By Charles Peirce
The Hare Hypothesis by Iain Spence is an interesting piece of pop-culture analysis which tries to link trends in youth movements to a larger pattern operating throughout history. It’s easy to understand the appeal — as anyone with a bit of historical perspective might start to notice the repetition of certain cultural trends. For Spence, whose background is in writing about music and youth in the UK, those repetitions are cycling in a four-stage pattern which he connects with his own, specific reading of the Life Scripts concept of Transactional Analysis.
First developed in in the mid-90s under the title The Sekhmet Hypothesis, Spence’s ideas have probably been most popularized by the comic book writer Grant Morrison. [1] The original version of the hypothesis focused on how youth culture seemed to vary in relationship to a solar cycle of 11 years [2], but Spence himself discredits this and now tries to connect the flux of youth culture to Life Scripts, though his primary sources remain counter-culture figures (Robert Anton Wilson, Peter Carroll, and Timothy Leary) rather than Transactional Analysis itself.
Spense sees four ego stages, present in infancy that he correlates with youth movements. The first is the “Gentle Angel” or “Friendly Weakness” which he connects with the Hippies and an attitude of passivity, love, and non-aggression but also inner insecurity. The second is the “Hostile Weakness” of the “Sullen Bull” which would represent the Punk movement and an attitude of hostile outer aggression but inner insecurity and self-loathing. Third is the “Friendly Strength” of the “Noble Lion” and the Rave movement, combining the outgoing and peaceful attitude of Hippies but with an internal sense of self and confidence. Fourth and last is the “Imperial Eagle” and its “Hostile Strength” and corresponds to a theorized “Stormer” cultural movement that may have been everything from nu-metal to gabber techno to The Matrix movies — strong and aggressive to the outside world but internally strong. [3]
There’s a few different ideas at work here, some of which I think are valid and some not. The basic idea is that a pattern of childhood developmental psychology plays out on the scale of history over the generations in pop culture, visible in youth movements in primal, archetypal ways (and in how they often seem extreme evolutions or involutions of each other). There’s an obvious logic problem here of scalability — while we know that childhood clearly affects later tastes, habits, and choices, linking that to larger groupings of culture needs some sort of defined causality. It doesn’t mean it’s not possible — it does mean the proof needs to be more sound (as Spence knows) than planetary cycles, passages of time, or apparent similarities between disparate things.
A bigger problem is in Spence’s conception of Transactional Analysis — his definitions and ideas seem to come almost entirely from Robert Anton Wilson (whose ideas in turn come from Timothy Leary). These ideas are wrapped up in an interest in the occult and psychedelic culture (either of which could be possible fertile ground for ways to think about culture and people’s tastes but neither of which directly link to Transactional Analysis). Most of his psychological references seem to be of a loose Jungian nature, and his reliance on Timothy Leary (whose early work on personality development would be an influence on Transaction Analysis rather than part of it) causes some key mistakes. Given that, it’s strange that Spence actually tries to dismiss Thomas Harris’ work while still using his terms (albeit incorrectly) to base his theory upon.
Chiefly, the four stages that Spence is referencing do not represent stages of transition which any infant goes through. They represent possible stages and one ideal stage (Spence’s “Friendly-Strong”), and two of them (Spence’s “Friendly-Weak” and “Hostile-Strong”) are actually areas of potential psychosis in a developing mind. From that perspective there’s no logical basis for thinking that people (on a personal scale or a larger cultural one) migrate through these four possible stages. If what he’s calling Life Scripts are more abstract Jungian archetypal patterns of personality, then perhaps it might have more basis. Spence’s idea of a holistic balance between four principle poles of possible personality types in an interesting one — but its roots are in other places.
Transactional Analysis
Transactional Analysis is a vital thing to understand as it offers many insights into communication and people. When I have talked previously about how our communication operates on multiple states, most obviously a surface level and a deeper emotional core, that belies a psychological sub-structure which Transactional Analysis has made a cogent effort in defining.
Transactional Analysis has its origins with two main figures — Eric Berne and his book Games People Play and Thomas A Harris and his book I’m Ok — You’re Ok. In both, the important defining groundwork is that our personality is definable by three distinct layers: Child, Parent, and Adult. For the first few years of existence, from a developmental perspective, we are essentially recording devices — absorbing what we see and learning adaptively. The “Child” is our pure, primal emotional, passionate creative state — it is intimate and playful but also potentially angry and dominated by fear. For Harris its main relationship to the world is weakness (“I’m not Ok”) and most of its activities are related to trying to cope with this state. The “Parent” is a series of behaviors we inherent and pick-up from any outside figure that imposes its will on us. It’s what gives us structure and allows us to initially learn, but it’s also where maladaptive attitudes and behaviors can come from (things like racism or responding to a child’s outburst with physical violence are considered “Parent” traits — as is knowing by instinct when not to cross the road). The “Adult” is a state that starts to develop a little later (around age 4) and is our rational, ideal state that helps to balance and control the actions of the other two states.
These three states continue throughout our lives and are similar to Freud’s Id, Ego, and Super Ego but not parallel. They are important to Transactional Analysis as they allow transactions between individuals to be defined and studied. The basic rule is that transactions between parallel states in individuals work with little friction (Child to Child, Adult to Adult, or Parent to Child/ Child to Parent) but crossed states cause problems (as when somebody responds with their Child-state in an Adult interaction). For instance, if somebody asks for another helping of food (ostensibly an Adult request) and are met with the response “you don’t want to get fat do you?” (a Parent response), a conflict has been created which might draw out their inner child (an angered, petulant, or upset response) or their own Parent (“you’re one to talk”).
Hopefully it’s obvious why understanding these levels of communication has potential in any field, whether personal communication, management, storytelling, or marketing. It is also not the foundation which Spence’s theory claims to be based on, and which makes his work largely a speculative curio more than anything else.
I’m not trying to dismantle an idea for an audience which is likely largely unfamiliar with it, but The Hare Hypothesis comes up enough — and aspects of it touch upon thinking which I do think is valid — that I felt it worth discussing. The Hare Hypothesis is a fun piece of pop-cultural analysis — and worth reading for its insights into various aspects of youth culture and how they reflect other aspects of personal psychology. It’s easy to see a pattern in generational cycles, and Spence very well may be onto something bigger — but the data he’s using to enforce his ideas is specious at best. That said, there is at least one other major source that Spence does not acknowledge, but which likely must have been an influence at some point, and that’s the “Generations” work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, which predates Spence’s work by several years and which also traces a four-stage pattern throughout cultural history based on each generation and their reaction to the previous one. I’ll talk about that idea and their work next.
Notes:
1. Grant Morrison is one of the more influential of contemporary comics writers, and his work is largely parallel in time with Alan Moore (Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta) and Frank Miller (300, Sin City) but has yet to see itself on the big screen in a significant way, though he personally claims to have been an influence on The Matrix.
2. Recurring patterns in history because of celestial movements would largely be the domain of Astrology — a belief I’m largely skeptical of but which I can understand as appealing as an abstract system within which to find larger, personal meaning. Cosmos and Psyche by Richard Tarnas would be a chief book if looking for a somewhat scholarly exploration of Astrology and its possible connection to historical events, though as with many texts of this nature Tarnas is unfortunately light with documentation for his ideas.
3. The search for a large movement that connects with “Hostile-Strong” is the self-admitted weak point of the Hare Hypothesis, and where much speculation starts.
Previously: Deep Metaphors
In Two Weeks: Audience by Generation
Nobody Knows Anything is a speculative journey through the more esoteric theories of popular culture: what that means, what comes next, and what can be done about it.
Charles Peirce is a screenwriter and musician, with an active interest in marketing, behavorial psychology and strategy. He finds it odd to talk about himself in the third person. He can be reached at ctcpeirce@gmail.com or via twitter @ctcpeirce.
