Research Report: Not Very Progressive Regressive Imagery Dictionary

By Jason Wong, member of The Venetian Project Team

Wiseman, John.  “Regressive Imagery Dictionary.” 21 May 2007. Lemonodor. 10 Feb 2009

http://lemonodor.com/archives/001511.html

Abstract

The Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID), first developed in 1975, is a content-analysis coding scheme designed for measuring primordial and conceptual thought in a text.  This specific program, which was created by Kovach Computing Services, works on the premise that language reflects a speaker’s internal operations.   Based on a collective study of sensitive words, the dictionary evaluates whether the text’s speaker is more a primordial thinker or more a conceptual thinker and compares the frequencies of specific thought processes of that speaker.  RID is downloadable in multiple, European language versions.

Description

Kovach Computing Services is a software provider for easy data analysis.  Its Regressive Imagery Dictionary takes a piece of text, categorizes the words in that text into their respective types of emotional or logical thought and judges what sort of thinker the speaker might be.  There are two branches of thinking: conceptual thought and primordial thought.  Conceptual thought, commonly known as left brained thinking, is logical, orderly, and driven by reality and reason.  Primordial thought, conversely and commonly known as right brained thinking, is emotional, associative, and inclined toward fantasy and dreams.  The program identifies certain words that link to either primordial thought or conceptual thought, further classifies the words into more explicit groups within those two categories, and unearths specific sensations and cognitions that the speaker might be experiencing at the moment of delivering the content of a text.          The English Regressive Imagery Dictionary contains 3000 words that represent twenty-nine different categories of primordial thought content and seven different categories of conceptual thought content.  For example, words that signify narcissism include eye, heart, and hand.  Words that connote timelessness include eternal, forever, and immortal.  Both narcissism and timelessness correspond to regressive cognition—other categories listed are defensive symbolization (passivity, random movement), sensation (taste, odor, temperature), and drive (oral, anal, sex).

The following section is an example of the results a researcher can collect when submitting a text for the speaker’s psychoanalysis.  These numbers depict George W. Bush’s mindset during his second, presidential debate with Al Gore in 2000: 

SECONDARY:ABSTRACTION                                          319

SECONDARY:INSTRUMENTAL BEHAVIOR                                197

SECONDARY:SOCIAL BEHAVIOR                                      183

PRIMARY:REGRESSIVE COGNITION:CONCRETENESS                      170

SECONDARY:MORAL IMPERATIVE                                     107

SECONDARY:TEMPORAL REFERENCES                                   93

SECONDARY:RESTRAINT                                             61

EMOTIONS:AFFECTION                                              57

EMOTIONS:AGGRESSION                                             51

SECONDARY:ORDER                                                 29

PRIMARY:SENSATION:VISION                                        24

PRIMARY:DEFENSIVE SYMBOLIZATION:PASSIVITY                       23

PRIMARY:SENSATION:COLD                                          20

PRIMARY:ICARIAN IMAGERY:WATER                                   13

EMOTIONS:POSITIVE AFFECT                                        11

PRIMARY:REGRESSIVE COGNITION:NARCISSISM                         10

PRIMARY:SENSATION:HARD                                          10

EMOTIONS:GLORY                                                  10

PRIMARY:ICARIAN IMAGERY:HEIGHT                                   8

EMOTIONS:ANXIETY                                                 7

PRIMARY:ICARIAN IMAGERY:FIRE                                     6

PRIMARY:ICARIAN IMAGERY:DESCENT                                  5

PRIMARY:NEED:SEX                                                 4

PRIMARY:REGRESSIVE COGNITION:BRINK-PASSAGE                       4

PRIMARY:SENSATION:SOUND                                          4

PRIMARY:ICARIAN IMAGERY:DEPTH                                    3

PRIMARY:SENSATION:GENERAL-SENSATION                              3

PRIMARY:DEFENSIVE SYMBOLIZATION:VOYAGE                           3

PRIMARY:ICARIAN IMAGERY:ASCENT                                   3

PRIMARY:DEFENSIVE SYMBOLIZATION:DIFFUSION                        2

EMOTIONS:SADNESS                                                 2

PRIMARY:NEED:ORALITY                                             2

PRIMARY:DEFENSIVE SYMBOLIZATION:RANDOM MOVEMENT                  2

PRIMARY:DEFENSIVE SYMBOLIZATION:CHAOS                            1

EMOTIONS:EXPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR                                     1

PRIMARY:REGRESSIVE COGNITION:CONSCIOUSNESS ALTERATION            1

PRIMARY:REGRESSIVE COGNITION:UNKNOWN                             1

PRIMARY             : 22.206897 %

EMOTIONS            : 9.586207 %

SECONDARY           : 68.206897 %

7996 words total

In comparing Bush’s data with Gore’s data (not pictured), an analyst can measure that Bush was 5% more realistic, 50% more emotional, and 33% in greater need for sex than Gore was.

            The program was created to facilitate the dissection of a text usually performed by humans, and whereas most digital text-analysis tools simply count and provide the frequency of words, the Regressive Imagery Dictionary exceeds that purpose and attempts to seek out meanings behind those frequencies for the user.

Commentary

            While exposing a speaker’s mentality surely entices an investigation for the veiled truth behind a text, an impersonal, digital analysis pales in the light of personal, human analysis.  The Regressive Imagery Dictionary will not understand the context of words and employs the mere mention of a word to formulate conclusions regarding an entire mentality.  Furthermore, the program cannot even attempt to capture an entire mentality when it only recognizes the three thousand words in its severely limited dictionary and obviously neglects the other hundreds of million words in the English language.  Perhaps only a speaker with an elementary vocabulary may be accurately assessed. 

            The program lists several important categories of thought that might interest a researcher, but for the average user who might be unfamiliar with psychoanalytical jargon, one could easily get confused about word definitions and wonder why there are only seven categories for conceptual thought while primordial thought features twenty-nine.  The creators cite numerous credible sources for the validity of this text-analysis tool, but the mechanism seems to force users to accept its conclusions with blind faith.  Some questions a user might ask could be, based on the examples shown on the program website: Why does the word sweat suggest an anal drive, and what is an anal drive?  How could the mere mention of winter signify that the speaker is literally feeling cold?  How does the mention of the sun connote that the speaker is a transcendentalist?

            For a project studying the inter-character relationships in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, using the program could yield wayward results.  The imagery of the play will heavily influence the tool to conclude that every character is emotionally driven, a primordial thinker.  The suspicion holds for every other work of Shakespeare.  Since the program ambiguously yet resolutely links certain words to certain manifestations within a person’s mind without regard to the text’s context and cognizance of millions of English words, the authority of such a tool in judging a speaker’s mindset is questionable.

Resources for Further Study

“Regressive Imagery Dictionary.” 29 Oct 2008.  Kovach Computing Services.  18 Feb 2009 <http://www.kovcomp.co.uk/wordstat/RID.html>

Martindale, C., & Dailey, A. “Creativity, Primary Process Cognition, and Personality.”

Personality and Individual Differences 20 (1996): 409-414.

West, A. N., Martindale, C., & Sutton-Smith, B. “Age Trends in the Content of

Children's Spontaneous Fantasy Narratives.” Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs 111 (1985): 389-405.