Self-reinforcing feedback cycles and Weinberg’s psychotherapy

A chosen action strengthens the action’s motivations, leading to this amplifying feedback cycle.

George Weinberg offers a clear and practical account of how people continually reconstruct themselves through their habits—and how people can change. When a person takes a chosen action, they reinforce the ideas and feelings that motivate the action. So, as habits repeat the same actions, they repeatedly reinforce their motivations. I present how self-amplifying feedback cycles organise this reinforcement.

Weinberg identifies how people can free themselves from buried fears that drive problems. By abstaining from a problematic habit, people can discover clues about the habit’s origin. Also, character is pliant, as people can develop new habits by acting on slight impulses that they want to strengthen.

George Weinberg (1929–2017) was a psychotherapist and educator in New York, as well as the author of 14 books. His accounts of counselling read like a good novel, e.g., “Invisible Masters: Compulsions and the Fear that Drives Them” (1995).

You can read about George Weinberg (Psychologist) on Wikipedia.

Website under development

Many links to other counselling pages are not active because I am still writing them. 4 Dec 2025.

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The direct effect principle

Taking a chosen action reinforces each of its motivating ideas and feelings, including its unconscious motivations. This is Weinberg’s Direct Effect Principle.

The reinforcement happens alongside the indirect influences of (1) damage resulting from the action, which usually tends to discourage the action, and (2) rewards from the action, which tend to encourage the action.

(Weinberg, 1996, p. 17; Weinberg, 1995, p. 86)

The direct effect as a Feedback Cycle

I see Weinberg’s “Direct Effect Principle” as part of a self-amplifying feedback cycle.

In this cycle:

The upper arrow is based on Weinberg’s direct effect principle: taking a chosen action tends to strengthen its motivating ideas and feelings.
The lower arrow indicates that the strengthened motivations tend to cause the person to repeat the action.

Any rewards or damage resulting from the action will independently influence the motivation to repeat the activity. Here are three more types of feedback cycles that organise people’s actions.

Rewards as an amplifying feedback cycle

When an activity results in rewards, this forms an amplifying feedback cycle.


Take an action.		Get more rewards from the activity.
	Increase motivation to take the action.

The more you take an action, the more rewards you get from it, and you tend to become more motivated to repeat it. The impact of rewards can fade with repetition or strengthen.

Damage as a damping feedback cycle

Conversely, when an activity results in damage or adverse consequences, a damping feedback cycle occurs.

In this damping feedback cycle:

When you take an action, you also
Suffer the damage or adverse consequences of the action, which usually tends to
weaken the motivation to take the action, which tends to produce
less repetition of the action.

Damage usually weakens the motivation for an action, but, perversely, in compulsive habits, the damage can increase the habit’s use (see below).

Rejecting an activity weakens motivation.

Also, when a person chooses to act, they reject alternative actions. Each choice both strengthens the motivations for the chosen action and weakens the motivations for the rejected actions.


Reject an action		Weaken the action’s motivations.

Habits are repeated actions.

In a habit, people repeat the same action, thereby repeatedly:

Reinforcing the ideas and feelings that motivate it, and
Weakening the ideas and feelings motivating the rejected alternative actions and pushing these motivations towards extinction.

People have hundreds of habits, like:

making jokes or remaining serious,
speaking loudly or softly,
being assertive or deferential
locking the car,
washing hands,
exercising,
smoking
gambling

These habits are each organised by the cycles described above:

amplifying cycles due to choosing the activity and strengthening its motivations,
amplifying cycles due to rejecting alternative actions and so weakening their motivations,
amplifying cycles due to rewards, and
damping cycles due to damage.

Consider one chosen action and its motivating ideas. The ideas motivating the habit of “locking the door when you are in the house” could be:

Locking the door will stop a prowler from entering my house
You should take simple steps to protect yourself and your things.
I want to be safe.
I’m not strong enough to protect myself
Mum would like to see me doing this, just like she told me.

A separate amplifying feedback cycle forms for each of these ideas, for example:


Action: Lock the door		Strengthens the idea: I want to be safe

For each habit alone, there will be many feedback cycles, and the cycles of one habit often interact with those driving other habits; e.g., the habits of “driving carefully” and “locking the door” will both reinforce the idea, “I want to be safe”.

Habits remake people in their own image.

Many habits constantly reinforce a person’s ideas and feelings via amplifying feedback cycles that organise a person’s habits and relationships.

People are constantly reproducing aspects of themselves – virtues, vices, fears, ways of perceiving others and themselves – by multitudinous, ongoing habits. (Weinberg, 1995, p. 189)

People unwittingly perpetuate their unconscious fears through their habits. For example, traumatic events do not turn a person into a frightened person. It is the habits they develop after the trauma, like becoming homebound, that re-infect them with the unconscious dread of a reoccurrence of the trauma, reinforcing their ideas about the world being dangerous and their fear of the dangerous world. (Weinberg 1995, p.198).


Choose to stay at home after a traumatic incident.		Strengthen the dread of the incident recurring.

The good news here is that character is not set in stone; it is pliable because people can change their ordinary and compulsive habits.

Habits: Ordinary and Compulsive

Unconscious dread motivates compulsive habits. This table shows how compulsive habits differ from ordinary habits.

An Ordinary Habit	A Compulsive Habit
It solves a problem in a practical, realistic way.	It deals with dread in a symbolic or illusory way. It is not successful as it only buries the dread, i.e., renders it unconscious. It seemed to work for the person at some time, so they adopted it as a habit, gaining a false sense of security.
It reinforces its motivating ideas and feelings.	The same as the ordinary habit.
There is no unconscious dread motivating it.	It reinforces the motivating dread. If a person is bashed on a city street and then stays at home to avoid another attack, they reinforce the fear each time they reject going out.
It comes to feel right & necessary.	The same:
A person performs the habit efficiently with little thought or consciousness.	The same:
Abstinence will stop the habit.	Abstinence will NOT stop the habit as the dread remains. Abstinence brings “hunger illusions”: clues about the dread and the origin of the habit.
–	Any habit can become compulsive.

An example of a compulsive habit

Consider the compulsive habit of one of Weinberg’s clients (1995, p. 190). Jack, I call him Jack, “snapped to defend himself against even the slightest implication of criticism … and could not remember his childhood at all”. Weinberg asked Jack to refrain from this defensiveness. After forcing himself to stay silent when people criticised him, Jack had a dream in which he was a child with his family criticising him. Then he remembered childhood episodes when his father corrected him by ridiculing him, and his mother just smiled. Jack was horrified about being wrong, ridiculed and outcast.

Jack’s compulsive habit kept his dread of being outcast unconscious, but it also reinforced this dread.
He managed his dread of being wrong and socially outcast by arguing against even the slightest criticism, an illusory solution.
It came to feel right and necessary to him.
Inevitably, when he did something wrong and argued that he was right, it gave others solid evidence to criticise him.

I see Jack’s habit reinforcing his dread in two ways. First, Jack’s choice to argue against criticism directly reinforced each of the habit’s motivations, including the motivating dread. This formed an amplifying feedback cycle.


Habit: Argue against the slightest criticism		Strengthen the dread of being wrong and outcast.

Second: The damage due to this defensive habit indirectly reinforced his dread, as people became critical of his extreme defensiveness. Whenever he was learning, made a slight mistake, and insisted he was right, it gave others solid grounds to criticise him. This formed another amplifying feedback cycle.


Habit: stronger argument against criticism		Increased damage with people fairly criticising him for arguing that black is white.
	Increased dread of being wrong and out

When a child adopts a compulsive habit to cope with a distressing situation, that habit can persist and keep their childhood fears alive.

Unconscious dread is always a motive for a compulsive activity; the activity itself not only conceals the dread, but also renews it; compulsions are reinfected agents. (Weinberg, 1995, p. 191)

This Weinberg quote, when viewed in isolation, can seem mysterious, but the amplifying feedback cycles make it clear that “compulsions are reinfecting agents”.

ZED: The cyclic intervention in brief.

Consider how this relates to my client Zed and the cyclic intervention.

Here is a brief overview of the cyclic dynamic that emerged during the session with Zed.

This diagram shows the dynamic driving this client’s problem gambling.

Zed’s life had become dominated by a vicious cycle, an amplifying feedback loop in which:

Zed gambled more to experience the exhilaration of respect during his winning streaks; however, this tended to
Increase the damage caused by his gambling, including losing money and the respect at home and at work, which tended to
increase his need for respect, which tended to
increase his gambling again, although things like running out of money often paused his gambling and paused the escalation of his need for respect, and the gambling damage.

The method for generating and using the cyclic intervention is critical; the linked page describes the counselling session.

Zed: Drivers of Zed’s and Jack’s habits were similar

Zed’s gambling habit defended him from his conscious need for respect, and I deduced this from discussing his recent life with him. So, Zed’s gambling is different from Jack’s compulsive habit of being extremely defensive, which defended him from an unconscious dread that originated in his childhood. Despite these differences, I see the drivers of Zed’s habit as similar to those of Jack’s habit.

Zed’s amplifying cycle linking his (1) need for respect, (2) gambling, and (3) damage has the same pattern as Jack’s cycle linking his (1) dread of being held in contempt, (2) his defensiveness, and (3) the damage. Both men also had amplifying feedback cycles linking their choices to act and their habits’ motivations.

Zed’s possible dread of being defective.

Another way to view Zed’s gambling also fits this same pattern. I discuss this on the psychodynamics page, but in brief, Zed could have feared that there was something wrong with his head, and this could have been another driver of his gambling and amplifying feedback cycle.

** Insert the diagram from the psychodynamics page and edit.

*LINK. *FIX

Hunger Illusions & Dread

Weinberg studied the thoughts and feelings that arose in people as they first refrained from their problematic habit and “hungered” for their habit. He called them hunger illusions. These illusions could reveal themselves in dreams or in what might seem like illogical excuses to resume the habit. Weinberg gives an example of a hunger illusion.

A man who had been dry for three weeks said sincerely to a roomful of people, ” I’m really worried that if I don’t sit down and drink with my family and friends during Christmas, they’ll think I’m a snob and that I hate them.” Everyone in the room laughed out loud. “But it’s only July”, someone reminded him. … The thought came from the centre of his being. … The man had begun drinking in his teens to get close to people and prove that he was not a snob. … the ideas that come to people’s minds when they break habits make no sense, even as excuses. They are … reasons that the person had had in the past when he or she began the behaviour. (Weinberg, 1995, p. 185)

Weinberg’s terms & psychodynamics

Weinberg’s compulsive habits are akin to psychodynamic defence mechanisms, but Weinberg and Malan use different terms.

Weinberg’s term	Malan’s term
Compulsive habit Symbolic solution	Defence
Dread Horrifying idea (1995, p 175)	A Hidden feeling. Unacceptable impulse. Mental pain. Mental conflict.
Not used	Anxiety

The interaction of psychodynamics & CBT

The feedback cycles between a chosen action and its motivations suggest how Cognitive therapy, Behavioural therapy, and Psychodynamic therapies can each influence a person’s actions, feelings and ideas.

The Victorian Government’s “Gambling Research Panel” report, “Best Practice in Problem Gambling Services”, wrote about my social work thesis:

The framework provides a structure for understanding how cognitive therapy, behavioural therapy, and psychodynamic therapy can influence problem gambling. It suggests that each therapy tackles problem gambling by breaking the amplifying loops underlying it in different places.

Cognitive therapy strategies tackle the pro-gambling mentality, denial, and self-tricking thinking, and thereby the gambling and the worries.

Behavioural therapy strategies tackle the gambling behaviour, and thereby the ideas and worries.

Psychodynamic therapy strategies tackle the dread, and thereby the ideas and gambling.

(Jackson, Thomas, and Blaszczynski: 2003, p 87, 88)


Reinforce the action’s motivating ideas.	Take a chosen action.	Reinforce the action’s motivating feelings.


Cognitive therapy tackles the pro-gambling mentality and denial.	Behavioural Therapy tackles the gambling behaviour.	Psycho-dynamic Therapy tackles the hidden feelings/dread.

The diagram shows the amplifying feedback cycles between a chosen action and its motivating ideas. There will be separate cycles for each of the many motivating ideas, conscious and unconscious, behind any chosen action:

a voluntary action tends to strengthen each motivating idea; and
the reinforced motivating idea tends to lead to repetition of the action.

Similarly, the diagram also shows the amplifying feedback cycles between the chosen action and its motivating feelings. Again, there will always be many motivating feelings behind any chosen action.

Many feedback cycles organise a single voluntary action or habit, and people have many habits, so there is a complex of interacting feedback cycles that spread any change across a person’s acting, thinking, and feeling.

DSM and Compulsive Gambling

Weinberg uses the term “compulsive gambling”. This is consistent with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-3R, which states that excessive gambling “may be referred to as compulsive”; however, DSM-5 TR (2022) says only some individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder may exhibit “compulsive gambling”

Wind Up

Weinberg’s concepts gave me a solid basis for understanding problem gambling and offered constructive ways for me to develop my counselling practice. I integrated some of his concepts into my systems theory understanding of my clients.

*Link to the systems theory page on this website.

References

The counselling references are on the “Introduction to the counselling pages”.

*LINK.

Counselling references

The counselling pages on this site