The perspective on social behavior and the psychological field discussed in previous chapters require some clarification and a number of aspects should be made explicit. First, what one perceives of another is within a field of psychological forces, subject to unconscious distortion and evaluative weighting. However, this perception is not completely arbitrary, since it is a dialectical balance between external powers and one's perspective. An external reality bearing on us with great strength, such as an explosion, a crying baby, or a gun pointed at us, will force the balance towards correct perception.

Second, this picture incorporates social roles in two ways. One, internalized roles are part of our motivational structure. They comprise attitudes sharing common goals activated in similar situations and which constitute reasons for our social practices. Our perception of another partly relates the other to these roles and, given the proper occasion, will trip the customary role disposition. Two, our expectations about the outcome of our behavior towards another are included in our perception of the other's role. Thus, our behavioral disposition is partly a role disposition, and its eventuation in actual behavior partly depends on our perception of the other's role.

Third, culture is very much a part of this picture. Our perception is given interpretation and orientation through our cultural matrix: how one sees another and defines an occasion for behavior, and what expectations one has of another, are endowed with cultural meanings, values, and norms. Through the cultural matrix, our psychological field and our behavior towards another are part of a causal-functional cultural whole.

Fourth, the twin and crucial concepts of distance and power are an integral part of this perspective. In the literature social distance has played an important role in understanding behavior and conflict, and the emphasis on both social and political power needs no elaboration. Here both distance and power are included at the fundamental psychological level as an integral part of our perception and social behavior.

And fifth, the dynamic psychological field constitutes the process, structure, and gestalt that is our selves. Each self is a different field and although each confronts the other, although perspectives battle, perceptions overlap, and cultural matrices are shared, the fields remain distinct, each its own person. And this will be the only field of humankind, so long as we view reality and behavior from the perspective of the actor.

But we are also observers. Not only part of the drama of life, we are also spectators trying to understand it, to intuit its moral, and guide our life by it. As observers, whether social scientist, humanist, or writer, we bring a different perspective to bear. We try to encapsulate others in a common framework, to provide a more general unity to individual social interactions, to see humanity as a whole. At this aggregate level we can see then the structures, forces, and processes that commonly affect and engage us all, that form patterns in our society, culture, and history. And through this observer's perspective on humanity, we gain better comprehension of our own perspective and social interactions.

The transition from the dynamic psychological field is then a perspective transformation from an individually centered perspective from within ourselves as actors to that of an observer of human behavior in general. This is not to lose the dynamic psychological view, however, but to pluralize it, to see it in a multiple interactive context.

But, then, is there a sociocultural field combining the individual dynamic fields? Or is it an observer's arbitrary framework? A model of social reality? Is the only reality the individual and thus his field? Again, I must refer to my view of reality as a complex of multiple and entwined potentialities, dispositions, determinables, and powers. This reality is actualizable and exists in many forms and diverse manifestations. Which aspect we actualize is a function of our perspective.

As we try to understand our social interactions, we bring our self-centered viewpoint to bear and transform reality through but one perspective. As we try to observe people in general, however, to understand the structure and patterns underlying social interactions between individuals, we then are seeing the same reality through a different perspective. Both the actor's and observer's perspectives constitute the same reality, both can be simultaneously true.