Here’s an in-depth response to a student of the Dramatica theory who recently stated:

“I assume the Independent has 4 iterations where each Splay and Display go together for a total of 4. This makes 4 Dynamic, 4 Companion, 4 Dependent, 4 Independent, which does give the correct number of appreciations for each tower.”

Here’s my lengthy reply that really gets to the core of how that part of the theory works:

Let’s talk about Independent for a minute. The quad of relationships that can exist between any two items are Dynamic, Companion, Dependent, and Component. Component is the fourth item in pair relationships. There are two dynamic pairs in a quad, two companion pairs, two dependent pairs and two component pairs. What are the two component pairs? Independent and Collective. Independent means all four items in the quad are seen as individual unconnected elements with individual traits. Collective means they are all taken together as a family in which all individual items are part of that family share overall traits.

In truth, every motion from one element in a quad to the next has a vertical component, but it is ignored in the spatial view until, by the time you have gone all around the quad, the vertical rise prevents the fourth item in the quad from connected back to the first in a true circle, creating a cycle as you would in trigonometry.

The spatial view prefers things all on the same level, so rather than addressing the temporal iterative rise element by element, it is ignored until at the fourth level, it all has to be dealt with at once, like a leap year in the calendar, and so the way that forth level works, and its semantic values all reflect the entire vertical rise from all four items combined, all at once.

That’s why Dynamic, Companion, and Dependent have the same feel as one another, each has two instances in the quad, and one will be a positive relationship and one a negative relationship to balance the potential of the polarity.

As you know, a negative dynamic relationship is where both elements beat each other into the ground until no potential is left. A positive dynamic relationship is when the conflict between both elements sparks a synthesis that helps solve the problem. One is destructive, the other constructive.

But what about the component relationships, independent and collective? One is positive and the other negative because one leads to the solution and one away from it. Picture the slinky toy view. A quad is in the middle of the slinky somewhere. From there, you can move up the slinky to the next quad or down the slinky to the next quad.

Collective relationships move up (arbitrary direction) but that means that it combines the elements into a family, thereby moving up to the next level in the tower and are now considered a family, rather than independent elements. Independent relationships move down (arbitrary direction just for illustration of the concept) and split apart into new parents that will have new children in the level below.

The family relationship they previous had is now gone as they are considered parents in their own right and the next level down in the tower is now created.

The mind can only hold four levels of iteration at one time before it runs out of perspectives (we call it the “size of mind constant.” But, like the slinky, it theoretically goes up and down the helix like a railroad track, only covering four railroad ties at a time, but able to move more into the macroscopic overview (up the tower) or down into the details in the other direction, if that is what is needed for a particular problem.

Now keep in mind that is how the mind operates ongoing. But narrative structure does not move up or down. Narrative structure defines the size of mind constant for one particular problem and explores all the mind’s perspective about that problem without moving up or down.

Narratives are a closed system that is defined by the size of mind constant as applied to a single problem. The mind itself is an open system the moves up and down the helix into the broader view or the narrower view as needed for each new problem it fields and must consider.

Bottom line, that is why the fourth pair relationship is actually Independent or Collective – it sets the direction of exploration up or down the town in a given closed system narrative, which mimics the completely open system movement of the mind along the helix in the wild.

That’s it for now, and I’ll be back later to talk about splay and display and your other points, unless you’d rather have me address some other issue instead. Talk to you again soon, either way.

–Melanie Anne Phillips