It's your regressive imagery, innit?

Mon, 21 May 2007 22:25:34 +0100

This weekend I bought a copy of The Language of Change by Paul Watlawick. I'm only a little way into it but I believe it's a book about learning to communicate in the language of the right hemisphere of your brain. This is a subject that, for a number of reasons, has become interesting and relevant to me lately.

So it was with some interest that I read John Wiseman's post about the Regressive Imagery Dictionary:

The Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) is a coding scheme for text analysis that is designed to measure �primordial� and conceptual content. Primordial thought is the kind of free-form, associative thinking involved in fantasy and dreams. Like Freud's id, I guess. Conceptual (or secondary) thought is logical, reality-based and focused on problem solving.

RID contains about 3,000 words grouped into categories that are themselves classified as primary, secondary, and emotional. A piece of text is classified by what percentage of its words fall into each category.

John posted some python source code he wrote. I decided I wanted to play with this and, being as I care for Python very much, wrote a Ruby version. It's not quite a port of John's although I did look at how rid.py worked as I wrote my own. I also compared his numbers with mine using the same sample text. My analyzer comes out with the same numbers to a few decimal points.

If you want to play with it you can get it from RubyForge or install it as a gem:

sudo gem install RIMA

Here is an example of using it:

require 'rima'

analyzer = if File.exist?( File.expand_path( "~/.rima" ) )
  RIMA::Analyzer.restore( "~/.rima" )
else
  RIMA::Analyzer.new(
    File.join( RIMA_PATH, 'rid', 'categories' ),
    File.join( RIMA_PATH, 'rid', 'exceptions' )
    ).store( "~/.rima" )
end

results = analyzer.analyze( STDIN.read )

puts "Total words   = #{results[:word_total]}"
puts "Counted words = #{results[:word_count]}"
puts ""
puts "Primary:   %0.3f" % results[:classes][:primary]
puts "Secondary: %0.3f" % results[:classes][:secondary]
puts "Emotions:  %0.3f" % results[:classes][:emotions]
puts ""
puts results[:sorted_scores].map { |r| "#{r[0].path.ljust(48)}=\t#{r[1]}" }.join( "\n" )

which, when fed Bush's speech (from the same source as Wiseman used):

Alia:~ matt$ rima < Projects/ruby/rima/data/bush.txt 
Total words   = 7982
Counted words = 1401

Primary:   0.230
Secondary: 0.672
Emotions:  0.098

SECONDARY/ABSTRACT_THOUGHT                      =       281
SECONDARY/INSTRU_BEHAVIOR                       =       197
SECONDARY/SOCIAL_BEHAVIOR                       =       181
PRIMARY/REGR_KNOL/CONCRETENESS                  =       170
SECONDARY/MORAL_IMPERATIVE                      =       107
SECONDARY/TEMPORAL_REPERE                       =       87
SECONDARY/RESTRAINT                             =       60
EMOTIONS/AFFECTION                              =       57
EMOTIONS/AGGRESSION                             =       51
SECONDARY/ORDER                                 =       29
PRIMARY/SENSATION/VISION                        =       24
PRIMARY/DEFENSIVE_SYMBOL/PASSIVITY              =       23
PRIMARY/SENSATION/COLD                          =       20
PRIMARY/ICARIAN_IM/WATER                        =       13
PRIMARY/REGR_KNOL/NARCISSISM                    =       10
PRIMARY/SENSATION/HARD                          =       10
EMOTIONS/GLORY                                  =       10
EMOTIONS/POSITIVE_AFFECT                        =       9
PRIMARY/ICARIAN_IM/HEIGHT                       =       8
EMOTIONS/ANXIETY                                =       7
PRIMARY/ICARIAN_IM/FIRE                         =       6
PRIMARY/ICARIAN_IM/DESCENT                      =       5
PRIMARY/SENSATION/SOUND                         =       4
PRIMARY/NEED/SEX                                =       4
PRIMARY/REGR_KNOL/BRINK-PASSAGE                 =       4
PRIMARY/ICARIAN_IM/DEPTH                        =       3
PRIMARY/DEFENSIVE_SYMBOL/VOYAGE                 =       3
PRIMARY/ICARIAN_IM/ASCEND                       =       3
PRIMARY/SENSATION/GEN_SENSATION                 =       3
PRIMARY/DEFENSIVE_SYMBOL/DIFFUSION              =       2
EMOTIONS/SADNESS                                =       2
PRIMARY/NEED/ORALITY                            =       2
PRIMARY/DEFENSIVE_SYMBOL/RANDOM MOVEMENT        =       2
PRIMARY/DEFENSIVE_SYMBOL/CHAOS                  =       1
PRIMARY/REGR_KNOL/COUNSCIOUS                    =       1
EMOTIONS/EXPRESSIVE_BEH                         =       1
PRIMARY/REGR_KNOL/UNKNOW                        =       1

This code comes with the RIMA library and is automatically installed as a binary by the gem, you can run it using:

rima < input_text

I'm going to be turning RIMA loose on Curiouser & Curiouser at some point, that might be interesting, and there are some other things I have in mind for it. But it could be fun to just noodle around with it. Please let me know if you do anything interesting with this code.

As an aside there here is an interesting exchange related by Robert Anton Wilson (in his excellent book Quantum Psychology) about Paul Watzlawick:

Dr. Watzlawick, incidently, got his first inkling of this psychotomimetic function of semantic noise when arriving at a mental hospital as a new staff member. He reported to the office of the Chief Psychiatrist, where he found a woman sitting at the desk in the outer office. Dr. Watzlawick made the assumption he had found the boss's secretary.

"I'm Watzlawick," he said, assuming the "secretary" would know he had an appointment.

"I didn't say you were," she replied.

A bit taken aback, Dr. Watzlawick exclaimed, "But I am."

"Then why did you deny it?" she asked.

At this point, in Dr. Watzlawick's view of the situation, the woman no longer seemed a secretary. He now classified her as a schizophrenic patient who had somehow wandered into the staff offices. Naturally, he became very careful in "dealing with" her.

His revised assumption seems logical, does it not? Only poets and schizophrenics communicate in language that defies rational analysis, and poets do not normally do so in ordinary conversation, or with the above degree of opacity. They also do it was a certain elegance, lacking in this case, and usually with some kind of rhythmn and sonority.

However, from the woman's point of view, Dr. Watzlawick himself had appeared as a schizophrenic patient. You see, due to noise, she had heard a different conversation.

A strange man had approached and said, "I'm not Slavic." Many paranoids begin a conversation with such assertions, vitally important to them, but sounding a bit strange to the rest of us.

"I didn't say you were," she replied trying to soothe him.

"But I am," he shot back, thereby graduating from "paranoid" to "paranoid schizophrenic" in her judgement.

"Then why did you deny it?" She asked reasonably and became very careful in "dealing with" him.

Anybody who had experience dealing with schizophrenics will recognize how both parties in this conversation felt. Dealing with poets never has quite this much hassle.

I think RAW maybe never had to deal with many poets.

Curiouser and Curiouser! on regressive-imagery

It's your regressive imagery, innit?