A clinical psychologist on William Powers's Perceptual Control Theory, inner conflict, reorganization, and what it means for leaders.Professor Warren Mansell is a clinical psychologist and an expert in Perceptual Control Theory, which physicist William Powers developed from control systems engineering. Mark “Moose” McGrath and I asked him to explain a simple, unsettling claim: behavior is how we control what we perceive.
Warren explains Powers’s view that living things are control systems. They organize their behavior so that what they perceive matches what they want to perceive. Behavior is the visible side effect of that control.
Conflict and reorganization
Psychological conflict, in this view, comes from two control systems inside us fighting over the same variable, such as wanting to remember a traumatic memory and wanting to forget it. Warren describes consciousness as a spotlight that moves through a hierarchy of control systems and helps resolve those conflicts through reorganization. That helps explain why deep conversation, meditation and psychedelics, which loosen habitual control for a while, can lead to insight.
For leaders
For leaders, Perceptual Control Theory offers a way to read people. Each person controls for different variables and lives with different conflicts. Leaders can build environments that help people explore what matters to them while staying aligned with shared goals.
Orientation sits at the center of John Boyd’s real OODA loop. Powers and Boyd both started from the inside of a living system.
What is the person across from you trying to control for?
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