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much less obvious than the similarities.) Real differences begin

to appear when the third, semantic circuit enters the picture.

MOST MAMMALS MARK THEIR TERRITORIES WITH

EXCRETIONS. DOMESTICATED PRIMATES MARK THEIR

TERRITORIES WITH INK EXCRETIONS ON PAPER.

For instance, novice dog-trainers always make the mistake of

using
too many words.
Because the dog is so "human" in so

many ways (canines, like primates, are great mimics), the novice

imputes too much "humanity" to them. The average dog has a

vocabulary of around 150 words, and within that semantic

universe is quite bright. It is very easy to teach a dog the meaning

of "Sit," "Stay," "Attack," etc.; and the dog will learn the

meaning of "walk" and "food" even without your trying to teach

him. The problem begins when the novice expects the dog to

understand something like "No, no, Fritz—anywhere else in the

bedroom, but not on the bed." Even a non-English-speaking

human would not grasp that, except vaguely. The dog gives up

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on such sentences and guesses what he can from your mammalian

(and unconscious)
body-language.

Understanding these distinctions can vastly improve primatecanine

communication. For instance, my wife, a sociologist,

trained our dog, Fang, not to beg at the table in the most direct

mammalian language possible. She simply
growled
at him the

first few times he approached her while she was eating. (She had

been reading ethology, of course.) Fang understood fully; he

soon learned to avoid the table while the Pack-Leaders (my wife

and myself) were eating. His genetic programs told him we were

the Big Dogs, or as close to the Big Dogs as he could find in that

environment; dogs, like wolves, have a genetic program about

not annoying the Big Dogs while they're eating. The growl told

him all he needed to know about the local parameters of that

rule. Fang, incidentally, was a Dachshund-Labrador mix, and

strange-looking to most humans. People would stop me on the

street while I was walking him and ask, "What...IS.. .that???"

Persons (extreme cases) who take the
heaviest
imprint on this

territorial-emotional circuit tend to be musculotonic. That is,

they hold most of their attention and energy, in the muscular

attack-defense systems and grow up medium weight—
heavy

enough to be hard to knock down, light enough to be quick and

sinewy. Often, they become body-builders, weight-lifters etc.

and have an extraordinary absorption in demonstrating their

strength. (Even shaking hands with them, you get the message

that they are not exchanging amity but demonstrating power.)

Most societies shunt these types into the military where their

propensities are put to proper ethological use, defending the

tribal turf. The anal orientation of this circuit explains the oddity

of military speech first noted by Norman Mailer: "ass" means

one's whole self and "shit" means all surrounding circumstance.

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IMPRINTING AFFECTS THE WHOLE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM AFFECTS THE WHOLE BODY.

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The second, emotional-territorial circuit, creates a two-dimensional

social space in conjunction with first-circuit advance-retreat.

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The grid of Circuits I and II creates four quadrants. Note that

Hostile Strength (the tyrant) is inclined to paranoid withdrawal; he

must govern, but he is also afraid. Cf. the careers of Hitler, Stalin,

Howard Hughes, etc. and the inaccessible Castle and Court in

Kafka's allegories. Note also that the dependent neurotic is not in

retreat at all; he or she advances upon you, demanding fulfillment

of emotional "needs" (imprints).

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73

These four quadrants have been known since the dawn of selfconsciousness.

For instance, in the terminology of the medieval

psychology of "humours," these four imprint-types are known as:

Clockwise, the Sanguinary type (friendly strength) was identified

with the
Lion
archetype and the element,
fire.
The Lion,

because of the dignity of these big cats, represents "good"

strength, and the fire represents power. The Phlegmatic type

(friendly weakness) was identified with the
Angel
archetype and

the element
water:
these people are "too sensitive to fight" and

"go with the flow." The Choleric types were identified with the

Bull archetype (truculent suspicion, paranoia) and the element,

earth,
standing for sluggish pseudo "stupidity." (This is the traditional

stance of defeated races dealing with their conquerors.)

The Bilius types (hostile strength) were identified with the
Eagle

archetype (symbol of Imperial Rome, the German royal family,

etc.) and the element
air,
air probably means sky, because these

types seem "high and mighty."

These symbols go back a long way; Cabalists find them in the

Old Testament (where, indeed, the lion-angel-bull-eagle appear

in Ezekiel). They are found constantly in Catholic art, associated

with the four evangelists (Matthew-angel, Mark-lion, Luke-bull,

John-eagle)
1
and run all through the design of Tarot card decks,

medieval and modern.

1 These are the Four Old Men in
Finnegans Wake.
Matt Gregory,

because his last name contains
ego
equals the angel; Marcus Lyons

equals the lion; Luke Tarpey equals taur, the bull; Johnny McDougal

equals ougal the eagle.

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In the clever language of the fashionable Transactional Analysis

system, these four imprint types are categorized as the four

basic life scripts, to wit:

It is the Phlegmatic (friendly weakness; dependent neurotic)

type who generally turn up in the psychotherapist's office seeking

reimprinting voluntarily. They are not-okay, but they have

great faith that the therapist is okay.

The Bilius (hostile strength) and Choleric (hostile weakness)

arrive in therapy, if at all, only because their associates or families,

or more commonly, a law court, has
ordered
them to try to

reimprint their compulsive hostilities.

The Sanguinary (friendly strength) type virtually never comes

for psychotherapy. He or she is satisfied with his or her life, and

so is the rest of society. Alas, they nonetheless can get to the

position where they need therapy of some sort, simply because

they may take on
too much
responsibility and carry
too many

burdens. They will generally arrive at the therapists only if sent

there by an M.D. who has intuited where their ulcers came from.

This system is not meant to be rigid or to imply that there are

only
four types of humanoid robots. The later circuits, still to be

discussed, modify all this considerably: some imprints are wobbly

(cover two or more quadrants partly); and we are all capable

of sudden brain change. It is also important to realize that the

four archetypes are
for convenience only—
and they are convenient,

as witness their reappearance in Transactional Analysis,

where their historical connection with Lion-Angel-Bull-Eagle

isn't even recognized. But each quadrant can be subdivided

much more sharply, if necessary for diagnostic purposes.

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75

For instance, the most widely used psychological test in this

country the Leary Interpersonal Grid (1957) divides the four

quadrants into sixteen sub-quadrants and allows one to grade

each in terms of moderate-to-excessive tendency to behave that

way. In the grid on which the Leary categories are drawn, the

moderate imprints
are in toward the center and the
excessive or

extreme cases
are out toward the perimeter, but what is being

measured is still basically the way the first two circuits (oral-biosurvival

and anal-territorial) are imprinted.

To clarify this a bit further, imagine that four babies were all

born at the same instant in John J. Boscowitz Memorial Hospital,

Enny Town, planet Earth. We come back twenty years later and

we find that each of them has a separate personality and life-style

(a problem for the astrologers, but let that pass). To make things

easier for us, they have actually landed in our four quadrants.

Subject #1 is Responsible/Over-Conventional (Sanguinary).

Everybody agrees that SHe (she or he) is usually a beloved

community leader—helpful, considerate, friendly and solidly

successful. Some may even say SHe spoils people with kindness,

forgives anything, agrees with everybody and actually enjoys

governing those who cannot govern themselves. The noble Lion.

This person may be (and probably is) a total robot. That is, if

SHe can
never
give orders in a strict way, is
never
able to doubt

others, is
never
ego-centered, etc. then SHe has mechanically

imprinted the First Quadrant, "friendly strength." On the other

hand, if SHe is able to move out of the First Quadrant in appropriate

situations (exercizing hostility against the marauder or

predator, admitting weakness when overwhelmed), SHe has an

imprinted-conditioned predilection for "I'm okay, you're okay,"

but is not totally robotized by it.

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LEARY'S INTERPERSONAL GRID

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THE FOUR QUADRANTS HAVE BEEN RECOGNIZED IN

MANY AGES AND EXPRESSED IN MANY SYMBOLS.

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Subject #2 has, after the same twenty years of imprinting and

conditioning, landed in Quadrant
2 friendly weakness
(Phlegmatic).

SHe is self-critical, shy, timid, easily led, "spineless," and

always looking for somebody to Take Charge and Give Orders.

The unearthly Angel, or in modem symbolism, the Flower Child.

Again, this imprinting-conditioning may be totally robotic, or

there may be enough flexibility for the person to jump to another

quadrant when necessary.

Subject #3 had landed, with total robothood or with some

small flexibility, in Quadrant 3, "Hostile Weakness" (Choleric).

She distrusts everybody, rebels against everything, speaks constantly

in sarcasms, complains chronically and is generally bitter,

resentful and (to some extent) paranoid. The sullen Bull.

Subject #4 has landed in Quadrant 4, "Hostile Strength"

(Bilius), and is regarded as "bossy," cold, unfeeling, dictatorial,

self-important, boastful etc. but still in the judgment of most, "a

good leader." The imperial Eagle.

The irony and the tragedy of human life is that none of these

subjects are aware at all of their robotry. Each will explain to

you, at great length and with great conviction, why each of these

robotic, endlessly-repeated reflexes are
caused
by the situations

around them, i.e., by the "bad" behavior of other people.

WHAT THE THINKER THINKS, THE PROVER PROVES.

Thus, if you put these four primates on a desert island, you

can predict, with virtually as much certainty as a chemist telling

us what will happen if four elements are compounded, that

Subject #1 and
#4
(Friendly Strength and Hostile Strength) will

both try to take over—#1 to help the others, #4 because SHe

can't imagine anybody else in control. #1 will submit to #4

because #1 wants things to run smoothly for the good of all, and

they never will run smoothly if #4 is not TOP DOG. #2, Friendly

Weakness, will not care whether
#1
or #4 rules, just so long as

somebody else is making the decisions. And #3 will complain

(and complain, and complain), no matter who is in charge, while

skillfully avoiding any action that would require taking personal

responsibility.

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The same political decisions would be made by four chimpanzees

or four dogs, if they have the four imprint quadrants

equally divided as in our hypothetical example.

Sociobiologists, who are very aware of these four quadrants in

both human and animal societies, claim that each organism is

born with a genetic predisposition to play one of these roles.

Critics of sociobiology, who are dogmatic Liberals, denounce