The Tension in Fitting In

The Spiral-derived Tree

In Change Primary Spiral, each essence of a mode contributes to clarifying situations through providing acceptability, which is the psychosocial pressure of the Change Domain. The 7 essences can be laid out as hierarchical levels—as confirmation that this is valid they generate an oscillating duality. The essence/levels affect each other which indicates the hierarchy is holistic, and that means it can form a Tree pattern by identifying and applying the appropriate dynamic duality.

Tree diagrams represent a person actually functioning in psychosocial reality. That means they show how the Domain's Primal Need is met in practice. Trees always reveal an automatic activation of tensions because they make it very obvious that there is the potential for opposition between the person's interests and socio-physical demands of the milieu.

In this Change Domain framework, the Tree's function is to clarify situations in a way that is acceptable and enables a person to fit in. Fitting in (or fitness) is the Primal Need. So the Tree, taken as a whole, will reveal the objective determinants of fitness and how they interact.

The Dynamic Duality

In clarifying situations to fit in with the social environment, the dynamic tension is particularly marked. It is natural to ask:

• whether the clarification emerges on the basis of the socio-cultural ethos, communal assumptions, and general understanding,
OR
•whether the clarification can be solely a product of the person’s observation, intuition and imagination, affected by their interests, unique background, unconscious biases and preferred perspectives.

As usual, in the Tree diagrams to be developed:

  • solely personal control (i.e. singular, willed) is labelled with a subscript P
  • solely social control (i.e. cultural, given) is labelled with a subscript S
  • where both personal and social controlsmust be taken in to account and fused or synthesized, the subscript label is B (for balanced).

Application of this duality to a mode essence/level converts it into either one balanced Centre centrally placed, or into two opposing Centres with the more dominant Centre conventionally placed on the right.

Developing the Tree

Given clarity about the dynamic duality, it is possible to develop a Tree.

Step 1: Apply the duality to each level to determine the Centre. Indicate Centre dominance where levels are bipolar and determine the influence (channel) between those two Centres.

Step 2: Then check and name influences between Centres in different levels in three stages as follows:

  • All Channels that feed into the shared framework-CL2: see here.
  • All Channels that feed into the accepted narrative-CL4: see here
  • The remaining Channels that operate on the periphery from CL7 to CL1: see here.

Step 3: Check for other possible Channels. See Review.

Originally posted: 10-May-2025