Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms In Cognitive Multi Agent Systems

Human cognitive processes and defense mechanisms, as described in psychoanalysis, bring about new notions and paradigms for artificial intelligence systems. One key reason is that the human cognitive processes and defense mechanisms in question can accomplish conflict detection functionalities, filter functionalities, and other system stabilizing tasks within artificial intelligence systems. Yet artificial cognitive architectures lack the capability to analyze complex situations as well as the universal competencies needed to orientate themselves in complex environments in various domains. Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in Cognitive Multi-Agent Systems addresses this dilemma by exploring how to describe, model, and implement psychoanalytic defense mechanisms in the course of a project that provides a functional model of the human mind. With discussions focusing on the development of a mathematical description for the implementation of conflict detection, the activation and selection of defense mechanisms, and the processing of defense mechanisms, Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in Cognitive Multi-Agent Systems describes the decisive points for the application of defense mechanisms in artificial intelligence. Formulae that treat defense mechanisms as transformations are also provided. Interdisciplinary cooperation between the scientific fields of psychoanalysis and artificial intelligence is highlighted as the foundation of new research findings throughout the book. Innovative and exciting, this book will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduates in the fields of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and psychoanalysis.

Human cognitive processes and defense mechanisms, as described in psychoanalysis, bring about new notions and paradigms for artificial intelligence systems. One key reason is that the human cognitive processes and defense mechanisms in question can accomplish conflict detection functionalities, filter functionalities, and other system stabilizing tasks within artificial intelligence systems. Yet artificial cognitive architectures lack the capability to analyze complex situations as well as the universal competencies needed to orientate themselves in complex environments in various domains. Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in Cognitive Multi-Agent Systems addresses this dilemma by exploring how to describe, model, and implement psychoanalytic defense mechanisms in the course of a project that provides a functional model of the human mind. With discussions focusing on the development of a mathematical description for the implementation of conflict detection, the activation and selection of defense mechanisms, and the processing of defense mechanisms, Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in Cognitive Multi-Agent Systems describes the decisive points for the application of defense mechanisms in artificial intelligence. Formulae that treat defense mechanisms as transformations are also provided. Interdisciplinary cooperation between the scientific fields of psychoanalysis and artificial intelligence is highlighted as the foundation of new research findings throughout the book. Innovative and exciting, this book will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduates in the fields of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and psychoanalysis.

The idea that the human mind-that faculty of the intellect which we use to define and discern the truth-might also be used to deceive itself is not new. The classic orator Demosthenes warned of this possibility in 349 B.C. when he wrote that "Nothing is more easy than to deceive one's self; what a man wishes he generally believes to be true." 1 Even Jean Jacques Rousseau, who suggested the possibility of man as "noble savage," alerts us to this paradox, when he writes "Jamais fa nature ne nous trompe; c'est toujours nous qui nous trompons" ("Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves). 2 But it was Sigmund Freud who placed this idea firmly into the field of psychopathology and then, later, into a general psychological theory. According to Freud, understanding the function of a defense mechanism means not only fathoming the origin of pathological symptoms but also comprehending a model of the mind that includes both conscious and unconscious mental processes. From this initial focus on the general process of defense, Freud and his followers went on to identify various forms this process might take, with the result that today we have a list of 3 more than 37 defense mechanisms described in the literature.

The book is focused on defense mechanisms as theoretical constructs as well as the possibilities of their empirical registration by different methods, and the application of these constructs in different fields of psychology with special regard to concurrent and predictive validity. It is argued that defense mechanisms are in many ways to be seen as integrative constructs, not necessarily restricted to psychoanalytic theory and that the potential fields of their application have a wide ranging scope, comprising many fields of psychology. Consequently empirical studies are presented from the fields of clinical and personality psychology, psychotherapy research and psychosomatic phenomena and diseases. Methodological questions have a heavy weight in most of these studies. Provides coverage of relevant literature Covers different fields of application Attempts an integration of the contstruct of defense mechanisms into mainstream psychology Provides explanations of the theoretical basis of the construct of defense mechanisms

This book features contributions from twenty six leading experts that survey the theoretical, historical, methodological, empirical, and clinical aspects of repression and the repressive personality style, from both psychoanalytic and cognitive psychological perspectives. "Rarely does a volume present contributions on a controversial topic from such distinguished clinicians and experimentalists . . . . There is something of interest in this volume for almost anyone involved in experimental cognitive psychology and psychiatry."—Carroll E. Izard, Contemporary Psychology "The concept of repression is the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory. . . . This is a delightful book, unusually well-written. . . . Recommended."—Choice "Readable, thorough, wide ranging and consistently interesting. . . . A testament to the continuing power of psychodynamic ideas when faced with individual psychopathology."—Sue Llewelyn, Psychologist "Singer has brought together some of the best empirical research in the areas of unconscious mental activity and repression—that is at once interdisciplinary and scholarly."—Howard D. Lerner, International Review of Psycho-analysis "A rich reference, replete with summaries and citations, covering a variety of topics related to the psychology of repression and dissociation. . . . A thoughtful, detailed and eclectic discussion of the scientific and theoretical basis of repression and dissociation."—Steven Lazrove, M.D., American Journal of Psychiatry

In recent years the availability of prospective longitudinal studies of adult development and videotapes of clinical interactions, as well as cognitive psychology's role in linking neuroscience with psychoanalysis, has made possible the empirical study of defense mechanisms." "This volume, with contributions by interdisciplinary researchers, lays the groundwork for future research by summarizing empirical studies to date, proposing a universal language of defense mechanisms, and demonstrating how various assessment methods can be used in diagnosis, case formulation, and treatment. Dr.

From the Foreword: "In this book Joscha Bach introduces Dietrich Dörner's PSI architecture and Joscha's implementation of the MicroPSI architecture. These architectures and their implementation have several lessons for other architectures and models. Most notably, the PSI architecture includes drives and thus directly addresses questions of emotional behavior. An architecture including drives helps clarify how emotions could arise. It also changes the way that the architecture works on a fundamental level, providing an architecture more suited for behaving autonomously in a simulated world. PSI includes three types of drives, physiological (e.g., hunger), social (i.e., affiliation needs), and cognitive (i.e., reduction of uncertainty and expression of competency). These drives routinely influence goal formation and knowledge selection and application. The resulting architecture generates new kinds of behaviors, including context dependent memories, socially motivated behavior, and internally motivated task switching. This architecture illustrates how emotions and physical drives can be included in an embodied cognitive architecture. The PSI architecture, while including perceptual, motor, learning, and cognitive processing components, also includes several novel knowledge representations: temporal structures, spatial memories, and several new information processing mechanisms and behaviors, including progress through types of knowledge sources when problem solving (the Rasmussen ladder), and knowledge-based hierarchical active vision. These mechanisms and representations suggest ways for making other architectures more realistic, more accurate, and easier to use. The architecture is demonstrated in the Island simulated environment. While it may look like a simple game, it was carefully designed to allow multiple tasks to be pursued and provides ways to satisfy the multiple drives. It would be useful in its own right for developing other architectures interested in multi-tasking, long-term learning, social interaction, embodied architectures, and related aspects of behavior that arise in a complex but tractable real-time environment. The resulting models are not presented as validated cognitive models, but as theoretical explorations in the space of architectures for generating behavior. The sweep of the architecture can thus be larger-it presents a new cognitive architecture attempting to provide a unified theory of cognition. It attempts to cover perhaps the largest number of phenomena to date. This is not a typical cognitive modeling work, but one that I believe that we can learn much from." --Frank E. Ritter, Series Editor Although computational models of cognition have become very popular, these models are relatively limited in their coverage of cognition-- they usually only emphasize problem solving and reasoning, or treat perception and motivation as isolated modules. The first architecture to cover cognition more broadly is PSI theory, developed by Dietrich Dorner. By integrating motivation and emotion with perception and reasoning, and including grounded neuro-symbolic representations, PSI contributes significantly to an integrated understanding of the mind. It provides a conceptual framework that highlights the relationships between perception and memory, language and mental representation, reasoning and motivation, emotion and cognition, autonomy and social behavior. It is, however, unfortunate that PSI's origin in psychology, its methodology, and its lack of documentation have limited its impact. The proposed book adapts Psi theory to cognitive science and artificial intelligence, by elucidating both its theoretical and technical frameworks, and clarifying its contribution to how we have come to understand cognition.