Unconscious incompetence revisited
By M on Tuesday 13 February 2007, 01:19 - Journal - Permalink
Gail Rae Hudson's comments about my father's inability to recognise his
inabilities - a form of senile anosognosia, I suppose - set off a train of
thought. There is a commonly quoted breakdown of how people or organisations
are supposed to develop, and it goes like this:
Thanks, Gail.
- unconscious incompetence - baby doesn't know what it doesn't know, can't do, or ought to do
- conscious incompetence - a small child knows that there are things it cannot do and needs help with
- conscious competence - an adolescent can make things work, but it takes constant effort
- unconscious competence - an adult doesn't even know they are doing things right, it just happens
- Conscious competence - things are now taking a little more effort, we notice. We have to be more careful about where we put our feet - but we are still steady. Using banisters on staircases becomes, not necessary perhaps, but prudent. Glasses adorn our noses because we see that we do not see that well any more. When we wear them we are fine. We avoid dangers, take precautions, take care where once we were blithely confident.
- Conscious incompetence - we may now avoid rough ground, or crowds. We've found a little rut that works for us, and we stick to it - we find things tend to go wrong when we try something new. We accept that things seem to be moving away from us and another generation appears to be taking control. People much younger than us are taking jobs far more responsible than any of ours were.
- Unconscious incompetence - to all intents and appearances things have continued to get worse but we find ourselves feeling fine again. We assert that if anyone breaks into our house we will give them such a thrashing that they will not know what hit them. In demonstrating how this will happen we stumble and fall against the wall. We take dozens of hours of other people's time but see no reason why we cannot be left to our own devices. We expect everything to be done, but make no effort to do it.
Thanks, Gail.
Comments
A very neat outline of the process. I certainly had never thought of it that way.
I think this explains one of the most difficult elements of this caretaking for me. The thing that ties me up in knots, and sometimes makes equanimity impossible, is seeing myself in my parents. A tone of voice, a gesture, a posture, suddenly makes me see how much like one or the other of them I am – no getting around it.
And that means that I too am on the same trajectory through the “competences.” If I’m honest I’d have to say that at 62 I am somewhere between conscious competence and conscious incompetence. And it’s only heading in one direction (though I’d like to think we have some control over the rate of progress of our conscious incompetence). So watching them forge ahead through the layers of unconscious incompetence is doubly terrifying.
By the way, I completely agree with you about the “It’s like taking care of a little child” myth.
Your welcome, Mike. I, like redcedar, am grateful that your thoughts took you as far as they did and that you wrote about it.
I like the idea of the reversal of time's arrow, because the collapsing of time is involved in the backward trajectory through competence. As well, in comparing the child's march toward competence and the adult's slide toward incompetence, I notice an interesting difference: Although a child, usually a child from the age of 9 - 18, will often convince themselves that they are capable of a task which is beyond their ability and attempt it in that fearless "I'm immortal, what could possibly happen to me if I get it wrong" mode, I clearly remember this state and am sure that I, at least, even if I insisted overtly that I was capable, was acutely and covertly aware that I was incompetent and, if anything went wrong, I was immediately aware that I was the seed of the wrong that happened. I notice that, when my mother attempts something she's convinced she can do despite the fact that she can't and something goes wrong, she is convinced that the seed of the wrong lies outside herself. Thus, rather than becoming more compliant, as one would expect if she were reverting along the same route she followed from infanthood to adulthood, she is becoming less compliant.
Interesting. Thanks for your clarity. Thanks for putting your clarity out here.
Just thought of one more thing regarding stuffing the crumbling mortar with tissue paper. No wonder my mother goes through so many Kleenexes! Perhaps I should replace the boxes of tissues with packets of cement mix and squirt bottles of water. Couldn't be any worse than our medical options for handling dementia, at the moment.