentiation and reciprocity of physical form or shape. When you consider sports teams, government departments, or armies, you notice a similar reciprocity of different role behaviors, so that they can achieve joint action, unity, or several acting as one. In fact throughout nature, and even the universe, you will find a unified whole made of differentiated parts acting in synergy. It makes sense therefore to have a model of gender unity that is based on the two acting as one through differentiation and reciprocity.

A well known symbolic representation of sensorimotor unity is the familiar Ying/Yang emblem. According to ancient tradition, it "demonstrates the perfectly balanced interchange of the two dynamically opposed forces of the Universe, the dot represents integration." In Tai Chi and I Ching traditions, the white area of the emblem represents heaven, the dark area earth and the curvy line between them represents the Law or reality. In Feng Shui the Yin/Yang represents the integration of Female/Male duality: "Yin and Yang are dependent opposites that must always be in balance." And: "It is a duality that cannot exist without both parts." (See for example this Web site: www.168fengshui.com/Articles/Article_yinyang.htm

In other words, it is the differentiation that makes the unity out of reciprocity. The man and the woman as a couple can be totally integrated, or form a unity, because they are completely different but in a way that is reciprocal. Nothing of the male can be like anything of the female (Yin/Yang diagram shows all white vs. all black for the two). But they curve around into each other, in a perfect fit of reciprocal union, the perfect circle. This is the principle of "synergy" which is defined as "combined action or operation." It comes from the Greek "synergos" or working together. In business "synergism" refers to "a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts)" (Merriam-Webster Online). The principle of synergy operates universally where separate elements interact to produce a joint goal. Synergy is obvious in the physical body where thousands of separate and differentiated parts work together to produce the functions of a normal human body.

Society is viewed as made of separate and unique family units forming themselves into a community and abiding by mutual norms, laws, and expectations. The same reasoning applies to the marriage relationship which society officially sanctions and licenses. Society recognizes that a married couple forms a new unit that acts together for common goals and are united by positive feelings and loyalties. Married couples who live according to the unity model represent the most perfect unit or a "one" that a man and a woman can form together. Affective unity is the most essential, and it influences the cognitive and sensorimotor unity that is possible for that couple. Unity is achieved through the synergy of the threefold self of each partner acting together. There is no independence in any area or under any circumstance. Even when the two are in physically different locations (e.g., at home vs. at work) they remain united because each partner acts and thinks when alone as if the other were present.

A different approach is that of "equity model" in marriage. This idea is transmitted in our socialization process and is part of our culture so that everyone has norms of equity in various areas of living. This is a good thing in public life because it acts to reduce discrimination against women which has been the traditional practice and still is by and large. Gender relationships may start with men assuming traditional dominant roles and women being submissive. But the relationship can then move on to the equity model which helps the two partners by reducing the traditional load of expected work on women and can make their relationship more intimate. But the equity model need not be the last phase. The couple can then move into the unity model which affords still more intimacy.

In the unity model there are two possible directions, one valid the other destructive. If equity is given up for unity, which of the two partners should be giving up their equal power under equity? If the woman gives up equity, then the couple falls back into the traditional dominance model they started with in which man dominates woman in socially prescribed ways. On the other hand if the man gives up equity power in decision making, then they move forward to the unity model that leads to greater intimacy, growth, and mutual support. This conclusion will be reviewed in detail in our class discussions throughout the semester.

5, Sensorimotor, Cognitive, and Affective Conjunction

Section 5

5. Part A

Consider the cognitive and affective domains of gender interaction in marriage. For instance, a wife's depth of perception of a situation (her affective self) contrasts with that of a man's, but the difference is such as to be reciprocal with it. But if the man feels competitive with her, as in the traditional and equity models, their difference in perception is then nonreciprocal, incompatible, or opposite. Similarly, a woman's cognitive self complements that of a man, which is why they find each other's ideas interesting and stimulating. A man ordinarily resists the idea that the woman who loves him has a deeper perception of his feelings and motivations than he has himself. Women have this greater awareness of feelings than men due to the confluence of biology, socialization, experience, interest, and spiritual structure. Hence the unity through reciprocity model requires that the man give up equity power and give in to the woman's way of understanding. This means that the man would voluntarily agree to let the woman play the lead role in decision making when it comes to their relationship areas.

For example, a wife might request that her husband no longer talk to an old girl friend of his. She feels very strongly about it. She perceives it from within, as if it was instinct. In other words, she may not be able to give a rational explanation of where it comes from or why she feels so strongly about it. She tells her husband all this, yet he rejects it because he thinks differently about it. He feels a certain loyalty to many of his old friends and doesn't want to give that up, especially since she can't explain her demand in a way that makes sense to him. He and his old girl friend do not have any romantic feelings for each other, so his wife (or current girl friend) should not be jealous. So they argue.

This stand off puts a hold on the inward (affective) growth of the relationship. She may not say this to him, and sometimes she may not be clearly aware of it, but within herself she knows that the relationship is not growing deeper. She hopes it can be amended but for now it's like a broken leg you can't use for walking. She feels neutralized by her partner's independent stance. He has excluded her and taken away her right or opportunity to make him change his stand into reciprocity, conjunction, unity, oneness in mind and body. He is keeping an area of his love sealed off to her. He reserves his affectional territory for something in which she has no direct input. She is kept on the outide.

This situation can be better understood if we look at it in more detail as to what's going on. In their relationship the man and the woman are interacting at the three levels of the self: sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective. The process of forming a marital unity involves the conjunction of the threefold self of each partner. The sensorimotor self of the man and the woman are conjoined first as shown by the activities they enjoy doing together--eating, playing, embracing, talking. These activities involve mostly the "external" physical self of the partners. It is called external because it is easily visible to them and to others like friends, parents, and neighbors. We can call this phase sensorimotor conjunction. In this phase the man often takes the lead and exerts a dominant role. The woman follows in order to keep the relationship going. Her motive is higher than the man's. His motive is to please himself; her motive is to continue the relationship going to a deeper level.

At the same time the cognitive self of the two partners are interacting. At this level of the interaction, the woman takes the lead. She strives to take the man's perspective, to learn his sense of humor, to memorize the details of his life that he reveals, to acquire the reasoning style he uses. Her motive in all this cognitive effort is to harmonize with the man and please him. She understands instinctively, and sometimes explicitly or consciously, that by making him laugh and pleasing him by how she thinks, she will succeed in conjoining the man to herself. The man is normally focused on himself, on his ideas, and he is pleased when she demonstrates that she knows those ideas. He is not thinking of her perspective, while she is constantly trying to analyze his perspective. Obviously, this differential effort and focus gives the woman a superior perception and understanding of the relationship, that is, of the process of conjoining. This cognitive communication of ideas between them can be called cognitive conjunction.

Cognitive conjunction is more visible than affective conjunction because it comes out in their agreements or disagreements. Long after sensorimotor conjunction has been established, and after cognitive conjunction has been operating for awhile in the relationship, the woman strives even more intensely to conjoin the man to herself at the affective level. She understands from instinct, and sometimes explicitly or consciously, that the relationship won't be perfect until they achieve affective conjunction. This doesn't just mean saying "I love you" even if it is meant sincerely. Affective conjunction means that the man has aligned his feelings with his woman. In other words he has given up his male prerogatives left to him by society and tradition. Society allows a man to retain affective independence from the woman he is married to. He is expected to provide for her needs, to support her in her endeavors, and to be decent to her. But he is not expected to become dependent on her for his feelings, motives, ambitions. He is expected to lover her and be loyal to her, but not to give up his own independent feelings and strivings. Affective independence is the norm for a man in most societies.

In contrast, social and cultural norms require a woman not only to love her mate but to be dependent on him for her feelings and emotions. For example, if she loves Italian food and he hates it, she is expected to give up her old loves and adopt his loves. He expects it and sees it as a sign of loyalty to him. If she complies with this expectation, he feels bonding with her. Note that a man feels bonding or conjunction when the woman becomes dependent on him in her threefold self. But this kind of bonding is not true conjunction and cannot lead to unity.

5. Part B

In the region of the heart, woman rises far above the man in perception, understanding, and consciousness. This is the result of her biological, rational, and spiritual nature. Therefore the gender syntax that produces unity involves the husband becoming affectively dependent on the wife. This runs contrary to his socialization and philosophy, so he puts up enormous resistance--that the woman has to overcome if they are going to achieve unity. Both men and women have three natures or levels of operation of life: a biological nature or self, a rational nature or self, and a spiritual nature or self. By the principle of differentiation and reciprocity it is clear that men and women differ in their biological nature, they differ in their rational nature, and they differ in their spiritual nature. Biological differences between them are obvious in the anatomy and appearance of their physical body. Rational differences between men and women result in the reciprocal orientation and focus they each have. When a man's cognitive focus is reciprocal to the woman's cognitive focus, they can conjoin. To conjoin means that they share parts of it, or all of it.

But sharing doesn't mean that they are similar because a man and a woman have different functions for their thinking. A woman might say or think X and a man might say or think X yet they are not thinking the identical thing. A woman uses thinking in the relationship for the purpose of achieving unity because that's the way she defines herself, while a man uses his thinking for the purpose of retaining independence because that's the way he defines himself. He wants her to give up her cognitive independence and think like him. This is impossible for nothing in a man can be like anything in a woman, and vice versa. On the other hand, he can give up his affective independence so that his thinking now responds not just to his own needs and purposes, but to her needs and purposes as well. In this way the man's thinking is elevated to a new level of consciousness, intelligence, and wisdom. But when he refuses to give up his affective independence, his thinking remains where it has always been, unable to achieve the higher levels of his own humanity. It's obvious therefore that "giving up" affective independence is not losing something but gaining a whole new level of life for a man.

When a husband is committed to giving up affective independence, he is conjoined to his wife at the inmost or affective level. This is a spiritual conjunction that lasts forever. It has a built in dynamics for dissolving disagreements. Not a single disagreement can arise between them no matter what. This is because they have learned a reciprocal style of interacting at all three levels of the self.

Sensorimotor conjunction is the mental state of husband and wife in which their sensations and movements are mutually and reciprocally interdependent. The pleasures they enjoy are connected to making the partner happy. For instance, what the husband enjoys most is to keep his wife feeling comfortable, and her desires or preferences satisfied. Sensorimotor independence exists when the husband insists on his own comforts and pleasures. His focus is then on himself, not his wife. It's common to observe in public couples walking together. More often than not you will see the woman carrying a greater load than the man. Maybe a child and a big bag, while the man has his hands free. Or at airports you see the woman carry two big bags and the man she is with is carrying one bag. These interactions result from the man's sensorimotor independence. Often husbands will satisfy their sexual appetites for years and never care enough to discover anything about his wife's appetites or satisfactions.

It helps to contrast clearly the differences between the affective and sensorimotor parts of the threefold self. Often people use the word "feeling" when they mean thinking (cognitive self), and vice versa. For example, people say, "I feel that we should wait longer" when they are discussing what they think. Sometimes feelings (affective) are confused with sensations (sensorimotor). For example, "I feel hot flashes coming on" or "I feel so tired." In both cases it is not the feelings (affective) that are discussed but the sensations (sensorimotor).

The sensorimotor area of the threefold self includes these primary features of our everyday life:

physical pleasures (all five senses), or their opposites
enjoyable sensations and movements, or their opposites
mental pleasures and delightful experiences, or their opposites
healthy well being and feeling good physically, or the opposite
being physically attracted to someone, or the opposite
feeling calm, cool, and collected, or the opposite
coordinating one's movements with partner, or the opposite
etc.

The affective area of the threefold self includes these primary features of our everyday life:

feeling good about the situation, or the opposite
feeling hesitant or resistant, or the opposite
feeling afraid or scared, or the opposite
feeling connected, or the opposite
striving to reach a goal, or the opposite
accepting someone or thing, or the opposite
perceiving (feeling, sensing) from within that something is right and good, or not
feeling guilty, embarrassed, ashamed, regretful, or not
etc.

Do you get the difference? Note that the affective always comes first in the sequence of our behavior. We do something because we are motivated to do it. We are motivated to do something to achieve a particular goal. Every goal is defined by what we want or desire or prefer to happen. Therefore all human action starts from a feeling -- what we want to happen, together with a goal that satisfies what we want.

5. Part C

Once we have a feeling, motive, or particular goal we desire to happen, the next behavior in sequence is the cognitive self. Our thinking operations suddenly begin to figure out a plan or method of proceeding that will bring about the desired goal, and thereby satisfy the feeling. It is the feeling that motivates, guides, and directs the thinking, keeping the sequence of mental operation focused in a coherent way to lead to the goal state. For example, we become aware that we are thinking about the candy bar in our pocket or purse. What made your thoughts go in that direction? It had to be some kind of feeling, like sensing hunger in the stomach (sensorimotor) which became the occasion for a desire to satisfy it. This desire or feeling then awakened our thoughts and memories to think about the candy bar.

Once the feeling (desire) and the thinking (candy bar in pocket or purse) are placed together or united, the hand starts reaching for the candy bar or the legs start waking to the kitchen (sensorimotor).

But then you stop the hand or the legs. Wait. I'm on a diet and I want to lose weight. Remember? What's happening here? It's another feeling (desire, motive) that takes over and this new feeling now directs the thinking and the moving in another direction.

So whatever we do all day long minute by minute, has to do with sequences and loops of feelings, thoughts, and sensorimotor executions of them. By self-witnessing or self-monitoring ourselves in a systematic and persistent way, we gradually learn to distinguish between the actions of the threefold self and how the affective hierarchy of our feelings dominates and rules our thinking and doing. Most people prior to self-witnessing are not fully aware of the feelings they have and their relative hierarchy of power over the threefold self. What we don't know about ourselves, we cannot control or modify even if they are maladaptive and the source of negative results. It is to everyone's advantage to get to know the hierarchy of feelings they have in the course of their day.

Here is a summary table to memorize:

PRINCIPLES BY WHICH HUSBAND GOVERNS HIS BEHAVIOR TOWARDS HIS WIFE		CHARACTER OF THE PARTNERSHIP	HOW THEY BEHAVE TOWARDS ONE ANOTHER AND CONSEQUENCES ON WIFE
follows the UNITY MODEL affective conjunction	spiritual marriages ("Till endless eternity in afterlife")	reciprocity with differentiation unifying, conjoining rational , theistic enlightened, etc.	husband chooses to always act from his wife’s feelings and preferences, rather than from his own, which might be different, thereby unifying the two into one conjoined self in heaven
follows the EQUITY MODEL cognitive conjunction	natural progressive marriages (“Till death do us part”)	agreeing with contracting with associating with co-sponsoring, etc.	the two make up consensual arrangements, based on equal rights principles, so husband agrees to help in domestic activities, but maintains independence where he chooses, so many women are stuck in unhappy roles and unromantic, unfulfilling marriages
follows the DOMINANCE MODEL sensorimotor conjunction	natural traditional marriages (“Till the husband decides to divorce his wife”)	consociation by male dominated norms, and race, family, blood, religion, genes – are central issues	wife is submissive and obedient to husband and his family , and must endure societal sanctioned abuse of women by men

See if you can follow the themes in each cell in the above Table. Try to see how these names and descriptions apply to your experience with couples, partnerships, and marriages:

yourself
parents
friends
movies
song lyrics
jokes
group practices, norms, and expectations.

Please note:

This is the Spring 2006 version. The corrected, updated, and expanded Spring 2007 version is here:

www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy26/409b-g26-lecture-notes.htm

Spiritual Gender Genes

This is the Spring 2006 version.
The corrected, updated, and expanded Spring 2007 version is here: