reversing

ne	reversing eliminate something by seizing it obtain something by giving it away

negative thinking > achieving negative goals > reversing

Reversing (for negative ends) is sometimes known as negation of the negation.

Heraclitus says: ‘the road up is the same as the road down’. Change in any direction is sometimes better than remaining fixed. Pushing initially in the wrong direction will ultimately lead to a movement in the right direction.

Is there a ‘right’ direction? In some fields there probably is, especially where we can identify a conscious intention for movement in a specific direction. Thus the fat person trying to lose weight has this as a conscious intention, perhaps subverted by other intra-psychic (unconscious) agencies. Hegel applied this logic to the progress of history, and this notion was taken up (to some extent) by Marx.

Engels, in Anti-Dühring, stated the dialectical ‘law’ of the negation of the negation. This has attracted a wide range of opinions, from outright scorn from those who see it as logical nonsense, to confused acceptance from those who proceed to apply it uncritically and inappropriately. Following Jon Elster, we regard this not as a law but as a ‘not infrequent pattern of change’.

‘A paradigm case of the negation of the negation is the transition from capitalism to communism. … It instantiates the pattern of an undifferentiated unity, followed by differentiation and splitting (first negation) and then the establishment of a higher, differentiated unity (second negation).’

One of the techniques used exquisitely by the hypnotherapist Milton Erikson was ‘prescribing the symptom’. So instead of preventing the patient doing or thinking X, the therapist may help the patient do or think X more effectively. For example, if a patient is anorexic or overweight, the therapist may demand that the anorexic lose even more weight, or the obese gain even more.

How does this help? Often there are hidden feedback loops that maintain X, and restore X after any intervention designed to reduce X. This is as true of organizations as it is of individual personalities. Prescribing the symptom can have the paradoxical effect of destroying the feedback loop, thus allowing the individual or organization to escape a vicious circle or spiral. The technique also demonstrates that the subject has control over X.

Some creative thinking uses reversal techniques, where the problem is hypothetically inverted, for brainstorming purposes. (How could we make this situation worse?) But it gets more interesting when reversal is used, not as an intellectual exercise but as a real-life intervention.

Driving When you ask a driving instructor what to do in a skid, you get two pieces of advice: (1) Don’t skid (2) Steer into the skid. This illustrates another aspect of this class of interventions: the first priority is to (re)gain control. Control literally means a ‘rolling against’. Therefore reversal is a controlling stratagem.

Testing If an engineer wants a system to work reliably, she appoints someone to find ways of making it fail. This is called system testing.

Polarity
response Some people do the opposite of whatever is suggested to them. This response is intended to protect them against being influenced by other people, but actually makes it very easy for them to be manipulated.

Homeopathy

Belief
formation Elster illustrates the pattern of ‘negation of the negation’ using some instances of belief formation, ‘beginning with dogmatic belief, passing through doubt and arriving finally at a more reflective belief.’ He cites Tocqueville: ‘Deep conviction lies at the two ends, with doubt in the middle.’

Swapping
roles Transactional Analysis: playing parent instead of child, or vice versa.
Moving the deckchairs on the Titanic. Cabinet reshuffles.
"Host and guest reversed"[36 stratagems] The parasite becomes the host: some strange biological examples. The parasite becomes a slave: (castration turns enemy into eunoch).

Propaganda During the Second World War, Gregory Bateson established a radio station in the Far East, designed to ‘neutralize’ Japanese propaganda. The station’s policy was simple: listen to the Japanese propaganda, and rebroadcast an exaggerated version, pretending to be a Japanese station. This followed the principle of exaggerating the symptom. They assumed that the genuine Japanese radio stations were probably already going to the limits of plausibility; the fake station would therefore push beyond these limits, thus countering the credibility not only of its own stories but also of those broadcast by the genuine Japanese stations.

Negative
Feedback ‘Marx was quite fond of [the] idea, that in capitalism equilibrium is attained only by the "negation of the negation" - by the constant overcoming of deviations from equilibrium rather than in the direct way that would be possible in a planned economy.’ [Elster]
Elster adds: ‘In retrospect we can say that the attainment of equilibrium by out-of-equilibrium trading is a much more complex process than Marx and the classical economists believed, and that the dynamic processs of mutual adjustments may well fail to bring about an equilibrium.’

Industrial
relations ‘Under liberal capitalism, the only effective form of protest against excessive prolongation of working hours sometimes consists in temporarily abstaining from work altogether (a strike).’ [Kotarbinksi]
Marx describes this in dialectic terms: he regards what is normally seen as a deterioration in social conditions - the heightening of class struggle - as a sign of the impending improvement in social conditions.

Delegation
- Creative
Management If we want to make an organization more spontaneous, less bureaucratic, we might consider appointing a small group of bureaucrats, who act as the bureaucratic conscience of the organization, allowing everyone else to relax (externalize?, project?) their bureaucratic instincts and become more innovative. In most consultancy companies, the main pressure is to maximize the utilization of consultants - the number of days in the year that are billable to clients. Obviously, the higher the utilization, the higher the salaries that can be paid to the consultants, and the higher the gross profits. Some consultancies have mottoes such as "No Dead Time". (The message is of course reinforced by using the emotionally charged word ‘dead’ for unbillable time.)
However, one extremely innovative company decided to rebel against these mottoes, and circulated the reverse motto: "Maximize Dead Time". This was partly a joke, not to be taken seriously, but there was a serious intent. Given that all the employees were all highly creative and highly motivated, whatever they did was likely to end up generating a profit for the company. (This would have worked better, but for the fact that the management sometimes lost its nerve, and interfered with the creativity of the employees, spoiling everything.)
Tom Peters takes this a step further. His advice to top management: If you are in control, you are out of control. To increase control, decrease control.

Sight &
Insight Only by giving up your sight can you gain insight. Œdipus blinds himself partly because he wants to be a seer like Tiresias.

Humility The paradox of Christianity is that the first shall be last and the last first. "Let a man humble himself till he is like this child, and he will be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." [Matthew XVIII] This is a spiritual form of reversal.
Even the sign of Christianity - the cross of the crucifixion - was originally supposed to denote the pagan humiliation of Jesus, yet it was reversed by the resurrection into a glorious symbol of redemption.

Page last updated on February 19th, 2001
Copyright © 2000, 2001 Richard Veryard

Driving	When you ask a driving instructor what to do in a skid, you get two pieces of advice: (1) Don’t skid (2) Steer into the skid. This illustrates another aspect of this class of interventions: the first priority is to (re)gain control. Control literally means a ‘rolling against’. Therefore reversal is a controlling stratagem.
Testing	If an engineer wants a system to work reliably, she appoints someone to find ways of making it fail. This is called system testing.
Polarity response	Some people do the opposite of whatever is suggested to them. This response is intended to protect them against being influenced by other people, but actually makes it very easy for them to be manipulated.
Homeopathy
Belief formation	Elster illustrates the pattern of ‘negation of the negation’ using some instances of belief formation, ‘beginning with dogmatic belief, passing through doubt and arriving finally at a more reflective belief.’ He cites Tocqueville: ‘Deep conviction lies at the two ends, with doubt in the middle.’
Swapping roles	Transactional Analysis: playing parent instead of child, or vice versa. Moving the deckchairs on the Titanic. Cabinet reshuffles. "Host and guest reversed"[36 stratagems] The parasite becomes the host: some strange biological examples. The parasite becomes a slave: (castration turns enemy into eunoch).
Propaganda	During the Second World War, Gregory Bateson established a radio station in the Far East, designed to ‘neutralize’ Japanese propaganda. The station’s policy was simple: listen to the Japanese propaganda, and rebroadcast an exaggerated version, pretending to be a Japanese station. This followed the principle of exaggerating the symptom. They assumed that the genuine Japanese radio stations were probably already going to the limits of plausibility; the fake station would therefore push beyond these limits, thus countering the credibility not only of its own stories but also of those broadcast by the genuine Japanese stations.
Negative Feedback	‘Marx was quite fond of [the] idea, that in capitalism equilibrium is attained only by the "negation of the negation" - by the constant overcoming of deviations from equilibrium rather than in the direct way that would be possible in a planned economy.’ [Elster] Elster adds: ‘In retrospect we can say that the attainment of equilibrium by out-of-equilibrium trading is a much more complex process than Marx and the classical economists believed, and that the dynamic processs of mutual adjustments may well fail to bring about an equilibrium.’
Industrial relations	‘Under liberal capitalism, the only effective form of protest against excessive prolongation of working hours sometimes consists in temporarily abstaining from work altogether (a strike).’ [Kotarbinksi] Marx describes this in dialectic terms: he regards what is normally seen as a deterioration in social conditions - the heightening of class struggle - as a sign of the impending improvement in social conditions.
Delegation - Creative Management	If we want to make an organization more spontaneous, less bureaucratic, we might consider appointing a small group of bureaucrats, who act as the bureaucratic conscience of the organization, allowing everyone else to relax (externalize?, project?) their bureaucratic instincts and become more innovative. In most consultancy companies, the main pressure is to maximize the utilization of consultants - the number of days in the year that are billable to clients. Obviously, the higher the utilization, the higher the salaries that can be paid to the consultants, and the higher the gross profits. Some consultancies have mottoes such as "No Dead Time". (The message is of course reinforced by using the emotionally charged word ‘dead’ for unbillable time.) However, one extremely innovative company decided to rebel against these mottoes, and circulated the reverse motto: "Maximize Dead Time". This was partly a joke, not to be taken seriously, but there was a serious intent. Given that all the employees were all highly creative and highly motivated, whatever they did was likely to end up generating a profit for the company. (This would have worked better, but for the fact that the management sometimes lost its nerve, and interfered with the creativity of the employees, spoiling everything.) Tom Peters takes this a step further. His advice to top management: If you are in control, you are out of control. To increase control, decrease control.
Sight & Insight	Only by giving up your sight can you gain insight. Œdipus blinds himself partly because he wants to be a seer like Tiresias.
Humility	The paradox of Christianity is that the first shall be last and the last first. "Let a man humble himself till he is like this child, and he will be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." [Matthew XVIII] This is a spiritual form of reversal. Even the sign of Christianity - the cross of the crucifixion - was originally supposed to denote the pagan humiliation of Jesus, yet it was reversed by the resurrection into a glorious symbol of redemption.