Artificial Paranoia : A Computer Simulation of Paranoid Processes KENNETH MARK COLBY, M.D. University of California School of Medicine Los Angeles PERGAMON PRESS INC· New York · Toronto · Oxford · Sydney · Braunschweig PERGAMON PRESS INC. Maxwell House, Fairview Park, Elmsford, N.Y. 10523 PERGAMON OF CANADA LTD. 207 Queen's Quay West, Toronto 117, Ontario PERGAMON PRESS LTD. Headington Hill Hall, Oxford PERGAMON PRESS (AUST.) PTY. LTD. Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, N.S.W. PERGAMON GmbH Burgplatz 1, Braunschweig Copyright © 1975, Pergamon Press Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Colby, Kenneth Mark. Artificial paranoia; a computer simulation of paranoid processes. (Pergamon general psychology series, 49) Bibliography: p. 1. Paranoia. 2. Electronic data processing- Psychiatry. 3. Digital computer simulation. I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Interview, Psychological. 2. Models, Psychological. 3. Paranoia. WM205 C686a] RC520.C64 1975 616.8'97 74-8815 ISBN 0-08-018162-7 ISBN 0-08-018161-9 (pbk.) All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Pergamon Press Inc. Printed in the United States of America Preface Something "artificial" is manmade. Someone "paranoid" believes others have malevolent intentions toward him. Artificial paranoia represents an attempt to computer simulate naturally-occurring paranoia. Such an attempt is of interest to psychiatrists, psychologists, computer scientists, and behavioral scientists in general. The significance of this simulation model lies in its (1) appropriateness, (2) systemicity, and (3) testability. (1) Psychiatrists deal with their patients at the symbolic level of natural language communication. It is at a symbolic level of analysis that explanations of symbolic behavior are the most appropriate and useful in providing understanding. (2) Since the model consists of an algorithm running on a computer, the consistency or systemicity requirement for a conjunction of hypotheses is met. (3) Theoretical ideas formulated in natural language can be made more precise, consistent, and testable when embodied in a symbolic model. If relevant empirical tests yield disconfirmatory instances, the model is rejected and abandoned as unworkable. If the tests result in confirmatory instances, the model merits working with further as a promising possibil ity. Improvements in the model result from increasing its precision, consistency, and extension. The simulation model to be described represents a new conjunction of hypotheses. It is the first model of psychopathology that has been tested by comparing its linguistic behavior in a psychiatric interview with the linguistic behavior of paranoid patients. A computer simulation of paranoid processes involves the construction and testing of a complex symbolic model. To fathom such a model and its vii vili Preface functions, it is first necessary to understand the perspectives of symbol processing and computer simulation. I shall try to present some back ground information sufficient to orient a reader unfamiliar with these perspectives. I am indebted to co-workers who collaborated with me in constructing and testing the model. Sylvia Weber Russell, a graduate student in Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, wrote the original version of the program. Franklin Dennis Hilf, a psychiatrist and research associate in the Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, was primarily responsible for the validation studies. Helena Kraemer, research associate in biostatistics, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University, assisted in the design of the experiments and in carrying out the statistical methods used. Also I am grateful to Bruce Anderson, Bruce Buchanan, Franklin Dennis Hilf, Roger C. Parkison, Charles J. Rieger III, and Yorick Wilks for their comments on the entire manuscript and to Margaret A. Boden, Horace Enea, and Abraham Kaplan for suggestions regarding specific chapters. Because I made them, I bear full responsibility for the errors. This research was supported by Grant PHS MH 06645-12 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by (in part) Research Scientist Award (No. 1-K05-K14,433) from the National Institute of Mental Health. K.M.C. The Author Kenneth Mark Colby (M.D. Yale University) is currently Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California School of Medicine in Los Angeles and Director of the Higher Mental Functions Project in the Department of Psychiatry there. He was formerly Senior Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University and Research Scientist sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. His primary research interests are in the use of computer models in psychiatry and psychotherapy. He is the author of five books and fifty-three papers, and coeditor (with Roger C. Schank) of Computer Models of Thought and Language. In 1973 he received the Freida Fromm-Reichmann Award from the American Academy of Psycho analysis for research in childhood autism. CHAPTER 1 The Paranoid Mode THE CONCEPT OF PARANOIA Like ourselves, the ancient Greeks called one another paranoid. The term "paranoia" (Gr: para = beside; nous = mind) referred to states of craziness and mental deterioration. For roughly the next two thousand years the term disappeared from classifications of mental disorders. Historians have not seemed curious about what persons with persecutory delusions were called all that time. (It is doubtful that there were not any such persons.) In the 18th century the term reappears in German classifications to refer to delusional states categorized as disorders of intellect rather than emotion (Lewis, 1970). Little agreement about the meaning of the term "paranoia" was reached until this half of the present century, when it achieved a solid adjectival status, as in "paranoid personality" and "paranoid state." At present the category "paranoid" has high reliability (85-95% interjudge agreement). The term is generally used to refer to the presence of persecutory delusions. To distinguish: somatic, erotic, grandeur, and jealousy delusions are simply identified as such without characterizing them as paranoid. To introduce what being paranoid is like, let us first consider two modes of human activity, one termed "ordinary" and the other termed "paranoid." In the ordinary mode of human action a person goes about his business of everyday living in a matter-of-fact way. He deals with recurrent and routine situations in his environment as they arise, taking things at their 1 2 Artificial Paranoia face value. Events proceed in accordance with his beliefs and expecta tions and thus can be managed routinely. Only a small amount of attention need be devoted to monitoring the environment, simply checking that everything is as expected. This placid ongoing flow of events can be interrupted by the detection of signs of alarm or opportunity at any time. But the predominant condition is one of a steady progression of events so ordinary as to be uneventful. In contrast to this routine ordinariness is the arousal state of emergency termed the "paranoid mode," characterized by a continuous wary suspi- ciousness. To appreciate the nature and problems of this state, imagine the situation of a spy in a hostile country. To him, everyone he meets is a potential enemy, a threat to existence who must be evaluated for malevolence. To survive, he must be hypervigilant and fully mobilized to attack, to flee, to stalk. In this situation appearances are not to be taken-at face value as ordinary events or routine background but each must be attended to and interpreted in order to detect malevolence. Events in the environment, which in the ordinary mode would not be connected to the self, become referred to the self and interpreted as potentially menacing. The unintended effects of other persons may be misinterpreted as intended and the undesigned tends to become confused with the designed. Nothing can be allowed to be unattendable. The dominant intention of the agent is to detect malevolence from others. When dividing the world of experience into conceptual classes, we sort and group together objects and events according to common properties. The members of a class resemble one another in sharing certain proper ties. The resemblances are neither exact nor total; members of a conceptual class are considered more or less alike and there exist degrees of resemblance. Further, humans are neither subjective nor objective; they are projective. In forming classifications, they project their inten tions onto the world. Thus the world of experience consists both of our interactive relations and the objects to which we relate depending on our interests. Observations and classifications made by clinicians regarding naturally- occurring paranoid disorders have been thoroughly described in the psychiatric literature. Extensive accounts can be found in Swanson, Bohnert, and Smith (1970) and in Cameron (1967). I shall attempt to give a condensed description of paranoid phenomena as they appear in, or are described by, patients in a psychiatric interview. It is many of these phenomena which the proposed simulation model attempts to explain. The Paranoid Mode 3 CHARACTERISTICS OF CLINICAL PARANOIA The main phenomena of paranoid disorders can be summarized under concepts of suspiciousness, self-reference, hypersensitivity, fearfulness, hostility, and rigidity. These class-concepts represent common empirical indicators of the paranoid mode. Suspiciousness The chief characteristic of clinical paranoid disorders consists of suspiciousness—a mistrust of others based on the patient's malevolence beliefs. The patient believes others, known and unknown, have evil intentions toward him. In his relationships he is continuously on the look-out for signs of malevolence, some of which he infers from the results of his own probings. He is hypervigilant; people must be watched, their schemes unmasked and foiled. He is convinced others try to humiliate, harass, subjugate, injure, and even kill him. In an interview he may report such beliefs directly or, if he is well guarded, he offers only hints. He does not confide easily. Disclosure may depend upon how the interviewer responds in the dialogue to the patient's reports of fluctuating suspicions and/or absolute convictions. He is greatly concerned with "evidence." No room is allowed for mistakes, ambiguities, or chance happenings. ("Paranoids have a greater passion for the truth than other madmen."—Saul Bellow in Sammler's Planet.) Using trivial evidential details, his inferences leap from the undeniable to the unbelievable. The patient may vary in his own estimate of the strength of his malevolence beliefs. If they consist of weakly held suspicions, he may have moments of reasoning with himself in which he tries to reject them as ill-founded. But when the beliefs represent absolute convictions, he does not struggle to dismiss them. They become preconditions for countering actions against tormentors who wish and try to do him evil. He seeks affirmation of his beliefs. ("It is certain that my conviction increases the moment another soul will believe in it."—Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim.) He wants sympathy and allies in positions of power such as clinicians or lawyers who can help him take action against his oppressors. The malevolence beliefs may involve a specific other person or a conspiracy of others such as the Mafia, the FBI, Communists, Hell's Angels. The patient sees himself as a victim, one who suffers at the hands of others, rather than as an agent who brings the suffering on himself. 4 Artificial Paranoia Other agents subject him to, and make him the object of, their evil intentions. He dwells on and rehearses these outrages in his imagination. He schemes to defeat or escape his adversaries. The misdeeds of others are denounced, disparaged, condemned, and belittled. He feels interfered with and discriminated against. The specific content of the beliefs may not be directly expressed in a first interview. The patient may be so mistrustful of how their disclosure might be used against him that he cautiously feels his way through an interview offering only hints that an interviewer can use to infer the presence of persecutory delusions. Using his own credibility judgments, the interviewer attempts to determine whether the patient's malevolence beliefs are delusions (false beliefs) or not. Experienced clinicians realize that some malevolence beliefs can turn out to be true. Others may represent correct estimations oft the part of the patient who, however, fails to see that the malevolence of others is a secondary consequence of his tendency to accuse and provoke others to the point where they in fact become hostile toward him. Self-Reference and Hypersensitivity The patient may believe many events in the world pertain directly to him. Other observers of his situation find his conviction hard to accept. For example, he may be convinced that newspaper headlines refer to him personally or that the statements of radio announcers contain special messages for him. Hypervigilant and hypersensitive, he reads himself into situations that are not actually intended to pertain to him and his particular concerns. References to the self are misconstrued as slurs, snubs, slights, or unfair judgments. He may feel he is being watched and stared at. He is excessively concerned about his visibility to eyes that threaten to see concealed inadequacies, expose and censure them. Cameras, telescopes, etc. that may be directed his way unnerve him. He may feel mysteriously influenced through electricity, radio waves, or (more contemporaneously) by emanations from computers. He is hypersensitive to criticism. In crowds he believes he is intentionally bumped. Driving on the highway he feels repeatedly followed too closely by the car behind. Badgered and bombarded without relief by this stream of wrongs, he becomes hyper- irritable, querulous, and quarrelsome. He is touchy about certain topics, flaring up when references to The Paranoid Mode 5 particular conceptual domains appear in the conversation. For example, any remarks about his age, religion, family, or sex life may set him off. Even when these domains are touched upon without reference to him, e.g., religion in general, he may take it personally. When a delusional complex is present, linguistic terms far removed from, but still conceptu ally connectable to, the complex stir him up. Thus, to a man holding beliefs that the Mafia intend to harm him, any remark about Italy might lead him to react in a suspicious or fearful manner. Fearfulness and Hostility The major affects expressed, both verbally and nonverbally, are those of fear, anger, and mistrust. The patient fears that others wish to subjugate and control him. He may be fearful of physical attack and injury even to the point of death. His fear is justified in his mind by the many threats he detects in the conduct of others toward him. He is hostile to what are interpreted as insinuations or demeaning allusions. His chronic irritability becomes punctuated with outbursts of raging tirades and diatribes. When he feels he is being overwhelmed, he may erupt and in desperation physically attack others. The affects of fear, anger, and mistrust he experiences blend with one another in varying proportions to yield an unpleasant negative affect-state made continuous by fantasied rehearsals and retellings of past wrongs. Depending on his interpretation of inputs, the patient may move away from others and become guarded, secretive, and evasive; or he may suddenly jump at others with sarcastic accusations and arguments. His negative affect-states become locked into self-perpetuating cycles with other people in his life space who may take censuring action toward him because of his uncommunicativeness or outbursts. Rigidity Another salient characteristic of the paranoid mode is excessive rigidity. The patient's beliefs in his sensitive areas remain fixed, difficult to influence by evidence or persuasion. The patient himself makes few attempts to falsify his convictions. To change a belief is to admit being wrong. To forgive others also opens a crack in the wall of righteousness. He does not apologize nor accept apology. He stubbornly follows rules to the letter and his literal interpretations of an organization's regulations can drive others wild. It is this insistent posture of rigidity and inflexibility that makes the treatment of paranoid processes by symbolic-semantic