Abstract
The study of single cases has occupied an important position in the history of the human sciences and William Stephenson (1902–1989) has been explicit that the study of single cases from the centrality-of-self standpoint is the only way to proceed scientifically. Adopting the view that abductions, like laws, are for future use and provide guidance in helping determine what to look for and which facts have value within any domain of inquiry, this study focuses on what solitude means in individual cases. Two persons reflect on their own experiences under nine conditions of instruction inspired by various laws of subjectivity that have been proposed by Stephenson, and the factor-analytic results are used to illustrate various of the laws as well as the variety in individual lives, and to elucidate the importance of the intensive study of single cases.
The role of small numbers and single cases in the acquisition of knowledge has had a distinguished career: witness Freud’s (1899/1913) analysis of his own dreams, Ebbinghaus’s (1885/1913) study of his own memory, and Piaget’s (1932) study of a small number of children playing marbles as a window into moral development. Additionally, Skinner (1969), an uncompromising behaviorist, advocated for the prolonged study of single cases, stating, “instead of studying a thousand rats for one hour each, or a hundred rats for ten hours each, the investigator is likely to study one rat for a thousand hours” (p. 112).
William Stephenson (1902–1989) is associated with having invented the Q-sort technique (Stephenson, 1953), which was widely used in psychology in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the clinical and counseling fields, and he was likewise a proponent of single cases. Q sorting consists of participants rank-ordering a set of stimuli (usually statements of opinion) from most agree (+5) to most disagree (−5) in a forced quasinormal distribution. The Q-sorts are then correlated and factor analyzed, resulting in group factors of response. However, little is remembered of the broader methodology that Q sorting was designed to subserve—to provide the basis for the scientific study of subjectivity—and a case can be made that the methodology has for the most part been excluded from psychological consideration (Brown, 2006; Stephenson, 1990). A basic feature of that science examined the study of single cases (Stephenson, 1974), and from which emerged several laws of subjectivity, such as Peirce’s (1892/1940) law of mind, Rogers’s (1951) law of self–ideal congruency, and several others that will be reintroduced and discussed in this article. Here, we will illustrate these laws of subjectivity using two single case examples depicting the topic of solitude and advance the role that Stephenson’s laws of subjectivity might play in informing future single case design and interpretation within Q methodology.
A central tenet of Stephenson’s methodological contributions was introduced a century ago by James Ward (1920), regarding the divergence between “psychology without a subject, and the psychology with one” (p. 432), the former subsequently referred to as R methodology and the latter Q methodology. R methodology, with its scales and measuring devices, focuses on assessment and diagnostics based on objective variables and concepts that are independent of the person and about which the person has little knowledge or understanding whereas Q methodology focuses on subjective meanings and understandings from the person’s own standpoint, that is, on subjectivity solely and as such. R methodology has its laws, such as the law of effect and Weber’s law (Teigen, 2002), but there have been few if any for the domain of subjectivity, which justifies a closer look at Stephenson’s clarification and enumeration of subjective laws at present.
Historical context
In his “philosophical creed,” Stephenson (1961a) stated, “At a basic level research on human behavior should be pursued scientifically on very few cases—in principle upon one person, and certainly one at a time” (p. 5). Elsewhere in that same “creed,” he was even more emphatic that the single case “makes science possible, in the place of scientism” (Stephenson, 1961c, p. 18), but this runs contrary to the creed that is predominant in contemporary behavioral science—that knowledge can only be secured through the study of large numbers of cases.
Prior to receiving his doctorate in psychology under the direction of Sir Charles Spearman (1929, University of London), Stephenson was trained in the natural sciences (PhD 1926, physics, Durham University) and so brought a more sophisticated understanding of science to the study of human behavior than is typical of most psychologists, sociologists, and others in the human sciences. Among his acquisitions was a pragmatic conception of lawfulness based on the writings of philosopher–physicist Moritz Schlick (1882–1936), the leader of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, who wrote:
Natural laws are not (in the logician’s language) “general implications,” because they cannot be verified for all cases, but are rules, instructions, aiding the investigator to find [their] way about in reality, to discover true propositions, to expect certain events. (Schlick, 1931/1962, p. 286)
Laws are not eternal truths, therefore, but rules and instructions designed for future use; that is, practical guides informing expectations when examining aspects of reality. Skinner (1969) adopted a similar view: “The formula s = ½gt2 does not govern the behavior of falling bodies, it governs those who correctly predict the position of falling bodies at given times” (p. 141).
It was during this period, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when Stephenson had just completed his studies in physics and “psychophysics” and was beginning his career, that physics itself was undergoing a revolutionary shift from its classical understanding in the works of Galileo and Newton (with Einstein serving a transitional role) to the new understanding of quantum theory (Bohr and Heisenberg). These were the changes in understanding causality and lawfulness with which Schlick was grappling and that formed the foundations of Stephenson’s training.
There was one other major influence on Stephenson’s thinking related to lawfulness in nature: D’Arcy W. Thompson’s (1942) On Growth and Form, which one Nobel laureate referred to as “beyond comparison the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue” (Medawar, 1958, p. 232). D. W. Thompson (1942) was a naturalist and mathematician, and he advanced laws of his own about the natural world—for example, Froude’s law (p. 31), that the larger the fish, the greater its speed (in the ratio of the square root of its length) given that the effect of gravity would have been neutralized due to buoyancy; and Borelli’s law (p. 37), that the proportion of muscle to total mass will determine the amount of work done, which explains why grasshoppers can jump proportionately higher than horses. These laws inform expectations about the future, so that according to Froude’s law, we would expect a boat 100 feet long to travel approximately twice as fast as one 25 feet long given that the square root of the former is twice the square root of the latter, and according to both Froude’s and Borelli’s laws, we would expect the heavier of two rowing teams in boats of equal length to win the race, given that their weight differences would have been nullified by the buoyancy of their boats.
Thompson was of course measuring objective features of the world, such as length and velocity whereas Stephenson was interested in measuring aspects of subjectivity. What drew Stephenson to Thompson, however, was not only the latter’s incorporation of mathematics into the study of natural phenomena, but also his insistence on studying the fish as a whole organism and not its component parts—it is the whole fish that obeys Froude’s law—which is one of the defining differences between Q and R methodologies. 1 Laws in R methodology have to do with constant connections among parts (as between intelligence and reading speed, or between reading speed and effort expended) whereas subjective laws refer to the responses of whole persons under various conditions, as when a person provides a Q-sort self-description and later is invited to provide a Q-sort describing the ideal self. If the person is reasonably adjusted, the expectation is that these two Q-sorts will be positively correlated in accord with what has come to be referred to as Rogers’s law.
Laws of subjectivity
The findings reported below were obtained in two phases during a semester-long doctoral seminar. In the extensive phase, n = 17 individuals were invited to provide their views about their experiences of solitude using a Q-sort containing N = 20 statements drawn from Nance and Mays (2013). The topic of solitude was of only marginal relevance given the focus on subjectivity, but it was a topic to which all persons of diverse background could relate. The Q-sorts were then factor analyzed, as shown in Table 1, and two individuals associated with one of the factors agreed to participate in single-case studies. The intensive phase consisted of guiding the two single cases through additional Q-sorts utilizing the same set of statements under nine different conditions of performance, as described in more detail below. All nine Q-sorts were likewise factor analyzed, the results providing the basis for introducing and discussing 12 laws of subjectivity located in various of Stephenson’s writings.
Experiences of solitude.
Note. Pt equals participant. Significant loadings in bold; decimals to two places omitted. Table 1 presents factor loadings from an initial set of n = 17 individuals completing a single Q-sort on solitude using a “Self” condition of instruction. Data are presented here for the first time.
Stephenson did not author any article specifically addressing and enumerating laws of subjectivity but referred to them in several articles focused on other issues, often noting a law only in passing, and so it is necessary to gather these laws by combing through several of his writings. In addition, he frequently used different words in labeling various of the laws while remaining consistent with regard to the phenomena to which the laws were referring. Stephenson also referred more frequently to some laws compared to others and often did not supply clear guidance to the literature and evidence that he regarded as the basis for the laws that he enunciated. Finally, he occasionally made indirect reference to lawful behavior implying laws that were never explicitly named, which suggests the incompleteness of the following compendium. In what follows, emphasis will be on those laws that are most evident within two single-case studies on solitude, which are presented as illustrative.
Stephenson’s law of concourse (William Stephenson)
Introductions and elaborations of concourse theory are to be found in articles by Stephenson (1978, 1980) who refers to this as the first law and expresses it as follows: “all subjective statements are grounded in statistical quantities of such statements, all matters of common communicability” (Stephenson, 1980, p. 9). Consider as an example the matter of solitude and of being alone in society, which leads to conversation resulting in comments such as the following (abstracted and paraphrased from Nance & Mays, 2013):
I sometimes like to withdraw from interaction, but not necessarily physically remove myself from the presence of others. . . . To maximize my potential, I need time alone to process what has happened when I have been with others. . . . There’s a possibility of kind of losing my grip on reality if I don’t have regular interactions with people. . . . It’s not like me to actively make time to be by myself. I do not intentionally seek out solitude. . . . There is a correlation in my life between time spent alone and the quality/quantity of my relationships. (pp. 3–5)
Concourse is voluminous (Stephenson’s “statistical quantities”) and infinite in principle, and is expected to be found comparably numerous in virtually any similar location, as in statements compiled by Nance (2023):
I feel that being alone helps to stimulate new and unique ways of thinking. . . . In solitude, I feel free from the pressures of everyday life. . . . Having time away from important people in my life allows me to appreciate them more. . . . Solitude allows me to better contemplate my desires in relation to my place in the universe. . . . For me, solitude usually results in feelings of loneliness.
Wherever the topic of solitude might arise, comparable volumes of communicability are expected to be evident, and it is anticipated that comparable volumes of communicability would ensue with regard to any topic whatsoever. So far as is known, this law is without exception.
Peirce’s law of mind (Charles Sanders Peirce)
Peirce’s (1892/1940) law of mind is framed as follows: that “ideas tend to spread continuously and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectability” (p. 340). An idea, Peirce says, has an “intrinsic quality as a feeling” and tends “to bring along other ideas with it” (p. 345), a number of ideas eventually uniting “under one general idea” (p. 348). Stephenson sometimes referred to this as the law of affectability or the law of schemata, and he provides his own expression—that “all new meaning forms in relation to statements of a concourse by way of feeling” (1980, p. 9); that is, in regard to statements of a concourse, “new meaning can be reached in relation to them (and only so), by way of feeling (and only so)” (p. 9). This is given operational grounding in Q technique, when a person considers a set of statements and, based necessarily upon the Q sorter’s own meaning, places them in an order in light of some criterion based on feeling (e.g., from positive to negative, or agreeable to disagreeable, with declining feeling in between). For example, one of the factors to be reported below placed the statements from the Solitude Q Sample in the following order, from +3 (agree) to −3 (disagree), revealing a common theme running throughout:
. . . (+3) I need time for centering myself—for reflection, stress relief, and my overall mental health. . . . (+2) For me at least, it is possible to have too much time alone. . . . (+1) I feel there are benefits from being socially interconnected. . . . (0) If I don’t have enough time to myself, I don’t feel like I can fully be myself out in the world. . . . (−1) There’s a possibility of kind of losing my grip on reality if I don’t have regular interactions with people. . . . (−2) It’s not like me to actively make time to be by myself. I do not intentionally seek out solitude. . . . (−3) I would consider it almost a badge of oddness if I sought out solitude.
Each Q-sort is therefore schematical, by which is meant that a theme runs throughout it and with affectability distending from the hedonically neutral center point. Operant factors are likewise structured “by a common strand of feeling,” from the positive to the negative ends of the factor arrays (Stephenson, 1980, p. 23).
Stephenson’s law of transformation (William Stephenson)
Stephenson (1980) regards this law as of universal applicability, that “all subjective communicability is transformable to operant factor structure” (p. 11); hence, it applies “to everything ever written in which subjectivity is at issue—in literature, religion, education, politics, art, science, common conversation” (pp. 11–12). When applied to the Solitude Q Sample, initially administered to 17 individuals, the operant factors in Table 1 resulted. Based on the law of transformation, comparable results are expected to emerge in any such study whereby comparable is not meant to imply numerically similar results necessarily, but operant factors that are transformations of the concrete subjective experiences from which they have emerged, as thousands of existing Q studies bear testimony.
The transformation law likewise applies to single cases, as illustrated in Table 2. Participants 1 and 7 (from Table 1) were invited to perform additional Q-sorts (using the same Solitude Q Sample) under the following conditions of instruction, after which their separate sets of Q-sorts were then intercorrelated and their respective 9 × 9 correlation matrices factor analyzed: 2
Operant factors.
Self-1: Represent your own point of view about being alone (already provided).
Society: How do you think that society as a whole views spending time alone?
Ideal: What would be the best possible view that you could have about being alone?
Loud: We have all known the kind of person who talks too much, who interrupts others and who says unpleasant things—an overbearing and obnoxious loudmouth. Think of a person whom you have known like this and describe that person’s view about solitude.
Future: What do you think you will feel about being alone 20–25 years from now?
Others: In general, what do others think your viewpoint is about solitude?
Past: Represent the view that you had when you were half your current age.
Admire: Think of a person whom you most admire and describe what that person probably thinks about being alone.
Self-2: Without referring to the first Q-sort (provided about 3 months previously), represent your view about being alone as it exists at present.
Based on examination of the factor scores (i.e., the scores from +3 to −3 assigned to each of the statements within each of the factors in Table 1), among the initial 17 participants, factor 1 was the most supportive concerning the advantages of solitude. Participants 1 and 7 (identifying as male and female, respectively) were among the most highly saturated with factor 1, and so we expect their respective factors A1 and B1 in Table 2 to likewise show a preference for solitude, since they both contain the same self-Q-sorts that were defining for factor 1. Each person’s factor A2 and B2 also showed expected characteristics, with perspectives of society and the participants’ experiences with loud individuals being uncorrelated and even negatively correlated with their self factors A1 and B1.
In sum, the three factors in Table 1 and the two sets of factors in Table 2 attest to the ways in which subjective experiences of solitude are transformed into operant factor structure, and this same Law of Transformation applies to all other persons and all contexts and with respect to all other topics, as has been demonstrated in the thousands of Q studies that have appeared in the scholarly literature across a wide range of disciplines. In addition, the two factor structures in Table 2 provide a basis for considering other subjective laws that have been proffered.
James’s law of me and mine (William James)
In his chapter on the self, William James (1890) referred to the empirical self as all that we would consider me, but then went on to say that “between what [a person] calls me and what [they] simply [call] mine the line is difficult to draw” (Vol. 1, p. 291). James was referring mainly to objective things—a person’s body, clothes, house, family members, land, horses, yacht, and bank account—and also to their reputation and works: if these are attacked, the person feels the slight. But James’s law applies to the subjective domain as well, and this is illustrated in the factor structures in Table 2. Participant 1’s own point of view about solitude, including both Self-1 and Self-2, is defined by factor A1, which is characterized by the following statements (+3, +2):
(12) I find solitude beneficial and necessary for my well-being. . . . (9) I feel there are benefits from being socially interconnected. . . . (8) I need time for centering myself—for reflection, stress relief, and my overall mental health. . . . (7) For me at least, it is possible to have too much time alone. . . . (11) Spending too much time alone can be harmful to my health, leading to depression, a persistent desire to be alone, and avoidance of others.
Hence, I feel that solitude is beneficial and I need time alone for reflection, but it is I who also believe that too much time alone can be harmful and see benefits from interpersonal connectedness. Factor A1 also represents this person’s past as well as future, and it is a viewpoint that is idealized: not only is this viewpoint ideal, it is also the view that is presumably held by someone whom participant 1 most admires. Participant 1 is personally invested in the point of view that factor A1 documents, and the same can be said with respect to participant 7’s factor B1: it is me.
By way of contrast, both participant 1’s and participant 7’s factors A2 and B2 are independent of the self: factor A2 is mine insofar as the Q-sorts comprising it were produced by participant 1, but they are not me in the sense of being identified with the self, as the statements characterizing factor A2 (+3, +2) attest:
(20) I would consider it almost a badge of oddness if I sought out solitude. . . . (3) There’s a possibility of kind of losing my grip on reality if I don’t have regular interactions with people. . . . (11) Spending too much time alone can be harmful to my health, leading to depression, a persistent desire to be alone, and avoidance of others. . . . (4) It’s not like me to actively make time to be by myself. I do not intentionally seek out solitude. . . . (15) I must confess that I have a somewhat negative view of people who spend time alone by choice—the loners, the odd birds, the hermits.
Factor A2 is obviously not participant 1’s own point of view, which is quite positive about solitude; rather, A2 is how participant 1 perceives that society in general regards solitude—that is, as desirous of social interactions and disinclined to seek out isolation while even taking something of a negative view of those who spend time alone, regarding them as a bit odd. This is also the view that participant 1 perceives that a loud person would take.
We see, therefore, that the difficult line that James detected between what is me and what is mine gains clarity in the measurements provided by the participants themselves. The symbols of self-identification are those images and perceptions that gather in the vicinity of the factor that includes the participant’s own point of view—in this instance, the self factors A1 and B1 in Table 2—which is comparable to a strange attractor in chaos theory (Ayers, 1997). Factors that are orthogonal to the self factor (i.e., factors A2 and B2 in the present case) belong to the Q sorter (hence are mine), but are separate from me and likewise constitute a strange attractor that also plays a role in the dynamic system of which it is a part.
Before continuing, it is noteworthy that factor A2 is bipolar, the negative pole being defined by how participant 1 regards others as viewing him: this, too, is mine (i.e., my perception), but not me, as the statements characterizing the negative pole of A2 indicate:
(12) I find solitude beneficial and necessary for my well-being. . . . (6) I feel pressured to be more interconnected, perhaps due to the popularity of social media. . . . (17) I find that too much socialization is risky. . . . (8) I need time for centering myself—for reflection, stress relief, and my overall mental health. . . . (18) With solitude, I get a better sense of who I am and why I do some of the things I do.
Hence, participant 1 sees others as viewing him as finding solitude beneficial (as he views himself), but perhaps for reasons different than those associated with factor A1. Participant 1 appears to see others as viewing him as a stereotypical loner who does not need other people. In addition, others see him as feeling pressured to be more engaged with social media.
Although “some subjective conditions are me, others only mine” (Stephenson, 1982b, p. 243), it is important to note that no particular Q-sort is predictable and that the same Q-sort can end up me or mine from case to case. In participant 1’s case, for instance, the past was me (factor A1) whereas in participant 7’s case, the past was mine only (factor B2). Despite factual differences, however, James’s law is nevertheless operable in both cases.
Rogers’s law of self–ideal congruency (Carl Rogers)
Client-centered therapist Carl Rogers (1951) famously used Q technique to demonstrate that the self and ideal conceptions of the maladjusted person would be uncorrelated whereas self–ideal correlations would be positive for the adjusted person. As Stephenson (1980) said, “people tend to behavioral adjustment in relation to concepts they have of themselves, and of themselves ideally” (p. 23). Just as a murderer imprisoned under a life sentence can idealize his situation (e.g., by adopting a “tough guy” persona) and achieve adjustment to it by incorporating this idealization, so do obese women who disbelieve in their ability to lose weight have to increase their self–ideal congruency before weight loss can occur (Dennis & Goldberg, 1996). And in line with Rogers’s law, whereas extraverts tend toward adjustment since their ideal selves are also extraverted, introverts are inclined toward maladjustment since their ideal selves are extraverted; that is, introverts are generally shy and inhibited, but would prefer to be more outgoing (Brown & Hendrick, 1971).
The two factor structures in Table 2 reveal participants 1 and 7 to be in conformity with Rogers’s law since their selves and ideals both occupy the same factor. They are both favorable toward solitude and regard this as an ideal position to have; moreover, this is a position that departs from society (Q-sort no. 2), which is comparable in both instances to the loud person (no. 4)—this is a loud and boisterous society from which they have both withdrawn to some extent—and their current position is one that they expect to maintain into the future (no. 5).
Participant 1 perceives a marked continuity from his past through the present (Self-1) and into the future, but participant 7 differs in this regard: her past is congruent with her view of society (plus the loud person in her history), and this discontinuity is worth closer examination. The statements that characterize participant 7’s factor B1 are virtually identical to participant 1’s factor A1 (displayed previously), but factor B2 portrays a different social situation:
Factor B2–positive (+3, +2): (10) Due to social media, I now find it possible to be in contact with other humans to some degree at almost any time. . . . (19) I don’t really feel alone when texting or chatting on Facebook. . . . (15) I must confess that I have a somewhat negative view of people who spend time alone by choice—the loners, the odd birds, the hermits. . . . (6) I feel pressured to be more interconnected, perhaps due to the popularity of social media. . . . (11) Spending too much time alone can be harmful to my health, leading to depression, a persistent desire to be alone, and avoidance of others. Factor B2–negative (−3, −2): (5) There is a correlation in my life between time spent alone and the quality/quantity of my relationships. . . . (1) I sometimes like to withdraw from interaction, but not necessarily physically remove myself from the presence of others. . . . (17) I find that too much socialization is risky. . . . (16) If I don’t have enough time to myself, I don’t feel like I can fully be myself out in the world. . . . (18) With solitude, I get a better sense of who I am and why I do some of the things I do.
Participant 7 appears to have avoided and even disdained solitude in her past in favor of seeking self-validation through peer influences, as she phrased it, an other-focused and normative transitional process of mid-adolescence (Albarello et al., 2018; Banks-VanAllen, 2021)—and it was this existence that she eventually relinquished in favor of embracing the more introspective style of life characterized by factor B1. 3
Shibutani’s law of significant others (Tamotsu Shibutani)
A significant other is someone, known personally or not, who has played an important role in a person’s life as a model for emulation or disdain. In this regard, Stephenson directed attention to sociologist Shibutani (1970), although the concept was actually introduced by psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan (1947/1953a, pp. 16–22). Evidence for this law is shown in Table 2, where the most admired figures in the lives of participants 1 and 7 are firmly associated with the self factors A1 and B1, respectively. In both instances, the person most admired is me and not simply mine (in the sense of James’s law). Participant 1 singled out an older graduate school influence who knew how to “work hard and play hard” and showed through example the value to academic life of being able to use solitude productively, but also how to relinquish it and enjoy socializing with workmates. Participant 7 selected an individual not known personally but followed on social media and whose comments served to validate participant 7’s own leanings and style of being, a person whose mindfulness and openness of opinions provided a source of inspiration and self-confirmation.
A significant other can also play a negative role by providing a model to oppose or against whom to establish a contrast. As Shibutani (1955) noted, “A person who is well aware of the expectations of significant others may go out of [their] way to reject them” (p. 568). Participant 1 actually pictured an unwanted aspect of the self, a more boisterous person that participant 1 sometimes struggled to keep under wraps, and participant 7 described an incongruence between her introverted leanings and her much-loved partner’s extraverted nature, which sometimes pushes her in a more inward direction, toward solitude.
Taylor’s law of self-consistency (Donald M. Taylor)
This law is based on findings by Taylor (1953, 1955) and holds that “self-descriptions tend to be consistent over long periods of time” (Stephenson, 1982b, p. 243), but consistency applies not only to self-perceptions, but to social perceptions generally. Baas (2020; Baas et al., 2022) has provided a remarkable demonstration of persons from one of the Q factors from his doctoral research whose views of the U.S. Constitution remained essentially unchanged more than 40 years later. There are, of course, many instances (both natural and experimentally contrived) of perceptual change that were intended, as in Pelletier et al.’s (1999) study of changes in food-security views as a function of a workshop designed to induce attitude change, and Sell and Craig’s (1983) study of changes in perceptions of host nationals as a function of foreign study; in addition, there are countless instances of change due to impactful natural events, such as religious epiphanies, psychotherapy, the death of a loved one, and so forth. Under stable conditions, however, perceptions tend to remain relatively stable, and it is to phenomena such as these that Taylor’s law refers.
In the present case, the assessments of self by participants 1 and 7 at both time-1 and time-2 (a span of approximately 3 months) remain on the factors A1 and B1 (Table 2), respectively, and neither of the small differences is statistically significant (α = .05), indicating that any observed differences are well within error. The 3-month lapse between times-1 and -2 is small, but the studies cited above plus many others attest to the viability of Taylor’s law.
Parloff’s law of behavior homology (Morris Parloff)
This and the following law are based on collaborations in which Stephenson was engaged while briefly at the National Institute of Mental Health (Parloff et al., 1963), and his version of Parloff’s law is to the effect that “self-referred operants [i.e., Q factors] are homologous with lived (objective) experience” (Stephenson, 1974, p. 14); that is, that a person’s life tends to correspond to or parallel self-related factors. The key to this law is self-reference: the stronger the incorporation of factors containing the self and the greater the number of compatible and reinforcing influences (especially with significant others), the greater the likelihood that the person will be drawn to other experiences that coincide. Deviations from this law often prove the rule. In an earlier paper, for instance, Stephenson (1949) provided an example of an impulsive and virtually psychopathic student who “regarded herself as ‘dependable and realistic—emotion doesn’t get in the way of her judgment’” (p. 219), but her lack of empathy and the weakness of her attachment to this self-image resulted in frequent and nonhomologous departures in conduct. In the two illustrative cases, the attraction to the admired person and avoidance of the loud person attest to the appeals to which the self is selectively drawn or repelled, and a related study reveals how persons are drawn to options that are compatible with their own life histories (Brown, 2017). The fact that participants 1 and 7 have chosen mindful professions adds confidence in Parloff’s law.
Perlin’s law of change (Seymour Perlin)
According to Stephenson (1974), “Changes in interactional respects are in relation to existing self-related operants” (p. 14); that is, for change to take place, individuals (or groups) must have some conception of where the change will take them, since they cannot be expected to change in directions about which they have no inkling. According to participant 7’s factor structure (Table 2), her view of solitude in her midadolescent past was associated with factor B2, but her current position (self) is associated with factor B1, but this transformation likely could not have occurred without some conception of B1, which might have been provided by an admired acquaintance or by peer or other influences such as parents, siblings, or teachers that might be revealed more explicitly through administration of the same Q-sort under additional conditions of instruction (e.g., what was the predominant view of students who were your closest friends when you entered college?). As noted at the outset, this proposing of rules of experimental performance was what Schlick (1931/1962) regarded as an important purpose of laws: to serve as instructions “aiding the investigator to find [their] way about in reality, to discover true propositions, to expect certain events” (p. 286).
Individuals need not necessarily have a crystal-clear conception of the destination to which change will lead them. Chusid and Cochran (1989) and MacGregor and Cochran (1988), for instance, show how career changes are almost invariably connected to roles embedded in past family dynamics that are only revealed in the course of depth interviews, with prior behaviors constituting “a tacit basis for orientation” (Chusid & Cochran, 1989, p. 39) requiring active effort for their elucidation. But Perlin’s law dictates that some manner of co-ordination, whether openly acknowledged or not, must exist for change to occur. In their classic study, Parloff et al. (1963) showed that Myra, one of four sisters with schizophrenia, produced several Q factors about herself (based on more than 30 Q sortings), including one factor that expressed her goals for herself, none of which was correlated with her therapist’s goals for her (as expressed in his Q-sort), which appeared on a factor separate from Myra’s Q factors. According to Perlin’s law, the direction that Myra’s therapist was urging her to pursue was not one that Myra had the option to take, since it was not present within her frame of reference: it was neither me nor mine (James’s law), hence not among her “attainable selves” (Stephenson, 1953, pp. 269–270).
Sullivan’s law of me–you dynamism (Harry Stack Sullivan)
Sullivan’s (1953b) interpersonal theory holds that the self and personality develop in the course of interactions with others. The nine conditions of instruction that culminated in the factor structures in Table 2 only hint at self–other interactions (e.g., between the self and the loud and admired others), as these two particular case studies were not designed to examine personality per se, but there are other studies that do focus more explicitly on Sullivan’s me–you dynamics. Among the most thorough and elaborate in this regard is by Ricks (1956, 1972), who relied explicitly on Sullivan in the intensive study of a single case of a “marginal man” who held the “lowly” role of janitor by night and the esteemed role as pastor of a church during the day. The Q sample consisted mainly of names of persons in the Reverend Ward’s life (parents, family members, work associates, friends and acquaintances, and others) and the conditions of instruction for Q sorting these names included considerations such as those who are friendliest (to most unfriendly) toward me, those who understand me best, those who are most respected generally, those who need me most, and so forth, the factor analysis of which revealed different dimensions in Reverend Ward’s interpersonal relations. Representative persons from these dimensions were then chosen and, using another Q sample comprised of relationship statements, the reverend was instructed to provide Q-sorts describing “how I behave toward X” and then “how X behaves toward me,” then “how I behave toward Y” and “how Y behaves toward me,” and so forth. This second set of factors then revealed the structure of Reverend Ward’s me–you dynamics and documented the extent to which his diversity of selves originated in, contributed to, and was maintained by the web of relationships in which he was embedded.
Ricks’s study provided a model for a subsequent study of two 8th-grade boys (the one holding democratic and the other undemocratic sentiments) whose structures of me–you dynamisms showed how their contrasting political orientations had been molded (Busson & Winebrenner, 1969), and additional case studies (e.g., Rhoads, 2001, 2017a, 2017b) have further served to affirm Sullivan’s law.
Freud’s law of identification-with (Sigmund Freud)
Freud (1922) has led us to expect defenses to be engaged, particularly in regard to self-referred factors with which we identify, and that especially “in conflictual situations the person may defend [themselves] by anomalous forms of behavior (such as we variously classify as projective, rationalized, compensatory, etc.)” (Stephenson, 1961a, p. 6). Behavior of this kind is common. During his silver-mining days, for instance, Mark Twain (1872) reported that he expected to find silver just lying about on the ground, but then confided, “I said nothing about this, for some instinct told me that I might possibly have an exaggerated idea about it, and so if I betrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself” (p. 204). This tendency to inhibit potentially unacceptable remarks and to respond in a more socially desirable way was regarded from the outset as a limitation of Q methodology (e.g., Edwards & Horst, 1953), and traces of this criticism still linger (e.g., Fluckinger, 2014), but one of the advantages of intensive single-case studies, in Q methodology as in psychoanalysis, is that they lengthen the observational timeframe, thereby providing more opportunities to notice all natural behavior, socially desirable or otherwise, and to identify anomalies and the functions that they serve.
The studies culminating in Table 2 are limited in this regard, but lengthier and more penetrating inquiries verify Freud’s expectations. In Stephenson’s (1954/2017) case of Martre, for instance, Martre’s four factors, based on 20 Q sortings, revealed idealizations, a distorted transference (onto Stephenson), an “explosive” self that had occasioned a precipitating breakdown, a resistant and permeating depressiveness, and an emergent femininity that was adding urgency to Martre’s fragile situation. In B. F. McKeown’s (1977) study of sources of religious sentiment, conceptions of religious figures could be traced back to familial experiences, from which they were projected into the religious domain. And in F. T. McKeown’s (1975) study of a dissociative personality, Kari not only separated her self and ideal on separate factors (Rogers’s law), she also idealized Aaron, a segmentation of her personality that enabled her to express her anger. It is the role of conditions of instruction in Q methodology to provide a staging area in which phenomena such as the operation of Freud’s law can be observed.
Binswanger’s law of natural existence (Ludwig Binswanger)
Ludwig Binswanger was a friend to Freud and Carl Jung and the founder of existential psychiatry. In one of his famous cases, Ellen West attempted suicide several times before finally succeeding with the support and understanding of her husband and her psychiatrist, death being the fulfillment of her existence, according to Binswanger (1958). This led Stephenson (1974) to Binswanger’s law, that “existence seeks its own end” (p. 14), which he regarded as the most subtle law of all. Stephenson left behind no worked example, but he did show how Binswanger’s conjectures could be supplemented by operant factors as he did as well in the case of Virginia Woolf (Stephenson, 1982a), of Freud’s case of Dora (Stephenson, 1953, pp. 249–254, 1988), and of his own autobiographical study (Stephenson, 1990). The two single-case studies above do not lend themselves to revealing the subtle play of Binswanger’s law, although it is noteworthy that the positive attitudes of solitude by both participants 1 and 7 are congruent with their occupational choices, which is not necessarily a matter of being foreordained, but perhaps at least a hint of existences that are compatible with certain directions rather than others, and of roads taken and those not taken (Parloff’s law).
Concluding remarks
As stated at the outset, the study of small numbers and single cases constitutes a distinguished tradition and it is of this tradition that Stephenson (1953) viewed Q methodology as being a part:
It is sufficient to show . . . that we can penetrate into matters with single individuals as our subjects and that, indeed, their study under conditions of gross averaging or the like for the sake of reaching statistical significance is entirely unnecessary and essentially foreign to, and destructive of, any sound scientific methodology. (p. 232)
As can be imagined, had averages been calculated for self/ideal-self correlations across a large sample of persons, the operation of Rogers’s law would have been muted at best (if not wholly obscured) since the inclusion of maladjusted persons would have drawn down on the high self/ideal correlations of adjusted individuals; moreover, gross averaging would also have concealed situational differences among individuals whose self/ideal correlations were both high despite the fact that their self and ideal descriptions were likely totally different due to successful adaptations to different settings. (The self/ideal correlation can be high both for the high school honor student and the sociopathic prisoner.) This was the difference between Aristotelian and Galilean thinking to which Lewin (1931) drew attention almost a century ago, the former depending on the frequency of recurrence and the latter on events observed under conditions that do not occur in daily life—for example, at sea level, in a vacuum, with zero friction, at a certain temperature, at constant velocity, and so forth: only under these specialized circumstances is the law in question demonstrable.
In this regard, it is important to make clear that the subjective laws refer primarily to the configuration and relationships among the Q-sorts as revealed in the factor structure (as shown in Table 2). Participants 1 and 7 were from the same factor 1 in Table 1 and so had similar stories to tell, but it is equally possible that the two of them could have led entirely different lives (and consequently produced totally different stories and uncorrelated Q-sorts) and still provided the same factor structures as in Table 2; that is, with both showing self–ideal congruence (Rogers’s law) and self–admire congruence (Shibutani’s) as well as self–1 and self–2 congruence (Taylor’s). In sum, life histories and narratives, although of intrinsic value, are not the same as (and often serve to conceal) the laws to which they may conform, which are a function of the measurements themselves.
This view of lawfulness has eluded many theorists who were instrumental in forging qualitative research and various postmodern movements, which largely gave up on generalities in the human domain. Gergen (1973), for instance, a major originator of social constructionism, considered general laws to be founded on “the general stability of events in the world of nature” (p. 309)—that is, on the repeated appearance of common events—leading him to conclude that “the continued attempt to build general laws of social behavior seems misdirected” (p. 316), and more recently Martin (2021) has taken a similar tack, abandoning a more scientific approach to psychology in favor of a more humanistic study of lives rather than identifying the general within the specific.
Psychology and the human sciences remain largely Aristotelian in this respect, and this is especially the case in the conventional sense of lawful, which usually amounts to little more than a statistical conclusion—for example, that such-and-such event occurs with high frequency when observed through time—but the laws described in our article refer to functional regularities of behavior segments, however long they may exist in clock time. With respect to Rogers’s law, for instance, we expect participants 1 and 7 to provide self and ideal descriptions that are highly correlated; moreover, if instructed to do so again, the expectation is that the high correlation will reappear due to the lawfulness under conditions of adjustment. This understanding is based in part on the assumption that subjectivity is behavior like any other (Midgley & Delprato, 2017) and that it is as natural as shoveling snow or the beating of a heart.
There are provisos. We can all see snow being shoveled, but we cannot see someone’s subjectivity, any more than we can observe that person’s beating heart; however, the person whose heart it is can detect its beating, and the same is axiomatic with regard to observing subjectivity: “objective measurements and observations can, in principle, be made by everyone (or by a piece of apparatus), whereas measurements and observations of a person’s subjectivity can be made only by [themselves]” (Stephenson, 1972, p. 17). A beating heart is objective and its science becomes possible due to instrumentation, such as the stethoscope, which enables the cardiologist to observe it. By way of contrast, subjectivity can only be observed by the person whose subjectivity it is, and this is the function that Q technique provides—an operation that renders visible what was previously invisible to the investigator so that the structure of subjectivity, like a beating heart, can be revealed for inspection and scientific consideration.
There are two important functions of subjective laws, those presented above as well as any others that might be justified. 4 First, they can serve as a source of prompts for venturing conditions of performance. When examining a single case, questions have to be asked, and the laws of subjectivity suggest questions worth asking. For example, along with other conditions of instruction that might be specific to a particular study, the above laws can also suggest conditions that may serve as surrogates for Rogers’s, Shibutani’s, and Taylor’s laws. Second, the laws can play an abductory role (Stephenson, 1961b) by providing the investigator with hints concerning what to look for at the point of judgmental rotation in factor analysis. Abduction stands alongside induction and deduction in making inferences from effects to plausible causes, but it can also suggest possibilities in advance that might lead an investigator to anticipate and be on the lookout for possible outcomes. An analyst, for instance, might initially rotate factors theoretically so as to position a participant’s self on a single factor (as in the case of factors A1 and B1 in Table 2) since it is this particular person who is the source of all of the other Q-sorts; however, alternative hunches and hypotheses might make stronger claims on the investigator’s judgment since each single case carries with it a logic of its own. It could be, for instance, that the participant is experiencing conflict between personal desire (Rogers’s law) and parental wishes (Shibutani’s) so that the theoretical rotation of factors might aim for a solution in which ideal is on one factor and parent on a separate factor, with self caught between. Such are the concrete specificities of each situation. Having Q-sorts that are surrogates for various of the laws of subjectivity can, as Schlick (1931/1962) was quoted earlier as saying, serve in aiding intellectual navigation and finding one’s way about in reality while making discoveries.
On a final and more speculative note, as a psychologist and a physicist, Stephenson (2018) was aware that the mathematics underlying both factor analysis and quantum mechanics were the same and that subjectivity and the material world must consequently share comparable features, such as complexity, nonlinearity, complementarity, entanglement, and uncertainty, which are not attributes pursued by contemporary psychometrics (R methodology), with its emphasis on general tendencies and predictability. The mode of thought at which Q methodology takes aim and from which it derives its laws is more akin to that of Claudia in Penelope Lively’s (1987) novel Moon Tiger:
There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of a myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water. The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and re-shuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once. (p. 2)
This is Ward’s (1920) “psychology with a person”—not a person fragmented into variables, but a whole person with all parts assembled—that reveals lawfulness despite turbulence at the surface.
Footnotes
Author note
This article is a revised version of a paper read at the 36th annual meeting of the International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity, La Baule, France (virtual), 15–17 September 2021.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
