Trom (The Resolution of Mind)

Greetings, mjh

It might be easier to understand the postulate failure chart if you keep in mind the differences between this and the games matrix.

First Dennis presents the games matrix with four legs. This describes the time track that an individual lives through as they pursue games with a given effect. It proceeds from Must Be Known to Must Not Be Known, to Must Know and finally to Must Not Know. An individual can only go in one direction through this sequence because they start in Leg 1 (Must Be Known) and each leg in turn becomes un-occupiable (by the person's own consideration, that is) as that postulate goes into failure. One ends in Leg 4 (Must Not Know), the low-toned end of the line for playing with that effect. The only way forward from there is to start a new cycle with a new effect.

Further on he introduces the postulate failure chart with its sixteen levels from 1A to 8B. These are instructions for therapy at Level 5 of TROM, and it goes in the opposite direction, from late to early on the time track. As he wrote, "The Time Track runs from 8 to 1. You work from 1 to 8, around and around." Someone running Level 5 starts at 1A which is the overwhelmed state at the very end of Leg 4. At 1A their 'Must Not Know'postulate has been defeated and they submit to knowing whatever effect their opponent was trying to make them know.

5A to 6B correspond to Leg 2, and 7A to 8B correspond to Leg 1. So in the case of a person getting into Leg 2 "by being overwhelmed by a Mustn’t know while being in the Must be known leg", he's overwhelmed by the opponent's 'Must Not Know' SD postulate at 7A and finds himself changing his own SD postulate to an enforced Must Not Be Known. Then when he moves into Leg 2 at level 6B he has adopted Must Not Be Known as his new SD postulate.

The complementary postulates at 1A, 2B, 3A, 4B, 5A, 6B, 7A, 8B are enforced complementaries. Check the origin and receipt columns to see who is enforcing what on whom. For example, at 1A Self apparently 'wants' to know the effect, but only because Others have rammed the effect down Self's throat. In running the postulate failure chart we're only seeking to run out games conditions and overwhelms, not the times when we happily had complementary postulates with others. Just as in scientology we were trying to run out aberrative incidents, not free track.

Anyway, I hope this is a bit helpful and hasn't created more problems. I didn't find the postulate failure chart easy to understand until I'd completed the earlier levels of TROM. When I finished Level 4, which removes charge from the whole subject of overts and motivators, the postulate failure chart started to make sense. Then on Level 5, understanding of what the levels mean in practical terms keeps changing as you run through them cycle after cycle.  These changes are the cognitions on each of the 1A, 1B etc levels within 5.  I've only recently started on Level 5, and expect to have many, many iterations of the chart before it's flat.

Your aside about twinned aspects is an interesting question too. It leads into the matter of competition, something that Dennis did not find it necessary to discuss. On the other hand, games theory in the biological sciences is all about competition: predators competing for a limited number of prey, birds competing for a limited number of nest sites etc. And games theorists in biology use the mathematics that John von Neumann developed in the 1940s to find optimum competitive strategies in business, poker and war. I've been trying to write a blog post explaining competition in terms of TROM, and if I ever get it finished I'll post a link here.  Briefly, competition (a.k.a rivalry) is an example of a junior game within a senior encompassing game, when there is relative scarcity on the other side. Dennis didn't need to address it directly because it collapses when the main game is resolved.

I'm inclined to agree with you that in the basic games package the only real conflicts would occur between paired outflows. An image comes to mind of two rival jazz trumpeters trying to out-play each other. In other game packages such as Eat there can be competing inflows, for example two plants in the same small pot competing to suck up a limited supply of nutrients.