THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS ■ 37station in the morning, fill the tire with air, and then drive to work as
quickly as possible. After work the tire was low again, so he inflated it
at a gas station near the factory and drove home.
On the morning in question, he had been doing this for three
days, hoping the procedure would work until the next paycheck. But
today, by the time he made it to the factory, he could hardly steer the
car because the wheel with the bum tire was so flat. All through the day
he worried: “Will I make it home tonight? How will 1 get to work
tomorrow morning?” These questions kept intruding in his mind, dis
rupting concentration on his work and throwing a pall on his moods.
Julio is a good example of what happens when the internal order
of the self is disrupted. The basic pattern is always the same: some
information that conflicts with an individual’s goals appears in con
sciousness. Depending on how central that goal is to the self and on how
severe the threat to it is, some amount of attention will have to be
mobilized to eliminate the danger, leaving less attention free to deal with
other matters. For Julio, holding a job was a goal of very high priority.
If he were to lose it, all his other goals would be compromised; therefore
keeping it was essential to maintain the order of his self. The flat tire
was jeopardizing the job, and consequently it absorbed a great deal of
his psychic energy.
Whenever information disrupts consciousness by threatening its
goals we have a condition of inner disorder, or psychic entropy, a disor
ganization of the self that impairs its effectiveness. Prolonged experi
ences of this kind can weaken the self to the point that it is no longer
able to invest attention and pursue its goals.
Julio’s problem was relatively mild and transient. A more chronic
example of psychic entropy is the case of Jim Harris, a greatly talented
high school sophomore who was in one of our surveys. Alone at home
on a Wednesday afternoon, he was standing in front of the mirror in
the bedroom his parents used to share. On the box at his feet, a tape
of the Grateful Dead was playing, as it had been almost without inter
ruption for the past week. Jim was trying on one of his father’s favorite
garments, a heavy green chamois shirt his father had worn whenever the
two had gone camping together. Passing his hand over the warm fabric,
Jim remembered the cozy feeling of being snuggled up to his dad in the
smoky tent, while the loons were laughing across the lake. In his right
hand, Jim was holding a pair of large sewing scissors. The sleeves were
too long for him, and he was wondering if he dared to trim them. Dad
would be furious ... or would he even notice? A few hours later, Jim
was lying in his bed. On the nightstand beside him was a bottle of