Part of the Casswiki article series Psychology
Psychology speaks of periods of imprint sensitivity in the context of an infant’s or young child’s early development. Three major phases of imprinting are generally recognized. The Freudian terms for these are oral, anal and genital, also sometimes called phallic. These are also known as the first, second and third circuits.
The general idea is that the brain/nervous system/body complex is like a slate to be written on but it has a special natural disposition to accepting certain types of writing at certain stages. A child that is born blind will only learn to see normally if the cause of blindness is removed before a certain age. The circuits of the visual cortex lose their imprintability with age. The concept of imprinting applies to senses, motor functions, emotions and thinking but the windows of imprinting are different for each function. In some cases re-imprinting is possible but is much more difficult than imprinting during the natural window of sensitivity.
Trauma during imprinting stages can leave hard to correct, long lasting effects which can sometimes be very subtle and influence the person’s emotions and modes of thinking without the person’s awareness. Gurdjieff has said that man was not only a machine but a broken one at that.
The first circuit deals with sense of security and is generally imprinted by the mother figure during the baby’s first few months. Trauma at this stage, or the absence of a consistent mother figure can lead to a pervasive sense of insecurity and lack of integration of aspects of personality. Children adopted from orphanages often have such problems. These can variously reflect as excessive self-reliance, as in preoccupation with control of the environment, negative self-image, manipulative behavior, low affect regulation or withdrawal and dissociation etc. Since the first circuit is preverbal, regular psychotherapy is not generally effective in addressing such issues.
The second circuit deals with place in the social structure. It imprints hierarchical and territorial functions and the father figure is generally the source of the imprinting. This circuit deals with how one responds to threat, asserts one’s place, how one organizes the environment etc. The popular term ‘anal retentive,’ meaning someone exceedingly preoccupied with maintaining order and labeling everything and generally scared of novelty refers to a possible effect of trauma at this stage. When confronted with challenge, the person with trauma at this stage may either try to scare and bully the challenge away or flee it. Fight/flight/freeze responses are the domain of second circuit. Problems of second circuit may manifest with compulsive vulgar language, needlessly severe discipline, inflexibility and dogmatism, to mention a few. Many fundamentalists and fanatics have bad second circuit imprinting.
The third circuit deals with formation of abstract thinking. While the two first circuits are generally recognizable with higher animals, the third circuit is specifically human. Problems with this stage of imprinting may take the form of unproductive or inflexible use of thought. For example, one may dedicate one’s life to proving that only the material universe is real or conversely to proving that all is illusion. One may use arguments of great logical complexity and intelligence while being disconnected from reality or context. Both of the examples are ‘formatory thinking,’ i.e. thinking without sense of context, in black and white.
We notice that while the circuits are quite different, trauma in each reduces flexibility and shuts out possibilities that would otherwise be open.
The circuits have to do with the formation of a semantic map of reality, a dictionary. The imprinting sort of populates the dictionaries, in order of emotional, social and intellectual, with the concepts and models with which the person will work for the rest of the lifetime. That which has never been experienced does not enter into one’s thinking. If one has never experienced safety, the term, also as concerns safety of others, is an abstraction void of inner positive meaning. The imprinting of circuits forms the basis of the formations of the so-called juvenile and adult dictionaries. Severe trauma at imprinting stages tends to later confine one to the ‘juvenile dictionary,’ depriving one of the full depth of concepts, no matter how sensitive or intelligent one may otherwise be.
Modern psychology generally maintains the idea that 80% of personality comes from genetic factors and only 20% from environment. It is true that the degree to which people get traumatized and the degree to which this affects their subsequent lives, even when they come from a very difficult environment, varies greatly from individual to individual. This may in part be explained by differences in the degree to which the circuits remain malleable and capable of new learning. Such differences are most likely genetically based. While a system of values is acquired, the basic type of personality seem to be congenital. Circuit imprinting can be seen as the process by which latent abilities are activated. An entirely unactivated ability may be permanently lost.
Some authors suggest the existence of as many as eight circuits. The fourth circuit would be the magnetic center of the 4th Way, the subsequent circuits would then correspond to higher and higher mystical experience, somewhat like the grades of meditation in yogic teachings.
In Secret History, Laura Knight-Jadczyk discusses the practice of circumcision of the boy child on the eighth day in terms of imprinting. She proposes that this creates a negative first circuit imprint which conditions the male to be distrustful of women in particular and the universe in general. This predisposes one to seek security in tribe and in male dominance. These traits are seen in cultures with this practice, if also elsewhere. The process is of course entirely subconscious. Still, this observation may shed light on the motives of the purported Yahweh who according to the Bible instigated this practice.