Freedom From Stress
Contents
Foreword  
Introduction
Chapter 1

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FOREWORD
 
William T. Powers

Ed Ford is a charter member of an odd collection of scientists and professionals called the Control Systems Group. The basic theme that holds this group together is a conception of human behavior that grew out of cybernetics in the early 1950s. For many years, perceptual control theory (as the new idea is called, at least by me, this week) was nursed along and developed by a very small handful of people. It wasn't very popular among psychologists for two main reasons. The first was that it sounded too much like engineering and not enough like real people. The second was that when most psychologists began to get a glimmer of what it is about, they would slam the door and pull the shutters closed. It was perfectly clear that if the concepts in perceptual control theory are right, not much that psychologists have believed would survive.
     Slowly, however, understanding of this new idea spread. The main lines of development still didn't look very promising as a realistic picture of how people work, because the experiments being done were very simple, tending to involve a person sitting in front of a computer screen wiggling a joystick. There were, however, a few people like Ed who kept insisting that perceptual control theory - or just control theory for short - had to be made understandable to everyone, not just to mathematicians, engineers, and psychologists. When Ed got tired of insisting, he decided he would have to do it himself. That is how this book and the one that preceded it came into existence.
     Ed is not an amateur, but a Master of Social Work with a long history of experience as a successful counselor. But his background was in practical dealings with human affairs, not with abstract theories. His own struggles to translate ideas from one world into another for himself have turned into a growing skill in translating those ideas into common and understandable terms.
     That is why he is a valued member of a group that is rather heavy with abstract thinkers and academic types. Ed's role is to make these people explain clearly and simply what they mean, often with the result that they come to understand their own ideas better. After he has made them do this, he turns around and writes books like Freedom from Stress. The academics in the Control Systems Group might look at a book of this sort and say, "Well, I wouldn't write it that way." After they read it carefully, however, they must admit that all the ideas are there, properly expressed, sounding like nothing more than good common sense. I think this is quite an achievement. I also think that Ed attests to one of the main strengths of the Control Systems Group: it is free of intellectual snobbery, demonstrating through work like that of Ed's the advantages of openness.
     Stress is often described in a way that makes it sound something like measles - a disease that you catch, something that gets inside you and causes troubles like an invading microorganism. The principles of control theory, however, teach us that human beings and other organisms are complex systems run more by inner motivations and networks of goals than by external forces. They are so complex that they can get themselves into trouble, one part of the whole system coming into conflict with another part. Control theorists think that stress is a condition in which a person is at war internally, one desire thwarting another desire, one goal canceling another goal. A human being, in other words, creates the stress in an attempt to deal with the problems of life in a way that's not internally consistent.
     It's not pleasant to be told, in effect, "You're doing it to yourself." But from another point of view, that is a very encouraging judgment - if you're doing it to yourself, then you can also stop doing it to yourself. The catch, of course, is that you're not aware of doing this to yourself; if you were, you wouldn't have the problem because then you would just stop doing whatever is clearly causing the problem. If you're doing it to yourself, but don't see how, this means that you have to learn something about how your body and mind work. Only then can you see the indirect and subtle ways in which inner conflict can arise; then you can change the goals and perceptions that led to the conflict that generates the symptoms we call stress.
     Ed's aim in this book is first to teach control theory in terms that are relevant to ordinary life and the problems of real people who aren't theoreticians. That's the main theme in his current writings. But in this book he slants the message toward the specific problem of stress: what it is and what people can do to free themselves of this difficulty. He is convinced, and I agree, that the basic task is to understand what is going on, not to prescribe some pill or procedure that will work like a cold remedy. Out of understanding will come awareness of what has to change. And then the change will come about naturally.
     Control theory is not the perfect final answer to everything; it simply represents what many reasonable people think is the best current guess about how we work. Ed tells you here enough about this theory so you can make up your own mind, check out what he says for yourself. No book can substitute for a personal relationship with a helpful and experienced counselor, but this book may give you a head start in solving the kinds of problems meant by the word stress.