Personality Theories Boeree PDF 2018

PERSONALITY THEORIES
From Freud to Frankl
C. George Boeree
PERSONALITY THEORIES:
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Contents
_____________________________________________
Chapter
1. Personality Theories: An Introduction…1

2. Sigmund Freud… 6
3. Anna Freud… 27
4. Erik Erikson… 30
5. Carl Jung… 47
6. Otto Rank… 66
7. Alfred Adler… 69
8. Karen Horney… 84
9. Albert Ellis… 92
10. Erich Fromm… 99
11. B. F. Skinner… 113
12. Hans Eysenck & Other Temperament Theorists… 120
13. Albert Bandura… 133
14. Gordon Allport… 141
15. George Kelly… 148
16. Donald Snygg & Arthur W. Combs… 167
17. Abraham Maslow… 171
18. Carl Rogers… 183
19. Ludwig Binswanger… 193
20. Medard Boss… 207
21. Viktor Frankl… 210
22. Rollo May… 224
23. Jean Piaget… 229
24. Sociobiology… 240
25. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha… 250
26. The Ultimate Theory on Personality… 261
References… 278
Index… 282
1|Personality Theories
CHAPTER 1
Personality Theories: An Introduction
Personality psychology, also known as personology, is the study of

the person, that is, the whole human individual. Most people, when they think
of personality, are actually thinking of personality differences—types and traits
and the like. This is certainly an important part of personality psychology,
since one of the characteristics of persons is that they can differ from each
other quite a bit. But the main part of personality psychology addresses the
broader issue of "what is it to be a person."
Personality psychologists view their field of study as being at the top
(of course) of a pyramid of other fields in psychology, each more detailed and
precise than the ones above. Practically speaking, that means that personality
psychologists must take into consideration biology (especially neurology),
evolution and genetics, sensation and perception, motivation and emotion,
learning and memory, developmental psychology, psychopathology, psycho-
therapy and whatever else might fall between the cracks.
Since this is quite an undertaking, personality psychology may also
be seen as the least scientific (and most philosophical) field in psychology. It
is for this reason that most personality courses in colleges still teach the field
in terms of theories. We have dozens and dozens of theories, each emphasiz-
ing different aspects of personhood, using different methods, sometimes
agreeing with other theories, sometimes disagreeing.
Like all psychologists—and all scientists—personality psychologists
yearn for a unified theory, one we can all agree on, one that is firmly rooted in
solid scientific evidence. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. People
are very hard to study. We are looking at an enormously complicated organ-
ism (one with "mind," whatever that is), embedded in not only a physical
environment, but in a social one made up of more of these enormously com-
plicated organisms. Too much is going on for us to easily simplify the situa-
tion without making it totally meaningless by doing so!
We need to take a look at the various research methods available
to us as personality psychologists to understand where we stand... There are
two broad classes of research methods: quantitative and qualita-
tive. Quantitative methods involve measurements and qualitative methods
don't. Measurement is very important to science because scientists want to
get beyond the purely subjective and to the more objective. If my dear wife
and I are both looking at a man and I say "he's short," she may say "no, he's
not—he's quite tall!" we are stuck with two subjective opinions. If we take
out a tape measure, we can together measure the man to discover that he is,
in fact, 5 foot 8 inches. Since I am 6 foot 2, I might think of him as short. My
2|C. George Boeree 3|Personality Theories
wife is 5 foot 2, and she might see him as tall. But there will be no argument the volume measured after, you know that the rotation of the knob is in some
about what the measuring tape says! (Actually, there won't be any arguing in way a cause of the volume.
any case, since my wife is clearly always correct.) Taking this idea into the world of personality, we could show people
A patch of color may seem blue to me and green to you. A piece of scary movies that have been rated as to how scary they are. Then we could
music may seem fast to me and slow to you. A person might seem shy to me measure their anxiety (with an instrument that measures how sweaty our
and outgoing to you. But if we measure the wavelength of color, or the hands get, for example, or with a simple test where we ask them to rate how
rhythm of the music, or find a way to give a number to shyness-outgoingness, frightened they are). Then we can see if they correlate. And, of course, they
we can agree. We become "objective." Creating personality tests to meas- would to some degree. Plus we now know that the scarier the movie, the
ure personality traits is a common activity of personality psychologists. more scared we get. A breakthrough in psychological science!
If you take two different forms of measurement—such as a measur- There are several things that make measurement, correlation and ex-
ing tape and a weight scale—and we measure the height and weight of a few periments difficult for personality psychologists. First, it isn't always easy to
hundred of our nearest and dearest friends, we can examine whether the two measure the kinds of things we are interested in in any meaningful way. Even
measures relate to each other somehow. This is called correlation. And, as the examples of shyness-easygoingness and intelligence and anxiety are iffy
you might expect, people's heights and weights do tend to correlate: the taller at best. How well do people recognize their own anxiety? How well does a
you are, generally speaking the heavier you are. Of course, there will be some sweat-test relate to anxiety? Can a paper-and-pencil test really tell you if you
folks who are tall but quite light and some who are short but quite heavy, and are smart or shy?
lots of variation in between, but there will indeed be a modest, but significant, When we get to some of the most important ideas in personality—
correlation. ideas like consciousness, anger, love, motivations, neurosis—the problem
You might be able to do the same thing with something involving looks at present to be insurmountable.
personality. For example, you might want to see if people who are shy are Another difficulty is the problem of control. In experiments, espe-
also more intelligent than people who are outgoing. So develop a way to cially, you need to control all the irrelevant variables in order to see whether
measure shyness-outgoingness and a way to measure intelligence (an IQ the independent variable actually affects the dependent variable. But there
test!), and measure a few thousand people. Compare the measures and see if are millions of variables impacting us at every moment. Even our whole his-
they correlate. In the case of this example, you would likely find little corre- tory as a person is right there, influencing the outcome. No sterile lab will
lation, despite our stereotypes. Correlation is a popular technique in psychol- ever control those!
ogy, including personality. Even if you could control many of the variables—the psychological
What correlation can't help you with is finding what causes version of a sterile lab—could you now generalize beyond that situa-
what. Does height somehow cause weight? Or is it the other way tion? People act differently in a lab than at home. They act differently when
around? Does being shy cause you to be smarter, or does being smarter cause they are being observed than when they do in private. Experiments are ac-
you to be shy? You can't say. It could be one way or the other, or in fact tually social situations, and they are different from other social situations. Re-
there could be some other variable that is the cause of both. alism might be the answer, but how does one accomplish realism at the same
That's where experimentation comes in. Experiments are the time as one keeps control?
"gold standard" of science, and all of us personality psychologists wish we Then there's the problem of samples. If a chemist works with a
had an easier time doing them. In the prototypical experiment, we actually certain rock, he or she can be pretty confident that other samples of the same
manipulate one of the variables (the independent one) and then measure a rock will respond similarly to any chemicals applied. Even a biologist ob-
second variable (the dependent one). serving a rat can feel pretty comfortable that this rat is similar to most rats
So, for example, you can measure the degree of rotation of the vol- (although that has been debated!). This is certainly not true for people.
ume knob on your radio, and then measure the actually volume of the music In psychology, we often use college freshmen as subjects for our
that comes out of the speakers. What you would find, obviously, is that the research. They are convenient—easily available, easy to coax into participa-
further you turn the knob, the louder the volume. They correlate, but this tion (with promises of "points"), passive, docile.... But whatever results you
time, because the knob was actually manipulated (literally in this case) and get with college freshmen, can you generalize them to people in facto-
ries? …to people on the other side of the world? …to people 100 years ago
or 100 years in the future? Can you even generalize to college seniors? This
problem transcends the issues for quantitative methods to qualitative meth- Freud is to be respected in that he was able to rise above his cultural
ods as well. attitudes about sex and suggest that sexuality—even female sexuality—was a
What about qualitative methods, then? Qualitative methods basi- natural (if animalistic) aspect of being human, and that repressing one's sex-
cally involve careful observation of people, followed by careful description, uality could lead to debilitating psychological disorders. On the other hand,
followed by careful analysis. The problem with qualitative methods is he didn't quite see the possibility of a new western culture—our own—
clear: how can we be certain that the researcher is indeed being careful? Or, wherein sexuality was not only accepted as normal but as something we
indeed, that the researcher is even being honest? Only by replicating the should all be actively engaged in at every opportunity.
studies. A second thing to be on guard against is egocentrism. Again, for
There are as many qualitative methods as there are quantitative our purposes, we are talking about the tendency to see our experiences, our
methods. In some, the researcher actually introspects—looks into his own lives, as being the standard for all people. Freud was very close to his
experiences—for evidence. This sounds weak, but in fact it is ultimately the mother. She was 20 when she had him, while his father was 40. She stayed
only way for a researcher to directly access the kinds of things that go on in home to raise him, while his father was working the usual 16 hour days of
the privacy of his or her own mind! This method is common among exis- the time. Little Freud was a child genius who could talk about adult matters
tential psychologists. by the time he was five. He was, as his mother once put it, her "Golden
Other researchers observe people "in the wild," sort of like ethol- Siggy."
ogists watch birds or chimps or lions, and describe their behavior. The good These circumstances are unusual, even for his time and place. Yet,
thing here is that it is certainly easier to replicate observations than introspec- as he developed his theory, he took it for granted that the mother-son con-
tions. Anthropologists typically rely on this method, as do many sociologists. nection was at the center of psychology for one and all! That, of course, was
One of the most common qualitative method in personality is a mistake: egocentrism.
the interview. We ask questions, sometimes prearranged ones, sometimes Last, we need to be on guard against dogmatism. A dogma is a set
by the seat of our pants, of a variety of people who have had a certain expe- of ideas that the person who holds those ideas will not permit to be criti-
rience (such as being abducted by a UFO) or fall into a certain category (such cized. Do you have evidence against my beliefs? I don't want to hear
as being diagnosed as having schizophrenia). The case study is a version of them. Do you notice some logical flaws in my arguments? They are irrele-
this that focusses on gaining a rather complete understanding of a single in- vant. Dogmas are common in the worlds of religion and politics, but they
dividual, and is the basis for a great deal of personality theory. have absolutely no place in science! Science should always be open to new
Ultimately, science is just careful observation plus careful think- evidence and criticism. Science isn't "Truth;" it is just a movement in that
ing. So we personality psychologists do the best we can with our research general direction. When someone claims they have "Truth," science comes
methods. That does leave us to consider the business of careful thinking, to a grinding halt.
though and there are a couple of particulars there to consider as well. Well, sadly, Freud was guilty of dogmatism. He became so attached
First, we must always be on guard against ethnocentrism. Ethno- to his ideas that he refused to accept disagreement from his "disciples." (No-
centrism is (for our purposes) the tendency we all have to see things from the tice the religious term here!) Some, like Jung and Adler, would eventually go
perspective of our own culture. We are born into our culture, and most of on to develop their own theories. If only Freud had not been dogmatic, if
us never truly leave it. We learn it so young and so thoroughly that it becomes only he had been open to new ideas and new evidence and allowed his theory
"second nature." to evolve openly, we might all be "Freudians" today—and "Freudian" would
Freud, for example, was born in 1856 in Moravia (part of what is mean something quite different and much grander.
now the Czech Republic). His culture—central European, German speak- Enough of this beating around the bush. Let's get started. Where
ing, Victorian era, Jewish...—was quite different from our own (whatever that should we start? At the beginning, of course. And that would be the great
might be). One thing his culture taught was that sex was a very bad thing, an master himself, Sigmund Freud.
animal thing, a sinful thing. Masturbation was thought to lead to criminality,
retardation and mental illness. Women who were capable of orgasms were
assumed to be nymphomaniacs, unlikely to make good wives and mothers,
and possibly destined for prostitution.
CHAPTER 2 was suffering from what was then called hysteria (now called conversion dis-
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) order), which meant she had symptoms that appeared to be physical, but
were not.
In the evenings, Anna would sink into states of what Breuer called
"spontaneous hypnosis," or what Anna herself called "clouds." Breuer found
that, during these trance-like states, she could explain her day-time fantasies
and other experiences, and she felt better afterwards. Anna called these epi-
sodes "chimney sweeping" and "the talking cure."
Sometimes during "chimney sweeping," some emotional event was
recalled that gave meaning to some particular symptom. The first example
came soon after she had refused to drink for a while: She recalled seeing a
woman drink from a glass that a dog had just drunk from. While recalling
this, she experienced strong feelings of disgust...and then had a drink of wa-
ter! In other words, her symptom—an avoidance of water—disappeared as
soon as she remembered its root event, and experienced the strong emotion
that would be appropriate to that event. Breuer called this catharsis, from the
It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively
proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a de- Greek word for cleansing.
mand only made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form It was eleven years later that Breuer and his assistant, Sigmund
and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even if it Freud, wrote a book on hysteria. In it they explained their theory: every hys-
be a scientific one. Science in its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; teria is the result of a traumatic experience, one that cannot be integrated into
it consists mainly of statements which it has developed to varying degrees the person's understanding of the world. The emotions appropriate to the
of probability. The capacity to be content with these approximations to trauma are not expressed in any direct fashion, but do not simply evaporate.
certainty and the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack of They express themselves in behaviors that in a weak, vague way offer a re-
final confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of mind. sponse to the trauma. These symptoms are, in other words, meaningful.
– Sigmund Freud When the client can be made aware of the meanings of his or her symptoms
(through hypnosis, for example) then the unexpressed emotions are released
Freud's story, like most people's stories, begins with others. In his
and so no longer need to express themselves as symptoms. It is analogous to
case those others were his mentor and friend, Dr. Joseph Breuer and Breuer's
lancing a boil or draining an infection.
patient, called Anna O.
In this way, Anna got rid of symptom after symptom. But it must be
Anna O. was Joseph Breuer's patient from 1880 through 1882.
noted that she needed Breuer to do this. Whenever she was in one of her
Twenty one years old, Anna spent most of her time nursing her ailing father.
hypnotic states, she had to feel his hands to make sure it was him before
She developed a bad cough that proved to have no physical basis. She devel-
talking! And sadly, new problems continued to arise.
oped some speech difficulties, then became mute, and then began speaking
According to Freud, Breuer recognized that she had fallen in love
only in English, rather than her usual German.
with him, and that he was falling in love with her. Plus, she was telling eve-
When her father died she began to refuse food, and developed an
ryone she was pregnant with his child. You might say she wanted it so badly
unusual set of problems. She lost the feeling in her hands and feet, developed
that her mind told her body it was true, and she developed a hysterical preg-
some paralysis and began to have involuntary spasms. She also had visual
nancy. Breuer, a married man in a Victorian era, abruptly ended their sessions
hallucinations and tunnel vision. But when specialists were consulted, no
together and lost all interest in hysteria.
physical causes for these problems could be found.
It was Freud who would later add what Breuer did not acknowledge
If all this weren't enough, she had fairy-tale fantasies, dramatic mood
publicly—that secret sexual desires lay at the bottom of all these hysterical
swings and made several suicide attempts. Breuer's diagnosis was that she
neuroses.
To finish her story, Anna spent time in a sanatorium. Later, she be-
came a well-respected and active figure—the first social worker in Ger-
many—under her true name, Bertha Pappenheim. She died in 1936. She will Theory
be remembered, not only for her own accomplishments, but as the inspira- Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus uncon-
tion for the most influential personality theory we have ever had. scious mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular. The con-
scious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your present
Biography perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you. Working
Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856, in a small town—Freiberg— closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what
in Moravia. His father was a wool merchant with a keen mind and a good we might today call "available memory:" anything that can easily be made
sense of humor. His mother was a lively woman, her husband's second wife conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but can
and 20 years younger. She was 21 years old when she gave birth to her first readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of
son, her darling, Sigmund. Sigmund had two older half-brothers and six mind. But Freud suggested that these are the smallest parts!
younger siblings. When he was four or five—he wasn't sure—the family The largest part by far is the unconscious. It includes all the things
moved to Vienna, where he lived most of his life. that are not easily available to awareness, including many things that have
A brilliant child, always at the head of his class, he went to medical their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put
school, one of the few viable options for a bright Jewish boy in Vienna those there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and emo-
days. There, he became involved in research under the direction of a physi- tions associated with trauma.
ology professor named Ernst Brücke, who believed in what was then a pop- According to Freud, the unconscious is the source of our motiva-
ular, if radical, notion, which we now call reductionism. "No other forces tions, whether they be simple desires for food or sex, neurotic compulsions,
than the common physical-chemical ones are active within the organism." or the motives of an artist or scientist. And yet, we are often driven to deny
Freud would spend many years trying to "reduce" personality to neurology, or resist becoming conscious of these motives, and they are often available
a cause he later gave up on. to us only in disguised form. We will come back to this.
Freud was very good at his research, concentrating on neurophysi-
ology, even inventing a special cell-staining technique. But only a limited The id, the ego, and the superego
number of positions were available, and there were others ahead of him. Freudian psychological reality begins with the world, full of objects.
Brücke helped him to get a grant to study, first with the great psychiatrist Among them is a very special object, the organism. The organism is special
Charcot in Paris, then with his rival Bernheim in Nancy. Both these gentle- in that it acts to survive and reproduce, and it is guided toward those ends by
men were investigating the use of hypnosis with hysterics. its needs—hunger, thirst, the avoidance of pain and sex.
After spending a short time as a resident in neurology and director A part—a very important part—of the organism is the nervous sys-
of a children's ward in Berlin, he came back to Vienna, married his fiancée of tem, which has as one of its characteristics a sensitivity to the organism's
many years Martha Bernays, and set up a practice in neuropsychiatry, with needs. At birth, that nervous system is little more than that of any other ani-
the help of Joseph Breuer. mal, an "it" or id. The nervous system, as id, translates the organism's needs
Freud's books and lectures brought him both fame and ostracism into motivational forces called, in German, Triebe, which has been trans-
from the mainstream of the medical community. He drew around him a num- lated as instincts or drives. Freud also called them wishes. This translation
ber of very bright sympathizers who became the core of the psychoanalytic from need to wish is called the primary process.
movement. Unfortunately, Freud had a penchant for rejecting people who The id works in keeping with the pleasure principle, which can be
did not totally agree with him. Some separated from him on friendly terms; understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately. Just picture the
others did not, and went on to found competing schools of thought. hungry infant, screaming itself blue. It doesn't "know" what it wants in any
Freud immigrated to England just before World War II when Vienna adult sense; it just knows that it wants it and it wants it now. The infant, in
became an increasing dangerous place for Jews, especially ones as famous as the Freudian view, is pure, or nearly pure id. And the id is nothing if not the
Freud. Not long afterward, he died of the cancer of the mouth and jaw that psychic representative of biology.
he had suffered from for the last 20 years of his life. Unfortunately, although a wish for food, such as the image of a juicy
steak, might be enough to satisfy the id, it isn't enough to satisfy the organism.
10 | C . G e o r g e B o e r e e 11 | P e r s o n a l i t y T h e o r i e s
The need only gets stronger, and the wishes just keep coming. You may have Freud's clinical experience led him to view sex as much more im-
noticed that, when you haven't satisfied some need, such as the need for food, portant in the dynamics of the psyche than other needs. We are, after all,
it begins to demand more and more of your attention, until there comes a social creatures, and sex is the most social of needs. Plus, we have to remem-
point where you can't think of anything else. This is the wish or drive break- ber that Freud included much more than intercourse in the term sex! Anyway,
ing into consciousness. libido has come to mean, not any old drive, but the sex drive.
Luckily for the organism, there is that small portion of the mind we Later in his life, Freud began to believe that the life instincts didn't
discussed before, the conscious that is hooked up to the world through the tell the whole story. Libido is a lively thing; the pleasure principle keeps us in
senses. Around this little bit of consciousness, during the first year of a child's perpetual motion. And yet the goal of all this motion is to be still, to be sat-
life, some of the "it" becomes "I," some of the id becomes ego. The ego isfied, to be at peace, to have no more needs. The goal of life, you might say,
relates the organism to reality by means of its consciousness, and it searches is death! Freud began to believe that "under" and "beside" the life instincts
for objects to satisfy the wishes that id creates to represent the organisms’ there was a death instinct. He began to believe that every person has an
needs. This problem-solving activity is called the secondary process. unconscious wish to die.
The ego, unlike the id, functions according to the reality principle, This seems like a strange idea at first, and it was rejected by many of
which says "take care of a need as soon as an appropriate object is found." It his students, but I think it has some basis in experience: life can be a painful
represents reality and, to a considerable extent, reason. and exhausting process. There is easily, for the great majority of people in the
However, as the ego struggles to keep the id (and, ultimately, the world, more pain than pleasure in life—something we are extremely reluctant
organism) happy, it meets with obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets to admit! Death promises release from the struggle.
with objects that actually assist it in attaining its goals. And it keeps a record Freud referred to a nirvana principle. Nirvana is a Buddhist idea,
of these obstacles and aides. In particular, it keeps track of the rewards and often translated as heaven, but actually meaning "blowing out," as in the
punishments meted out by two of the most influential objects in the world blowing out of a candle. It refers to non-existence, nothingness, the void,
of the child—mom and dad. This record of things to avoid and strategies to which is the goal of all life in Buddhist philosophy.
take becomes the superego. It is not completed until about seven years of The day-to-day evidence of the death instinct and its nirvana princi-
age. In some people, it never is completed. ple is in our desire for peace, for escape from stimulation, our attraction to
There are two aspects to the superego: one is the conscience, which alcohol and narcotics, our penchant for escapist activity, such as losing our-
is an internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called the ego selves in books or movies, our craving for rest and sleep. Sometimes it pre-
ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models presented to the child. sents itself openly as suicide and suicidal wishes. And, Freud theorized, some-
The conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego times we direct it out away from ourselves, in the form of aggression, cruelty,
with feelings like pride, shame and guilt. murder, and destructiveness.
It is as if we acquired, in childhood, a new set of needs and accom-
panying wishes, this time of social rather than biological origins. Unfortu- Anxiety
nately, these new wishes can easily conflict with the ones from the id. You Freud once said "life is not easy!"
see, the superego represents society and society often wants nothing better The ego—the "I"—sits at the center of some pretty powerful forces:
than to have you never satisfy your needs at all! reality; society, as represented by the superego; biology, as represented by the
id. When these make conflicting demands upon the poor ego, it is under-
Life instincts and the death instinct standable if it—if you—feel threatened, feel overwhelmed, feel as if it were
Freud saw all human behavior as motivated by the drives or instincts, about to collapse under the weight of it all. This feeling is called anxiety, and
which in turn are the neurological representations of physical needs. At first, it serves as a signal to the ego that its survival, and with it the survival of the
he referred to them as the life instincts. These instincts perpetuate (a) the whole organism, is in jeopardy.
life of the individual, by motivating him or her to seek food and water and Freud mentions three different kind of anxieties: the first is realistic
(b) the life of the species, by motivating him or her to have sex. The motiva- anxiety, which you and I would call fear. Actually Freud did, too, in German.
tional energy of these life instincts, the "oomph" that powers our psyches, he But his translators thought "fear" too mundane! Nevertheless, if I throw you
called libido, from the Latin word for "I desire." into a pit of poisonous snakes, you might experience realistic anxiety.
The second is moral anxiety. This is what we feel when the threat Repression, which Anna Freud also called "motivated forgetting,"
comes not from the outer, physical world, but from the internalized social is just that: not being able to recall a threatening situation, person, or event.
world of the superego. It is, in fact, just another word for feelings like shame This, too, is dangerous, and is a part of most other defenses.
and guilt and the fear of punishment. As an adolescent, I developed a rather strong fear of spiders, espe-
The last is neurotic anxiety. This is the fear of being overwhelmed cially long-legged ones. I didn't know where it came from, but it was starting
by impulses from the id. If you have ever felt like you were about to "lose it," to get rather embarrassing by the time I entered college. At college, a coun-
lose control, your temper, your rationality, or even your mind, you have felt selor helped me to get over it (with a technique called systematic desensitiza-
neurotic anxiety. Neurotic is actually the Latin word for nervous, so this is tion), but I still had no idea where it came from. Years later, I had a dream, a
nervous anxiety. It is this kind of anxiety that intrigued Freud most, and we particularly clear one, that involved getting locked up by my cousin in a shed
usually just call it anxiety, plain and simple. behind my grandparents' house when I was very young. The shed was small,
dark, and had a dirt floor covered with—you guessed it!—Long-legged spi-
The defense mechanisms ders.
The ego deals with the demands of reality, the id, and the superego The Freudian understanding of this phobia is pretty simple: I re-
as best as it can. But when the anxiety becomes overwhelming, the ego must pressed a traumatic event—the shed incident—but seeing spiders aroused
defend itself. It does so by unconsciously blocking the impulses or distorting the anxiety of the event without arousing the memory.
them into a more acceptable, less threatening form. The techniques are called Other examples abound. Anna Freud provides one that now strikes
the ego defense mechanisms, and Freud, his daughter Anna, and other dis- us as quaint: a young girl, guilty about her rather strong sexual desires, tends
ciples have discovered quite a few. to forget her boy-friend's name, even when trying to introduce him to her
Denial involves blocking external events from awareness. If some relations! Or an alcoholic can't remember his suicide attempt, claiming he
situation is just too much to handle, the person just refuses to experience it. must have "blacked out." Or when someone almost drowns as a child, but
As you might imagine, this is a primitive and dangerous defense—no one can't remember the event even when people try to remind him—but he does
disregards reality and gets away with it for long! It can operate by itself or, have this fear of open water!
more commonly, in combination with other, more subtle mechanisms that Note that, to be a true example of a defense, it should function un-
support it. consciously. My brother had a fear of dogs as a child, but there was no de-
I was once reading while my five year old daughter was watching a fense involved. He had been bitten by one, and wanted very badly never to
cartoon (The Smurfs, I think). She was, as was her habit, quite close to the repeat the experience! Usually, it is the irrational fears we call phobias that
television, when a commercial came on. Apparently, no-one at the television derive from repression of traumas.
station was paying much attention, because this was a commercial for a hor- Asceticism, or the renunciation of needs, is one most people have-
ror movie, complete with bloody knife, hockey mask, and screams of terror. n't heard of, but it has become relevant again today with the emergence of
Now I wasn't able to save my child from this horror, so I did what any good the disorder called anorexia. Preadolescents, when they feel threatened by
psychologist father would do. I talked about it. I said to her "Boy, that was a their emerging sexual desires, may unconsciously try to protect themselves
scary commercial, wasn't it?" She said "Huh?" I said "That commercial...it by denying, not only their sexual desires, but all desires. They get involved in
sure was scary wasn't it?" She said "What commercial?" I said "The commer- some kind of ascetic (monk-like) lifestyle wherein they renounce their interest
cial that was just on, with the blood and the mask and the screaming...!" She in what other people enjoy.
had apparently shut out the whole thing. In boys nowadays, there is a great deal of interest in the self-disci-
Since then, I've noticed little kids sort of glazing over when con- pline of the martial arts. Fortunately, the martial arts not only don't hurt you
fronted by things they'd rather not be confronted by. I've also seen people (much), they may actually help you. Unfortunately, girls in our society often
faint at autopsies, people deny the reality of the death of a loved one, and develop a great deal of interest in attaining an excessively and artificially thin
students fail to pick up their test results. That's denial. standard of beauty. In Freudian theory, their denial of their need for food is
Anna Freud also mentions denial in fantasy. This is when children, actually a cover for their denial of their sexual development. Our society con-
in their imaginations, transform an "evil" father into a loving teddy bear, or spires with them. After all, what most societies consider a normal figure for
a helpless child into a powerful superhero. a mature woman is in ours considered 20 pounds overweight!
Anna Freud also discusses a milder version of this called restriction Once upon a time, at a time when I was not feeling my best, my
of ego. Here, a person loses interest in some aspect of life and focuses it daughter, five years old, spilled an entire glass of chocolate milk in the living
elsewhere, in order to avoid facing reality. A young girl who has been rejected room. I lashed out at her verbally, telling her she was clumsy and had to learn
by the object of her affections may turn away from feminine things and be- to be more careful and how often hadn't I told her and...Well, you know. She
come a "sex-less intellectual," or a boy who is afraid that he may be humili- stood there stiffly with a sort of smoldering look in her eyes, and, of all things,
ated on the football team may unaccountably become deeply interested in pounded herself on her own head several times! Obviously, she would rather
poetry. have pounded my head, but, well, you just don't do that, do you? Needless
Isolation (sometimes called intellectualization) involves stripping to say, I've felt guilty ever since.
the emotion from a difficult memory or threatening impulse. A person may, Projection, which Anna Freud also called displacement outward, is
in a very cavalier manner, acknowledge that they had been abused as a child, almost the complete opposite of turning against the self. It involves the ten-
or may show a purely intellectual curiosity in their newly discovered sexual dency to see your own unacceptable desires in other people. In other words,
orientation. Something that should be a big deal is treated as if it were not. the desires are still there, but they're not your desires anymore. I confess that
In emergency situations, many people find themselves completely whenever I hear someone going on and on about how aggressive everybody
calm and collected until the emergency is over, at which point they fall to is, or how perverted they all are, I tend to wonder if this person doesn't have
pieces. Something tells you that, during the emergency, you can't afford to an aggressive or sexual streak in themselves that they'd rather not
fall apart. It is common to find someone totally immersed in the social obli- acknowledge.
gations surrounding the death of a loved one. Doctors and nurses must learn Let me give you a couple of examples: A husband, a good and faith-
to separate their natural reactions to blood, wounds, needles, and scalpels, ful one, finds himself terribly attracted to the charming and flirtatious lady
and treat the patient, temporarily, as something less than a warm, wonderful next door. But rather than acknowledge his own, hardly abnormal, lusts, he
human being with friends and family. Adolescents often go through a stage becomes increasingly jealous of his wife, constantly worried about her faith-
where they are obsessed with horror movies, perhaps to come to grips with fulness, and so on. Or a woman finds herself having vaguely sexual feelings
their own fears. Nothing demonstrates isolation more clearly than a theater about her girlfriends. Instead of acknowledging those feelings as quite nor-
full of people laughing hysterically while someone is shown being dismem- mal, she becomes increasingly concerned with the presence of lesbians in her
bered. community.
Displacement is the redirection of an impulse onto a substitute tar- Altruistic surrender is a form of projection that at first glance looks
get. If the impulse, the desire, is okay with you, but the person you direct that like its opposite: here, the person attempts to fulfill his or her own needs
desire towards is too threatening, you can displace to someone or something vicariously, through other people.
that can serve as a symbolic substitute. A common example of this is the friend (we've all had one) who,
Someone who hates his or her mother may repress that hatred, but while not seeking any relationship himself, is constantly pushing other people
direct it instead towards, say, women in general. Someone who has not had into them, and is particularly curious as to "what happened last night" and
the chance to love someone may substitute cats or dogs for human beings. "how are things going?" The extreme example of altruistic surrender is the
Someone who feels uncomfortable with their sexual desire for a real person person who lives their whole life for and through another.
may substitute a fetish. Someone who is frustrated by his or her superiors Reaction formation, which Anna Freud called "believing the op-
may go home and kick the dog, beat up a family member, or engage in cross- posite," is changing an unacceptable impulse into its opposite. So a child,
burnings. angry at his or her mother, may become overly concerned with her and rather
Turning against the self is a very special form of displacement, dramatically shower her with affection. An abused child may run to the abus-
where the person becomes their own substitute target. It is normally used in ing parent. Or someone who can't accept a homosexual impulse may claim
reference to hatred, anger, and aggression, rather than more positive im- to despise homosexuals.
pulses, and it is the Freudian explanation for many of our feelings of inferi- Perhaps the most common and clearest example of reaction for-
ority, guilt, and depression. The idea that depression is often the result of the mation is found in children between seven and eleven or so. Most boys will
anger we refuse to acknowledge is accepted by many people, Freudians and tell you in no uncertain terms how disgusting girls are, and girls will tell you
non-Freudians alike. with equal vigor how gross boys are. Adults watching their interactions, how-
ever, can tell quite easily what their true feelings are!
Undoing involves "magical" gestures or rituals that are meant to the hostages were not only not terribly angry at their captors, but often down-
cancel out unpleasant thoughts or feelings after they've already occurred. right sympathetic. A more recent case involved a young woman named Patty
Anna Freud mentions, for example, a boy who would recite the alphabet Hearst, of the wealthy and influential Hearst family. She was captured by a
backwards whenever he had a sexual thought, or turn around and spit when- very small group of self-proclaimed revolutionaries called the Symbionese
ever meeting another boy who shared his passion for masturbation. Liberation Army. She was kept in closets, raped, and otherwise mistreated.
In "normal" people, the undoing is, of course, more conscious, and Yet she apparently decided to join them, making little propaganda videos for
we might engage in an act of atonement for some behavior, or formally ask them and even waving a machine gun around during a bank robbery. When
for forgiveness. But in some people, the act of atonement isn't conscious at she was later tried, psychologists strongly suggested she was a victim, not a
all. Consider the alcoholic father who, after a year of verbal and perhaps criminal. She was nevertheless convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to
physical abuse, puts on the best and biggest Christmas ever for his kids. When 7 years in prison. Her sentence was commuted by President Carter after two
the season is over, and the kids haven't quite been fooled by his magical ges- years.
ture, he returns to his bartender with complaints about how ungrateful his Regression is a movement back in psychological time when one is
family is, and how they drive him to drink. faced with stress. When we are troubled or frightened, our behaviors often
One of the classic examples of undoing concerns personal hygiene become more childish or primitive. A child may begin to suck their thumb
following sex. It is perfectly reasonable to wash up after sex. After all, it can again or wet the bed when they need to spend some time in the hospital.
get messy! But if you feel the need to take three or four complete showers Teenagers may giggle uncontrollably when introduced into a social situation
using gritty soap—perhaps sex doesn't quite agree with you. involving the opposite sex. A freshman college student may need to bring an
Introjection, sometimes called identification, involves taking into old toy from home. A gathering of civilized people may become a violent
your own personality characteristics of someone else, because doing so solves mob when they are led to believe their livelihoods are at stake. Or an older
some emotional difficulty. For example, a child who is left alone frequently, man, after spending twenty years at a company and now finding himself laid
may in some way try to become "mom" in order to lessen his or her fears. off, may retire to his recliner and become childishly dependent on his wife.
You can sometimes catch them telling their dolls or animals not to be afraid. Where do we retreat when faced with stress? To the last time in life
And we find the older child or teenager imitating his or her favorite star, when we felt safe and secure, according to Freudian theory.
musician, or sports hero in an effort to establish an identity. A more unusual Rationalization is the cognitive distortion of "the facts" to make an
example is a woman who lived next to my grandparents. Her husband had event or an impulse less threatening. We do it often enough on a fairly con-
died and she began to dress in his clothes, albeit neatly tailored to her figure. scious level when we provide ourselves with excuses. But for many people,
She began to take up several of his habits, such as smoking a pipe. Although with sensitive egos, making excuses comes so easy that they never are truly
the neighbors found it strange and referred to her as "the man-woman," she aware of it. In other words, many of us are quite prepared to believe our lies.
was not suffering from any confusion about her sexual identity. In fact, she A useful way of understanding the defenses is to see them as a com-
later remarried, retaining to the end her men's suits and pipe! bination of denial or repression with various kinds of rationalizations.
I must add here that identification is very important to Freudian the- All defenses are, of course, lies, even if we are not conscious of mak-
ory as the mechanism by which we develop our superegos. ing them. But that doesn't make them less dangerous—in fact it makes them
Identification with the aggressor is a version of introjection that more so. As your grandma may have told you, "Oh what a tangled web we
focuses on the adoption, not of general or positive traits, but of negative or weave..." Lies breed lies, and take us further and further from the truth, from
feared traits. If you are afraid of someone, you can partially conquer that fear reality. After a while, the ego can no longer take care of the id's demands, or
by becoming more like them. Two of my daughters, growing up with a par- pay attention to the superego. The anxieties come rushing back, and you
ticularly moody cat, could often be seen meowing, hissing, spitting, and arch- break down.
ing their backs in an effort to keep that cat from springing out of a closet or And yet Freud saw defenses as necessary. You can hardly expect a
dark corner and trying to eat their ankles. person, especially a child, to take the pain and sorrow of life full on! While
A more dramatic example is one called the Stockholm syndrome. some of his followers suggested that all of the defenses could be used posi-
After a hostage crisis in Stockholm, psychologists were surprised to find that tively, Freud himself suggested that there was one positive defense, which he
called sublimation.
Sublimation is the transforming of an unacceptable impulse, school years, perhaps up to a quarter of them are quite busy masturbating
whether it be sex, anger, fear, or whatever, into a socially acceptable, even and playing "doctor." In Freud's repressive era, these children were, at least,
productive form. So someone with a great deal of hostility may become a quieter than their modern counterparts.
hunter, a butcher, a football player, or a mercenary. Someone suffering from The genital stage begins at puberty, and represents the resurgence
a great deal of anxiety in a confusing world may become an organizer, a busi- of the sex drive in adolescence, and the more specific focusing of pleasure in
nessperson, or a scientist. Someone with powerful sexual desires may become sexual intercourse. Freud felt that masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality, and
an artist, a photographer, or a novelist, and so on. For Freud, in fact, all pos- many other things we find acceptable in adulthood today, were immature.
itive, creative activities were sublimations, and predominantly of the sex This is a true stage theory, meaning that Freudians believe that we
drive. all go through these stages, in this order, and pretty close to these ages.
The stages The Oedipal Crisis

As I said earlier, for Freud, the sex drive is the most important mo- Each stage has certain difficult tasks associated with it where prob-
tivating force. In fact, Freud felt it was the primary motivating force not only lems are more likely to arise. For the oral stage, this is weaning. For the anal
for adults but for children and even infants. When he introduced his ideas stage, it's potty-training. For the phallic stage, it is the oedipal crisis, named
about infantile sexuality to the Viennese public of his day, they were hardly after the ancient Greek story of king Oedipus, who inadvertently killed his
prepared to talk about sexuality in adults, much less in infants! father and married his mother.
It is true that the capacity for orgasm is there neurologically from Here's how the oedipal crisis works: the first love-object for all of us
birth. But Freud was not just talking about orgasm. Sexuality meant not only is our mother. We want her attention, we want her affection, we want her
intercourse, but all pleasurable sensation from the skin. It is clear even to the caresses, and we want her, in a broadly sexual way. The young boy, however,
most prudish among us that babies, children, and, of course, adults, enjoy has a rival for his mother's charms: his father! His father is bigger, stronger,
tactile experiences such as caresses, kisses, and so on. smarter, and he gets to sleep with mother, while junior pines away in his
Freud noted that, at different times in our lives, different parts of lonely little bed. Dad is the enemy.
our skin give us greatest pleasure. Later theorists would call these areas ero- About the time the little boy recognizes this archetypal situation, he
genous zones. It appeared to Freud that the infant found its greatest pleas- has become aware of some of the more subtle differences between boys and
ure in sucking, especially at the breast. In fact, babies have a penchant for girls, the ones other than hair length and clothing styles. From his naive per-
bringing nearly everything in their environment into contact with their spective, the difference is that he has a penis, and girls do not. At this point
mouths. A bit later in life, the child focuses on the anal pleasures of holding in life, it seems to the child that having something is infinitely better than not
it in and letting go. By three or four, the child may have discovered the pleas- having something, and so he is pleased with this state of affairs.
ure of touching or rubbing against his or her genitalia. Only later, in our sex- But the question arises: where is the girl's penis? Perhaps she has lost
ual maturity, do we find our greatest pleasure in sexual intercourse. In these it somehow? Perhaps it was cut off? Perhaps this could happen to him! This
observations, Freud had the makings of a psychosexual stage theory. is the beginning of castration anxiety, a slight misnomer for the fear of los-
The oral stage lasts from birth to about 18 months. The focus of ing one's penis.
pleasure is, of course, the mouth. Sucking and biting are favorite activities. To return to the story, the boy, recognizing his father's superiority
The anal stage lasts from about 18 months to three or four years and fearing for his penis, engages some of his ego defenses. He displaces his
old. The focus of pleasure is the anus. Holding it in and letting it go are greatly sexual impulses from his mother to girls and, later, women; and he identifies
enjoyed. with the aggressor, dad, and attempts to become more and more like him,
The phallic stage lasts from three or four to five, six, or seven years that is to say, a man. After a few years of latency, he enters adolescence and
old. The focus of pleasure is the genitalia. Masturbation is common. the world of mature heterosexuality.
The latent stage lasts from five, six, or seven to puberty, that is, The girl also begins her life in love with her mother, so we have the
somewhere around 12 years old. During this stage, Freud believed that the problem of getting her to switch her affections to her father before the oedi-
sexual impulse was suppressed in the service of learning. I must note that, pal process can take place. Freud accomplishes this with the idea of penis
while most children seem to be fairly calm, sexually, during their grammar envy. The young girl, too, has noticed the difference between boys and girls
and feels that she, somehow, doesn't measure up. She would like to have one,
too, and all the power associated with it. At very least, she would like a penis for no reason you can understand, the powers that be want you to do it only
substitute, such as a baby. As every child knows, you need a father as well as at certain times and in certain places. And parents seem to actually value the
a mother to have a baby, so the young girl sets her sights on dad. end product of all this effort!
Dad, of course, is already taken. The young girl displaces from him Some parents put themselves at the child's mercy in the process of
to boys and men, and identifies with mom, the woman who got the man she toilet training. They beg, they cajole, they show great joy when you do it right,
really wanted. Note that one thing is missing here: the girl does not suffer they act as though their hearts were broken when you don't. The child is the
from the powerful motivation of castration anxiety, since she cannot lose king of the house, and knows it. This child will grow up to be an anal expul-
what she doesn't have. Freud felt that the lack of this great fear accounts for sive (a.k.a. anal aggressive) personality. These people tend to be sloppy, dis-
the fact (as he saw it) that women were both less firmly heterosexual than organized, and generous to a fault. They may be cruel, destructive, and given
men and somewhat less morally-inclined. to vandalism and graffiti. The Oscar Madison character in The Odd Couple
Before you get too upset by this less-than-flattering account of wom- is a nice example.
en's sexuality, rest assured that many people have responded to it. I will dis- Other parents are strict. They may be competing with their neigh-
cuss it in the discussion section. bors and relatives as to who can potty-train their child first (early potty-train-
ing being associated in many people's minds with great intelligence). They
Character may use punishment or humiliation. This child will likely become constipated
Your experiences as you grow up contribute to your personality, or as he or she tries desperately to hold it in at all times, and will grow up to be
character, as an adult. Freud felt that traumatic experiences had an especially an anal retentive personality. He or she will tend to be especially clean,
strong effect. Of course, each specific trauma would have its own unique perfectionistic, dictatorial, very stubborn, and stingy. In other words, the anal
impact on a person, which can only be explored and understood on an indi- retentive is tight in all ways. The Felix Unger character in The Odd Couple is
vidual basis. But traumas associated with stage development, since we all have a perfect example.
to go through them, should have more consistency. There are also two phallic personalities, although no-one has given
If you have difficulties in any of the tasks associated with the them names. If the boy is harshly rejected by his mother, and rather threat-
stages—weaning, potty-training, or finding your sexual identity—you will ened by his very masculine father, he is likely to have a poor sense of self-
tend to retain certain infantile or childish habits. This is called fixation. Fix- worth when it comes to his sexuality. He may deal with this by either with-
ation gives each problem at each stage a long-term effect in terms of our drawing from heterosexual interaction, perhaps becoming a book-worm, or
personality or character. by putting on a rather macho act and playing the ladies' man. A girl rejected
If you, in the first eight months of your life, are often frustrated in by her father and threatened by her very feminine mother is also likely to feel
your need to suckle, perhaps because mother is uncomfortable or even rough poorly about herself, and may become a wall-flower or a hyper-feminine
with you, or tries to wean you too early, then you may develop an oral-pas- "belle."
sive character. An oral-passive personality tends to be rather dependent on But if a boy is not rejected by his mother, but rather favored over
others. They often retain an interest in "oral gratifications" such as eating, his weak, milquetoast father, he may develop quite an opinion of himself
drinking, and smoking. It is as if they were seeking the pleasures they missed (which may suffer greatly when he gets into the real world, where nobody
in infancy. loves him like his mother did), and may appear rather effeminate. After all,
When we are between five and eight months old, we begin teething. he has no cause to identify with his father. Likewise, if a girl is daddy's little
One satisfying thing to do when you are teething is to bite on something, like princess and best buddy, and mommy has been relegated to a sort of servant
mommy's nipple. If this causes a great deal of upset and precipitates an early role, then she may become quite vain and self-centered, or possibly rather
weaning, you may develop an oral-aggressive personality. These people re- masculine.
tain a life-long desire to bite on things, such as pencils, gum, and other peo- These various phallic characters demonstrate an important point in
ple. They have a tendency to be verbally aggressive, argumentative, sarcastic, Freudian characterology: extremes lead to extremes. If you are frustrated in
and so on. some way or overindulged in some way, you have problems. And, although
In the anal stage, we are fascinated with our "bodily functions." At each problem tends to lead to certain characteristics, these characteristics can
first, we can go whenever and wherever we like. Then, out of the blue and also easily be reversed. So an anal retentive person may suddenly become
exceedingly generous, or may have some part of their life where they are ter- Transference, catharsis, and insight
ribly messy. This is frustrating to scientists, but it may reflect the reality of Transference occurs when a client projects feelings toward the
personality! therapist that more legitimately belong with certain important others. Freud
felt that transference was necessary in therapy in order to bring the repressed
Therapy emotions that have been plaguing the client for so long, to the surface. You
Freud's therapy has been more influential than any other, and more can't feel really angry, for example, without a real person to be angry at. The
influential than any other part of his theory. Here are some of the major relationship between the client and the therapist, contrary to popular images,
points: is very close in Freudian therapy, although it is understood that it can't get
Relaxed atmosphere. The client must feel free to express anything. out of hand.
The therapy situation is in fact a unique social situation, one where you do Catharsis is the sudden and dramatic outpouring of emotion that
not have to be afraid of social judgment or ostracism. In fact, in Freudian occurs when the trauma is resurrected. The box of tissues on the end table is
therapy, the therapist practically disappears. Add to that the physically relax- not there for decoration.
ing couch, dim lights, sound-proof walls, and the stage is set. Insight is being aware of the source of the emotion, of the original
Free association. The client may talk about anything at all. The the- traumatic event. The major portion of the therapy is completed when cathar-
ory is that, with relaxation, the unconscious conflicts will inevitably drift to sis and insight are experienced. What should have happened many years
the fore. It isn't far off to see a similarity between Freudian therapy and ago—because you were too little to deal with it, or under too many conflict-
dreaming! However, in therapy, there is the therapist, who is trained to rec- ing pressures—has now happened, and you are on your way to becoming a
ognize certain clues to problems and their solutions that the client would happier person.
overlook. Freud said that the goal of therapy is simply “to make the uncon-
Resistance. One of these clues is resistance. When a client tries to scious conscious."
change the topic, draws a complete blank, falls asleep, comes in late, or skips
an appointment altogether, the therapist says "aha!" These resistances suggest Discussion
that the client is nearing something in his free associations that he—uncon- The only thing more common than a blind admiration for Freud
sciously, of course—finds threatening. seems to be an equally blind hatred for him. Certainly, the proper attitude lies
Dream analysis. In sleep, we are somewhat less resistant to our un- somewhere in between. Let's start by exploring some of the apparent flaws
conscious and we will allow a few things, in symbolic form, of course, to in his theory.
come to awareness. These wishes from the id provide the therapist and client The least popular part of Freud's theory is the oedipal complex and
with more clues. Many forms of therapy make use of the client's dreams, but the associated ideas of castration anxiety and penis envy. What is the reality
Freudian interpretation is distinct in the tendency to find sexual meanings. behind these concepts? It is true that some children are very attached to their
Parapraxes. A parapraxis is a slip of the tongue, often called a opposite sex parent, and very competitive with their same-sex parent. It is
Freudian slip. Freud felt that they were also clues to unconscious conflicts. true that some boys worry about the differences between boys and girls, and
Freud was also interested in the jokes his clients told. In fact, Freud felt that fear that someone may cut their penis off. It is true that some girls likewise
almost everything meant something almost all the time—dialing a wrong are concerned, and wish they had a penis. And it is true that some of these
number, making a wrong turn, misspelling a word, were serious objects of children retain these affections, fears, and aspirations into adulthood.
study for Freud. However, he himself noted, in response to a student who Most personality theorists, however, consider these examples aber-
asked what his cigar might be a symbol for, that "sometimes a cigar is just a rations rather than universals, exceptions rather than rules. They occur in
cigar." Or is it? families that aren't working as well as they should, where parents are unhappy
Other Freudians became interested in projective tests, such as the with each other, use their children against each other. They occur in families
famous Rorschach or inkblot tests. The theory behind these test is that, when where parents literally denigrate girls for their supposed lack, and talk about
the stimulus is vague, the client fills it with his or her own unconscious cutting off the penises of unruly boys. They occur especially in neighbor-
themes. Again, these could provide the therapist with clues. hoods where correct information on even the simplest sexual facts is not
forthcoming, and children learn mistaken ideas from other children.
If we view the oedipal crisis, castration anxiety, and penis envy in a The unconscious
more metaphoric and less literal fashion, they are useful concepts. We do One last concept that is often criticized is the unconscious. It is not
love our mothers and fathers as well as compete with them. Children proba- argued that something like the unconscious accounts for some of our behav-
bly do learn the standard heterosexual behavior patterns by imitating the ior, but rather how much and the exact nature of the beast.
same-sex parent and practicing on the opposite-sex parent. In a male-domi- Behaviorists, humanists, and existentialists all believe that (a) the mo-
nated society, having a penis—being male—is better than not, and losing tivations and problems that can be attributed to the unconscious are much
one's status as a male is scary. And wanting the privileges of the male, rather fewer than Freud thought, and (b) the unconscious is not the great churning
than the male organ, is a reasonable thing to expect in a girl with aspirations. cauldron of activity he made it out to be. Most psychologists today see the
But Freud did not mean for us to take these concepts metaphorically. Some unconscious as whatever we don't need or don't want to see. Some theorists
of his followers, however, did. don't use the concept at all.
On the other hand, at least one theorist, Carl Jung, proposed an un-
Sexuality conscious that makes Freud's look puny! But we will leave all these views for
A more general criticism of Freud's theory is its emphasis on sexu- the appropriate chapters.
ality. Everything, both good and bad, seems to stem from the expression or
repression of the sex drive. Many people question that, and wonder if there Positive aspects
are any other forces at work. Freud himself later added the death instinct, but People have the unfortunate tendency to "throw the baby out with
that proved to be another one of his less popular ideas. the bath water." If they don't agree with ideas a, b, and c, they figure x, y, and
First let me point out that, in fact, a great deal of our activities are in z must be wrong as well. But Freud had quite a few good ideas, so good that
some fashion motivated by sex. If you take a good hard look at our modern they have been incorporated into many other theories, to the point where we
society, you will find that most advertising uses sexual images, that movies forget to give him credit.
and television programs often don't sell well if they don't include some titil- First, Freud made us aware of two powerful forces and their de-
lation, that the fashion industry is based on a continual game of sexual hide- mands on us. Back when everyone believed people were basically rational, he
and-seek, and that we all spend a considerable portion of every day playing showed how much of our behavior was based on biology. When everyone
"the mating game." Yet we still don't feel that all life is sexual. conceived of people as individually responsible for their actions, he showed
But Freud's emphasis on sexuality was not based on the great the impact of society. When everyone thought of male and female as roles
amount of obvious sexuality in his society—it was based on the intense determined by nature or God, he showed how much they depended on family
avoidance of sexuality, especially among the middle and upper classes, and dynamics. The id and the superego—the psychic manifestations of biology
most especially among women. What we too easily forget is that the world and society—will always be with us in some form or another.
has changed rather dramatically over the last hundred years. We forget that Second is the basic theory, going back to Breuer, of certain neurotic
doctors and ministers recommended strong punishment for masturbation, symptoms as caused by psychological traumas. Although most theorists no
that "leg" was a dirty word, that a woman who felt sexual desire was auto- longer believe that all neurosis can be so explained, or that it is necessary to
matically considered a potential prostitute, that a bride was often taken com- relive the trauma to get better, it has become a common understanding that
pletely by surprise by the events of the wedding night, and could well faint at a childhood full of neglect, abuse, and tragedy tends to lead to an unhappy
the thought. adult.
It is to Freud's credit that he managed to rise above his culture's Third is the idea of ego defenses. Even if you are uncomfortable
sexual attitudes. Even his mentor Breuer and the brilliant Charcot couldn't with Freud's idea of the unconscious, it is clear that we engage in little ma-
fully acknowledge the sexual nature of their clients' problems. Freud's mis- nipulations of reality and our memories of that reality to suit our own needs,
take was more a matter of generalizing too far, and not taking cultural change especially when those needs are strong. I would recommend that you learn
into account. It is ironic that much of the cultural change in sexual attitudes to recognize these defenses. You will find that having names for them will
was in fact due to Freud's work! help you to notice them in yourself and others!
Finally, the basic form of therapy has been largely set by Freud. Ex-
cept for some behaviorist therapies, most therapy is still "the talking cure,"
and still involves a physically and socially relaxed atmosphere. And, even if
other theorists do not care for the idea of transference, the highly personal Chapter 3
nature of the therapeutic relationship is generally accepted as important to Anna Freud (1885-1982)
success.
Some of Freud's ideas are clearly tied to his culture and era. Other
ideas are not easily testable. Some may even be a matter of Freud's own per-
sonality and experiences. But Freud was an excellent observer of the human
condition, and enough of what he said has relevance today that he will be a
part of personality textbooks for years to come. Even when theorists come
up with dramatically different ideas about how we work, they compare their
ideas with Freud's.
Readings
Freud's work is preserved in a 23 volume set called The Standard Edi- It seems that every time Freud felt he had his successor picked out,
tion of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. For a briefer overview, the nominee would abandon him. At least, that's what happened with Jung
you might want to try Freud's A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis or New and Adler. In the meantime, though, his daughter Anna was attending lec-
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. They are a part of The Standard Edition, but tures, going through analysis with her father, and generally moving towards
can also be found separately and in paperback. Or you might try a collection, a career as a lay psychoanalyst. She also became his care-taker after he de-
such as The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. veloped cancer in 1923. She became at very least her father's symbolic suc-
Some of Freud's most interesting works are The Interpretation of cessor.
Dreams, his own favorite, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, about Freudian
slips and other day-to-day oddities, Totem and Taboo, Freud's views on our Ego psychology
beginnings, Civilization and Its Discontents, his pessimistic commentary on Unlike Jung and Adler, she remained faithful to the basic ideas her
modern society, and The Future of an Illusion, on religion. All are a part of The father developed. However, she was more interested in the dynamics of the
Standard Edition, but all are available as separate paperbacks as well. psyche than in its structure, and was particularly fascinated by the place of
The father of psychoanalysis has been psychoanalyzed many times. the ego in all this. Freud had, after all, spent most of his efforts on the id and
First, there is his official biography, by his student Ernest Jones. More recent the unconscious side of psychic life. As she rightly pointed out, the ego is
is a biography by Peter Gay. A highly critical account of Freud's work is Jef- the "seat of observation" from which we observe the work of the id and the
frey Masson's The Assault on Truth. The best book I've come across on Freud superego and the unconscious generally, and deserves study in its own right.
and the entire psychoanalytic movement is Revolution in Mind: The Creation of She is probably best known for her book The Ego and the Mechanisms
Psychoanalysis, by George Makari. The commentary on and criticism of Freud's of Defense, in which she gives a particularly clear description of how the de-
work is unending! fenses work, including some special attention to adolescents' use of de-
fenses. The defenses section of the chapter on Freud in this text is based as
much on Anna's work as on Sigmund's.
This focus on the ego began a movement in psychoanalytic circles
called ego psychology that today represents, arguably, the majority of
Freudians. It takes Freud's earlier work as a crucial foundation, but extends
it into the more ordinary, practical, day-to-day world of the ego. In this way,
Freudian theory can be applied, not only to psychopathology, but to social
and developmental issues as well. Erik Erikson is the best-known example
of an ego psychologist.
Child psychology development from early childhood through adolescence. She also led the
But Anna Freud was not primarily a theoretician. Her interests were way in the use of natural experiments, that is, careful analyses of groups of
more practical, and most of her energies were devoted to the analysis of chil- children who suffered from similar disabilities, such as blindness, or early
dren and adolescents, and to improving that analysis. Her father, after all, traumas, such as wartime loss of parents. The common criticism of Freudian
had focused entirely on adult patients. Although he wrote a great deal about psychology as having no empirical basis is true only if "empirical basis" is
development, it was from the perspectives of these adults. What do you do restricted to laboratory experimentation!
with the child, for whom family crises and traumas and fixations are present Most of Anna Freud's work is contained within The Writings of Anna
events, not dim recollections? Freud, a seven-volume collection of her books and papers, including The Ego
First, the relationship of the child to the therapist is different. The and the Mechanisms of Defense and her work on the analysis of children and ad-
child's parents are still very much a part of his or her life, a part the therapist olescents. She is a very good writer, doesn't get too technical in most of her
cannot and should not try to usurp. But neither can the therapist pretend to works, and uses many interesting case studies as examples.
be just another child rather than an authority figure. Anna Freud found that
the best way to deal with this "transference problem" was the way that came
most naturally: be a caring adult, not a new playmate, not a substitute par-
ent. Her approach seems authoritarian by the standards of many modern
child therapies, but it might make more sense.
Another problem with analyzing children is that their symbolic abil-
ities are not as advanced as those of adults. The younger ones, certainly, may
have trouble relating their emotional difficulties verbally. Even older chil-
dren are less likely than adults to bury their problems under complex sym-
bols. After all, the child's problems are here-and-now; there hasn't been
much time to build up defenses. So the problems are close to the surface
and tend to be expressed in more direct, less symbolic, behavioral and emo-
tional terms.
Most of her contributions to the study of personality come out of
her work at the Hamstead Child Therapy Clinic in London, which she
helped to set up. Here, she found that one of the biggest problems was com-
munications among therapists. Whereas adult problems were communicated
by means of traditional labels, children's problems could not be.
Because children's problems are more immediate, she conceptual-
ized them in terms of the child's movement along a developmental time-
line. A child keeping pace with most of his or her peers in terms of eating
behaviors, personal hygiene, play styles, relationships with other children, and
so on, could be considered healthy. When one aspect or another of a child's
development seriously lagged behind the rest, the clinician could assume that
there was a problem, and could communicate the problem by describing the
particular lag.
Research
She also influenced research in Freudian psychology. She standard-
ized the records for children with diagnostic profiles, encouraged the pooling
of observations from multiple analysts, and encouraged long-term studies of
CHAPTER 4 Children were made to stay at boarding schools much of the year, in
Erik Erikson (1902-1994) the sincere belief that civilization and prosperity comes with education. At
boarding schools they learned many things that contradicted what they
learned at home. They were taught white standards of cleanliness and beauty,
some of which contradicted Lakota standards of modesty. They were taught
to compete, which contradicted Lakota traditions of egalitarianism. They
were told to speak up, when their upbringing told them to be still. In other
words, their white teachers found them quite impossible to work with, and
their parents found them quite corrupted by an alien culture.
As time went by, their original culture disappeared, but the new cul-
ture didn't provide the necessary substitutions. There were no more dream
quests, but then what roles were there left for adolescents to dream them-
selves into?
Erikson was moved by the difficulties faced by the Lakota children
Among the Oglala Lakota, it was the tradition for an adolescent boy and adolescents he talked to and observed. But growing up and finding one's
to go off on his own, weaponless and wearing nothing but a loincloth and place in the world isn't easy for many other Americans, either. African-Amer-
moccasins, on a dream quest. Hungry, thirsty, and bone-tired, the boy would icans struggle to piece together an identity out of forgotten African roots, the
expect to have a dream on the fourth day which would reveal to him his life's culture of powerlessness and poverty, and the culture of the surrounding
white majority. Asian-Americans are similarly stretched between Asian and
path. Returning home, he would relate his dream to the tribal elders, who
American traditions. Rural Americans find that the cultures of childhood
would interpret it according to ancient practice. And his dream would tell
him whether he was destined to be a good hunter, or a great warrior, or expert won't cut it in the larger society. And the great majority of European-Amer-
at the art of horse-stealing, or perhaps to become specialized in the making icans have, in fact, little left of their own cultural identities other than wearing
of weapons, or a spiritual leader, priest, or medicine man. green on St. Patrick's Day or a recipe for marinara sauce from grandma!
In some cases, the dream would lead him into the realm of controlled American culture, because it is everybody's, is in some senses nobody's.
deviations among the Oglala. A dream involving the thunderbird might lead Like Native Americans, other Americans have also lost many of the
a boy to go through a period of time as a heyoka, which involved acting like rituals that once guided us through life. At what point are you an adult? When
you go through puberty? Have your confirmation or bar mitzvah? Your first
a clown or a crazy man. Or a vision of the moon or a white buffalo could
sexual experience? Sweet sixteen party? Your learner's permit? Your driver's
lead one to a life as a berdache, a man who dresses and behaves as if he were
a woman. license? High school graduation? Voting in your first election? First job? Le-
In any case, the number of roles one could play in life was extremely gal drinking age? College graduation? When exactly is it that everyone treats
limited for men, and even more so for women. Most people were generalists; you like an adult?
very few could afford to be specialists. And you learned these roles by simply Consider some of the contradictions: You may be old enough to be
being around the other people in your family and community. You learned entrusted with a two-ton hunk of speeding metal, yet not be allowed to vote;
them by living. You may be old enough to die for your country in war, yet not be permitted
to order a beer; as a college student, you may be trusted with thousands of
By the time the Oglala Lakota were visited by Erik Erikson, things
dollars of student loans, yet not be permitted to choose your own classes.
had changed quite a bit. They had been herded onto a large but barren reser-
vation through a series of wars and unhappy treaties. The main source of In traditional societies (even our own only 50 or 100 years ago), a
young man or woman looked up to his or her parents, relations, neighbors,
food, clothing, shelter, and just about everything else—the buffalo—had
long since been hunted into near-extinction. Worst of all, the patterns of their and teachers. They were decent, hard-working people (most of them) and we
lives had been taken from them, not by white soldiers, but by the quiet efforts wanted to be just like them.
of government bureaucrats to turn the Lakota into Americans! Unfortunately, most children today look to the mass media, espe-
cially T.V., for role models. It is easy to understand why: the people on T.V.
are prettier, richer, smarter, wittier, healthier, and happier than anybody in
our own neighborhoods! Unfortunately, they aren't real. I'm always With the Nazis coming into power, they left Vienna, first for Copen-
astounded at how many new college students are quickly disappointed to dis- hagen, then to Boston. Erikson was offered a position at the Harvard Medical
cover that their chosen field actually requires a lot of work and study. It School and practiced child psychoanalysis privately. During this time, he met
doesn't on T.V. Later, many people are equally surprised that the jobs they psychologists like Henry Murray and Kurt Lewin, and anthropologists like
worked so hard to get aren't as creative and glorious and fulfilling as they Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Gregory Bateson. I think it can be safely
expected. Again, that isn't how it is on T.V. It shouldn't surprise us that so said that these anthropologists had nearly as great an effect on Erikson as
many young people look to the short-cuts that crime seems to offer, or the Sigmund and Anna Freud!
fantasy life that drugs promise. He later taught at Yale, and later still at the University of California
Some of you may see this as an exaggeration or a stereotype of modern ado- at Berkeley. It was during this period of time that he did his famous studies
lescence. I certainly hope that your passage from childhood to adulthood was of modern life among the Lakota and the Yurok.
a smooth one. But a lot of people—myself and Erikson included—could When he became an American citizen, he officially changed his name
have used a dream quest. to Erik Erikson. Erikson's son, Kai Erikson, believes it was just a decision to
define himself as a self-made man: Erik, son of Erik.
Biography In 1950, he wrote Childhood and Society, which contained summar-
Erik Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 15, 1902. ies of his studies among the Native Americans, analyses of Maxim Gorkiy
There is a little mystery about his heritage: His biological father was an un- and Adolph Hitler, a discussion of the "American personality," and the basic
named Danish man who abandoned Erik's mother before he was born. His outline of his version of Freudian theory. These themes—the influence of
mother, Karla Abrahamsen, was a young Jewish woman who raised him culture on personality and the analysis of historical figures—were repeated in
alone for the first three years of his life. She then married Dr. Theodor Hom- other works, one of which, Gandhi's Truth, won him the Pulitzer Prize and
berger, who was Erik's pediatrician, and moved to Karlsruhe in southern the national Book Award.
Germany. In 1950, during Senator Joseph McCarthy's reign of terror, Erikson
We cannot pass over this little piece of biography without some left Berkeley when professors there were asked to sign "loyalty oaths." He
comment. The development of identity seems to have been one of his great- spent ten years working and teaching at a clinic in Massachusetts, and ten
est concerns in Erikson's own life as well as in his theory. During his child- years more back at Harvard. Since retiring in 1970, he wrote and did research
hood, and his early adulthood, he was Erik Homberger, and his parents kept with his wife. He died in 1994.
the details of his birth a secret. So here he was, a tall, blond, blue-eyed boy
who was also Jewish. At temple school, the kids teased him for being Nordic; Theory
at grammar school, they teased him for being Jewish. Erikson is a Freudian ego-psychologist. This means that he accepts
After graduating high school, Erik focused on becoming an artist. Freud's ideas as basically correct, including the more debatable ideas such as
When not taking art classes, he wandered around Europe, visiting museums the Oedipal complex, and accepts as well the ideas about the ego that were
and sleeping under bridges. He was living the life of the carefree rebel, long added by other Freudian loyalists such as Heinz Hartmann and, of, course,
before it became "the thing to do." Anna Freud. However, Erikson is much more society and culture-oriented
When he was 25, his friend Peter Blos—a fellow artist and, later, than most Freudians, as you might expect from someone with his anthropo-
psychoanalyst—suggested he apply for a teaching position at an experimental logical interests, and he often pushes the instincts and the unconscious prac-
school for American students run by Dorothy Burlingham, a friend of Anna tically out of the picture. Perhaps because of this, Erikson is popular among
Freud. Besides teaching art, he gathered a certificate in Montessori education Freudians and non-Freudians alike!
and one from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. He was psychoanalyzed by
Anna Freud herself. The epigenetic principle
While there, he also met Joan Serson, a Canadian dance teacher at He is most famous for his work in refining and expanding Freud's
the school. They went on the have three children, one of whom became a theory of stages. Development, he says, functions by the epigenetic princi-
sociologist himself. ple. This principle says that we develop through a predetermined unfolding
of our personalities in eight stages. Our progress through each stage is in part
determined by our success, or lack of success, in all the previous stages. A
little like the unfolding of a rose bud, each petal opens up at a certain time, appropriate to add a third (and in some cases, a fourth) generation to the
in a certain order, which nature, through its genetics, has determined. If we picture: many of us have been influenced by our grandparents, and they by
interfere in the natural order of development by pulling a petal forward prem- us.
aturely or out of order, we ruin the development of the entire flower. A particularly clear example of mutuality can be seen in the problems
Each stage involves certain developmental tasks that are psychoso- of the teenage mother. Although the mother and her child may have a fine
cial in nature. Although he follows Freudian tradition by calling them crises, life together, often the mother is still involved in the tasks of adolescence,
they are more drawn out and less specific than that term implies. The child that is, in finding out who she is and how she fits into the larger society. The
in grammar school, for example, has to learn to be industrious during that relationship she has or had with the child's father may have been immature
period of his or her life, and that industriousness is learned through the com- on one or both sides, and if they don't marry, she will have to deal with the
plex social interactions of school and family. problems of finding and developing a relationship as well. The infant, on the
The various tasks are referred to by two terms. The infant's task, for other hand, has the simple, straight-forward needs that infants have, and the
example, is called "trust-mistrust." At first, it might seem obvious that the most important of these is a mother with the mature abilities and social sup-
infant must learn trust and not mistrust. But Erikson made it clear that there port a mother should have. If the mother's parents step in to help, as one
it is a balance we must learn: certainly, we need to learn mostly trust; but we would expect, then they, too, are thrown off of their developmental tracks,
also need to learn a little mistrust, so as not to grow up to become gullible back into a life-style they thought they had passed, and which they might find
fools! terribly demanding. And so on....
Each stage has a certain optimal time as well. It is no use trying to The ways in which our lives intermesh are terribly complex and very
rush children into adulthood, as is so common among people who are ob- frustrating to the theorist. But ignoring them is to ignore something vitally
sessed with success. Neither is it possible to slow the pace or to try to protect important about our development and our personalities.
our children from the demands of life. There is a time for each task.
If a stage is managed well, we carry away a certain virtue or psycho- The first stage
social strength which will help us through the rest of the stages of our lives. The first stage, infancy or the oral-sensory stage, is approximately
On the other hand, if we don't do so well, we may develop maladaptations the first year or year and a half of life. The task is to develop trust without
and malignancies, as well as endanger all our future development. A malig- completely eliminating the capacity for mistrust.
nancy is the worse of the two, and involves too little of the positive and too If mom and dad can give the newborn a degree of familiarity, con-
much of the negative aspect of the task, such as a person who can't trust sistency, and continuity, then the child will develop the feeling that the
others. A maladaptation is not quite as bad and involves too much of the world—especially the social world—is a safe place to be, that people are re-
positive and too little of the negative, such as a person who trusts too much. liable and loving. Through the parents' responses, the child also learns to trust
his or her own body and the biological urges that go with it.
Children and adults If the parents are unreliable and inadequate, if they reject the infant
Perhaps Erikson's greatest innovation was to postulate not five or harm it, if other interests cause both parents to turn away from the infants
stages, as Freud had done, but eight. Erikson elaborated Freud's genital stage needs to satisfy their own instead, then the infant will develop mistrust. He
into adolescence plus three stages of adulthood. We certainly don't stop de- or she will be apprehensive and suspicious around people.
veloping—especially psychologically—after our twelfth or thirteenth birth- Please understand that this doesn't mean that the parents have to be
days; it seems only right to extend any theory of stages to cover later devel- perfect. In fact, parents who are overly protective of the child, are there the
opment! minute the first cry comes out, will lead that child into the maladaptive ten-
Erikson also had some things to say about the interaction of gener- dency Erikson calls sensory maladjustment: overly trusting, even gullible,
ations, which he called mutuality. Freud had made it abundantly clear that a this person cannot believe anyone would mean them harm, and will use all
child's parents influence his or her development dramatically. Erikson the defenses at their command to retain their Pollyanna perspective.
pointed out that children influence their parents' development as well. The Worse, of course, is the child whose balance is tipped way over on
arrival of children, for example, into a couple's life, changes that life consid- the mistrust side. They will develop the malignant tendency of with-
erably, and moves the new parents along their developmental paths. It is even drawal, characterized by depression, paranoia, and possibly psychosis.
If mom and dad (and the other care-takers that often come into the
picture at this point) permit the child, now a toddler, to explore and manip-
Psycho- Maladapta-
ulate his or her environment, the child will develop a sense of autonomy or
Psychosocial Significant Psychosocial mo- independence. The parents should not discourage the child, but neither
Stage (age) social vir- tions & malig-
crisis relations dalities
tues nancies should they push. A balance is required. People often advise new parents to
I (0-1)— trust vs mis- to get, to give in re-
sensory distor- be "firm but tolerant" at this stage, and the advice is good. This way, the child
mother hope, faith tion—with- will develop both self-control and self-esteem.
infant trust turn
drawal
On the other hand, it is rather easy for the child to develop instead
autonomy vs
II (2-3)—
shame and parents
to hold on, to let will, deter- impulsivity— a sense of shame and doubt. If the parents come down hard on any attempt
toddler go mination compulsion to explore and be independent, the child will soon give up with the assump-
doubt
III (3-6)— initiative vs purpose, ruthlessness—
tion that cannot and should not act on their own. We should keep in mind
family to go after, to play that even something as innocent as laughing at the toddler's efforts can lead
preschooler guilt courage inhibition
IV (7-12 or neighbor- to complete, to the child to feel deeply ashamed, and to doubt his or her abilities.
industry vs compe- narrow virtuos-
so)—
inferiority
hood and make things to-
tence ity—inertia
And there are other ways to lead children to shame and doubt. If
school-age child school gether you give children unrestricted freedom and no sense of limits, or if you try to
V (12-18 or ego-identity
peer groups, to be oneself, to fidelity, fanaticism—re- help children do what they should learn to do for themselves, you will also
so)— vs role-confu-
adolescence sion
role models share oneself loyalty pudiation give them the impression that they are not good for much. If you aren't pa-
tient enough to wait for your child to tie his or her shoe-laces, your child will
to lose and find
VI (the 20’s)— intimacy vs partners,
oneself in a love
promiscuity— never learn to tie them, and will assume that this is too difficult to learn!
young adult isolation friends exclusivity Nevertheless, a little "shame and doubt" is not only inevitable, but
another
VII (late 20’s to generativity beneficial. Without it, you will develop the maladaptive tendency Erikson
household, to make be, to take overexten-
50’s)—middle vs self-ab-
workmates care of
care
sion—rejectivity
calls impulsiveness, a sort of shameless willfulness that leads you, in later
adult sorption childhood and even adulthood, to jump into things without proper consider-
VIII (50’s and
integrity vs mankind or
to be, through hav-
presumption— ation of your abilities.
beyond)—old ing been, to face wisdom
adult
despair “my kind”
not being
despair Worse, of course, is too much shame and doubt, which leads to the
malignancy Erikson calls compulsiveness. The compulsive person feels as
if their entire being rides on everything they do, and so everything must be
FIGURE 4.1 Erikson's 1959 Identity and the Life Cycle (Psychological Issues Vol. 1, no 1.)
done perfectly. Following all the rules precisely keeps you from mistakes, and
If the proper balance is achieved, the child will develop the vir- mistakes must be avoided at all costs. Many of you know how it feels to al-
tue hope, the strong belief that, even when things are not going well, they ways be ashamed and always doubt yourself. A little more patience and tol-
will work out well in the end. One of the signs that a child is doing well in erance with your own children may help them avoid your path. And give
the first stage is when the child isn't overly upset by the need to wait a mo- yourself a little slack, too!
ment for the satisfaction of his or her needs: mom or dad don't have to be If you get the proper, positive balance of autonomy and shame and
perfect; I trust them enough to believe that, if they can't be here immediately, doubt, you will develop the virtue of willpower or determination. One of the
they will be here soon; Things may be tough now, but they will work out. most admirable—and frustrating—thing about two- and three-year-olds is
This is the same ability that, in later life, gets us through disappointments in their determination. "Can do" is their motto. If we can preserve that "can do"
love, our careers, and many other domains of life. attitude (with appropriate modesty to balance it) we are much better off as
adults.
Stage two
The second stage is the anal-muscular stage of early childhood, Stage three
from about eighteen months to three or four years old. The task is to achieve Stage three is the genital-locomotor stage or play age. From three
a degree of autonomy while minimizing shame and doubt. or four to five or six, the task confronting every child is to learn initia-
tive without too much guilt.
Initiative means a positive response to the world's challenges, taking Stage four
on responsibilities, learning new skills, feeling purposeful. Parents can en- Stage four is the latency stage, or the school-age child from about
courage initiative by encouraging children to try out their ideas. We should six to twelve. The task is to develop a capacity for industry while avoiding
accept and encourage fantasy and curiosity and imagination. This is a time an excessive sense of inferiority. Children must "tame the imagination" and
for play, not for formal education. The child is now capable, as never before, dedicate themselves to education and to learning the social skills their society
of imagining a future situation, one that isn't a reality right now. Initiative is requires of them.
the attempt to make that non-reality a reality. There is a much broader social sphere at work now: the parents and
But if children can imagine the future, if they can plan, then they can other family members are joined by teachers and peers and other members
be responsible as well, and guilty. If my two-year-old flushes my watch down of the community at large. They all contribute: parents must encourage,
the toilet, I can safely assume that there were no "evil intentions." It was just teachers must care, peers must accept. Children must learn that there is pleas-
a matter of a shiny object going round and round and down. What fun! But ure not only in conceiving a plan, but in carrying it out. They must learn the
if my five year old does the same thing... well, she should know what's going feeling of success, whether it is in school or on the playground, academic or
to happen to the watch, what's going to happen to daddy's temper, and what's social.
going to happen to her! She can be guilty of the act, and she can begin to feel A good way to tell the difference between a child in the third stage
guilty as well. The capacity for moral judgement has arrived. and one in the fourth stage is to look at the way they play games. Four-year-
Erikson is, of course, a Freudian, and as such, he includes the Oedi- olds may love games, but they will have only a vague understanding of the
pal experience in this stage. From his perspective, the Oedipal crisis involves rules, may change them several times during the course of the game, and be
the reluctance a child feels in relinquishing his or her closeness to the oppo- very unlikely to actually finish the game, unless it is by throwing the pieces at
site sex parent. A parent has the responsibility, socially, to encourage the child their opponents. A seven-year-old, on the other hand, is dedicated to the
to "grow up—you're not a baby anymore!" But if this process is done too rules, considers them pretty much sacred, and is more likely to get upset if
harshly and too abruptly, the child learns to feel guilty about his or her feel- the game is not allowed to come to its required conclusion.
ings. If the child is allowed too little success, because of harsh teachers or
Too much initiative and too little guilt means a maladaptive tendency rejecting peers, for example, then he or she will develop instead a sense of
Erikson calls ruthlessness. The ruthless person takes the initiative alright; inferiority or incompetence. An additional source of inferiority Erikson men-
they have their plans, whether it's a matter of school or romance or politics tions is racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. If a child believes
or career. It's just that they don't care who they step on to achieve their goals. that success is related to who you are rather than to how hard you try, then
The goals are everything, and guilty feelings are for the weak. The extreme why try?
form of ruthlessness is sociopathy. Too much industry leads to the maladaptive tendency called narrow
Ruthlessness is bad for others, but actually relatively easy on the virtuosity. We see this in children who aren't allowed to "be children," the
ruthless person. Harder on the person is the malignancy of too much guilt, ones that parents or teachers push into one area of competence, without al-
which Erikson calls inhibition. The inhibited person will not try things be- lowing the development of broader interests. These are the kids without a
cause "nothing ventured, nothing lost" and, particularly, nothing to feel guilty life: child actors, child athletes, child musicians, child prodigies of all sorts.
about. On the sexual, oedipal, side, the inhibited person may be impotent or We all admire their industry, but if we look a little closer, it's all that stands in
frigid. the way of an empty life.
A good balance leads to the psychosocial strength of purpose. A Much more common is the malignancy called inertia. This includes
sense of purpose is something many people crave in their lives, yet many do all of us who suffer from the "inferiority complexes" Alfred Adler talked
not realize that they themselves make their purposes, through imagination about. If at first you don't succeed, don't ever try again! Many of us didn't do
and initiative. I think an even better word for this virtue would have been well in mathematics, for example, so we'd die before we took another math
courage, the capacity for action despite a clear understanding of your limita- class. Others were humiliated instead in the gym class, so we never try out
tions and past failings. for a sport or play a game of racquetball. Others never developed social
skills—the most important skills of all—and so we never go out in public.
We become inert.
A happier thing is to develop the right balance of industry and infe- is no room left for tolerance. Erikson calls this maladaptive tendency fanat-
riority—that is, mostly industry with just a touch of inferiority to keep us icism. A fanatic believes that his way is the only way. Adolescents are, of
sensibly humble. Then we have the virtue called competency. course, known for their idealism, and for their tendency to see things in black-
and-white. These people will gather others around them and promote their
Stage five beliefs and life-styles without regard to others' rights to disagree.
Stage five is adolescence, beginning with puberty and ending The lack of identity is perhaps more difficult still, and Erikson refers
around 18 or 20 years old. The task during adolescence is to achieve ego to the malignant tendency here as repudiation. They repudiate their mem-
identity and avoid role confusion. It was adolescence that interested Erik- bership in the world of adults and, even more, they repudiate their need for
son first and most, and the patterns he saw here were the bases for his think- an identity. Some adolescents allow themselves to "fuse" with a group, espe-
ing about all the other stages. cially the kind of group that is particularly eager to provide the details of your
Ego identity means knowing who you are and how you fit in to the identity: religious cults, militaristic organizations, groups founded on hatred,
rest of society. It requires that you take all you've learned about life and your- groups that have divorced themselves from the painful demands of main-
self and mold it into a unified self-image, one that your community finds stream society. They may become involved in destructive activities, drugs, or
meaningful. alcohol, or you may withdraw into their own psychotic fantasies. After all,
There are a number of things that make things easier: first, we should being "bad" or being "nobody" is better than not knowing who you are!
have a mainstream adult culture that is worthy of the adolescent's respect, If you successfully negotiate this stage, you will have the virtue Erik-
one with good adult role models and open lines of communication. son called fidelity. Fidelity means loyalty, the ability to live by societies stand-
Further, society should provide clear rites of passage, certain ac- ards despite their imperfections and incompleteness and inconsistencies. We
complishments and rituals that help to distinguish the adult from the child. are not talking about blind loyalty, and we are not talking about accepting the
In primitive and traditional societies, an adolescent boy may be asked to leave imperfections. After all, if you love your community, you will want to see it
the village for a period of time to live on his own, hunt some symbolic animal, become the best it can be. But fidelity means that you have found a place in
or seek an inspirational vision. Boys and girls may be required to go through that community, a place that will allow you to contribute.
certain tests of endurance, symbolic ceremonies, or educational events. In
one way or another, the distinction between the powerless, but irresponsible, Stage six
time of childhood and the powerful and responsible time of adulthood, is If you have made it this far, you are in the stage of young adulthood,
made clear. which lasts from about 18 to about 30. The ages in the adult stages are much
Without these things, we are likely to see role confusion, meaning an fuzzier than in the childhood stages, and people may differ dramatically. The
uncertainty about one's place in society and the world. When an adolescent task is to achieve some degree of intimacy, as opposed to remaining in iso-
is confronted by role confusion, Erikson say he or she is suffering from an lation.
identity crisis. In fact, a common question adolescents in our society ask is a Intimacy is the ability to be close to others, as a lover, a friend, and
straight-forward question of identity: "who am I?" as a participant in society. Because you have a clear sense of who you are, you
One of Erikson's suggestions for adolescence in our society is no longer need to fear "losing" yourself, as many adolescents do. The "fear
the psychosocial moratorium. He suggests you take a little "time out." If of commitment" some people seem to exhibit is an example of immaturity
you have money, go to Europe. If you don't, bum around the U.S., quit in this stage. This fear isn't always so obvious. Many people today are always
school and get a job. Quit your job and go to school. Take a break, smell the putting off the progress of their relationships: I'll get married (or have a fam-
roses, get to know yourself. We tend to want to get to "success" as fast as ily, or get involved in important social issues) as soon as I finish school, as
possible, and yet few of us have ever taken the time to figure out what success soon as I have a job, as soon as I have a house, as soon as.... If you've been
means to us. A little like the young Oglala Lakota, perhaps we need to dream engaged for the last ten years, what's holding you back?
a little. Neither should the young adult need to prove him- or herself any-
There is such a thing as too much "ego identity," where a person is more. A teenage relationship is often a matter of trying to establish identity
so involved in a particular role in a particular society or subculture that there through "couple-hood." Who am I? I'm her boy-friend. The young adult re-
lationship should be a matter of two independent egos wanting to create
something larger than themselves. We intuitively recognize this when we
frown on a relationship between a young adult and a teenager. We see the that, if the love is not returned, we don't consider it a true love. With gener-
potential for manipulation of the younger member of the party by the older. ativity, that implicit expectation of reciprocity isn't there, at least not as
Our society hasn't done much for young adults, either. The emphasis on ca- strongly. Few parents expect a "return on their investment" from their chil-
reers, the isolation of urban living, the splitting apart of relationships because dren; if they do, we don't think of them as very good parents!
of our need for mobility, and the general impersonal nature of modern life Although the majority of people practice generativity by having and
prevent people from naturally developing their intimate relationships. I am raising children, there are many other ways as well. Erikson considers teach-
typical of many people in having moved dozens of times in my life. I haven't ing, writing, invention, the arts and sciences, social activism, and generally
the faintest idea what has happened to the kids I grew up with, or even my contributing to the welfare of future generations to be generativity as well—
college buddies. My oldest friend lives a thousand miles away. I live where I anything, in fact, that satisfies that old "need to be needed."
do out of career necessity and, until recently, have felt no real sense of com- Stagnation, on the other hand, is self-absorption, caring for no-one.
munity. The stagnant person ceases to be a productive member of society. It is per-
Before I get too depressing, let me mention that many of you may haps hard to imagine that we should have any "stagnation" in our lives, but
not have had these experiences. If you grew up and stayed in your commu- the maladaptive tendency Erikson calls overextension illustrates the prob-
nity, and especially if your community is a rural one, you are much more likely lem: Some people try to be so generative that they no longer allow time for
to have deep, long-lasting friendships, to have married your high school themselves, for rest and relaxation. The person who is overextended no
sweetheart, and to feel a great love for your community. But this style of life longer contributes well. I'm sure we all know someone who belongs to so
is quickly becoming an anachronism. many clubs, or is devoted to so many causes, or tries to take so many classes
Erikson calls the maladaptive form promiscuity, referring particu- or hold so many jobs that they no longer have time for any of them!
larly to the tendency to become intimate too freely, too easily, and without More obvious, of course, is the malignant tendency of rejectivity.
any depth to your intimacy. This can be true of your relationships with friends Too little generativity and too much stagnation and you are no longer partic-
and neighbors and your whole community as well as with lovers. ipating in or contributing to society. And much of what we call "the meaning
The malignancy he calls exclusion, which refers to the tendency to of life" is a matter of how we participate and what we contribute.
isolate oneself from love, friendship, and community, and to develop a cer- This is the stage of the "midlife crisis." Sometimes men and women
tain hatefulness in compensation for one's loneliness. take a look at their lives and ask that big, bad question "what am I doing all
If you successfully negotiate this stage, you will instead carry with this for?" Notice the question carefully. Because their focus is on themselves,
you for the rest of your life the virtue or psychosocial strength Erikson they ask what, rather than whom, they are doing it for. In their panic at getting
calls love. Love, in the context of his theory, means being able to put aside older and not having experienced or accomplished what they imagined they
differences and antagonisms through "mutuality of devotion." It includes not would when they were younger, they try to recapture their youth. Men are
only the love we find in a good marriage, but the love between friends and often the most flamboyant examples. They leave their long-suffering wives,
the love of one's neighbor, co-worker, and compatriot as well. quit their humdrum jobs, buy some "hip" new clothes, and start hanging
around singles bars. Of course, they seldom find what they are looking for,
Stage seven because they are looking for the wrong thing!
The seventh stage is that of middle adulthood. It is hard to pin a But if you are successful at this stage, you will have a capacity for
time to it, but it would include the period during which we are actively in- caring that will serve you through the rest of your life.
volved in raising children. For most people in our society, this would put it
somewhere between the middle twenties and the late fifties. The task here is Stage eight
to cultivate the proper balance of generativity and stagnation. This last stage, referred to delicately as late adulthood or maturity,
Generativity is an extension of love into the future. It is a concern or less delicately as old age, begins sometime around retirement, after the kids
for the next generation and all future generations. As such, it is considerably have gone, say somewhere around 60. Some older folks will protest and say
less "selfish" than the intimacy of the previous stage: intimacy, the love be- it only starts when you feel old and so on, but that's an effect of our youth-
tween lovers or friends, is a love between equals, and it is necessarily recip- worshipping culture, which has even old people avoiding any acknowledge-
rocal. Oh, of course we love each other unselfishly, but the reality is such ment of age. In Erikson's theory, reaching this stage is a good thing, and not
reaching it suggests that earlier problems retarded your development!
The task is to develop ego integrity with a minimal amount of des- great deal, not by their wise words, but by their simple and gentle approach
pair. This stage, especially from the perspective of youth, seems like the most to life and death, by their "generosity of spirit."
difficult of all. First comes a detachment from society, from a sense of use-
fulness, for most people in our culture. Some retire from jobs they've held Discussion
for years; others find their duties as parents coming to a close; most find that I can't think of anyone, other than Jean Piaget, who has promoted
their input is no longer requested or required. the stage approach to development more than Erik Erikson. And yet stages
Then there is a sense of biological uselessness, as the body no longer are not at all a popular concept among personality theorists. Of the people
does everything it used to. Women go through a sometimes dramatic meno- reviewed in this text, only Sigmund and Anna Freud fully share his convic-
pause; Men often find they can no longer "rise to the occasion." Then there tions. Most theorists prefer an incremental or gradual approach to develop-
are the illnesses of old age, such as arthritis, diabetes, heart problems, con- ment, and speak of "phases" or "transitions" rather than of clearly marked
cerns about breast and ovarian and prostate cancers. There come fears about stages.
things that one was never afraid of before—the flu, for example, or just fall- But there are certain segments of life that are fairly easy to identify,
ing down. that do have the necessary quality of biologically determined timing. Adoles-
Along with the illnesses come concerns of death. Friends die. Rela- cence is "preprogrammed" to occur when it occurs, as is birth and, very pos-
tives die. One's spouse dies. It is, of course, certain that you, too, will have sibly, natural death. The first year of life has some special, fetus-like qualities,
your turn. Faced with all this, it might seem like everyone would feel despair. and the last year of life includes certain "catastrophic" qualities.
In response to this despair, some older people become preoccupied If we stretch the meaning of stages to include certain logical se-
with the past. After all, that's where things were better. Some become preoc- quences, i.e. things that happen in a certain order, not because they are bio-
cupied with their failures, the bad decisions they made, and regret that (unlike logically so programmed, but because they don't make sense any other way,
some in the previous stage) they really don't have the time or energy to re- we can make an even better case: weaning and potty-training have to precede
verse them. We find some older people become depressed, spiteful, paranoid, the independence from mother required by schooling; one is normally sex-
hypochondriacal, or developing the patterns of senility with or without phys- ually mature before finding a lover, normally finds a lover before having chil-
ical bases. dren, and necessarily has children before enjoying their leaving!
Ego integrity means coming to terms with your life, and thereby And if we stretch the meaning of stages even further to include social
coming to terms with the end of life. If you are able to look back and accept "programming" as well as biological, we can include periods of dependence
the course of events, the choices made, your life as you lived it, as being and schooling and work and retirement as well. So stretched, it is no longer
necessary, then you needn't fear death. Although most of you are not at this a difficult matter to come up with seven or eight stages; Only now, of course,
point in life, perhaps you can still sympathize by considering your life up to you'd be hard pressed to call them stages, rather than "phases" or something
now. We've all made mistakes, some of them pretty nasty ones; yet, if you equally vague.
hadn't made these mistakes, you wouldn't be who you are. If you had been It is, in fact, hard to defend Erikson's eight stages if we accept the
very fortunate, or if you had played it safe and made very few mistakes, your demands of his understanding of what stages are. In different cultures, even
life would not have been as rich as is. within cultures, the timing can be quite different. In some countries, babies
The maladaptive tendency in stage eight is called presumption. This are weaned at six months and potty-trained at nine months; in others, they
is what happens when a person "presumes" ego integrity without actually still get the breast at five and potty-training involves little more than taking it
facing the difficulties of old age. The malignant tendency is called disdain, outside. At one time in our own culture, people were married at thirteen and
by which Erikson means a contempt of life, one's own or anyone's. had their first child by fifteen. Today, we tend to postpone marriage until
Someone who approaches death without fear has the strength Erik- thirty and rush to have our one and only child before forty. We look forward
son calls wisdom. He calls it a gift to children, because "healthy children will to many years of retirement; in other times and other places, retirement is
not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death." He sug- unknown.
gests that a person must be somewhat gifted to be truly wise, but I would like And yet Erikson's stages do seem to give us a framework. We can
to suggest that you understand "gifted" in as broad a fashion as possible. I talk about our culture as compared with others', or today as compared with
have found that there are people of very modest gifts who have taught me a a few centuries ago, by looking at the ways in which we differ relative to the
"standard" his theory provides. Erikson and other researchers have found
that the general pattern does in fact hold across cultures and times, and most CHAPTER 5
of us find it quite familiar. In other words, his theory meets one of the most Carl Jung (1875-1961)
important standards of personality theory, a standard sometimes more im-
portant than "truth." It is useful.
It also offers us insights we might not have noticed otherwise. For
example, you may tend to think of his eight stages as a series of tasks that
don't follow any particularly logical course. But if you divide the lifespan into
two sequences of four stages, you can see a real pattern, with a child devel-
opment half and an adult development half.
In stage I, the infant must learn that "it" (meaning the world, espe-
cially as represented by mom and dad and itself) is "okay." In stage II, the
toddler learns "I can do," in the here-and-now. In stage III, the preschooler
learns "I can plan," and project him or herself into the future. In stage IV, Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing
the school-age child learns "I can finish" these projections. In going through from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon
these four stages, the child develops a competent ego, ready for the larger exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and
world. wander with human heart though the world. There in the horrors of pris-
In the adult half of the scheme, we expand beyond the ego. Stage V, ons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and
is concerned with establishing something very similar to "it is okay." The gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist
adolescent must learn that "I am okay," a conclusion predicated on successful meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love
and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body,
negotiation of the preceding four stages. In stage VI, the young adult must he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could
learn to love, which is a sort of social "I can do," in the here-and-now. In give him, and he will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of
stage VII, the adult must learn to extend that love into the future, as caring. the human soul.—Carl Jung (from "New Paths in Psychology", in Collected
And in stage VIII, the old person must learn to "finish" him- or herself as an Papers on Analytic Psychology, London, 1916)
ego, and establish a new and broader identity. We could borrow Jung's term,
and say that the second half of live is devoted to realizing one's self.
Freud said that the goal of therapy was to make the unconscious
Readings conscious. He certainly made that the goal of his work as a theorist. And yet
Erikson is an excellent writer and will capture your imagination he makes the unconscious sound very unpleasant, to say the least. It is a caul-
whether you are convinced by his Freudian side or not. The two books that dron of seething desires, a bottomless pit of perverse and incestuous crav-
lay out his theory are Childhood and Society and Identity: Youth and Crisis. These ings, a burial ground for frightening experiences which nevertheless come
are more like collections of essays on subjects as varied as Native American back to haunt us. Frankly, it doesn't sound like anything I'd like to make con-
tribes, famous people like William James and Adolph Hitler, nationality, race, scious!
and gender. A younger colleague of his, Carl Jung, was to make the exploration
His most famous books are two studies in "Psychohistory," Young of this "inner space" his life's work. He went equipped with a background in
Man Luther on Martin Luther, and Gandhi’s Truth. Freudian theory, of course, and with an apparently inexhaustible knowledge
of mythology, religion, and philosophy. Jung was especially knowledgeable in
the symbolism of complex mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, Alchemy,
Kabala, and similar traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism. If anyone could
make sense of the unconscious and its habit of revealing itself only in sym-
bolic form, it would be Carl Jung.
He had, in addition, a capacity for very lucid dreaming and occa-
sional visions. In the fall of 1913, he had a vision of a "monstrous flood"
engulfing most of Europe and lapping at the mountains of his native Swit- Emilie Preiswerk Jung. He was surrounded by a fairly well educated extended
zerland. He saw thousands of people drowning and civilization crumbling. family, including quite a few clergymen and some eccentrics as well.
Then, the waters turned into blood. This vision was followed, in the next few The elder Jung started Carl on Latin when he was six years old, be-
weeks, by dreams of eternal winters and rivers of blood. He was afraid that ginning a long interest in language and literature—especially ancient litera-
he was becoming psychotic. ture. Besides most modern western European languages, Jung could read
But on August 1 of that year, World War I began. Jung felt that there several ancient ones, including Sanskrit, the language of the original Hindu
had been a connection, somehow, between himself as an individual and hu- holy books.
manity in general that could not be explained away. From then until 1928, he Carl was a rather solitary adolescent, who didn't care much for
was to go through a rather painful process of self-exploration that formed school, and especially couldn't take competition. He went to boarding school
the basis of all of his later theorizing. in Basel, Switzerland, where he found himself the object of a lot of jealous
He carefully recorded his dreams, fantasies, and visions, and drew, harassment. He began to use sickness as an excuse, developing an embarrass-
painted, and sculpted them as well. He found that his experiences tended to ing tendency to faint under pressure.
form themselves into persons, beginning with a wise old man and his com- Although his first career choice was archeology, he went on to study
panion, a little girl. The wise old man evolved, over a number of dreams, into medicine at the University of Basel. While working under the famous neurol-
a sort of spiritual guru. The little girl became "anima," the feminine soul, who ogist Krafft-Ebing, he settled on psychiatry as his career.
served as his main medium of communication with the deeper aspects of his After graduating, he took a position at the Burghoeltzli Mental Hos-
unconscious. pital in Zurich under Eugene Bleuler, an expert on (and who named) schizo-
A leathery brown dwarf would show up guarding the entrance to the phrenia. In 1903, he married Emma Rauschenbach. He also taught classes at
unconscious. He was "the shadow," a primitive companion for Jung's ego. the University of Zurich, had a private practice, and invented word associa-
Jung dreamt that he and the dwarf killed a beautiful blond youth, whom he tion at this time!
called Siegfried. For Jung, this represented a warning about the dangers of Long an admirer of Freud, he met him in Vienna in 1907. The story goes that
the worship of glory and heroism which would soon cause so much sorrow after they met, Freud canceled all his appointments for the day, and they
all over Europe—and a warning about the dangers of some of his own talked for 13 hours straight, such was the impact of the meeting of these two
tendencies towards hero-worship, of Sigmund Freud! great minds! Freud eventually came to see Jung as the crown prince of psy-
Jung dreamt a great deal about the dead, the land of the dead, and choanalysis and his heir apparent.
the rising of the dead. These represented the unconscious itself—not the "lit- But Jung had never been entirely sold on Freud's theory. Their rela-
tle" personal unconscious that Freud made such a big deal out of, but a tionship began to cool in 1909, during a trip to America. They were enter-
new collective unconscious of humanity itself, an unconscious that could taining themselves by analyzing each other’s dreams (more fun, apparently,
contain all the dead, not just our personal ghosts. Jung began to see the men- than shuffleboard), when Freud seemed to show an excess of resistance to
tally ill as people who are haunted by these ghosts, in an age where no-one is Jung's efforts at analysis. Freud finally said that they'd have to stop because
supposed to even believe in them. If we could only recapture our mytholo- he was afraid he would lose his authority! Jung felt rather insulted.
gies, we would understand these ghosts, become comfortable with the dead, World War I was a painful period of self-examination for Jung. It
and heal our mental illnesses. was, however, also the beginning of one of the most interesting theories of
Critics have suggested that Jung was, very simply, ill himself when personality the world has ever seen.
all this happened. But Jung felt that, if you want to understand the jungle, After the war, Jung traveled widely, visiting, for example, tribal peo-
you can't be content just to sail back and forth near the shore. You've got to ple in Africa, America, and India. He retired in 1946, and began to retreat
get into it, no matter how strange and frightening it might seem. from public attention after his wife died in 1955. He died on June 6, 1961, in
Zurich.
Biography
Carl Gustav Jung was born July 26, 1875, in the small Swiss village Theory
of Kessewil. His father was Paul Jung, a country parson, and his mother was Jung's theory divides the psyche into three parts. The first is the ego,
which Jung identifies with the conscious mind. Closely related is the per-
sonal unconscious, which includes anything which is not presently con- child begins to yearn for something more specific when it is hungry—a bot-
scious, but can be. The personal unconscious is like most people's under- tle, a cookie, a broiled lobster, a slice of New York style pizza.
standing of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily The archetype is like a black hole in space. You only know it’s there by how
brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason. But it draws matter and light to itself.
it does not include the instincts that Freud would have it include.
But then Jung adds the part of the psyche that makes his theory stand The mother archetype
out from all others: the collective unconscious. You could call it your "psy- The mother archetype is a particularly good example. All of our
chic inheritance." It is the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of ancestors had mothers. We have evolved in an environment that included a
knowledge we are all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious mother or mother-substitute. We would never have survived without our
of it. It influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the connection with a nurturing-one during our times as helpless infants. It
emotional ones, but we only know about it indirectly, by looking at those stands to reason that we are "built" in a way that reflects that evolutionary
influences. environment. We come into this world ready to want mother, to seek her, to
There are some experiences that show the effects of the collective recognize her, to deal with her.
unconscious more clearly than others. The experiences of love at first sight, So the mother archetype is our built-in ability to recognize a certain
of Deja vu (the feeling that you've been here before), and the immediate relationship, that of "mothering." Jung says that this is rather abstract, and
recognition of certain symbols and the meanings of certain myths, could all we are likely to project the archetype out into the world and onto a particular
be understood as the sudden conjunction of our outer reality and the inner person, usually our own mothers. Even when an archetype doesn't have a
reality of the collective unconscious. Grander examples are the creative ex- particular real person available, we tend to personify the archetype, that is,
periences shared by artists and musicians all over the world and in all times, turn it into a mythological "story-book" character. This character symbolizes
or the spiritual experiences of mystics of all religions, or the parallels in the archetype.
dreams, fantasies, mythologies, fairy tales, and literature. The mother archetype is symbolized by the primordial mother or
A nice example that has been greatly discussed recently is the near- "earth mother" of mythology, by Eve and Mary in western traditions, and by
death experience. It seems that many people, of many different cultural back- less personal symbols such as the church, the nation, a forest, or the ocean.
grounds, find that they have very similar recollections when they are brought According to Jung, someone whose own mother failed to satisfy the demands
back from a close encounter with death. They speak of leaving their bodies, of the archetype may well be one that spends his or her life seeking comfort
seeing their bodies and the events surrounding them clearly, of being pulled in the church, or in identification with "the motherland," or in meditating
through a long tunnel towards a bright light, of seeing deceased relatives or upon the figure of Mary, or in a life at sea.
religious figures waiting for them, and of their disappointment at having to
leave this happy scene to return to their bodies. Perhaps we are all "built" to Mana
experience death in this fashion. You must understand that these archetypes are not really biological
things, like Freud's instincts. They are more spiritual demands. For example,
Archetypes if you dreamt about long things, Freud might suggest these things represent
The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. the phallus and ultimately sex. But Jung might have a very different interpre-
Jung also called them dominants, imagos, mythological or primordial images, tation. Even dreaming quite specifically about a penis might not have much
and a few other names, but archetypes seems to have won out over these. An to do with some unfulfilled need for sex.
archetype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way. It is curious that in primitive societies, phallic symbols do not usually
The archetype has no form of its own, but it acts as an "organizing refer to sex at all. They usually symbolize mana, or spiritual power. These
principle" on the things we see or do. It works the way that instincts work in symbols would be displayed on occasions when the spirits are being called
Freud's theory. At first, the baby just wants something to eat, without know- upon to increase the yield of corn, or fish, or to heal someone. The connec-
ing what it wants. It has a rather indefinite yearning which, nevertheless, can tion between the penis and strength, between semen and seed, between fer-
be satisfied by some things and not by others. Later, with experience, the tilization and fertility are understood by most cultures.
The shadow many remnants of these traditional expectations. Women are still expected
Sex and the life instincts in general are, of course, represented some- to be more nurturing and less aggressive; men are still expected to be strong
where in Jung's system. They are a part of an archetype called the shadow. and to ignore the emotional side of life. But Jung felt these expectations
It derives from our prehumen, animal past, when our concerns were limited meant that we had developed only half of our potential.
to survival and reproduction, and when we weren't self-conscious. The anima is the female aspect present in the collective uncon-
It is the "dark side" of the ego, and the evil that we are capable of is scious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective
often stored there. Actually, the shadow is amoral—neither good nor bad, unconscious of women. Together, they are referred to as syzygy. The anima
just like animals. An animal is capable of tender care for its young and vicious may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a
killing for food, but it doesn't choose to do either. It just does what it does. witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotion-
It is "innocent." But from our human perspective, the animal world looks ality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old
rather brutal, inhuman, so the shadow becomes something of a garbage can man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often
for the parts of ourselves that we can't quite admit to. rationalistic, and even argumentative.
Symbols of the shadow include the snake (as in the Garden of Eden), The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communi-
the dragon, monsters, and demons. It often guards the entrance to a cave or cate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into
a pool of water, which is the collective unconscious. Next time you dream touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love
about wrestling with the devil, it may only be yourself you are wrestling with! life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our other
half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex.
The persona When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that "fills"
The persona represents your public image. The word is, obviously, our anima or animus archetype particularly well!
related to the word person and personality, and comes from a Latin word for
mask. So the persona is the mask you put on before you show yourself to the Other archetypes
outside world. Although it begins as an archetype, by the time we are finished Jung said that there is no fixed number of archetypes which we could
realizing it, it is the part of us most distant from the collective unconscious. simply list and memorize. They overlap and easily melt into each other as
At its best, it is just the "good impression" we all wish to present as needed, and their logic is not the usual kind. But here are some he mentions:
we fill the roles society requires of us. But, of course, it can also be the "false Besides mother, there are other family archetypes. Obviously, there
impression" we use to manipulate people's opinions and behaviors. And, at is father, who is often symbolized by a guide or an authority figure. There is
its worst, it can be mistaken, even by ourselves, for our true nature. Some- also the archetype family, which represents the idea of blood relationship
times we believe we really are what we pretend to be! and ties that run deeper than those based on conscious reasons.
There is also the child, represented in mythology and art by children,
Anima and animus infants most especially, as well as other small creatures. The Christ child cel-
A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play. For ebrated at Christmas is a manifestation of the child archetype, and represents
most people that role is determined by their physical gender. But Jung, like the future, becoming, rebirth, and salvation. Curiously, Christmas falls during
Freud and Adler and others, felt that we are all really bisexual in nature. When the winter solstice, which in northern primitive cultures also represents the
we begin our lives as fetuses, we have undifferentiated sex organs that only future and rebirth. People used to light bonfires and perform ceremonies to
gradually, under the influence of hormones, become male or female. Like- encourage the sun's return to them. The child archetype often blends with
wise, when we begin our social lives as infants, we are neither male nor female other archetypes to form the child-god, or the child-hero.
in the social sense. Almost immediately—as soon as those pink or blue boo- Many archetypes are story characters. The hero is one of the main
ties go on—we come under the influence of society, which gradually molds ones. He is the mana personality and the defeater of evil dragons. Basically,
us into men and women. he represents the ego—we do tend to identify with the hero of the story—
In all societies, the expectations placed on men and women differ, and is often engaged in fighting the shadow, in the form of dragons and other
usually based on our different roles in reproduction, but often involving monsters. The hero is, however, often dumb as a post. He is, after all, igno-
many details that are purely traditional. In our society today, we still have rant of the ways of the collective unconscious. Luke Skywalker, in the Star
Wars films, is the perfect example of a hero.
The hero is often out to rescue the maiden. She represents purity, and Buddha, two people who many believe achieved perfection. But Jung felt
innocence, and, in all likelihood, naiveté. In the beginning of the Star that perfection of the personality is only truly achieved in death.
Wars story, Princess Leia is the maiden. But, as the story progresses, she be-
comes the anima, discovering the powers of the force—the collective uncon- The dynamics of the psyche
scious—and becoming an equal partner with Luke, who turns out to be her So much for the content of the psyche. Now let's turn to the princi-
brother. ples of its operation. Jung gives us three principles, beginning with the prin-
The hero is guided by the wise old man. He is a form of the animus, ciple of opposites. Every wish immediately suggests it’s opposite. If I have
and reveals to the hero the nature of the collective unconscious. In Star a good thought, for example, I cannot help but have in me somewhere the
Wars, he is played by Obi Wan Kenobi and, later, Yoda. Notice that they opposite bad thought. In fact, it is a very basic point: in order to have a con-
teach Luke about the force and, as Luke matures, they die and become a part cept of good, you must have a concept of bad, just like you can't have up
of him. without down or black without white.
You might be curious as to the archetype represented by Darth This idea came home to me when I was about eleven. I occasionally
Vader, the "dark father." He is the shadow and the master of the dark side of tried to help poor innocent woodland creatures who had been hurt in some
the force. He also turns out to be Luke and Leia's father. When he dies, he way—often, I'm afraid, killing them in the process. Once I tried to nurse a
becomes one of the wise old men. baby robin back to health. But when I picked it up, I was so struck by how
There is also an animal archetype, representing humanity's relation- light it was that the thought came to me that I could easily crush it in my
ships with the animal world. The hero's faithful horse would be an example. hand. Mind you, I didn't like the idea, but it was undeniably there.
Snakes are often symbolic of the animal archetype, and are thought to be According to Jung, it is the opposition that creates the power (or li-
particularly wise. Animals, after all, are more in touch with their natures than bido) of the psyche. It is like the two poles of a battery, or the splitting of an
we are. Perhaps loyal little robots and reliable old spaceships—the Falcon— atom. It is the contrast that gives energy, so that a strong contrast gives strong
are also symbols of animal. energy, and a weak contrast gives weak energy.
And there is the trickster, often represented by a clown or a magi- The second principle is the principle of equivalence. The energy
cian. The trickster's role is to hamper the hero's progress and to generally created from the opposition is "given" to both sides equally. So, when I held
make trouble. In Norse mythology, many of the gods' adventures originate that baby bird in my hand, there was energy to go ahead and try to help it.
in some trick or another played on their majesties by the half-god Loki. But there is an equal amount of energy to go ahead and crush it. I tried to
There are other archetypes that are a little more difficult to talk help the bird, so that energy went into the various behaviors involved in help-
about. One is the original man, represented in western religion by Adam. ing it. But what happens to the other energy?
Another is the God archetype, representing our need to comprehend the uni- Well, that depends on your attitude towards the wish that you didn't
verse, to give a meaning to all that happens, to see it all as having some pur- fulfill. If you acknowledge it, face it, keep it available to the conscious mind,
pose and direction. then the energy goes towards a general improvement of your psyche. You
The hermaphrodite, both male and female, represents the union of grow, in other words.
opposites, an important idea in Jung's theory. In some religious art, Jesus is But if you pretend that you never had that evil wish, if you deny and
presented as a rather feminine man. Likewise, in China, the character Kuan suppress it, the energy will go towards the development of a complex. A
Yin began as a male saint (the bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara), but was por- complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster—con-
trayed in such a feminine manner that he is more often thought of as the stellate—around a theme provided by some archetype. If you deny ever hav-
female goddess of compassion! ing thought about crushing the little bird, you might put that idea into the
The most important archetype of all is the self. The self is the ulti- form offered by the shadow (your "dark side"). Or if a man denies his emo-
mate unity of the personality and is symbolized by the circle, the cross, and tional side, his emotionality might find its way into the anima archetype. And
the mandala figures that Jung was fond of painting. A mandala is a drawing so on.
that is used in meditation because it tends to draw your focus back to the Here's where the problem comes: if you pretend all your life that you
center, and it can be as simple as a geometric figure or as complicated as a are only good, that you don't even have the capacity to lie and cheat and steal
stained glass window. The personifications that best represent self are Christ and kill, then all the times when you do good, that other side of you goes into
a complex around the shadow. That complex will begin to develop a life of
its own, and it will haunt you. You might find yourself having nightmares in on the self, and become closer to all people, all life, even the universe itself.
which you go around stomping on little baby birds! The self-realized person is actually less selfish.
If it goes on long enough, the complex may take over, may "possess"
you, and you might wind up with a multiple personality. In the movie The Synchronicity
Three Faces of Eve, Joanne Woodward portrayed a meek, mild woman who Personality theorists have argued for many years about whether psy-
eventually discovered that she went out and partied like crazy on Saturday chological processes function in terms of mechanism or teleology. Mecha-
nights. She didn't smoke, but found cigarettes in her purse, didn't drink, but nism is the idea that things work in through cause and effect. One thing leads
woke up with hangovers, didn't fool around, but found herself in sexy outfits. to another which leads to another, and so on, so that the past determines the
Although multiple personality is rare, it does tend to involve these kinds of present. Teleology is the idea that we are lead on by our ideas about a future
black-and-white extremes. state, by things like purposes, meanings, values, and so on. Mechanism is
The final principle is the principle of entropy. This is the tendency linked with determinism and with the natural sciences. Teleology is linked
for oppositions to come together, and so for energy to decrease, over a per- with free will and has become rather rare. It is still common among moral,
son's lifetime. Jung borrowed the idea from physics, where entropy refers to legal, and religious philosophers, and, of course, among personality theorists.
the tendency of all physical systems to "run down," that is, for all energy to Among the people discussed in this book, Freudians and behavior-
become evenly distributed. If you have, for example, a heat source in one ists tend to be mechanists, while the neo-Freudians, humanists, and existen-
corner of the room, the whole room will eventually be heated. tialists tend to be teleologists. Jung believes that both play a part. But he adds
When we are young, the opposites will tend to be extreme, and so a third alternative called synchronicity.
we tend to have lots of energy. For example, adolescents tend to exaggerate Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events that are not linked
male-female differences, with boys trying hard to be macho and girls trying causally, nor linked teleologically, yet are meaningfully related. Once, a client
equally hard to be feminine. And so their sexual activity is invested with great was describing a dream involving a scarab beetle when, at that very instant, a
amounts of energy! Plus, adolescents often swing from one extreme to an- very similar beetle flew into the window. Often, people dream about some-
other, being wild and crazy one minute and finding religion the next. thing, like the death of a loved one, and find the next morning that their loved
As we get older, most of us come to be more comfortable with our one did, in fact, die at about that time. Sometimes people pick up the phone
different facets. We are a bit less naively idealistic and recognize that we are to call a friend, only to find that their friend is already on the line. Most psy-
all mixtures of good and bad. We are less threatened by the opposite sex chologists would call these things coincidences, or try to show how they are
within us and become more androgynous. Even physically, in old age, men more likely to occur than we think. Jung believed they were indications of
and women become more alike. This process of rising above our opposites, how we are connected, with our fellow humans and with nature in general,
of seeing both sides of who we are, is called transcendence. through the collective unconscious.
Jung was never clear about his own religious beliefs. But this unusual
The self idea of synchronicity is easily explained by the Hindu view of reality. In the
The goal of life is to realize the self. The self is an archetype that Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea. We look out at the
represents the transcendence of all opposites, so that every aspect of your world and each other and think we are separate entities. What we don't see is
personality is expressed equally. You are then neither and both male and fe- that we are connected to each other by means of the ocean floor beneath the
male, neither and both ego and shadow, neither and both good and bad, nei- waters.
ther and both conscious and unconscious, neither and both an individual and The outer world is called Maya, meaning illusion, and is thought of
the whole of creation. And yet, with no oppositions, there is no energy, and as God's dream or God's dance. That is, God creates it, but it has no reality
you cease to act. Of course, you no longer need to act. of its own. Our individual egos they call Jivatman, which means individual
To keep it from getting too mystical, think of it as a new center, a souls. But they, too, are something of an illusion. We are all actually exten-
more balanced position, for your psyche. When you are young, you focus on sions of the one and only Atman, or God, who allows bits of himself to
the ego and worry about the trivialities of the persona. When you are older forget his identity, to become apparently separate and independent, to be-
(assuming you have been developing as you should), you focus a little deeper, come us. But we never truly are separate. When we die, we wake up and
realize who we were from the beginning: God.
When we dream or meditate, we sink into our personal unconscious, The first is sensing. Sensing means what it says: getting information
coming closer and closer to our true selves, the collective unconscious. It is by means of the senses. A sensing person is good at looking and listening and
in states like this that we are especially open to "communications" from other generally getting to know the world. Jung called this one of the irra-
egos. Synchronicity makes Jung's theory one of the rare ones that is not only tional functions, meaning that it involved perception rather than judging of
compatible with parapsychological phenomena, but actually tries to explain information.
them! The second is thinking. Thinking means evaluating information or
ideas rationally, logically. Jung called this a rational function, meaning that it
involves decision making or judging, rather than simple intake of infor-
mation.
The third is intuiting. Intuiting is a kind of perception that works
outside of the usual conscious processes. It is irrational or perceptual, like
sensing, but comes from the complex integration of large amounts of infor-
mation, rather than simple seeing or hearing. Jung said it was like seeing
around corners.
The fourth is feeling. Feeling, like thinking, is a matter of evaluating
information, this time by weighing one's overall, emotional response. Jung
calls it rational, obviously not in the usual sense of the word.
FIGURE 5.1 Model of Jung’s collective unconscious
Introversion and extroversion

Jung developed a personality typology that has become so popular
that some people don't realize he did anything else! It begins with the distinc-
tion between introversion and extroversion. Introverts are people who pre-
fer their internal world of thoughts, feelings, fantasies, dreams, and so on,
while extroverts prefer the external world of things and people and activities.
The words have become confused with ideas like shyness and socia-
bility, partially because introverts tend to be shy and extroverts tend to be
sociable. But Jung intended for them to refer more to whether you ("ego")
more often faced toward the persona and outer reality, or toward the collec-
tive unconscious and its archetypes. In that sense, the introvert is somewhat
more mature than the extrovert. Our culture, of course, values the extrovert FIGURE 5.2 Jung’s model on personality types
much more. And Jung warned that we all tend to value our own type most!
We now find the introvert-extravert dimension in several theories,
notably Hans Eysenck's, although often hidden under alternative names such We all have these functions. We just have them in different propor-
as "sociability" and "surgency." tions, you might say. Each of us has a superior function, which we prefer
and which is best developed in us, a secondary function, which we are aware
The functions of and use in support of our superior function, a tertiary function, which is
Whether we are introverts or extroverts, we need to deal with the only slightly less developed but not terribly conscious, and an inferior func-
world, inner and outer. And each of us has our preferred ways of dealing with tion, which is poorly developed and so unconscious that we might deny its
it, ways we are comfortable with and good at. Jung suggests there are four existence in ourselves.
basic ways, or functions:
Most of us develop only one or two of the functions, but our goal Each type is identified by four letters, such as ENFJ. These have
should be to develop all four. Once again, Jung sees the transcendence of proven so popular, you can even find them on people's license plates!
opposites as the ideal. ENFJ (Extroverted feeling with intuiting): These people are easy
speakers. They tend to idealize their friends. They make good parents, but
Assessment have a tendency to allow themselves to be used. They make good therapists,
Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers found Jung's teachers, executives, and salespeople.
types and functions so revealing of people's personalities that they decided ENFP (Extroverted intuiting with feeling): These people love nov-
to develop a paper-and-pencil test. It came to be called the Myers-Briggs elty and surprises. They are big on emotions and expression. They are sus-
Type Indicator, and is one of the most popular, and most studied, tests ceptible to muscle tension and tend to be hyper alert. They tend to feel self-
around. conscious. They are good at sales, advertising, politics, and acting.
On the basis of your answers on about 125 questions, you are placed ENTJ (Extroverted thinking with intuiting): In charge at home, they
in one of sixteen types, with the understanding that some people might find expect a lot from spouses and kids. They like organization and structure and
themselves somewhere between two or three types. What type you are says tend to make good executives and administrators.
quite a bit about you—your likes and dislikes, your likely career choices, your ENTP (Extroverted intuiting with thinking): These are lively peo-
compatibility with others, and so on. People tend to like it quite a bit. It has ple, not humdrum or orderly. As mates, they are a little dangerous, especially
the unusual quality among personality tests of not being too judgmental: none economically. They are good at analysis and make good entrepreneurs. They
of the types is terribly negative, nor are any overly positive. Rather than as- do tend to play at one-upmanship.
sessing how "crazy" you are, the "Myers-Briggs" simply opens up your per- ESFJ (Extroverted feeling with sensing): These people like har-
sonality for exploration. mony. They tend to have strong shoulds and should-nots. They may be de-
The test has four scales. Extroversion—Introversion (E-I) is the pendent, first on parents and later on spouses. They wear their hearts on their
most important. Test researchers have found that about 75 % of the popula- sleeves and excel in service occupations involving personal contact.
tion is extroverted. ESFP (Extroverted sensing with feeling): Very generous and impul-
The next one is Sensing—Intuiting (S-N), with about 75 % of the sive, they have a low tolerance for anxiety. They make good performers, they
population sensing. like public relations, and they love the phone. They should avoid scholarly
The next is Thinking—Feeling (T-F). Although these are distrib- pursuits, especially science.
uted evenly through the population, researchers have found that two-thirds ESTJ (Extroverted thinking with sensing): These are responsible
of men are thinkers, while two-thirds of women are feelers. This might seem mates and parents and are loyal to the workplace. They are realistic, down-
like stereotyping, but keep in mind that feeling and thinking are both valued to-earth, orderly, and love tradition. They often find themselves joining civic
equally by Jungians, and that one-third of men are feelers and one-third of clubs!
women are thinkers. Note, though, that society does value thinking and feel- ESTP (Extroverted sensing with thinking): These are action-ori-
ing differently, and that feeling men and thinking women often have difficul- ented people, often sophisticated, sometimes ruthless—our "James Bonds."
ties dealing with people's stereotyped expectations. As mates, they are exciting and charming, but they have trouble with com-
The last is Judging—Perceiving (J-P), not one of Jung's original mitment. They make good promoters, entrepreneurs, and con artists.
dimensions. Myers and Briggs included this one in order to help determine INFJ (Introverted intuiting with feeling): These are serious students
which of a person's functions is superior. Generally, judging people are more and workers who really want to contribute. They are private and easily hurt.
careful, perhaps inhibited, in their lives. Perceiving people tend to be more They make good spouses, but tend to be physically reserved. People often
spontaneous, sometimes careless. If you are an extrovert and a "J," you are a think they are psychic. They make good therapists, general practitioners, min-
thinker or feeler, whichever is stronger. Extroverted and "P" means you are isters, and so on.
a senser or intuiter. On the other hand, an introvert with a high "J" score will INFP (Introverted feeling with intuiting): These people are idealis-
be a senser or intuiter, while an introvert with a high "P" score will be a tic, self-sacrificing, and somewhat cool or reserved. They are very family and
thinker or feeler. J and P are equally distributed in the population. home oriented, but don't relax well. You find them in psychology, architec-
ture, and religion, but never in business.
INTJ (Introverted intuiting with thinking): These are the most in- personality theorists), but he goes a step further and talks about the mystical
dependent of all types. They love logic and ideas and are drawn to scientific interconnectedness of synchronicity. Not only does he postulate an uncon-
research. They can be rather single-minded, though. scious, where things are not easily available to the empirical eye, but he pos-
INTP (Introverted thinking with intuiting): Faithful, preoccupied, tulates a collective unconscious that never has been and never will be con-
and forgetful, these are the bookworms. They tend to be very precise in their scious.
use of language. They are good at logic and math and make good philoso- In fact, Jung takes an approach that is essentially the reverse of the
phers and theoretical scientists, but not writers or salespeople. mainstream's reductionism: Jung begins with the highest levels—even spirit-
ISFJ (Introverted sensing with feeling): These people are service and ualism—and derives the lower levels of psychology and physiology from
work oriented. They may suffer from fatigue and tend to be attracted to trou- them.
blemakers. They are good nurses, teachers, secretaries, general practitioners, Even psychologists who applaud his teleology and antireductionist
librarians, middle managers, and housekeepers. position may not be comfortable with him. Like Freud, Jung tries to bring
ISFP (Introverted feeling with sensing): They are shy and retiring, everything into his system. He has little room for chance, accident, or cir-
are not talkative, but like sensuous action. They like painting, drawing, sculpt- cumstances. Personality—and life in general—seems "over-explained" in
ing, composing, dancing—the arts generally—and they like nature. They are Jung's theory.
not big on commitment. I have found that his theory sometimes attracts students who have
ISTJ (Introverted sensing with thinking): These are dependable pil- difficulty dealing with reality. When the world, especially the social world,
lars of strength. They often try to reform their mates and other people. They becomes too difficult, some people retreat into fantasy. Some, for example,
make good bank examiners, auditors, accountants, tax examiners, supervisors become couch potatoes. But others turn to complex ideologies that pretend
in libraries and hospitals, business, home etc., and phys. ed. teachers, and boy to explain everything. Some get involved in Gnostic or Tantric religions, the
or girl scouts! kind that present intricate rosters of angels and demons and heavens and
ISTP (Introverted thinking with sensing): These people are action- hells, and endlessly discuss symbols. Some go to Jung. There is nothing in-
oriented and fearless, and crave excitement. They are impulsive and danger- trinsically wrong with this; but for someone who is out of touch with reality,
ous to stop. They often like tools, instruments, and weapons, and often be- this is hardly going to help.
come technical experts. They are not interested in communications and are These criticisms do not cut the foundation out from under Jung's
often incorrectly diagnosed as dyslexic or hyperactive. They tend to do badly theory. But they do suggest that some careful consideration is in order.
in school.
Even without taking the test, you may very well recognize yourself The positive things
in one or two of these types. Or ask others—they may be more accurate!1 On the plus side, there is the Myers-Briggs and other tests based on
Jung's types and functions. Because they do not place people on dimensions
Discussion that run from "good" to "bad," they are much less threatening. They encour-
Quite a few people find that Jung has a great deal to say to them. age people to become more aware of themselves.
They include writers, artists, musicians, film makers, theologians, clergy of all The archetypes, at first glance, might seem to be Jung's strangest
denominations, students of mythology, and, of course, and some psycholo- idea. And yet they have proven to be very useful in the analysis of myths,
gists. Examples that come to mind are the mythologist Joseph Campbell, the fairy tales, literature in general, artistic symbolism, and religious exposition.
film maker George Lucas, and the science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. They apparently capture some of the basic "units" of our self-expression.
Anyone interested in creativity, spirituality, psychic phenomena, the univer- Many people have suggested that there are only so many stories and charac-
sal, and so on will find in Jung a kindred spirit. ters in the world, and we just keep on rearranging the details.
But scientists, including most psychologists, have a lot of trouble This suggests that the archetypes actually do refer to some deep
with Jung. Not only does he fully support the teleological view (as do most structures of the human mind. After all, from the physiological perspective,
we come into his world with a certain structure. We see in a certain way, hear
1
If you like, you can take my Jungian personality test: http://web- in a certain way, "process information" in a certain way, and behave in a cer-
space.ship.edu/cgboer/jungiantypestest.html tain way, because our neurons and glands and muscles are structured in a
certain way. At least one cognitive psychologist has suggested looking for the Readings
structures that correspond to Jung's archetypes! Most of Jung's writings are contained in The Collected Works of Carl G.
Finally, Jung has opened our eyes to the differences between child Jung. I have to warn you that most of his works are not easy going, but they
development and adult development. Children clearly emphasize differentia- are full of interesting things that make them worth the trouble.
tion—separating one thing from another—in their learning. "What's this?" If you are looking for something a little easier, you might try Analytic
“Why is it this way and not that?" "What kinds are there?" They actively seek Psychology: Its Theory and Practice, which is a collection of lectures and is available
diversity. And many people, psychologists included, have been so impressed in paperback. Or read Man and His Symbols, which is available in several edi-
by this that they have assumed that all learning is a matter of differentiation, tions ranging from large ones with many color pictures to an inexpensive
of learning more and more "things." paperback. If you want a smattering of Jung, try a collection of his writings,
But Jung has pointed out that adults search more for integration, for such as Modern Library's The Basic Writings of C. C. Jung. The best book I've
the transcending of opposites. Adults search for the connections between ever read about Jung, however, is the autobiographical Memories, Dreams and
things, how things fit together, how they interact, how they contribute to the Reflections, written with his student Aniela Jaffe. It makes a good introduction,
whole. We want to make sense of it, find the meaning of it, the purpose of it assuming you've read something like the preceding chapter first.
all. Children unravel the world; adults try to knit it back together.
Connections
On the one hand, Jung is still attached to his Freudian roots. He
emphasizes the unconscious even more than Freudians do. In fact, he might
be seen as the logical extension of Freud's tendency to put the causes of
things into the past. Freud, too, talked about myths —Oedipus, for exam-
ple—and how they impact on the modern psyche.
On the other hand, Jung has a lot in common with the neo-Freudi-
ans, humanists, and existentialists. He believes that we are meant to progress,
to move in a positive direction, and not just to adapt, as the Freudians and
behaviorists would have it. His idea of self-realization is clearly similar to self-
actualization.
The balancing or transcending of opposites also has counterparts in
other theories. Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Andreas Angyal, David Bakan,
Gardner Murphy, and Rollo May all make reference to balancing two oppos-
ing tendencies, one towards individual development and the other towards
the development of compassion or social interest. Rollo May talks about the
psyche being composed of many "diamonds" (little gods) such as the desire
for sex, or love, or power. All are positive in their place, but should anyone
take over the whole personality, we would have "demonic possession," or
mental illness!
Finally, we owe to Jung the broadening of interpretation, whether of
symptoms or dreams or free-associations. While Freud developed more-or-
less rigid (specifically, sexual) interpretations, Jung allowed for a rather free-
wheeling "mythological" interpretation, wherein anything could mean, well,
anything. Existential analysis, in particular, has benefited from Jung's ideas.
CHAPTER 6 But notice that Rank doesn't bring sexuality into the picture, and
Otto Rank (1884-1939) doesn't refer to a collective unconscious. The myths are simply the expres-
sions different cultures have given to common childhood experiences. His
interpretation may not be perfect, but its humility is refreshing!
The artist
Rank also tackles the difficult issue of artistic creativity. On the one
hand, Rank says, the artist has a particularly strong tendency towards glorifi-
cation of his own will. Unlike the rest of us, he feels compelled to remake
reality in his own image. And yet a true artist also needs immortality, which
he can only achieve by identifying himself with the collective will of his cul-
A fascination with mythology, literature, art, and religion was hardly ture and religion. Good art could be understood as a joining of the material
restricted to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. In fact, it comes up again and and the spiritual, the specific and the universal, or the individual and human-
again among personality psychologists. It is especially prominent in Otto ity.
Rank. This joining doesn't come easily, though. It begins with the will,
Rank's word for the ego, but an ego imbued with power. We are all born
The hero with a will to be ourselves, to be free of domination. In early childhood, we
One of his earliest works was The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, in which exercise our will in our efforts to do things independently of our par-
he examines such birth myths as those of the Babylonian kings Gilgamesh ents. Later, we fight the domination of other authorities, including the inner
and Sargon, the Hindu hero Karna, The Persian king Cyrus, The Greek he- authority of our sexual drives. How our struggle for independence goes de-
roes Oedipus, Hercules, Paris, and Perseus, the Roman founders Romulus termines the type of person we become. Rank describes three basic types:
and Remus, the Celtic hero Tristan, the Germanic heroes Siegfried and Lo- First, there is the adapted type. These people learn to "will" what
hengrin, and even Moses, Buddha, and Jesus. they have been forced to do. They obey authority, their society's moral code,
He finds the same pattern over and over again: there is a king and and, as best as they can, their sexual impulses. This is a passive, duty-bound
queen or god and goddess or other highly placed couple; something makes creature that Rank suggests is, in fact, the average person.
the hero's conception difficult or impossible; there is a dream or oracle Second, there is the neurotic type. These people have a much
prophesizing his birth, often including a warning of danger to the father; the stronger will than the average person, but it is totally engaged in the fight
infant hero is usually left to die in a box, basket, or small boat, floating on the against external and internal domination. They even fight the expression of
water; he is rescued and nurtured by either animals or people of very low their own will, so there is no will left over to actually do anything with the
birth; he grows up, discovers his true parents, takes revenge on his father, freedom won. Instead, they worry and feel guilty about being so "will-
and finally receives the honors due him. ful." They are, however, at a higher level of moral development than the
Rank finds the myths relatively simple to understand. As children, adapted type.
we worship our parents. But as we get older, they begin to get in our way, Third, there is the productive type, which Rank also refers to as the
and we discover they were not all they seemed. The myth reflects a wish in artist, the genius, the creative type, the self-conscious type, and, simply, the
all of us for a return to the comforting days when we thought our parents human being. Instead of fighting themselves, these people accept and affirm
were perfect and gave us the attention we felt we deserved. The box or bas- themselves, and create an ideal, which functions as a positive focus for
ket symbolizes the womb, and the waters our birth. The "people of low will. The artist creates himself or herself, and then goes on to create a new
birth" symbolize our weak and unappreciative parents. The king and queen world as well.
symbolize what they should be like. And the revenge is our anger at how
they have mistreated us. Life and death
Another interesting idea Rank introduced was the contest between
life and death. He felt we have a "life instinct" that pushes us to become
individuals, competent and independent, and a "death instinct" that pushes
us to be part of a family, community, or humanity. We also feel a certain fear CHAPTER 7

of these two. The "fear of life" is the fear of separation, loneliness, and al- Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
ienation; the "fear of death" is the fear of getting lost in the whole, stagnat-
ing, being no-one.
Our lives are filled with separations, beginning with birth. Rank's
earliest work, in fact, concerned birth trauma, the idea that the anxiety ex-
perienced during birth was the model for all anxiety experienced after-
wards. After birth, there's weaning and discipline and school and work and
heartbreaks.... But avoiding these separations is, literally, avoiding life and
choosing death—never finding out what you can do, never leaving your fam-
ily or small town, never leaving the womb!
So we must face our fears, recognizing that, to be fully developed, I would like to introduce Alfred Adler by talking about someone
we must embrace both life and death, become individuals and nurture our Adler never knew: Theodore Roosevelt. Born to Martha and Theodore Sen-
relationships with others. ior in Manhattan on October 27, 1858, he was said to be a particularly beau-
Otto Rank never founded a "school" of psychology like Freud and tiful baby who needed no help entering his new world. His parents were
Jung did, but his influences can be found everywhere. He has had a signifi- strong, intelligent, handsome, and quite well-to-do. It should have been an
cant impact on Carl Rogers, a more subtle one on the older Adler, as well as idyllic childhood
Fromm and Horney, and an influence on the existentialists, especially Rollo But "Teddy," as he was called, was not as healthy as he first appeared.
May. Other people have "reinvented" his ideas, and we can find bits and He had severe asthma, and tended to catch colds easily, develop coughs and
pieces of Otto Rank in competence motivation, reactance theory, and terror fevers, and suffer from nausea and diarrhea. He was small and thin. His voice
management theory. was reedy, and remained so even in adulthood. He became malnourished and
If you would like to learn more about Otto Rank's theory, his most was often forced by his asthma to sleep sitting up in chairs. Several times, he
important works are Art and Artist, Truth and Reality, and Will Therapy. came dangerously close to dying from lack of oxygen.
Not to paint too negative a picture, Teddy was an active boy—some
would say over-active—and had a fantastic personality. He was full of curi-
osity about nature and would lead expeditions of cousins to find mice, squir-
rels, snakes, frogs, and anything else that could be dissected or pickled. His
repeated confinement when his asthma flared up turned him to books, which
he devoured throughout his life. He may have been sickly, but he certainly
had a desire to live!
After traveling through Europe with his family, his health became
worse. He had grown taller but no more muscular. Finally, with encourage-
ment from the family doctor, Roosevelt Senior encouraged the boy, now
twelve, to begin lifting weights. Like anything else he tackled, he did this en-
thusiastically. He got healthier, and for the first time in his life got through a
whole month without an attack of asthma.
When he was thirteen, he became aware of another defect of his.
When he found that he couldn't hit anything with the rifle his father had
given him. When friends read a billboard to him, he didn't realize it had writ-
ing on it. It was discovered that he was terribly nearsighted!
In the same year, he was sent off to the country on his own after a
bad attack of asthma. On the way, he was waylaid by a couple of other boys
his own age. He found that not only couldn't he defend himself, he couldn't an aggression instinct, which Freud did not approve of, and then a paper
even lay a hand on them. He later announced to his father his intention to on children's feelings of inferiority, which suggested that Freud's sexual no-
learn to box. By the time he went to Harvard, he was not only a healthier tions be taken more metaphorically than literally.
Teddy Roosevelt, but was a regular winner of a variety of athletic contests. Although Freud named Adler the president of the Viennese Analytic
The rest, as they say, is history. "Teddy" Roosevelt went on to be- Society and the co-editor of the organization's newsletter, Adler didn't stop
come a successful New York assemblyman, North Dakota cowboy, New his criticism. A debate between Adler's supporters and Freud's was arranged,
York commissioner of police, Assistant secretary of the Navy, lieutenant but it resulted in Adler, with nine other members of the organization, resign-
colonel of the "Rough Riders," the Governor of New York, and best-selling ing to form the Society for Free Psychoanalysis in 1911. This organization
author, all by the age of forty. With the death of President William McKinley became The Society for Individual Psychology in the following year.
in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest president of the United During World War I, Adler served as a physician in the Austrian
States. Army, first on the Russian front, and later in a children's hospital. He saw
How it is that someone so sickly should become so healthy, vigor- firsthand the damage that war does, and his thought turned increasingly to
ous, and successful? Why is it that some children, sickly or not, thrive, while the concept of social interest. He felt that if humanity was to survive, it had
others wither away? Is the drive that Roosevelt had peculiar to him, or is it to change its ways!
something that lies in each of us? These kinds of questions intrigued a young After the war, he was involved in various projects, including clinics
Viennese physician named Alfred Adler, and led him to develop his theory, attached to state schools and the training of teachers. In 1926, he went to the
called Individual Psychology. United States to lecture, and he eventually accepted a visiting position at the
Long Island College of Medicine. In 1934, he and his family left Vienna for-
Biography ever. On May 28, 1937, during a series of lectures at Aberdeen University, he
Alfred Adler was born in the suburbs of Vienna on February 7, 1870, died of a heart attack.
the third child, second son, of a Jewish grain merchant and his wife. As a
child, Alfred developed rickets, which kept him from walking until he was Theory
four years old. At five, he nearly died of pneumonia. It was at this age that he Alfred Adler postulates a single "drive" or motivating force behind
decided to be a physician. all our behavior and experience. By the time his theory had gelled into its
Alfred was an average student and preferred playing outdoors to be- most mature form, he called that motivating force the striving for perfec-
ing cooped up in school. He was quite outgoing, popular, and active, and was tion. It is the desire we all have to fulfill our potentials, to come closer and
known for his efforts at outdoing his older brother, Sigmund. closer to our ideal. It is, as many of you will already see, very similar to the
He received a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1895. more popular idea of self-actualization.
During his college years, he became attached to a group of socialist students, "Perfection" and "ideal" are troublesome words, though. On the one
among which he found his wife-to-be, Raissa Timofeyewna Epstein. She was hand, they are very positive goals. Shouldn't we all be striving for the ideal?
an intellectual and social activist who had come from Russia to study in Vi- And yet, in psychology, they are often given a rather negative connotation.
enna. They married in 1897 and eventually had four children, two of whom Perfection and ideals are, practically by definition, things you can't reach.
became psychiatrists. Many people, in fact, live very sad and painful lives trying to be perfect! As
He began his medical career as an ophthalmologist, but he soon you will see, other theorists, like Karen Horney and Carl Rogers, emphasize
switched to general practice, and established his office in a lower-class part this problem. Adler talks about it, too. But he sees this negative kind of ide-
of Vienna, across from the Prater, a combination amusement park and circus. alism as a perversion of the more positive understanding. We will return to
His clients included circus people, and it has been suggested (Furtmuller, this in a little while.
1965) that the unusual strengths and weaknesses of the performers led to his Striving for perfection was not the first phrase Adler used to refer to
insights into organ inferiorities and compensation. his single motivating force. His earliest phrase was the aggression drive, re-
He then turned to psychiatry, and in 1907 was invited to join Freud's ferring to the reaction we have when other drives, such as our need to eat, be
discussion group. After writing papers on organic inferiority, which were sexually satisfied, get things done, or be loved, are frustrated. It might be
quite compatible with Freud's views, he wrote, first, a paper concerning better called the assertiveness drive, since we tend to think of aggression as
physical and negative. But it was Adler's idea of the aggression drive that first
caused friction between him and Freud. Freud was afraid that it would detract Life style
from the crucial position of the sex drive in psychoanalytic theory. Despite A lot of this playing with words reflects Adler's groping towards a
Freud's dislike for the idea, he himself introduced something very similar really different kind of personality theory than that represented by Freud's.
much later in his life: the death instinct. Freud's theory was what we nowadays would call a reductionistic one. He
Another word Adler used to refer to basic motivation was compen- tried most of his life to get the concepts down to the physiological level.
sation, or striving to overcome. Since we all have problems, short-comings, Although he admitted failure in the end, life is nevertheless explained in terms
inferiorities of one sort or another, Adler felt, earlier in his writing that our of basic physiological needs. In addition, Freud tended to "carve up" the per-
personalities could be accounted for by the ways in which we do—or don't— son into smaller theoretical concepts—the id, ego, and superego—as well.
compensate or overcome those problems. The idea still plays an important Adler was influenced by the writings of Jan Smuts, the South African
role in his theory, as you will see, but he rejected it as a label for the basic philosopher and statesman. Smuts felt that, in order to understand people,
motive because it makes it sound as if it is your problems that cause you to we have to understand them more as unified wholes than as a collection of
be what you are. bits and pieces, and we have to understand them in the context of their en-
One of Adler's earliest phrases was masculine protest. He noted vironment, both physical and social. This approach is called holism, and Ad-
something pretty obvious in his culture (and by no means absent from our ler took it very much to heart.
own): Boys were held in higher esteem than girls. Boys wanted, often desper- First, to reflect the idea that we should see people as wholes rather
ately, to be thought of as strong, aggressive, in control—i.e. "masculine"— than parts, he decided to label his approach to psychology individual psy-
and not weak, passive, or dependent—i.e. "feminine." The point, of course, chology. The word individual means literally "un-divided."
was that men are somehow basically better than women. They do, after all, Second, instead of talking about a person's personality, with the tra-
have the power, the education, and apparently the talent and motivation ditional sense of internal traits, structures, dynamics, conflicts, and so on, he
needed to do "great things," and women don't. preferred to talk about style of life (nowadays, "lifestyle"). Life style refers to
You can still hear this in the kinds of comments older people make how you live your life, how you handle problems and interpersonal relations.
about little boys and girls: if a baby boy fusses or demands to have his own Here's what he himself had to say about it: "The style of life of a tree is the
way (masculine protest!), they will say he's a natural boy; If a little girl is quiet individuality of a tree expressing itself and molding itself in an environment.
and shy, she is praised for her femininity; if, on the other hand, the boy is We recognize a style when we see it against a background of an environment
quiet and shy, they worry that he might grow up to be a sissy; or if a girl is different from what we expect, for then we realize that every tree has a life
assertive and gets her way, they call her a "tomboy" and will try to reassure pattern and is not merely a mechanical reaction to the environment."
you that she'll grow out of it!
But Adler did not see men's assertiveness and success in the world Teleology
as due to some innate superiority. He saw it as a reflection of the fact that The last point—that lifestyle is "not merely a mechanical reaction"—
boys are encouraged to be assertive in life, and girls are discouraged. Both is a second way in which Adler differs dramatically from Freud. For Freud,
boys and girls, however, begin life with the capacity for "protest!" Because so the things that happened in the past, such as early childhood trauma, deter-
many people misunderstood him to mean that men are, innately, more asser- mine what you are like in the present. Adler sees motivation as a matter of
tive, lead him to limit his use of the phrase. moving towards the future, rather than being driven, mechanistically, by the
The last phrase he used, before switching to striving for perfection, past. We are drawn towards our goals, our purposes, and our ideals. This is
was striving for superiority. His use of this phrase reflects one of the phil- called teleology.
osophical roots of his ideas: Friederich Nietzsche developed a philosophy Moving things from the past into the future has some dramatic ef-
that considered the will to power the basic motive of human life. Although fects. Since the future is not here yet, a teleological approach to motivation
striving for superiority does refer to the desire to be better, it also contains takes the necessity out of things. In a traditional mechanistic approach, cause
the idea that we want to be better than others, rather than better in our own leads to effect: if a, b, and c happen, then x, y, and z must, of necessity, hap-
right. Adler later tended to use striving for superiority more in reference to pen. But you don't have to reach your goals or meet your ideals, and they can
unhealthy or neurotic striving. change along the way. Teleology acknowledges that life is hard and uncertain,
but it always has room for change!
Another major influence on Adler's thinking was the philosopher between it hurting him and it hurting me, we'll take "hurting him" every time!
Hans Vaihinger, who wrote a book called The Philosophy of "As If." Vaihinger So the tendency to empathize must be supported by parents and the culture
believed that ultimate truth would always be beyond us, but that, for practical at large. Even if we disregard the possibilities of conflict between my needs
purposes, we need to create partial truths. His main interest was science, so and yours, empathy involves feeling the pain of others, and in a hard world,
he gave as examples such partial truths as protons and electrons, waves of that can quickly become overwhelming. Much easier to just "toughen up"
light, gravity as distortion of space, and so on. Contrary to what many of us and ignore that unpleasant empathy—unless society steps in on empathy's
non-scientists tend to assume, these are not things that anyone has seen or behalf!
proven to exist. They are useful constructs. They work for the moment, let One misunderstanding Adler wanted to avoid was the idea that so-
us do science, and hopefully will lead to better, more useful constructs. We cial interest was somehow another version of extraversion. Americans in par-
use them "as if" they were true. He called these partial truths fictions. ticular tend to see social concern as a matter of being open and friendly and
Vaihinger, and Adler, pointed out that we use these fictions in day slapping people on the back and calling them by their first names. Some peo-
to day living as well. We behave as if we knew the world would be here to- ple may indeed express their social concern this way; but other people just
morrow, as if we were sure what good and bad are all about, as if everything use that kind of behavior to further their own ends. Adler meant social con-
we see is as we see it, and so on. Adler called this fictional finalism. You cern or feeling not in terms of particular social behaviors, but in the much
can understand the phrase most easily if you think about an example. Many broader sense of caring for family, for community, for society, for humanity,
people behave as if there were a heaven or a hell in their personal future. Of even for life. Social concern is a matter of being useful to others.
course, there may be a heaven or a hell, but most of us don't think of this as On the other hand, a lack of social concern is, for Adler, the very
a proven fact. That makes it a "fiction" in Vaihinger's and Adler's sense of definition of mental ill-health: all failures—neurotics, psychotics, criminals,
the word. And finalism refers to the teleology of it. The fiction lies in the drunkards, problem children, suicides, perverts, and prostitutes—are failures
future, and yet influences our behavior today. because they are lacking in social interest.... Their goal of success is a goal of
Adler added that, at the center of each of our lifestyles, there sits one personal superiority, and their triumphs have meaning only to themselves.
of these fictions, an important one about who we are and where we are going.
Inferiority
Social interest Here we are, all of us, "pulled" towards fulfillment, perfection, and
Second in importance only to striving for perfection is the idea self-actualization. And yet some of us—the failures—end up terribly unful-
of social interest or social feeling (originally called Gemein- filled, baldly imperfect, and far from self-actualized. And all because we lack
schaftsgefuhl or "community feeling"). In keeping with his holism, it is easy social interest, or, to put it in the positive form, because we are too self-
to see that anyone "striving for perfection" can hardly do so without consid- interested. So what makes so many of us self-interested?
ering his or her social environment. As social animals, we simply don't exist, Adler says it's a matter of being overwhelmed by our inferiority. If
much less thrive, without others, and even the most resolute people-hater you are moving along, doing well, feeling competent, you can afford to think
forms that hatred in a social context! of others. If you are not, if life is getting the best of you, then your attentions
Adler felt that social concern was not simply inborn, nor just learned, become increasingly focused on yourself.
but a combination of both. It is based on an innate disposition, but it has to Obviously, everyone suffers from inferiority in one form or another.
be nurtured to survive. That it is to some extent innate is shown by the way For example, Adler began his theoretical work considering organ inferior-
babies and small children often show sympathy for others without having ity, that is, the fact that each of us has weaker, as well as stronger, parts of
been taught to do so. Notice how, when one baby in a nursery begins to cry, our anatomy or physiology. Some of us are born with heart murmurs, or
they all begin to cry. Or how, when we walk into a room where people are develop heart problems early in life. Some have weak lungs, or kidneys, or
laughing, we ourselves begin to smile. early liver problems; some of us stutter or lisp; some have diabetes, or asthma,
And yet, right along with the examples of how generous little chil- or polio. Some have weak eyes, or poor hearing, or a poor musculature. Some
dren can be to others, we have examples of how selfish and cruel they can of us have innate tendencies to being heavy, others to being skinny. Some of
be. Although we instinctively seem to know that what hurts him can hurt me, us are retarded, some of us are deformed; some of us are terribly tall or ter-
and vice versa, we also instinctively seem to know that, if we have to choose ribly short, and so on and so on.
Adler noted that many people respond to these organic inferiorities withdrawn, and concentrated on the only thing I was good at, school. It took
with compensation. They make up for their deficiencies in some way. The a long time for me to realize my self-worth.
inferior organ can be strengthened and even become stronger than it is in If you weren't "super-nerd," you may have had one of the most com-
others; or other organs can be overdeveloped to take up the slack; or the mon inferiority complexes I've come across: "math phobia!" Perhaps it
person can psychologically compensate for the organic problem by develop- started because you could never remember what seven times eight was. Every
ing certain skills or even certain personality styles. There are, as you well year, there was some topic you never quite got the hang of. Every year, you
know, many examples of people who overcame great physical odds to be- fell a little further behind. And then you hit the crisis point: algebra. How
come what those who are better endowed physically wouldn't even dream of! could you be expected to know what "x" is when you still didn't know what
Sadly, there are also many people who cannot handle their difficul- seven times eight was?
ties, and live lives of quiet despair. I would guess that our optimistic, up-beat Many, many people truly believe that they are not meant to do math,
society seriously underestimates their numbers. that they are missing that piece of their brains or something. I'd like to tell
But Adler soon saw that this is only part of the picture. Even more you here and now that anyone can do math, if they are taught properly and
people have psychological inferiorities. Some of us are told that we are when they are really ready. That aside, you've got to wonder how many peo-
dumb, or ugly, or weak. Some of us come to believe that we are just plain no ple have given up being scientists, teachers, business people, or even going
good. In school, we are tested over and over, and given grades that tell us we to college, because of this inferiority complex.
aren't as good as the next person. Or we are demeaned for our pimples or But the inferiority complex is not just a little problem, it's a neuro-
our bad posture and find ourselves without friends or dates. Or we are forced sis, meaning it's a life-size problem. You become shy and timid, insecure,
into basketball games, where we wait to see which team will be stuck with us. indecisive, cowardly, submissive, compliant, and so on. You begin to rely on
In these examples, it's not a matter of true organic inferiority—we are not people to carry you along, even manipulating them into supporting you. "You
really retarded or deformed or weak—but we learn to believe that we are. think I'm smart / pretty / strong / sexy / good, don't you?" Eventually, you
Again, some compensate by becoming good at what we feel inferior about. become a drain on them, and you may find yourself by yourself. Nobody can
More compensate by becoming good at something else, but otherwise retain- take all that self-centered whining for long!
ing our sense of inferiority. And some just never develop any self-esteem at There is another way in which people respond to inferiority besides
all. compensation and the inferiority complex. You can also develop a superior-
If the preceding hasn't hit you personally yet, Adler also noted an ity complex. The superiority complex involves covering up your inferiority
even more general form of inferiority. The natural inferiority of children. All by pretending to be superior. If you feel small, one way to feel big is to make
children are, by nature, smaller, weaker, less socially and intellectually com- everyone else feel even smaller! Bullies, braggarts, and petty dictators every-
petent, than the adults around them. Adler suggested that, if we look at chil- where are the prime example. More subtle examples are the people who are
dren's games, toys, and fantasies, they tend to have one thing in common: given to attention-getting dramatics, the ones who feel powerful when they
the desire to grow up, to be big, and to be an adult. This kind of compensa- commit crimes, and the ones who put others down for their gender, race,
tion is really identical with striving for perfection! Many children, however, ethnic origins, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, weight, height, etc. etc.
are left with the feeling that other people will always be better than they are. Even more subtle still are the people who hide their feelings of worthlessness
If you are overwhelmed by the forces of inferiority—whether it is in the delusions of power afforded by alcohol and drugs.
your body hurting, the people around you holding you in contempt, or just
the general difficulties of growing up—you develop an inferiority complex. Psychological types
Looking back on my own childhood, I can see several sources for later infe- Although all neurosis is, for Adler, a matter of insufficient social in-
riority complexes: physically, I've tended to be heavy, with some real "fat terest, he did note that three types could be distinguished based on the dif-
boy" stages along the way; also, because I was born in Holland, I didn't grow ferent levels of energy they involved.
up with the skills of baseball, football, and basketball in my genes. Finally, my The first is the ruling type. They are, from childhood on, character-
artistically talented parents often left me—unintentionally—with the feeling ized by a tendency to be rather aggressive and dominant over others. Their
that I'd never be as good as they were. So, as I grew up, I became shy and energy—the strength of their striving after personal power—is so great that
they tend to push over anything or anybody who gets in their way. The most
energetic of them are bullies and sadists; somewhat less energetic ones hurt
others by hurting themselves, and include alcoholics, drug addicts, and sui- words, into preconceived notions, just like new acquaintances tend to get
cides. "force fit" into our stereotypes.
The second is the leaning type. They are sensitive people who have Adler felt that there were three basic childhood situations that most
developed a shell around themselves which protects them, but they must rely contribute to a faulty lifestyle. The first is one we've spoken of several times:
on others to carry them through life's difficulties. They have low energy levels organ inferiorities, as well as early childhood diseases. They are what he called
and so become dependent. When overwhelmed, they develop what we typi- "overburdened," and if someone doesn't come along to draw their attention
cally think of as neurotic symptoms: phobias, obsessions and compulsions, to others, they will remain focused on themselves. Most will go through life
general anxiety, hysteria, amnesias, and so on, depending on individual details with a strong sense of inferiority; a few will overcompensate with a superior-
of their lifestyle. ity complex. Only with the encouragement of loved ones will some truly
The third type is the avoiding type. These have the lowest levels of compensate.
energy and only survive by essentially avoiding life—especially other people. The second is pampering. Many children are taught, by the actions
When pushed to the limits, they tend to become psychotic, retreating finally of others that they can take without giving. Their wishes are everyone else's
into their own personal worlds. commands. This may sound like a wonderful situation, until you realize that
There is a fourth type as well: the socially useful type. This is the the pampered child fails in two ways: first, he doesn't learn to do for himself,
healthy person, one who has both social interest and energy. Note that with- and discovers later that he is truly inferior; and secondly, he doesn't learn any
out energy, you can't really have social interest, since you wouldn't be able to other way to deal with others than the giving of commands. And society re-
actually do anything for anyone! sponds to pampered people in only one way: hatred.
Adler noted that his four types looked very much like the four types The third is neglect. A child who is neglected or abused learns what
proposed by the ancient Greeks. They, too, noticed that some people are the pampered child learns, but learns it in a far more direct manner. They
always sad, others always angry, and so on. But they attributed these temper- learn inferiority because they are told and shown every day that they are of
aments (from the same root as temperature) to the relative presence of four no value; they learn selfishness because they are taught to trust no one. If you
bodily fluids called humors. haven't known love, you don't develop a capacity for it later. We should note
If you had too much yellow bile, you would be choleric (hot and that the neglected child includes not only orphans and the victims of abuse,
dry) and angry all the time. The choleric is, roughly, the ruling type. but the children whose parents are never there, and the ones raised in a rigid,
If you had too much phlegm, you would be phlegmatic (cold and authoritarian manner.
wet) and be sluggish. This is roughly the leaning type.
If you had too much black bile—and we don't know what the Birth order
Greeks were referring to here—you would be melancholy (cold and dry) Adler must be credited as the first theorist to include not only a
and tend to be sad constantly. This is roughly the avoiding type. child's mother and father and other adults as early influence on the child, but
And, if you had a lot of blood relative to the other humors, you be the child's brothers and sisters as well. His consideration of the effects of
in a good humor, sanguine (warm and moist). This naturally cheerful and siblings and the order in which they were born is probably what Adler is best-
friendly person represents the socially useful type. known for. I have to warn you, though, that Adler considered birth-order
One word of warning about Adler's types: Adler believed very another one of those heuristic ideas—useful fictions—that contribute to un-
strongly that each person is a unique individual with his or her own unique derstanding people, but must be not be taken too seriously.
lifestyle. The idea of types is, for him, only a heuristic device, meaning a The only child is more likely than others to be pampered, with all
useful fiction, not an absolute reality! the ill results we've discussed. After all, the parents of the only child have put
Childhood all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, and are more likely to take special
Adler, like Freud, saw personality or lifestyle as something estab- care—sometimes anxiety-filled care—of their pride and joy. If the parents
lished quite early in life. In fact, the prototype of your lifestyle tends to be are abusive, on the other hand, the only child will have to bear that abuse
fixed by about five years old. New experiences, rather than change that pro- alone.
totype, tend to be interpreted in terms of the prototype, "force fit," in other The first child begins life as an only child, with all the attention to
him- or herself. Sadly, just as things are getting comfortable, the second child
arrives and "dethrones" the first. At first, the child may battle for his or her
lost position. He or she might try acting like the baby—after all, it seems to brother, that might suggest the strong strivings of a second child and the
work for the baby!—Only to be rebuffed and told to grow up. Some become "ruling" type of personality; If your memory involves neglect and hiding un-
disobedient and rebellious, others sullen and withdrawn. Adler believes that der the sink, it might mean severe inferiority and avoidance, and so on.
first children are more likely than any other to become problem children. He might also ask about any childhood problems you may have had:
More positively, first children are often precocious. They tend to be relatively bad habits involving eating or the bathroom might indicate ways in which
solitary and more conservative than the other children in the family. you controlled your parents; Fears, such as a fear of the dark or of being left
The second child is in a very different situation. He or she has the alone, might suggest pampering; Stuttering is likely to mean that speech was
first child as a sort of "pace-setter," and tends to become quite competitive, associated with anxiety; Overt aggression and stealing may be signs of a su-
constantly trying to surpass the older child. They often succeed, but many periority complex; Daydreaming, isolation, laziness, and lying may be various
feel as if the race is never done, and they tend to dream of constant running ways of avoiding facing one's inferiorities.
without getting anywhere. Other "middle" children will tend to be similar to Like Freud and Jung, dreams (and daydreams) were important to
the second child, although each may focus on a different "competitor." Adler. He took a more direct approach to them, though: dreams are an ex-
The youngest child is likely to be the most pampered in a family pression of your style of life and, far from contradicting your daytime feel-
with more than one child. After all, he or she is the only one who is never ings, are unified with your conscious life. Usually, they reflect the goals you
dethroned! And so youngest children are the second most likely source of have and the problems you face in reaching them. If you can't remember any
problem children, just behind first children. On the other hand, the youngest dreams, Adler isn't put off. Go ahead and fantasize right then and there. Your
may also feel incredible inferiority, with everyone older and "therefore" su- fantasies will reflect your lifestyle just as well.
perior. But, with all those "pace-setters" ahead, the youngest can also be Adler would also pay attention to how you express yourself. Your
driven to exceed all of them. posture, the way you shake hands, the gestures you use, how you move, your
Who is a first, second, or youngest child isn't as obvious as it might "body language," as we say today. He notes that pampered people often lean
seem. If there is a long stretch between children, they may not see themselves against something! Even your sleep postures may contribute some insight. A
and each other the same way as if they were closer together. There are eight person who sleeps in the fetal position with the covers over his or her head
years between my first and second daughter and three between the second is clearly different from one who sprawls over the entire bed completely un-
and the third; that would make my first daughter an only child, my second a covered!
first child, and my third the second and youngest! And if some of the children He would also want to know the exogenous factors, the events that
are boys and some girls, it makes a difference as well. A second child who is triggered the symptoms that concern you. He gives a number of common
a girl might not take her older brother as someone to compete with; a boy in triggers: sexual problems, like uncertainty, guilt, the first time, impotence, and
a family of girls may feel more like the only child; and so on. As with every- so on; The problems women face, such as pregnancy and childbirth and the
thing in Adler's system, birth order is to be understood in the context of the onset and end of menstruation; your love life, dating, engagement, marriage,
individual's own special circumstances. and divorce; Your work life, including school, exams, career decisions, and
the job itself; And mortal danger or the loss of a loved one.
Diagnosis Last, and not least, Adler was open to the less rational and scientific, more
In order to help you to discover the "fictions" your lifestyle is based art-like side of diagnosis. He suggested we not ignore empathy, intuition, and
upon, Adler would look at a great variety of things—your birth-order posi- just plain guess-work!
tion, for example. First, he might examine you and your medical history for
any possible organic roots to your problem. A serious illness, for example, Therapy
may have side effects that closely resemble neurotic and psychotic symptoms. There are considerable differences between Adler's therapy and
In your very first session with you, he might ask for your earliest Freud's: First, Adler preferred to have everyone sitting up and talking face to
childhood memory. He is not so much looking for the truth here as for an face. Further, he went to great lengths to avoid appearing too authoritarian.
indication of that early prototype of your present lifestyle. If your earliest In fact, he advised that the therapist never allow the patient to force him into
memory involves security and a great deal of attention, that might indicate the role of an authoritarian figure, because that allows the patient to play
pampering; If you recall some aggressive competition with your older some of the same games he or she is likely to have played many times before.
The patient may set you up as a savior, only to attack you when you inevitably
reveal your humanness. By pulling you down, they feel as if they are raising you saw, uses basic concepts that are far from physical and behavioral: striv-
themselves, with their neurotic lifestyles, up. ing for perfection? How do you measure that? Or compensation? Or feelings
This is essentially the explanation Adler gave for resistance. When a of inferiority? Or social interest? The experimental method also makes a basic
patient forgets appointments, comes in late, demands special favors, or gen- assumption: That all things operate in terms of cause and effect. Adler would
erally becomes stubborn and uncooperative, it is not, as Freud thought, a certainly agree that physical things do so, but he would adamantly deny that
matter of repression. Rather, resistance is just a sign of the patient's lack of people do! Instead, he takes the teleological route, that people are "deter-
courage to give up their neurotic lifestyle. mined" by their ideals, goals, values, "final fictions." Teleology takes the ne-
The patient must come to understand the nature of his or her life- cessity out of things. A person doesn't have to respond a certain way to a
style and its roots in self-centered fictions. This understanding or insight can- certain circumstance; a person has choices to make; a person creates his or
not be forced. If you just tell someone "look, here is your problem!" he or her own personality or lifestyle. From the experimental perspective, these
she will only pull away from you and look for ways of bolstering their present things are illusions that a scientist, even a personality theorist, dare not give
fictions. Instead, a patient must be brought into such a state of feeling that in to.
he likes to listen, and wants to understand. Only then can he be influenced Even if you are open to the teleological approach, though, there are
to live what he has understood (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956). It is the criticisms you can make regarding how scientific Adler's theory is: many of
patient, not the therapist, who is ultimately responsible for curing him- or the details of his theory are too anecdotal, that is, are true in particular cases,
herself. but don't necessarily have the generality Adler seems to claim for them. A
Finally, the therapist must encourage the patient, which means awak- first child (even broadly defined) doesn't necessarily feel dethroned, nor a
ening his or her social interest, and the energy that goes with it. By developing second child necessarily feel competitive, for example.
a genuine human relationship with the patient, the therapist provides the Adler could, however, respond to these criticisms very easily: first,
basic form of social interest, which the patient can then transfer to others. didn't we just finish saying that, if you accept teleology, nothing about human
personality is necessary. And secondly, didn't he go to great lengths to explain
Discussion his ideas about fictional finalism? All of his concepts are useful constructs,
Although Adler's theory may be less interesting than Freud's, with not absolute truths, and science is just a matter of creating increasingly useful
its sexuality, or Jung's, with its mythology, it has probably struck you as the constructs. So if you have better ideas, let's hear them!
most commonsensical of the three. Students generally like Adler and his the-
ory. In fact, quite a few personality theorists like him, too. Maslow, for ex- Readings
ample, once said that, the older he gets, the more right Adler seems. If you If you are interested in learning more about Alfred Adler's theory,
have some knowledge of Carl Rogers' brand of therapy, you may have no- go straight to Ansbacher and Ansbacher's The Individual Psychology of Alfred Ad-
ticed how similar it is to Adler's. And a number of students of personality ler. They take selections from his writings, organize them, and add running
theories have noted that the theorists called Neo-Freudians—Horney, commentary. It introduces all of his ideas in a very readable fashion. His own
Fromm, and Sullivan—should really have been called Neo-Adlerians. books include Understanding Human Nature, Problems of Neurosis, The Practice and
And so the "positives" of Adler's theory don't really need to be listed. Theory of Individual Psychology, and Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind. An-
His clear descriptions of people's complaints, his straight-forward and com- other collection by Ansbacher and Ansbacher (Superiority and Social Interest)
mon-sense interpretations of their problems, his simple theoretical structure, includes a biography by Carl Furtmuller. You can find early and recent work
his trust and even affection for the common person, all make his theory both by Adler and others in English in The International Journal of Individual Psychology.
comfortable and highly influential.
Problems
Criticisms of Adler tend to involve the issue of whether or not, or to
what degree, his theory is scientific. The mainstream of psychology today is
experimentally oriented, which means, among other things, that the concepts
a theory uses must be measurable and manipulable. This in turn means that
an experimental orientation prefers physical or behavioral variables. Adler, as
CHAPTER 8 As Freud might have predicted, she had married a man not unlike
Karen Horney (1885-1952) her father. Oscar was an authoritarian as harsh with his children as the captain
had been with his. Horney notes that she did not intervene, but rather con-
sidered the atmosphere good for her children and encouraging their inde-
pendence. Only many years later did hindsight change her perspective on
childrearing.
In 1923, Oskar's business collapsed and he developed meningitis. He
became a broken man, morose and argumentative. Also in 1923, Karen's
brother died at the age of 40 of a pulmonary infection. Karen became very
depressed, to the point of swimming out to a sea piling during a vacation with
thoughts of committing suicide.
Karen and her daughters moved out of Oskar's house in 1926 and,
Karen Horney was born September 16, 1885, to Clotilde and Berndt four years later, moved to the U.S., eventually settling in Brooklyn. In the
Wackels Danielson. Her father was a ship's captain, a religious man, and an 1930's, Brooklyn was the intellectual capital of the world, due in part to the
authoritarian. His children called him "the Bible thrower," because, according influx of Jewish refugees from Germany. It was here that she became friends
to Horney, he did! Her mother, who was known as Sonni, was a very different with such intellectuals as Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan, even paus-
person—Berndt's second wife, 19 years his junior, and considerably more ing to have an affair with the former. And it was here that she developed her
urbane. Karen also had an older brother, also named Berndt, for whom she theories on neurosis, based on her experiences as a psychotherapist.
cared deeply, as well as four older siblings from her father's previous mar- She practiced, taught, and wrote until her death in 1952.
riage.
Karen Horney's childhood seems to have been one of mispercep- Theory
tions. For example, while she paints a picture of her father as a harsh disci- Horney's theory is perhaps the best theory of neurosis we have.
plinarian who preferred her brother Berndt over her, he apparently brought First, she offered a different way of viewing neurosis. She saw it as much
her gifts from all over the world and even took her on three long sea voyages more continuous with normal life as previous theorists. Specifically, she saw
with him—a very unusual thing for sea captains to do in those days! Never- neurosis as an attempt to make life bearable, as a way of "interpersonal con-
theless, she felt deprived of her father's affections, and so became especially trol and coping." This is, of course, what we all strive to do on a day-to-day
attached to her mother, becoming, as she put it, "her little lamb." basis, only most of us seem to be doing alright, while the neurotic seems to
At the age of nine, she changed her approach to life, and became be sinking fast.
ambitious and even rebellious. She said, "If I couldn't be pretty, I decided I In her clinical experience, she discerned ten particular patterns of
would be smart," which is only unusual in that she actually was pretty! Also neurotic needs. They are based on things that we all need, but they have be-
during this time, she developed something of a crush on her own brother. come distorted in several ways by the difficulties of some people's lives.
Embarrassed by her attentions, as you might expect of a young teenage boy, Let's take the first need, for affection and approval, as an example.
he pushed her away. This led to her first bout with depression—a problem We all need affection, so what makes such a need neurotic? First, the need is
that would plague her the rest of her life. unrealistic, unreasonable, and indiscriminate. For example, we all need affec-
In early adulthood came several years of stress. In 1904, her mother tion, but we don't expect it from everyone we meet. We don't expect great
divorced her father and left him with Karen and young Berndt. In 1906, she outpourings of affection from even our close friends and relations. We don't
entered medical school, against her parents' wishes and, in fact, against the expect our loved ones to show affection at all times, in all circumstances. We
opinions of polite society of the time. While there, she met a law student don't expect great shows of love while our partners are filing out tax forms,
named Oscar Horney, whom she married in 1909. In 1910, Karen gave birth for example. And, we realize that there may be times in our lives where we
to Brigitte, the first of her three daughters. In 1911, her mother Sonni died. have to be self-sufficient.
The strain of these events were hard on Karen, and she entered psychoanal- Second, the neurotic's need is much more intense, and he or she will
ysis. experience great anxiety if the need is not met, or if it even appears that it
may not be met in the future. It is this, of course, that leads to the unrealistic
nature of the need. Affection, to continue the example, has to be shown

clearly at all times, in all circumstances, by all people, or the panic sets in. The 8. The neurotic need for personal achievement. Again, there is noth-
neurotic has made the need too central to their existence. ing intrinsically wrong with achievement—far from it! But some people are
The neurotic needs are as follows: obsessed with it. They have to be number one at everything they do. Since
this is, of course, quite a difficult task, you will find these people devaluing
1. The neurotic need for affection and approval, the indiscriminate anything they cannot be number one in! If they are good runners, then the
need to please others and be liked by them. discus and the hammer are "side shows." If academic abilities are their
strength, physical abilities are of no importance, and so on.
2. The neurotic need for a partner, for someone who will take over
one's life. This includes the idea that love will solve all of one's problems. 9. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence. We
Again, we all would like a partner to share life with, but the neurotic goes a should all cultivate some autonomy, but some people feel that they shouldn't
step or two too far. ever need anybody. They tend to refuse help and are often reluctant to com-
mit to a relationship.
3. The neurotic need to restrict one's life to narrow borders, to be
undemanding, satisfied with little, to be inconspicuous. Even this has its nor- 10. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability. To become
mal counterpart. Who hasn't felt the need to simplify life when it gets too better and better at life and our special interests is hardly neurotic, but some
stressful, to join a monastic order, disappear into routine, or to return to the people are driven to be perfect and scared of being flawed. They can't be
womb? caught making a mistake and need to be in control at all times.
4. The neurotic need for power, for control over others, for a facade As Horney investigated these neurotic needs, she began to recognize
of omnipotence. We all seek strength, but the neurotic may be desperate for that they can be clustered into three broad coping strategies:
it. This is dominance for its own sake, often accompanied by a contempt for
the weak and a strong belief in one's own rational powers. I. Compliance, which includes needs one, two, and three.
5. The neurotic need to exploit others and get the better of them. In II. Aggression, including needs four through eight.
the ordinary person, this might be the need to have an effect, to have impact,
to be heard. In the neurotic, it can become manipulation and the belief that III. Withdrawal, including needs nine, ten, and three.
people are there to be used. It may also involve a fear of being used, of look-
ing stupid. You may have noticed that the people who love practical jokes She added three here because it is crucial to the illusion of total in-
more often than not cannot take being the butt of such a joke themselves! dependence and perfection that you limit the breadth of your life!
In her writings, she used a number of other phrases to refer to these
6. The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige. We are social three strategies. Besides compliance, she referred to the first as the moving-
creatures, and sexual ones, and like to be appreciated. But these people are toward strategy and the self-effacing solution. One should also note that
overwhelmingly concerned with appearances and popularity. They fear being it is the same as Adler's getting or leaning approach, or the phlegmatic per-
ignored, be thought plain, "uncool," or "out of it." sonality.
Besides aggression, the second was referred to as moving-
7. The neurotic need for personal admiration. We need to be ad- against and the expansive solution. It is the same as Alder's ruling or dom-
mired for inner qualities as well as outer ones. We need to feel important and inant type, or the choleric personality.
valued. But some people are more desperate, and need to remind everyone And, besides withdrawal, she called the third moving-away-
of their importance—"Nobody recognizes genius," "I'm the real power be- from and the resigning solution. It is somewhat like Adler's avoiding type,
hind the scenes, you know," and so on. Their fear is of being thought nobod- the melancholy personality.
ies, unimportant and meaningless.
Development unto themselves—the third coping strategy. They say, "If I withdraw, noth-
It is true that some people who are abused or neglected as children ing can hurt me."
suffer from neuroses as adults. What we often forget is that most do not. If
you have a violent father, or a schizophrenic mother, or are sexually molested Self theory
by a strange uncle, you may nevertheless have other family members that love Horney had one more way of looking at neurosis—in terms of self-
you, take care of you, and work to protect you from further injury, and you images. For Horney, the self is the core of your being, your potential. If you
will grow up to be a healthy, happy adult. It is even truer that the great ma- were healthy, you would have an accurate conception of who you are, and
jority of adult neurotics did not in fact suffer from childhood neglect or you would then be free to realize that potential (self-realization).
abuse! So the question becomes, if it is not neglect or abuse that causes neu- The neurotic has a different view of things. The neurotics self is
rosis, what does? "split" into a despised self and an ideal self. Other theorists postulate a
Horney's answer, which she called the "basic evil," is parental in- "looking-glass" self, the “you” you think others see. If you look around and
difference, a lack of warmth and affection in childhood. Even occasional see (accurately or not) others despising you, then you take that inside you as
beatings or an early sexual experience can be overcome, if the child feels what you assume is the real you. On the other hand, if you are lacking in
wanted and loved. some way, that implies there are certain ideals you should be living up to.
The key to understanding parental indifference is that it is a matter You create an ideal self out of these "shoulds." Understand that the ideal self
of the child's perception, and not the parents' intentions. "The road to hell," is not a positive goal; it is unrealistic and ultimately impossible. So the neu-
it might pay to remember, "is paved with good intentions." A well-inten- rotic swings back and forth between hating themselves and pretending to be
tioned parent may easily communicate indifference to children with such perfect.
things as showing a preference for one child over another, blaming a child
for what they may not have done, overindulging one moment and rejecting
another, neglecting to fulfill promises, disturbing a child's friendships, mak-
ing fun of a child's thinking, and so on. Please notice that many parents—
even good ones—find themselves doing these things because of the many
pressures they may be under. Other parents do these things because they
themselves are neurotic, and place their own needs ahead of their children's
Horney noticed that, in contrast to our stereotypes of children as
weak and passive, their first reaction to parental indifference is anger, a re-
sponse she calls basic hostility. To be frustrated first leads to an effort at
protesting the injustice!
Some children find this hostility effective, and over time it becomes
a habitual response to life's difficulties. In other words, they develop an ag-
gressive coping strategy. They say to themselves, "If I have power, no one
can hurt me."
Most children, however, find themselves overwhelmed by basic FIGURE 8.1 Self theory model
anxiety, which in children is mostly a matter of fear of helplessness and
abandonment. For survival's sake, basic hostility must be suppressed and the
parents won over. If this seems to work better for the child, it may become
the preferred coping strategy—compliance. They say to themselves, "If I can Horney described this stretching between the despised and ideal
make you love me, you will not hurt me." selves as "the tyranny of the shoulds" and neurotic "striving for glory:"
Some children find that neither aggression nor compliance eliminate
the perceived parental indifference. They "solve" the problem by withdraw-
ing from family involvement into themselves, eventually becoming sufficient
The compliant person believes "I should be sweet, self-sacrificing, A second idea, one that still gets little respect in the psychological
and saintly." community, is self-analysis. Horney wrote one of the earliest "self-help"
books, and suggested that, with relatively minor neurotic problems, we could
The aggressive person says "I should be powerful, recognized, a be our own psychiatrists. You can see how this might threaten a few of the
winner." delicate egos who make their livings as therapists! I am always surprised at
the negative reaction some of my colleagues have to people like Joyce Broth-
The withdrawing person believes "I should be independent, aloof, ers, the famous psychologist-columnist. Apparently, if you aren't working
and perfect." within the official guidelines, your work is dismissed as "pop psych."
The major negative comment I might make about Horney is that her
And while vacillating between these two impossible selves, the neu- theory is limited to the neurotic. Besides leaving out psychotics and other
rotic is alienated from their true core and prevented from actualizing their problems, she leaves out the truly healthy person. Nevertheless, since she
potentials. does put neurosis and health on a single continuum, she does speak to the
neurotic in all of us.
Discussion
At first glance, it may appear that Horney stole some of Adler's best References
ideas. It is clear, for example, that her three coping strategies are very close Karen Horney's best book is Neurosis and Human Growth (1950). It is
to Adler's three types. It is, of course, quite conceivable that she was influ- the best book on neurosis ever, in my humble opinion. She wrote more "pop"
enced by Adler. But if you look at how she derived her three strategies—by versions called The Neurotic Personality of our Time (1937) and Our Inner Con-
collapsing groups of neurotic needs—you see that she simply came to the flicts (1945). Her thoughts on therapy can be found in New Ways in Psychoanal-
same conclusions from a different approach. There is no question, of course, ysis (1939). For an early insight into feminist psychology, read Feminine Psy-
that Adler and Horney (and Fromm and Sullivan) form an unofficial school chology (1967). And to read about self-analysis read Self-Analysis (1942).
of psychiatry. They are often called neo-Freudians, although that is rather
inaccurate. Unfortunately, the other common term is the Social Psychologists
which, while accurate, is a term already used for an area of study.
Please notice how Horney's self theory fleshes out Adler's theory
about the differences between healthy and neurotic striving for perfection,
and (to get ahead of ourselves a bit) how similar this conception is to Carl
Rogers'. I usually feel that, when different people come up with similar ideas
relatively independently, this is a good sign we're getting at something valua-
ble!
Karen Horney had a couple more interesting ideas that should be
mentioned. First, she criticized Freud's idea of penis envy. Although she con-
ceded that it did occasionally occur in neurotic women, she felt strongly that
it was not anywhere near to a universal. She suggested that what may appear
to be signs of penis envy is really justified envy of men's power in this world.
In fact, she suggested, there may also be a male counterpart to penis
envy—womb envy—in some men who feel envious of a woman's ability to
bear children. Perhaps the degree to which many men are driven to succeed,
and to have their names live on after them, is in compensation for their ina-
bility to more directly extend themselves into the future by means of carrying,
bearing, and nurturing their children!
CHPATER 9 turned exclusively to nonfiction, to promoting what he called the "sex-family

Albert Ellis (1913-2007) revolution."
As he collected more and more materials for a treatise called "The
Case for Sexual Liberty," many of his friends began regarding him as some-
thing of an expert on the subject. They often asked for advice, and Ellis dis-
covered that he liked counseling as well as writing. In 1942 he returned to
school, entering the clinical-psychology program at Columbia. He started a
part-time private practice in family and sex counseling soon after he received
his master's degree in 1943.
At the time Columbia awarded him a doctorate in 1947 Ellis had
come to believe that psychoanalysis was the deepest and most effective form
of therapy. He decided to undertake a training analysis, and "become an out-
standing psychoanalyst the next few years." The psychoanalytic institutes re-
Since I began putting these personality theories on the internet, I have refused to take trainees without M.D.s, but he found an analyst with the Karen
ceived requests to add this or that theorist, sometimes with the added notion that I Horney group who agreed to work with him. Ellis completed a full analysis
must be a total dunderhead to have left out such a genius! I added Allport, for ex- and began to practice classical psychoanalysis under his teacher's direction.
ample, on the basis of one such request. But most I did not add, because, however In the late 1940s he taught at Rutgers and New York University, and
much the writer loves the genius, the genius is rarely up to the standards set by the- was the senior clinical psychologist at the Northern New Jersey Mental Hy-
orists such as Rogers or Horney, much less Jung or Binswanger. But Albert Ellis has giene Clinic. He also became the chief psychologist at the New Jersey Diag-
gotten my attention! Although his is admittedly a "clinical" theory (i.e. devoted pri- nostic Center and then at the New Jersey Department of Institutions and
marily to advancing a form of therapy), it is, in my opinion, as sophisticated as any.
Agencies.
To simplify my life, I have used, with permission of the Albert Ellis Institute
(http://www.rebt.org/), pieces of two articles to present Ellis's theory. But Ellis' faith in psychoanalysis was rapidly crumbling. He discov-
ered that when he saw clients only once a week or even every other week,
Ellis was born in Pittsburgh in 1913 and raised in New York City. they progressed as well as when he saw them daily. He took a more active
He made the best of a difficult childhood by using his head and becoming, role, interjecting advice and direct interpretations as he did when he was
in his words, "a stubborn and pronounced problem-solver." A serious kidney counseling people with family or sex problems. His clients seemed to im-
disorder turned his attention from sports to books, and the strife in his family prove more quickly than when he used passive psychoanalytic procedures.
(his parents were divorced when he was 12) led him to work at understanding And remembering that before he underwent analysis, he had worked through
others. many of his own problems by reading and practicing the philosophies or Ep-
In junior high school Ellis set his sights on becoming the Great ictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, he began to teach his
American Novelist. He planned to study accounting in high school and col- clients the principles that had worked for him.
lege, make enough money to retire at 30, and write without the pressure of By 1955 Ellis had given up psychoanalysis entirely, and instead was
financial need. The Great Depression put an end to his vision, but he made concentrating on changing people's behavior by confronting them with their
it through college in 1934 with a degree in business administration from the irrational beliefs and persuading them to adopt rational ones. This role was
City University of New York. His first venture in the business world was a more to Ellis' taste, for he could be more honestly himself. "When I became
pants-matching business he started with his brother. They scoured the New rational-emotive," he said, "my own personality processes really began to vi-
York garment auctions for pants to match their customer's still-usable coats. brate."
In 1938, he became the personnel manager for a gift and novelty firm. He published his first book on REBT, How to Live with a Neurotic,
Ellis devoted most of his spare time to writing short stories, plays, in 1957. Two years later he organized the Institute for Rational Living, where
novels, comic poetry, essays and nonfiction books. By the time he was 28, he he held workshops to teach his principles to other therapists. The Art and
had finished almost two dozen full-length manuscripts, but had not been able Science of Love, his first really successful book, appeared in 1960, and he has
to get them published. He realized his future did not lie in writing fiction, and now published 54 books and over 600 articles on REBT, sex and marriage.
He is currently the President of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy
in New York, which offers a full-time training program, and operates a large There are twelve examples of irrational beliefs that Ellis often men-
psychological clinic. tions...
(From A Sketch of Albert Ellis, by Gary Gregg) 12 Irrational Ideas That Cause and Sustain Neurosis
Theory 1. The idea that it is a dire necessity for adults to be loved by significant others
Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) begins with ABC! A for almost everything they do—instead of their concentrating on their own
is for activating experiences, such as family troubles, unsatisfying work, early self-respect, on winning approval for practical purposes, and on loving rather
childhood traumas, and all the many things we point to as the sources of our than on being loved.
unhappiness. B stands for beliefs, especially the irrational, self-defeating be-
liefs that are the actual sources of our unhappiness. And C is for conse- 2. The idea that certain acts are awful or wicked, and that people who perform
quences, the neurotic symptoms and negative emotions such as depression such acts should be severely damned—instead of the idea that certain acts
panic, and rage, that come from our beliefs. are self-defeating or antisocial, and that people who perform such acts are
Although the activating experiences may be quite real and have behaving stupidly, ignorantly, or neurotically, and would be better helped to
caused real pain, it is our irrational beliefs that create long-term, disabling change. People's poor behaviors do not make them rotten individuals.
problems! Ellis adds D and E to ABC. The therapist must dispute (D) the
irrational beliefs, in order for the client to ultimately enjoy the positive psy- 3. The idea that it is horrible when things are not the way we like them to
chological effects (E) of rational beliefs. be—instead of the idea that it is too bad, that we would better try to change
For example, “a depressed person feels sad and lonely because he or control bad conditions so that they become more satisfactory, and, if that
erroneously thinks he is inadequate and deserted.” Actually, depressed peo- is not possible, we had better temporarily accept and gracefully lump their
ple perform just as well as non-depressed people. So, a therapist should show existence.
the depressed person his or her successes, and attack the belief that they are
inadequate, rather than attacking the mood itself! 4. The idea that human misery is invariably externally caused and is forced
Although it is not important to therapy to pin-point the source of on us by outside people and events—instead of the idea that neurosis is
these irrational beliefs, it is understood that they are the result of “philosoph- largely caused by the view that we take of unfortunate conditions.
ical conditioning,” habits not unlike the habit of answering the phone just
because it rings. Further, Ellis says that we are biologically programmed to 5. The idea that if something is or may be dangerous or fearsome we should
be susceptible to this kind of conditioning! be terribly upset and endlessly obsess about it—instead of the idea that one
These beliefs take the form of absolute statements. Instead of ac- would better frankly face it and render it non-dangerous and, when that is
knowledging a preference or a desire, we make unqualified demands on oth- not possible, accept the inevitable.
ers, or convince ourselves that we have overwhelming needs. There are a
number of typical “thinking errors” people typically engage in, including... 6. The idea that it is easier to avoid than to face life difficulties and self-re-
sponsibilities—instead of the idea that the so-called easy way is usually much
1. Ignoring the positive, harder in the long run.
2. Exaggerating the negative, and
3. Overgeneralizing. 7. The idea that we absolutely need something other or stronger or greater
than our self on which to rely—instead of the idea that it is better to take the
I may refuse to see that I do have some friends or that I have had a risks of thinking and acting less dependently.
few successes. I may dwell on and blow out of proportion the hurts I have
suffered. I may convince myself that nobody loves me, or that I always screw 8. The idea that we should be thoroughly competent, intelligent, and achiev-
up. ing in all possible respects—instead of the idea that we would better do rather
than always need to do well and accept our self as a quite imperfect creature,
who has general human limitations and specific fallibilities.
to do so, encourage self-management through behavior modification tech-

9. The idea that because something once strongly affected our life, it should niques, use systematic desensitization, and so on.
indefinitely affect it—instead of the idea that we can learn from our past ex-
periences but not be overly-attached to or prejudiced by them. Unconditional self-acceptance
Ellis has come to emphasize more and more the importance of what
10. The idea that we must have certain and perfect control over things— he calls “unconditional self-acceptance.” He says that, in REBT, no one is
instead of the idea that the world is full of probability and chance and that damned, no matter how awful their actions, and we should accept ourselves
we can still enjoy life despite this. for what we are rather than for what we have achieved.
One approach he mentions is to convince the client of the intrinsic
11. The idea that human happiness can be achieved by inertia and inaction— value of him or herself as a human being. Just being alive provides you with
instead of the idea that we tend to be happiest when we are vitally absorbed value.
in creative pursuits, or when we are devoting ourselves to people or projects He notes that most theories make a great deal out of self-esteem and
outside ourselves. ego-strength and similar concepts. We are naturally evaluating creatures, and
that is fine. But we go from evaluating our traits and our actions to evaluating
12. The idea that we have virtually no control over our emotions and that we this vague holistic entity called “self.” How can we do this? And what good
cannot help feeling disturbed about things—instead of the idea that we have does it do? Only harm, he believes.
real control over our destructive emotions if we choose to work at changing There are, he says, legitimate reasons for promoting one’s self or
the masturbatory hypotheses which we often employ to create them. ego. We want to stay alive and be healthy, we want to enjoy life, and so
on. But there are far more ways in which promoting the self or ego does
(From The Essence of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, by Albert harm, as exemplified by these irrational beliefs:
Ellis, Ph.D. Revised, May 1994.)
I am special or I am damned.
To simplify, Ellis also talks about the three main irrational beliefs: I must be loved or cared for.
I must be immortal.
1. “I must be outstandingly competent, or I am worthless.” I am either good or bad.
2. “Others must treat me considerately, or they are absolutely rot- I must prove myself.
ten.” I must have everything that I want.
3. “The world should always give me happiness, or I will die.”
He believes very strongly that self-evaluation leads to depression and
The therapist uses his or her skills to argue against these irrational repression, and avoidance of change. The best thing for human health is that
ideas in therapy, or, even better, leads the client to make the arguments. For we should stop evaluating ourselves altogether!
example, the therapist may ask... But perhaps this idea of a self or an ego is overdrawn. Ellis is quite
skeptical about the existence of a “true” or “real” self, ala Horney or Rog-
1. Is there any evidence for this belief? ers. He especially dislikes the idea that there is a conflict between a self-
2. What is the evidence against this belief? promoted by actualization versus one promoted by society. In fact, he says,
3. What is the worst that can happen if you give up this belief? one’s nature and one’s society are more likely to be mutually supporting than
4. And what is the best that can happen? antagonistic.
He certainly sees no evidence for a transpersonal self or soul. Bud-
In addition to argument, the REBT therapist uses any other tech- dhism, for example, does quite well without it! And he is skeptical about the
niques that assist the client in changing their beliefs. They might use group altered states of consciousness mystical traditions and transpersonal psychol-
therapy, use unconditional positive regard, provide risk-taking activities, as- ogy recommend. In fact, he sees these states as being more inauthentic than
sertiveness training, empathy training, perhaps using role playing techniques transcendent!
On the other hand, he sees his approach as coming out of the ancient CHAPTER 10
Stoic tradition, and supported by such philosophers as Spinoza. He sees ad- Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
ditional similarities in existentialism and existential psychology. Any ap-
proach that puts the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the individual
and his or her beliefs is likely to have commonalities with Ellis’s REBT.
Aaron Beck
I would be remiss if I did not at least include a mention of Aaron
Beck while talking about Ellis. If Ellis is the grandfather of cognitive-style
therapies, Beck is the father. The influence of these two gentlemen on psy-
chotherapy cannot be ignored!
Aaron Beck was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 18, 1921
to Russian Jewish immigrants. He received his bachelor’s degree (magna cum
laude) from Brown University in 1942, and his MD from Yale Medical School
in 1946. He is married and has four children, one of whom (Judith) followed Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. His father
in her father's footsteps. was a business man and, according to Erich, rather moody. His mother was
He is still active as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He frequently depressed. In other words, like quite a few of the people we've
is also the director of the Center for the Treatment and Prevention of Suicide, looked at, his childhood wasn't very happy.
and the president of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research Like Jung, Erich came from a very religious family, in his case ortho-
in Philadelphia, of which Dr. Judith Beck is the director. dox Jews. Fromm himself later became what he called an atheistic mystic.
Beck developed a form of therapy he called CT (Cognitive Ther- In his autobiography, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, Fromm talks about
apy—also known as CBT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), which has a two events in his early adolescence that started him along his path. The first
number of commonalities with Albert Ellis's RET: involved a friend of the family's:
Cognitive therapy is based on the idea that many psychological prob-
lems ultimately derive from cognitive "errors," especially regarding one's self, Maybe she was 25 years of age; she was beautiful, attractive, and in addition
one's world, and one's future. In conversational style, the therapist helps the a painter, the first painter I ever knew. I remember having heard that she
patient explore and test their beliefs and thought processes and develop bet- had been engaged but after some time had broken the engagement; I re-
member that she was almost invariably in the company of her widowed
ter approaches to life's problems. Among the original thinking errors Beck
father. As I remember him, he was an old, uninteresting, and rather unat-
discovered were overgeneralization, minimization of positives, and maximi- tractive man, or so I thought (maybe my judgment was somewhat biased
zation of negatives. by jealousy). Then one day I heard the shocking news: her father had died,
Originally, Beck applied his methods to depression and suicidal and immediately afterwards, she had killed herself and left a will which stip-
thoughts, but he and his students have since expanded their range to include ulated that she wanted to be buried with her father. (p. 4)
anxiety disorders, personality disorders, and even schizophrenia.
In 2007, the online magazine Psychotherapy Networker conducted As you can imagine, this news hit the 12 year old Erich hard, and he
a survey among psychotherapists concerning the most influential thera- found himself asking what many of us might ask: why? Later, he began find-
pists. Dr. Beck came in second, right after Carl Rogers. ing some answers—partial ones, admittedly—in Freud.
The second event was even larger: World War I. At the tender age
of 14, he saw the extremes that nationalism could go to. All around him, he
heard the message: we (Germans, or more precisely, Christian Germans) are
great; they (the English and their allies) are cheap mercenaries. The hatred,
the "war hysteria," frightened him, as well it should.
So again he wanted to understand something irrational—the irra- to the church (and other traditional establishments) for the path we were to
tionality of mass behavior—and he found some answers, this time in the take. Then came the Reformation, which introduced the idea of each of us
writings of Karl Marx. being individually responsible for our own soul's salvation. And then came
To finish Fromm's story, he received his PhD from Heidelberg in democratic revolutions such as the American and the French revolutions.
1922 and began a career as a psychotherapist. He moved to the U.S. in Now all of a sudden we were supposed to govern ourselves! And then came
1934—a popular time for leaving Germany!—And settled in New York City, the industrial revolution, and instead of tilling the soil or making things with
where he met many of the other great refugee thinkers that gathered there, our hands, we had to sell our labor in exchange for money. All of a sudden,
including Karen Horney, with whom he had an affair. we became employees and consumers! Then came socialist revolutions such
Toward the end of his career, he moved to Mexico City to teach. He as the Russian and the Chinese, which introduced the idea of participatory
had done considerable research into the relationship between economic class economics. You were no longer responsible only for your own well-being,
and personality types there. He died in 1980 in Switzerland. but for fellow workers as well!
So, over a mere 500 years, the idea of the individual, with individual
Theory thoughts, feelings, moral conscience, freedom, and responsibility, came into
As his biography suggests, Fromm's theory is a rather unique blend being. But with individuality came isolation, alienation, and bewilderment.
of Freud and Marx. Freud, of course, emphasized the unconscious, biological Freedom is a difficult thing to have, and when we can we tend to flee from
drives, repression, and so on. In other words, Freud postulated that our char- it.
acters were determined by biology. Marx, on the other hand, saw people as Fromm describes three ways in which we escape from freedom:
determined by their society, and most especially by their economic systems.
He added to this mix of two deterministic systems something quite 1. Authoritarianism. We seek to avoid freedom by fusing ourselves
foreign to them: The idea of freedom. He allows people to transcend the with others, by becoming a part of an authoritarian system like the society of
determinisms that Freud and Marx attribute to them. In fact, Fromm makes the middle Ages. There are two ways to approach this. One is to submit to
freedom the central characteristic of human nature! the power of others, becoming passive and compliant. The other is to be-
There are, Fromm points out, examples where determinism alone come an authority yourself, a person who applies structure to others. Either
operates. A good example of nearly pure biological determinism, ala Freud, way, you escape your separate identity.
is animals (at least simple ones). Animals don't worry about freedom—their Fromm referred to the extreme version of authoritarianism as mas-
instincts take care of everything. Woodchucks, for example, don't need career ochism and sadism, and points out that both feel compelled to play their
counseling to decide what they are going to be when they grow up. They are separate roles, so that even the sadist, with all his apparent power over the
going to be woodchucks! masochist, is not free to choose his actions. But milder versions of authori-
A good example of socioeconomic determinism, ala Marx, is the tra- tarianism are everywhere. In many classes, for example, there is an implicit
ditional society of the middle Ages. Just like woodchucks, few people in the contract between students and professors: students demand structure, and
Middle Ages needed career counseling. They had fate, the Great Chain of the professor sticks to his notes. It seems innocuous and even natural, but
Being, to tell them what to do. Basically, if your father was a peasant, you'd this way the students avoid taking any responsibility for their learning, and
be a peasant. If your father was a king, that's what you'd become. And if you the professor can avoid taking on the real issues of his field.
were a woman, well, there was only one role for women.
Today, we might look at life in the middle Ages, or life as an animal, 2. Destructiveness. Authoritarians respond to a painful existence
and cringe. But the fact is that the lack of freedom represented by biological by, in a sense, eliminating themselves. If there is no me, how can anything
or social determinism is easy. Your life has structure, meaning, there are no hurt me? But others respond to pain by striking out against the world. If I
doubts, no cause for soul-searching, you fit in and never suffered an identity destroy the world, how can it hurt me? It is this escape from freedom that
crisis. accounts for much of the indiscriminate nastiness of life—brutality, vandal-
Historically speaking, this simple, if hard, life began to get shaken up ism, humiliation, vandalism, crime, terrorism....
with the Renaissance. In the Renaissance, people started to see humanity as Fromm adds that, if a person's desire to destroy is blocked by cir-
the center of the universe, instead of God. In other words, we didn't just look cumstances, he or she may redirect it inward. The most obvious kind of self-
destructiveness is, of course, suicide. But we can also include many illnesses,
drug addiction, alcoholism, even the joys of passive entertainment. He turns senting adults do among themselves is not the state's business! Another ex-
Freud's death instinct upside down. Self-destructiveness is frustrated destruc- ample involves most of us today. We may well fight for freedom (of the
tiveness, not the other way around. political sort), and yet when we have it, we tend to be conformist and often
rather irresponsible. We have the vote, but we fail to use it! Fromm is very
3. Automaton conformity. Authoritarians escape by hiding within much for political freedom—but he is especially eager that we make use of
an authoritarian hierarchy. But our society emphasizes equality! There is less that freedom and take the responsibility that goes with it.
hierarchy to hide in (though plenty remains for anyone who wants it, and
some who don't). When we need to hide, we hide in our mass culture instead. Families
When I get dressed in the morning, there are so many decisions! But I only Which of the escapes from freedom you tend to use has a great deal
need to look at what you are wearing, and my frustrations disappear. Or I can to do with what kind of family you grew up in. Fromm outlines two kinds of
look at the television, which, like a horoscope, will tell me quickly and effec- unproductive families.
tively what to do. If I look like, talk like, think like, feel like... everyone else
in my society, then I disappear into the crowd, and I don't need to 1. Symbiotic families. Symbiosis is the relationship two organisms
acknowledge my freedom or take responsibility. It is the horizontal counter- have who cannot live without each other. In a symbiotic family, some mem-
part to authoritarianism. bers of the family are "swallowed up" by other members, so that they do not
The person who uses automaton conformity is like a social chame- fully develop personalities of their own. The more obvious example is the
leon: He takes on the coloring of his surroundings. Since he looks like a mil- case where the parent "swallows" the child, so that the child's personality is
lion other people, he no longer feels alone. He isn't alone, perhaps, but he's merely a reflection of the parent's wishes. In many traditional societies, this
not himself either. The automaton conformist experiences a split between his is the case with many children, especially girls.
genuine feelings and the colors he shows the world, very much along the lines The other example is the case where the child "swallows" the parent.
of Horney's theory. In this case, the child dominates or manipulates the parent, who exists essen-
In fact, since humanity's "true nature" is freedom, any of these es- tially to serve the child. If this sounds odd, let me assure you it is common,
capes from freedom alienates us from ourselves. Here's what Fromm had to especially in traditional societies, especially in the relationship between a boy
say: and his mother. Within the context of the particular culture, it is even neces-
sary. How else does a boy learn the art of authority he will need to survive as
Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending an adult?
it. He has to find principles of action and decision making which replace In reality, nearly everyone in a traditional society learns both how to
the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which dominate and how to be submissive, since nearly everyone has someone
permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for above them and below them in the social hierarchy. Obviously, the authori-
consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, tarian escape from freedom is built-in to such a society. But note that, for all
starving, and being hurt, but also against another anger which is specifically that it may offend our modern standards of equality, this is the way people
human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself
lived for thousands of years. It is a very stable social system, it allows for a
not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of
losing his mind. (Fromm, 1968, p. 61) great deal of love and friendship, and billions of people live in it still.
I should add here that freedom is in fact a complex idea, and that 2. Withdrawing families. In fact, the main alternative is most no-
Fromm is talking about "true" personal freedom, rather than just political table for its cool indifference, if not cold hatefulness. Although withdrawal
freedom (often called liberty): most of us, whether they are free or not, tend as a family style has always been around, it has come to dominate some soci-
to like the idea of political freedom, because it means that we can do what eties only in the last few hundred years, that is, since the bourgeoisie—the
we want. A good example is the sexual sadist (or masochist) who has a psy- merchant class—arrive on the scene in force.
chological problem that drives his behavior. He is not free in the personal The "cold" version is the older of the two, found in northern Europe
sense, but he will welcome the politically free society that says that what con- and parts of Asia, and wherever merchants are a formidable class. Parents are
very demanding of their children, who are expected to live up to high, well-
defined standards. Punishment is not a matter of a slap upside the head in
full anger and in the middle of dinner; it is instead a formal affair, a full- Fromm believes that our social unconscious is best understood by
fledged ritual, possibly involving cutting switches and meeting in the wood- examining our economic systems. In fact, he defines, and even names, five
shed. Punishment is cold-blooded, done "for your own good." Alternatively, personality types, which he calls orientations, in economic terms! If you like,
a culture may use guilt and withdrawal of affection as punishment. Either you can take a personality test made up of lists of adjectives Fromm used to
way, children in these cultures become rather strongly driven to succeed in describe his orientations2.
whatever their culture defines as success.
This puritanical style of family encourages the destructive escape 1. The receptive orientation. These are people who expect to get
from freedom, which is internalized until circumstances (such as war) allow what they need. If they don't get it immediately, they wait for it. They believe
its release. I might add that this kind of family more immediately encourages that all goods and satisfactions come from outside themselves. This type is
perfectionism—living by the rules—which is also a way of avoiding freedom most common among peasant populations. It is also found in cultures that
that Fromm does not discuss. When the rules are more important than peo- have particularly abundant natural resources, so that one need not work hard
ple, destructiveness is inevitable. for one's sustenance (although nature may also suddenly withdraw its
The second withdrawing kind of family is the modern family, found bounty!). It is also found at the very bottom of any society: slaves, serfs, wel-
in the most advanced parts of the world, most notably the USA. Changes in fare families, migrant workers... all are at the mercy of others.
attitudes about child rearing have lead many people to shudder at the use of This orientation is associated with symbiotic families, especially
physical punishment and guilt in raising children. The newer idea is to raise where children are "swallowed" by parents, and with the masochistic (pas-
your children as your equals. A father should be a boy's best buddy; a mother sive) form of authoritarianism. It is similar to Freud's oral passive, Adler's
should be a daughter's soul mate. But, in the process of controlling their leaning-getting, and Horney's compliant personality. In its extreme form, it
emotions, the parents become coolly indifferent. They are, in fact, no longer can be characterized by adjectives such as submissive and wishful. In a more
really parents, just cohabitants with their children. The children, now without moderate form, adjectives such as accepting and optimistic are more descrip-
any real adult guidance, turn to their peers and to the media for their values. tive.
This is the modern, shallow, television family!
The escape from freedom is particularly obvious here: it is automa- 2. The exploitative orientation. These people expect to have to
ton conformity. Although this is still very much a minority family in the world take what they need. In fact, things increase in value to the extent that they
(except, of course, on TV!), this is the one Fromm worries about the most. are taken from others. Wealth is preferably stolen, ideas plagiarized, love
It seems to portent the future. achieved by coercion. This type is prevalent among history's aristocracies,
What makes up a good, healthy, productive family? Fromm suggests and in the upper classes of colonial empires. Think of the English in India
it is a family where parents take the responsibility to teach their children rea- for example. Their position was based entirely on their power to take from
son in an atmosphere of love. Growing up in this sort of family, children the indigenous population. Among their characteristic qualities is the ability
learn to acknowledge their freedom and to take responsibility for themselves, to be comfortable ordering others around! We can also see it in pastoral bar-
and ultimately for society as a whole. barians and populations who rely on raiding (such as the Vikings).
The exploitative orientation is associated with the "swallowing" side
The social unconscious of the symbiotic family, and with the masochistic style of authoritarianism.
But our families mostly just reflect our society and culture. Fromm They are Freud's oral aggressive, Adler's ruling-dominant, and Horney's ag-
emphasizes that we soak up our society with our mother's milk. It is so close gressive types. In extremes, they are aggressive, conceited, and seducing.
to us that we usually forget that our society is just one of an infinite number Mixed with healthier qualities, they are assertive, proud, captivating.
of ways of dealing with the issues of life. We often think that our way of
doing things is the only way, the natural way. We have learned so well that it 3. The hoarding orientation. Hoarding people expect to keep.
has all become unconscious—the social unconscious, to be precise. So, many They see the world as possessions and potential possessions. Even loved
times we believe that we are acting according to our own free will, but we are ones are things to possess, to keep, or to buy. Fromm, drawing on Karl Marx,
only following orders we are so used to we no longer notice them.
2
Explore Fromm personality test at: http://web-
space.ship.edu/cgboer/frommtest.html
relates this type to the bourgeoisie, the merchant middle class, as well as popular in the USA, but let me explain: humanistic means oriented towards
richer peasants and crafts people. He associates it particularly with the human beings, and not towards some higher entity—not the all-powerful
Protestant work ethic and such groups as our own Puritans. State nor someone's conception of God. Communitarian means composed
Hoarding is associated with the cold form of withdrawing family, of small communities (Gemeinschaften, in German), as opposed to big govern-
and with destructiveness. I might add that there is a clear connection with ment or corporations. Socialism means everyone is responsible for the wel-
perfectionism as well. Freud would call it the anal retentive type, Adler (to fare of everyone else. Thus understood, it's hard to argue with Fromm's ide-
some extent) the avoiding type, and Horney (a little more clearly) the with- alism!
drawing type. In its pure form, it means you are stubborn, stingy, and unim- Fromm says that the first four orientations (which others might call
aginative. If you are a milder version of hoarding, you might be steadfast, neurotic) are living in the having mode. They focus on consuming, obtain-
economical, and practical. ing, possessing.... They are defined by what they have. Fromm says that "I
have it" tends to become "it has me," and we become driven by our posses-
4. The marketing orientation. The marketing orientation expects sions! The productive orientation, on the other hand, lives in the being
to sell. Success is a matter of how well I can sell myself, package myself, and mode. What you are is defined by your actions in this world. You live without
advertise myself. My family, my schooling, my jobs, my clothes—all are an a mask, experiencing life, relating to people, being yourself.
advertisement, and must be "right." Even love is thought of as a transaction. He says that most people, being so used to the having mode, use the
Only the marketing orientation thinks up the marriage contract, wherein we word have to describe their problems. "Doctor, I have a problem; I have
agree that I shall provide such and such, and you in return shall provide this insomnia. Although I have a beautiful home, wonderful children, and a happy
and that. If one of us fails to hold up our end of the arrangement, the mar- marriage, I have many worries." He is looking to the therapist to remove the
riage is null and void—no hard feelings (perhaps we can still be best of bad things, and let him keep the good ones, a little like asking a surgeon to
friends!) This, according to Fromm, is the orientation of the modern indus- take out your gall bladder. What you should be saying is more like "I am
trial society. This is our orientation! troubled. I am happily married, yet I cannot sleep...." By saying you have a
This modern type comes out of the cool withdrawing family, and problem, you are avoiding facing the fact that you are the problem—i.e. you
tend to use automaton conformity as its escape from freedom. Adler and avoid, once again, taking responsibility for your life.
Horney don't have an equivalent, but Freud might: This is at least half of the
vague phallic personality, the type that lives life as flirtation. In extreme, the
marketing person is opportunistic, childish, and tactless. Less extreme, and Orienta-
Society Family Escape from Freedom
he or she is purposeful, youthful, and social. Notice today's values as ex- tion
pressed to us by our mass media: fashion, fitness, eternal youth, adventure, Receptive Peasant society
Symbiotic (pas-
Authoritarian (masochistic)
daring, novelty, sexuality... these are the concerns of the "yuppie," and his or sive)
her less-wealthy admirers. The surface is everything! Let's go bungee-jump- Exploita-
Aristocratic society Symbiotic (active) Authoritarian (sadistic)
ing! tive
Withdrawing (pu-
Hoarding Bourgeois society Perfectionist to destructive
5. The productive orientation. There is a healthy personality as ritanical)
well, which Fromm occasionally refers to as the person without a mask. This Withdrawing (in-
Marketing Modern society Automaton conformist
fantile)
is the person who, without disavowing his or her biological and social nature,
nevertheless does not shirk away from freedom and responsibility. This per- Humanistic com-
Produc- Loving and rea- Freedom and responsibility acknowl-
munitarian
son comes out of a family that loves without overwhelming the individual tive
socialism
soning edged and accepted
that prefers reason to rules, and freedom to conformity.
The society that gives rise to the productive type (on more than a FIGURE 10.1 Fromm model
chance basis) doesn't exist yet, according to Fromm. He does, of course, have
some ideas about what it will be like. He calls it humanistic communitarian
socialism. That's quite a mouthful, and made up of words that aren't exactly
Evil Biophilous
Fromm was always interested in trying to understand the really evil
people of this world—not just one's who were confused or mislead or stupid
or sick, but the ones who, with full consciousness of the evil of their acts, Receptive
performed them anyway: Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and so Exploitative Necrophilous
Having Mode
on, large and small. Hoarding
Marketing
All the orientations we've talked about, productive and non-produc-
tive, in the having mode or the being mode, have one thing in common. They Being Mode Productive
are all efforts at life. Like Horney, Fromm believed that even the most mis-
erable neurotic is at the least trying to cope with life. They are, to use his FIGURE 10.2 Biophilous
word, biophilous, life-loving.
But there is another type of person he calls necrophilous—the lov-
ers of death. They have the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, Human Needs
putrid, and sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into some- Erich Fromm, like many others, believed that we have needs that go
thing unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in far beyond the basic, physiological ones that some people, like Freud and
all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion "to tear apart living structures." many behaviorists, think explain all of our behavior. He calls these human
If you think back to high school, you may remember a few misfits. needs, in contrast to the more basic animal needs. And he suggests that
They were real horror movie aficionados. They may have made models of the human needs can be expressed in one simple statement: The human be-
torture devices and guillotines. They loved to play war games. They liked to ing needs to find an answer to his existence.
blow things up with their chemistry sets. They got a kick out of torturing Fromm says that helping us to answer this question is perhaps the
small animals. They treasured their guns. They were really into mechanical major purpose of culture. In a way, he says, all cultures are like religions,
devices. The more sophisticated the technology, the happier they were. Bea- trying to explain the meaning of life. Some, of course, do so better than
vis and Butthead are modeled after these kids. others.
I remember watching an interview on TV once, back during the little A more negative way of expressing this need is to say that we need to
war in Nicaragua. There were plenty of American mercenaries among the avoid insanity, and he defines neurosis as an effort to satisfy the need for an-
Contras, and one in particular had caught the reporter’s eye. He was a muni- swers that doesn't work for us. He says that every neurosis is a sort of private
tions expert—someone who blew up bridges, buildings, and, of course, the religion, one we turn to when our culture no longer satisfies. He lists five
occasional enemy soldier. When asked how he got into this line of work, he human needs:
smiled and told the reporter that he might not like the story. You see, when
he was a kid, he liked to put firecrackers up the backside of little birds he had 1. Relatedness
caught, light the fuses, let them go, and watch them blow up. This man was As human beings, we are aware of our separateness from each other,
a necrophiliac. and seek to overcome it. Fromm calls this our need for relatedness, and
Fromm makes a few guesses as to how such a person happens. He views it as love in the broadest sense. Love, he says, "is union with some-
suggested that there may be some genetic flaw that prevents them from feel- body, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the sep-
ing or responding to affection. It may also be a matter of a life so full of arateness and integrity of one's own self" (The Sane Society, p. 37). It allows us
frustration that the person spends the rest of their life in a rage. And finally, to transcend our separateness without denying us our uniqueness.
he suggests that it may be a matter of growing up with a necrophilous mother, The need is so powerful that sometimes we seek it in unhealthy
so that the child has no one to learn love from. It is very possible that some ways. For example, some seek to eliminate their isolation by submitting
combination of these factors is at work. And yet there is still the idea that themselves to another person, to a group, or to their conception of a
these people know what they are doing, are conscious of their evil, and God. Others look to eliminate their isolation by dominating others. Either
choose it. It is a subject that would bear more study! way, these are not satisfying: your separateness is not overcome.
Another way some attempt to overcome this need is by denying our group. But this is only pretend identity, an identity we take from others,
it. The opposite of relatedness is what Fromm calls narcissism. Narcissism— instead of one we develop ourselves and it fails to satisfy our need.
the love of self—is natural in infants, in that they don't perceive themselves
as separate from the world and others to begin with. But in adults, it is a 5. A frame of orientation
source of pathology. Like the schizophrenic, the narcissist has only one re- Finally, we need to understand the world and our place in it. Again,
ality: the world of his own thoughts, feelings, and needs. His world becomes our society—and especially the religious aspects of our culture—often at-
what he wants it to be, and he loses contact with reality. tempts to provide us with this understanding. Things like our myths, our
philosophies, and our sciences provide us with structure.
2. Creativity Fromm says this is really two needs. First, we need a frame of ori-
Fromm believes that we all desire to overcome, to transcend, another entation—almost anything will do. Even a bad one is better than none! And
fact of our being: our sense of being passive creatures. We want to be crea- so people are generally quite gullible. We want to believe, sometimes even
tors. There are many ways to be creative: we give birth, we plant seeds, we desperately. If we don't have an explanation handy, we will make one up,
make pots, we paint pictures, we write books, and we love each other. Cre- via rationalization.
ativity is, in fact, an expression of love. The second aspect is that we want to have a good frame of orienta-
Unfortunately, some don't find an avenue for creativity. Frustrated, tion, one that is useful, accurate. This is where reason comes in. It is nice that
they attempt to transcend their passivity by becoming destroyers instead. De- our parents and others provide us with explanations for the world and our
stroying puts me "above" the things—or people—I destroy. It makes me lives, but if they don't hold up, what good are they? A frame of orientation
feel powerful. We can hate as well as love. But in the end, it fails to bring us needs to be rational.
that sense of transcendence we need. Fromm adds one more thing: he says we don't just want a cold phi-
losophy or material science. We want a frame of orientation that provides us
3. Rootedness with meaning. We want understanding, but we want a warm, human under-
We also need roots. We need to feel at home in the universe, even standing.
though, as human beings, we are somewhat alienated from the natural world.
The simplest version is to maintain our ties to our mothers. But to Discussion
grow up means we have to leave the warmth of our mothers' love. To stay Fromm, in some ways, is a transition figure or, if you prefer, a theo-
would be what Fromm calls a kind of psychological incest. In order to manage rist that brings other theories together. Most significantly for us, he draws
in the difficult world of adulthood, we need to find new, broader roots. We together the Freudian and Neo-Freudian theories we have been talking about
need to discover our brotherhood (and sisterhood) with humanity. (especially Adler's and Horney's) and the humanistic theories we will discuss
This, too has its pathological side. For example, the schizophrenic later. He is, in fact, so close to being an existentialist that it almost doesn't
tries to retreat into a womb-like existence, one where, you might say, the matter! I believe interest in his ideas will rise as the fortune of existential psy-
umbilical cord has never been cut. There is also the neurotic who is afraid to chology does.
leave his home, even to get the mail. And there's the fanatic who sees his Another aspect of his theory is fairly unique to him: his interest in
tribe, his country, his church... as the only good one, the only real one. Eve- the economic and cultural roots of personality. No one before or since has
ryone else is a dangerous outsider, to be avoided or even destroyed. put it so directly. Your personality is to a considerable extent a reflection of
such issues as social class, minority status, education, vocation, religious and
4. A sense of identity philosophical background, and so forth. This has been a very under-repre-
"Man may be defined as the animal that can say 'I.'" (The Sane Society, sented view, perhaps because of its association with Marxism. But it is, I
p. 62). Fromm believes that we need to have a sense of identity, of individual- think, inevitable that we begin to consider it more and more, especially as a
ity, in order to stay sane. counterbalance to the increasing influence of biological theories.
This need is so powerful that we are sometimes driven to find it, for
example by doing anything for signs of status, or by trying desperately to con- References
form. We sometimes will even give up our lives in order to remain a part of Fromm is an excellent and exciting writer. You can find the basics
of his theory in Escape from Freedom (1941) and Man for Himself (1947). His
interesting treatise on love in the modern world is called The Art of Lov- CHAPTER 11
ing (1956). My favorite of his books is The Sane Society (1955), which perhaps B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
should have been called "the insane society" because most of it is devoted to
demonstrating how crazy our world is right now, and how that leads to our
psychological difficulties. He has also written "the" book on aggression, The
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), which includes his ideas on necro-
philia. He has written many other great books, including ones on Christianity,
Marxism, and Zen Buddhism!
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the small
Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna. His father was a lawyer, and his mother
a strong and intelligent housewife. His upbringing was old-fashioned and
hard-working.
Burrhus was an active, out-going boy who loved the outdoors and
building things, and actually enjoyed school. His life was not without its trag-
edies, however. In particular, his brother died at the age of 16 of a cerebral
aneurysm.
Burrhus received his BA in English from Hamilton College in up-
state New York. He didn’t fit in very well, not enjoying the fraternity parties
or the football games. He wrote for school paper, including articles critical
of the school, the faculty, and even Phi Beta Kappa! To top it off, he was an
atheist—in a school that required daily chapel attendance.
He wanted to be a writer and did try, sending off poetry and short
stories. When he graduated, he built a study in his parents’ attic to concen-
trate, but it just wasn’t working for him.
Ultimately, he resigned himself to writing newspaper articles on la-
bor problems, and lived for a while in Greenwich Village in New York City
as a “bohemian.” After some traveling, he decided to go back to school, this
time at Harvard. He got his masters in psychology in 1930 and his doctorate
in 1931, and stayed there to do research until 1936.
Also in that year, he moved to Minneapolis to teach at the University
of Minnesota. There he met and soon married Yvonne Blue. They had two
daughters, the second of which became famous as the first infant to be raised
in one of Skinner’s inventions, the air crib. Although it was nothing more
than a combination crib and playpen with glass sides and air conditioning, it
looked too much like keeping a baby in an aquarium to catch on.
In 1945, he became the chairman of the psychology department at
Indiana University. In 1948, he was invited to come to Harvard, where he
remained for the rest of his life. He was a very active man, doing research to learn the behavior the first time. This is because the return of the rein-
and guiding hundreds of doctoral candidates as well as writing many forcer takes place in the context of a reinforcement history that goes all the
books. While not successful as a writer of fiction and poetry, he became one way back to the very first time the rat was reinforced for pushing on the bar!
of our best psychology writers, including the book Walden II, which is a fic-
tional account of a community run by his behaviorist principles. Schedules of reinforcement
August 18, 1990, B. F. Skinner died of leukemia after becoming per- Skinner likes to tell about how he “accidentally—i.e. operantly—
haps the most celebrated psychologist since Sigmund Freud. came across his various discoveries. For example, he talks about running low
on food pellets in the middle of a study. Now, these were the days before
Theory “Purina rat chow” and the like, so Skinner had to make his own rat pellets, a
B. F. Skinner’s entire system is based on operant condition- slow and tedious task. So he decided to reduce the number of reinforcements
ing. The organism is in the process of “operating” on the environment, he gave his rats for whatever behavior he was trying to condition, and, lo and
which in ordinary terms means it is bouncing around its world, doing what it behold, the rats kept up their operant behaviors, and at a stable rate, no
does. During this “operating,” the organism encounters a special kind of less. This is how Skinner discovered schedules of reinforcement!
stimulus, called a reinforcing stimulus, or simply a reinforcer. This special Continuous reinforcement is the original scenario: every time that
stimulus has the effect of increasing the operant—that is, the behavior oc- the rat does the behavior (such as pedal-pushing), he gets a rat goodie.
curring just before the reinforcer. This is operant conditioning: “the behav- The fixed ratio schedule was the first one Skinner discovered: if
ior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the rat presses the pedal three times, say, he gets a goodie. Or five times. Or
the organism’s tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.” twenty times. Or “x” times. There is a fixed ratio between behaviors and
Imagine a rat in a cage. This is a special cage (called, in fact, a “Skin- reinforcers: 3 to 1, 5 to 1, 20 to 1, etc. This is a little like “piece rate” in the
ner box”) that has a bar or pedal on one wall that, when pressed, causes a clothing manufacturing industry. You get paid so much for so many shirts.
little mechanism to release a food pellet into the cage. The rat is bouncing The fixed interval schedule uses a timing device of some sort. If
around the cage, doing whatever it is rats do, when he accidentally presses the rat presses the bar at least once during a particular stretch of time (say 20
the bar and—hey, presto!—A food pellet falls into the cage! The operant is seconds), then he gets a goodie. If he fails to do so, he doesn’t get a goodie.
the behavior just prior to the reinforcer, which is the food pellet, of But even if he hits that bar a hundred times during that 20 seconds, he still
course. In no time at all, the rat is furiously peddling away at the bar, hoard- only gets one goodie! One strange thing that happens is that the rats tend to
ing his pile of pellets in the corner of the cage. “pace” themselves. They slow down the rate of their behavior right after the
reinforcer, and speed up when the time for it gets close.
A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an increased probability Skinner also looked at variable schedules. Variable ratio means
of that behavior occurring in the future. you change the “x” each time—first it takes 3 presses to get a goodie, then
10, then 1, then 7 and so on. Variable interval means you keep changing the
What if you don’t give the rat any more pellets? Apparently, he’s no time period—first 20 seconds, then 5, then 35, then 10 and so on.
fool, and after a few futile attempts, he stops his bar-pressing behavior. This In both cases, it keeps the rats on their rat toes. With the variable
is called extinction of the operant behavior. interval schedule, they no longer “pace” themselves, because they can no
longer establish a “rhythm” between behavior and reward. Most im-
A behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results in a decreased portantly, these schedules are very resistant to extinction. It makes sense, if
probability of that behavior occurring in the future. you think about it. If you haven’t gotten a reinforcer for a while, well, it could
just be that you are at a particularly “bad” ratio or interval! Just one more
Now, if you were to turn the pellet machine back on, so that pressing bar press, maybe this’ll be the one!
the bar again provides the rat with pellets, the behavior of bar-pushing will This, according to Skinner, is the mechanism of gambling. You may
“pop” right back into existence, much more quickly than it took for the rat not win very often, but you never know whether and when you’ll win
again. It could be the very next time, and if you don’t roll the dice, or play
that hand, or bet on that number this once, you’ll miss on the score of the
century!
by stumbling into an operating theater, cutting open someone's head, suc-

Shaping cessfully removing a tumor, and being rewarded with prestige and a hefty
A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more com- paycheck, along the lines of the rat in the Skinner box. Instead, you are gently
plex sorts of behaviors. He responded with the idea of shaping, or “the shaped by your environment to enjoy certain things, do well in school, take
method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a certain bio class, see a doctor movie perhaps, have a good hospital visit,
a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, enter med school, be encouraged to drift towards brain surgery as a specialty,
you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so and so on. This could be something your parents were carefully doing to
on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show you, as if you were a rat in a cage. But much more likely, this is something
up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in that was more or less unintentional.
teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things. My favorite
is teaching pigeons to bowl! Aversive stimuli
I used shaping on one of my daughters once. She was about three An aversive stimulus is the opposite of a reinforcing stimulus,
or four years old, and was afraid to go down a particular slide. So I picked something we might find unpleasant or painful.
her up, put her at the end of the slide, asked if she was okay and if she could A behavior followed by an aversive stimulus results in a decreased probability of the behav-
jump down. She did, of course, and I showered her with praise. I then ior occurring in the future.
picked her up and put her a foot or so up the slide, asked her if she was okay, This both defines an aversive stimulus and describes the form of
and asked her to slide down and jump off. So far so good. I repeated this conditioning known as punishment. If you shock a rat for doing x, it’ll do
again and again, each time moving her a little up the slide, and backing off if a lot less of x. If you spank Johnny for throwing his toys he will throw his
she got nervous. Eventually, I could put her at the top of the slide and she toys less and less (maybe).
could slide all the way down and jump off. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t On the other hand, if you remove an already active aversive stimulus
climb up the ladder, so I was a very busy father for a while. after a rat or Johnny performs a certain behavior, you are doing negative
This is the same method that is used in the therapy called system- reinforcement. If you turn off the electricity when the rat stands on his hind
atic desensitization, invented by another behaviorist named Joseph legs, he’ll do a lot more standing. If you stop your perpetually nagging when
Wolpe. A person with a phobia—say of spiders—would be asked to come I finally take out the garbage, I’ll be more likely to take out the garbage (per-
up with ten scenarios involving spiders and panic of one degree or an- haps). You could say it “feels so good” when the aversive stimulus stops,
other. The first scenario would be a very mild one—say seeing a small spider that this serves as a reinforcer!
at a great distance outdoors. The second would be a little scarier, and so on,
until the tenth scenario would involve something totally terrifying—say a ta- Behavior followed by the removal of an aversive stimulus results in an increased
rantula climbing on your face while you’re driving your car at a hundred miles probability of that behavior occurring in the future.
an hour! The therapist will then teach you how to relax your muscles—which
is incompatible with anxiety. After you practice that for a few days, you come Notice how difficult it can be to distinguish some forms of negative
back and you and the therapist go through your scenarios, one step at a time, reinforcement from positive reinforcement. If I starve you, is the food I give
making sure you stay relaxed, backing off if necessary, until you can finally you when you do what I want a positive—i.e. a reinforcer? Or is it the re-
imagine the tarantula while remaining perfectly tension-free. moval of a negative—i.e. the aversive stimulus of hunger?
This is a technique quite near and dear to me because I did in fact Skinner (contrary to some stereotypes that have arisen about behav-
have a spider phobia, and did in fact get rid of it with systematic desensitiza- iorists) doesn’t “approve” of the use of aversive stimuli—not because of eth-
tion. It worked so well that, after one session (beyond the original scenario- ics, but because they don’t work well! Notice that I said earlier that Johnny
writing and muscle-training session) I could go out and pick up a daddy-long- will maybe stop throwing his toys, and that I perhaps will take out the gar-
legs. Cool. bage? That’s because whatever was reinforcing the bad behaviors hasn’t been
Beyond these fairly simple examples, shaping also accounts for the removed, as it would’ve been in the case of extinction. This hidden rein-
most complex of behaviors. You don’t, for example, become a brain surgeon forcer has just been “covered up” with a conflicting aversive stimulus. So,
sure, sometimes the child (or me) will behave—but it still feels good to throw
those toys. All Johnny needs to do is wait till you’re out of the room, or find
a way to blame it on his brother, or in some way escape the consequences, beings. He responded to the sea of criticism with another book (one of his
and he’s back to his old ways. In fact, because Johnny now only gets to enjoy best) called Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He asked, what do we mean when we
his reinforcer occasionally, he’s gone into a variable schedule of reinforce- say we want to be free? Usually we mean we don’t want to be in a society
ment, and he’ll be even more resistant to extinction than ever! that punishes us for doing what we want to do. Okay—aversive stimuli don’t
work well anyway, so out with them! Instead, we’ll only use reinforcers to
Behavior modification “control” society. And if we pick the right reinforcers, we will feel free, be-
Behavior modification—often referred to as b-mod—is the ther- cause we will be doing what we feel we want!
apy technique based on Skinner’s work. It is very straight-forward: extin- Likewise for dignity. When we say “she died with dignity,” what do
guish an undesirable behavior (by removing the reinforcer) and replace it with we mean? We mean she kept up her “good” behaviors without any apparent
a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on all sorts of psy- ulterior motives. In fact, she kept her dignity because her reinforcement his-
chological problems—addictions, neuroses, shyness, autism, even schizo- tory has led her to see behaving in that "dignified" manner as more reinforc-
phrenia—and works particularly well with children. There are examples of ing than making a scene.
back-ward psychotics who haven’t communicated with others for years who The bad do bad because the bad is rewarded. The good do good
have been conditioned to behave themselves in fairly normal ways, such as because the good is rewarded. There is no true freedom or dignity. Right
eating with a knife and fork, taking care of their own hygiene needs, dressing now, our reinforcers for good and bad behavior are chaotic and out of our
themselves, and so on. control—it’s a matter of having good or bad luck with your “choice” of par-
There is an offshoot of b-mod called the token economy. This is ents, teachers, peers, and other influences. Let’s instead take control, as a
used primarily in institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile halls, and society, and design our culture in such a way that good gets rewarded and
prisons. Certain rules are made explicit in the institution, and behaving your- bad gets extinguished! With the right behavioral technology, we can de-
self appropriately is rewarded with tokens—poker chips, tickets, funny sign culture.
money, recorded notes, etc. Certain poor behavior is also often followed by Both freedom and dignity are examples of what Skinner calls men-
a withdrawal of these tokens. The tokens can be traded in for desirable things talistic constructs—unobservable and so useless for a scientific psychol-
such as candy, cigarettes, games, movies, time out of the institution, and so ogy. Other examples include defense mechanisms, the unconscious, arche-
on. This has been found to be very effective in maintaining order in these types, fictional finalisms, coping strategies, self-actualization, consciousness,
often difficult institutions. even things like hunger and thirst. The most important example is what he
There is a drawback to token economy: when an “inmate” of one refers to as the homunculus—Latin for “the little man”—that supposedly
of these institutions leaves, they return to an environment that reinforces the resides inside us and is used to explain our behavior, ideas like soul, mind,
kinds of behaviors that got them into the institution in the first place. The ego, will, self, and, of course, personality.
psychotic’s family may be thoroughly dysfunctional. The juvenile offender Instead, Skinner recommends that psychologists concentrate on ob-
may go right back to “the ‘hood.” No one is giving them tokens for eating servables, that is, the environment and our behavior in it.
politely. The only reinforcements may be attention for “acting out,” or some
gang glory for robbing a Seven-Eleven. In other words, the environment Readings
doesn’t travel well! Whether you agree with him or not, Skinner is a good writer and fun
to read. I’ve already mentioned Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dig-
Walden II nity (1971). The best summary of his theory is the book About Behavior-
Skinner started his career as an English major, writing poems and ism (1974).
short stories. He has, of course, written a large number of papers and books
on behaviorism. But he will probably be most remembered by the general
run of readers for his book Walden II, wherein he describes a utopia-like com-
mune run on his operant principles.
People, especially the religious right, came down hard on his
book. They said that his ideas take away our freedom and dignity as human
CHAPTER 12 know what the ancient Greeks were referring to. But the melancholy person
Hans Eysenck (1916-1997) and was thought to have too much of it!
Other Temperament Theorists These four types are actually the corners of two dissecting
lines: temperature and humidity. Sanguine people are warm and
wet. Choleric people are warm and dry. Phlegmatic people are cool and
wet. Melancholy people are cool and dry. There were even theories suggest-
ing that different climates were related to different types, so that Italians
(warm and moist) were sanguine, Arabs (warm and dry) were choleric, Rus-
sians (cool and dry) were melancholy, and Englishmen (cool and wet) were
phlegmatic!
What might surprise you is that this theory, based on so little, has
actually had an influence on several modern theorists. Adler, for example,
This chapter is devoted to theories of temperament. Temperament related these types to his four personalities. But, more to the point, Ivan
is that aspect of our personalities that is genetically based, inborn, there from Pavlov, of classical conditioning fame, used the humors to describe his dogs’
birth or even before. That does not mean that a temperament theory says personalities.
we don't also have aspects of our personality that are learned! They just have One of the things Pavlov tried with his dogs was conflicting condi-
a focus on "nature," and leave "nurture" to other theorists! tioning—ringing a bell that signaled food at the same time as another bell
The issue of personality types, including temperament, is as old as that signaled the end of the meal. Some dogs took it well, and maintain their
psychology. In fact, it is a good deal older. The ancient Greeks, to take the cheerfulness. Some got angry and barked like crazy. Some just laid down
obvious example, had given it considerable thought, and came up with two and fell asleep. And some whimpered and whined and seemed to have a
dimensions of temperament, leading to four “types,” based on what kind of nervous breakdown. I don’t need to tell you which dog is which tempera-
fluids (called humors) they had too much or too little of. This theory became ment!
popular during the middle ages. Pavlov believed that he could account for these personality types
The sanguine type is cheerful and optimistic, pleasant to be with, with two dimensions. On the one hand there is the overall level of arousal
comfortable with his or her work. According to the Greeks, the sanguine (called excitation) that the dogs’ brains had available. On the other, there was
type has a particularly abundant supply of blood (hence the name sanguine, the ability the dogs’ brains had of changing their level of arousal—i.e. the
from sanguis, Latin for blood) and so also is characterized by a healthful look, level of inhibition that their brains had available. Lots of arousal, but good
including rosy cheeks. inhibition: sanguine. Lots of arousal, but poor inhibition: choleric. Not
The choleric type is characterized by a quick, hot temper, often an much arousal, plus good inhibition: phlegmatic. Not much arousal, plus
aggressive nature. The name refers to bile (a chemical that is excreted by the poor inhibition: melancholy. Arousal would be analogous to warmth, inhi-
gall bladder to aid in digestion). Physical features of the choleric person in- bition analogous to moisture! This became the inspiration for Hans Ey-
clude a yellowish complexion and tense muscles. senck’s theory.
Next, we have the phlegmatic temperament. These people are
characterized by their slowness, laziness, and dullness. The name obviously Biography
comes from the word phlegm, which is the mucus we bring up from our Hans Eysenck was born in Germany on March 4, 1916. His parents
lungs when we have a cold or lung infection. Physically, these people are were actors who divorced when he was only two, and so Hans was raised by
thought to be kind of cold, and shaking hands with one is like shaking hands his grandmother. He left there when he was 18 years old, when the Nazis
with a fish. came to power. As an active Jewish sympathizer, his life was in danger.
Finally, there’s the melancholy temperament. These people tend to In England, he continued his education, and received his Ph.D. in
be sad, even depressed, and take a pessimistic view of the world. The name Psychology from the University of London in 1940. During World War II,
has, of course, been adopted as a synonym for sadness, but comes from the he served as a psychologist at an emergency hospital, where he did research
Greek words for black bile. Now, since there is no such thing, we don’t quite on the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses. The results led him to a life-long
antagonism to main-stream clinical psychology.
After the war, he taught at the University of London, as well as serv- Eysenck was convinced that, since everyone in his data-pool fit
ing as the director of the psychology department of the Institute of Psychia- somewhere on this dimension of normality-to-neuroticism, this was a true
try, associated with Bethlehem Royal Hospital. He has written 75 books and temperament, i.e. that this was a genetically-based, physiologically-supported
some 700 articles, making him one of the most prolific writers in psychol- dimension of personality. He therefore went to the physiological research to
ogy. Eysenck retired in 1983 and continued to write until his death on Sep- find possible explanations.
tember 4, 1997. The most obvious place to look was at the sympathetic nervous
system. This is a part of the autonomic nervous system that functions sep-
Theory3 arately from the central nervous system and controls much of our emotional
Eysenck’s theory is based primarily on physiology and genetics. Alt- responsiveness to emergency situations. For example, when signals from the
hough he is a behaviorist who considers learned habits of great importance, brain tell it to do so, the sympathetic nervous systems instructs the liver to
he considers personality differences as growing out of our genetic inher- release sugar for energy, causes the digestive system to slow down, opens up
itance. He is, therefore, primarily interested in what is usually called temper- the pupils, raises the hairs on your body (goosebumps), and tells the adrenal
ament. glands to release more adrenalin (epinephrine). The adrenalin in turn alters
Eysenck is also primarily a research psychologist. His methods in- many of the body’s functions and prepares the muscles for action. The tradi-
volve a statistical technique called factor analysis. This technique extracts a tional way of describing the function of the sympathetic nervous system is to
number of “dimensions” from large masses of data. For example, if you give say that it prepares us for “fight or flight.”
long lists of adjectives to a large number of people for them to rate them- Eysenck hypothesized that some people have a more responsive
selves on, you have prime raw material for factor analysis. sympathetic nervous system than others. Some people remain very calm dur-
Imagine, for example, a test that included words like “shy,” “intro- ing emergencies; some people feel considerable fear or other emotions; and
verted,” “outgoing,” “wild,” and so on. Obviously, shy people are likely to some are terrified by even very minor incidents. He suggested that this latter
rate themselves high on the first two words, and low on the second two. group had a problem of sympathetic hyperactivity, which made them prime
Outgoing people are likely to do the reverse. Factor analysis extracts dimen- candidates for the various neurotic disorders.
sions—factors—such as shy-outgoing from the mass of information. The Perhaps the most “archetypal” neurotic symptom is the panic at-
researcher then examines the data and gives the factor a name such as “in- tack. Eysenck explained panic attacks as something like the positive feedback
troversion-extraversion.” There are other techniques that will find the “best you get when you place a microphone too close to a speaker. The small
fit” of the data to various possible dimension, and others still that will find sounds entering the mike get amplified and come out of the speaker, and go
“higher level” dimensions—factors that organize the factors, like big head- into the mike, get amplified again, and come out of the speaker again, and so
ings organize little headings. on, round and round, until you get the famous squeal that we all loved to
Eysenck's original research found two main dimensions of tempera- produce when we were kids. (Lead guitarists like to do this too to make some
ment: neuroticism and extraversion-introversion. Let’s look at each one... of their long, wailing sounds.)
Well, the panic attack follows the same pattern. You are mildly
Neuroticism frightened by something—crossing a bridge, for example. This gets your
Neuroticism is the name Eysenck gave to a dimension that ranges sympathetic nervous system going. That makes you more nervous, and so
from normal, fairly calm and collected people to one’s that tend to be quite more susceptible to stimulation, which gets your system even more in an up-
“nervous.” His research showed that these nervous people tended to suffer roar, which makes you more nervous and more susceptible.... You could say
more frequently from a variety of “nervous disorders” we call neuroses, that the neuroticistic person is responding more to his or her own panic than
hence the name of the dimension. But understand that he was not saying that to the original object of fear! As someone who has had panic attacks, I can
people who score high on the neuroticism scale are necessarily neurotics— vouch for Eysenck’s description—although his explanation remains only a
only that they are more susceptible to neurotic problems. hypothesis.
Extraversion-introversion
3
For a mini personality assessment, visit http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/ey- His second dimension is extraversion-introversion. By this he means
senckminitest.html something very similar to what Jung meant by the same terms, and something
very similar to our common-sense understanding of them: shy, quiet people

“versus” out-going, even loud people. This dimension, too, is found in eve- Neuroticism and extraversion-introversion
ryone, but the physiological explanation is a bit more complex. Another thing Eysenck looked into was the interaction of the two
Eysenck hypothesized that extraversion-introversion is a matter of the bal- dimensions and what that might mean in regard to various psychological
ance of “inhibition” and “excitation” in the brain itself. These are ideas that problems. He found, for example, that people with phobias and obsessive-
Pavlov came up with to explain some of the differences he found in the re- compulsive disorder tended to be quite introverted, whereas people with con-
actions of his various dogs to stress. Excitation is the brain waking itself up, version disorders (e.g. hysterical paralysis) or dissociative disorders (e.g. am-
getting into an alert, learning state. Inhibition is the brain calming itself nesia) tended to be more extraverted.
down, either in the usual sense of relaxing and going to sleep, or in the sense Here’s his explanation: highly neuroticistic people over-respond to
of protecting itself in the case of overwhelming stimulation. fearful stimuli; if they are introverts, they will learn to avoid the situations
Someone who is extraverted, he hypothesized, has good, strong in- that cause panic very quickly and very thoroughly, even to the point of be-
hibition. When confronted by traumatic stimulation—such as a car crash— coming panicky at small symbols of those situations—they will develop pho-
the extravert’s brain inhibits itself, which means that it becomes “numb,” you bias. Other introverts will learn (quickly and thoroughly) particular behaviors
might say, to the trauma, and therefore will remember very little of what hap- that hold off their panic—such as checking things many times over or wash-
pened. After the car crash, the extravert might feel as if he had “blanked out” ing their hands again and again.
during the event, and may ask others to fill them in on what happened. Be- Highly neuroticistic extraverts, on the other hand, are good at ignor-
cause they don’t feel the full mental impact of the crash, they may be ready ing and forgetting the things that overwhelm them. They engage in the clas-
to go back to driving the very next day. sic defense mechanisms, such as denial and repression. They can conven-
The introvert, on the other hand, has poor or weak inhibition. When iently forget a painful weekend, for example, or even “forget” their ability to
trauma, such as the car crash, hits them, their brains don’t protect them fast feel and use their legs.
enough, don’t in any way shut down. Instead, they are highly alert and learn
well, and so remember everything that happened. They might even report Psychoticism
that they saw the whole crash “in slow motion!” They are very unlikely to Eysenck came to recognize that, although he was using large popu-
want to drive anytime soon after the crash, and may even stop driving alto- lations for his research, there were some populations he was not tapping. He
gether. began to take his studies into the mental institutions of England. When these
Now, how does this lead to shyness or a love of parties? Well, im- masses of data were factor analyzed, a third significant factor began to
agine the extravert and the introvert both getting drunk, taking off their emerge, which he labeled psychoticism.
clothes, and dancing buck naked on a restaurant table. The next morning, the Like neuroticism, high psychoticism does not mean you are psy-
extravert will ask you what happened (and where are his clothes). When you chotic or doomed to become so—only that you exhibit some qualities com-
tell him, he’ll laugh and start making arrangements to have another party. The monly found among psychotics, and that you may be more susceptible, given
introvert, on the other hand, will remember every mortifying moment of his certain environments, to becoming psychotic.
humiliation, and may never come out of his room again. (I’m very intro- As you might imagine, the kinds of qualities found in high psychot-
verted, and again I can vouch to a lot of this experientially! Perhaps some of icistic people include a certain recklessness, a disregard for common sense or
you extraverts can tell me if he describes your experiences well, too—assum- conventions, and a degree of inappropriate emotional expression. It is the
ing, of course, that you can remember you experiences!) dimension that separates those people who end up institutions from the rest
One of the things that Eysenck discovered was that violent criminals of humanity!
tend to be non-neuroticistic extraverts. This makes common sense, if you
think about it. It is hard to imagine somebody who is painfully shy and who Discussion
remembers their experiences and learns from them holding up a Seven- Hans Eysenck was an iconoclast—someone who enjoyed attacking
Eleven! It is even harder to imagine someone given to panic attacks doing so. established opinion. He was an early and vigorous critic of the effectiveness
But please understand that there are many kinds of crime besides the violent of psychotherapy, especially the Freudian variety. He also criticized the sci-
kind that introverts and neurotics might engage in! entific nature of much of the academic varieties of psychology. As a hard-
core behaviorist, he felt that only the scientific method (as he understood it)
could give us an accurate understanding of human beings. As a statistician, (a too a lesser degree the muscular athletic type) was more prone to schizo-
he felt that mathematical methods were essential. As a physiologically-ori- phrenia. His research, although involving thousands of institutionalized pa-
ented psychologist, he felt that physiological explanations were the only valid tients, was suspect because he failed to control for age and the schizophrenics
ones. were considerably younger than the bipolar patients, and so more likely to be
Of course, we can argue with him on all these points: phenomenol- thinner.
ogy and other qualitative methods are also considered scientific by Sheldon developed a precise measurement system that summarized
many. Some things are not so easily reduced to numbers, and factor analysis body shapes with three numbers. These numbers referred to how closely
in particular is a technique not all statisticians approve of. And it is certainly you matched three “types:”
debatable that all things must have a physiological explanation—even B. F.
Skinner, the arch-behaviorist, thought more in terms of conditioning—a psy- 1. Ectomorphs: Slender, often tall, people, with long arms and legs and fine
chological process—than in terms of physiology. features.
And yet, his descriptions of various types of people, and of how they
can be understood physically, ring particularly true. And most parents, teach- 2. Mesomorphs: Stockier people, with broad shoulders and good muscu-
ers, and child psychologists will more than support the idea that kids have lature.
built-in differences in their personalities that begin at birth (and even before),
and which no amount of re-education will touch. Although I personally am 3. Endomorphs: Chubby people, tending to “pear-shaped.”
not a behaviorist, dislike statistics, and am more culturally oriented that bio-
logically, I agree with the basics of Eysenck’s theory. You, of course, have Noting that these three “types” have some pretty strong stereotypi-
to make up your own mind! cal personalities associated with them, he decided to test the idea. He came
up with another three numbers, this time referring how closely you match
References three personality “types:”
It's hard to pick out just a few of Eysenck's books—there are so
many! "The" text on his theory is probably The Biological Basis of Personal- 1. Cerebrotonics: Nervous types, relatively shy, often intellectual.
ity (1967), but it is a bit hard. The more "pop" book is Psychology is about Peo-
ple (1972). If you are interested in psychoticism, try Psychoticism as a Dimension 2. Somatotonics: Active types, physically fit and energetic.
of Personality (1976). And if you want to understand his view of criminality,
see Crime and Personality (1964). His unusual, but interesting, theory about per- 3. Viscerotonics: Sociable types, lovers of food and physical comforts.
sonality and cancer and heart disease—he thinks personality is more signifi-
cant than smoking, for example!—is summarized in Psychology Today (Decem- He theorized that the connection between the three physical types
ber, 1989). and the three personality types was embryonic development. In the early
stages of our prenatal development, we are composed of three layers or
OTHER TEMPERAMENT THEORIES “skins:” the ectoderm or outer layer, which develops into skin and nervous
There have been literally dozens of other attempts at discovering the system; the mesoderm or middle layer, which develops into muscle; and the
basic human temperaments. Here are a few of the better known theories. endoderm or inner layer, which develops into the viscera.
Some embryos show stronger development in one layer or an-
Your body and your personality other. He suggested that those who show strong ectoderm development
In the 1950’s, William Sheldon (b. 1899) became interested in the would become ectomorphs, with more skin surface and stronger neural de-
variety of human bodies. He built upon earlier work done by Ernst velopment (including the brain—hence cerebrotonic!). Those with strong
Kretschmer in the 1930's. Kretschmer believed that there was a relationship mesoderm development would become mesomorphs, with lots of muscle (or
between three different physical types and certain psychological disor- body—hence somatotonic!). And those with strong endomorph develop-
ders. Specifically, he believed that the short, round pyknic type was more ment would become endomorphs, with well-developed viscera and a strong
prone to cyclothymic or bipolar disorders, and that the tall thin asthenic type attraction to food (hence viscerotonic!) And his measurements backed him
up.
Now at several points above, I used “types” with quotes. This is an can pick out things that are more likely genetic from things that are more
important point. He sees these two sets of three numbers as dimensions or likely due to the learning babies do in their first few months.
traits, not as types (“pigeon-holes”) at all. In other words, we are all more- Buss and Plomin asked mothers of twin babies to fill out question-
or-less ecto-, meso-, and endomorphs, as well as more-or-less cerebro-, so- naires about their babies’ behavior and personality. Some babies were iden-
mato- and viscerotonic! tical and others fraternal. Using statistical techniques similar to factor analy-
sis, they separated out which descriptions were more likely genetic from
Thirty-five Factors which were more likely learned. They found four dimensions of tempera-
Raymond Cattell (b. 1905) is another prolific theorist-researcher ment:
like Eysenck who has made extensive use of the factor-analysis method, alt-
hough a slightly different version. In his early research, he isolated 16 per- 1. Emotionality-impassiveness: How emotional and excitable were the
sonality factors, which he composed into a test called, of course, the 16PF! babies? Some were given to emotional outbursts of distress, fear, and an-
Later research added seven more factors to the list. Even later research ger—others were not. This was their strongest temperament dimension.
added twelve “pathological” factors found using items from the MMPI (Min-
nesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory). 2. Sociability-detachment: How much did the babies enjoy, or avoid,
A “second order” factor analysis on the total of 35 factors revealed contact and interaction with people. Some babies are “people,” others are
eight “deeper” factors, as follows, in order of strength: “loners.”
QI. Exvia (Extraversion) 3. Activity-lethargy: How vigorous, how active, how energetic were the
babies? Just like adults, some babies are always on the move, fidgety, busy—
QII. Anxiety (Neuroticism) and some are not.
QIII. Corteria ("cortical alertness," practical and realistic) 4. Impulsivity-deliberateness: How quickly did the babies “change
gears,” move from one interest to another? Some people quickly act upon
QIV. Independence (strong loner types) their urges, others are more careful and deliberate.
QV. Discreetness (socially shrewd types)
The last one is the weakest of the four, and in the original research
showed up only in boys. That doesn’t mean girls can’t be impulsive or delib-
QVI. Subjectivity (distant and out-of-it)
erate—only that they seemed to learn their style, while boys seem to come
one way or the other straight from the womb. But their later research found
QVII. Intelligence (IQ!)
the dimension in girls as well, just not quite so strongly. It is interesting that
impulse problem such as hyperactivity and attention deficit are more com-
QVIII. Good Upbringing (stable, docile, the salt of the earth)
mon among boys than girls, as if to show that, while girls can be taught to sit
still and pay attention, some boys cannot.
Baby Twins
Arnold Buss (b. 1924) and Robert Plomin (b. 1948), both working
The Magic Number4
at the University of Colorado at the time, took a different approach. If some
In the last couple of decades, an increasing number of theorists and
aspect of our behavior or personality is supposed to have a genetic, inborn
researchers have come to the conclusion that five is the “magic number” for
basis, we should find it more clearly in infants than in adults.
temperament dimensions. The first version, called The Big Five, was intro-
So Buss and Plomin decided to study infants. Plus, since identical
duced in 1963 by Warren Norman. It was a fresh reworking of an Air Force
twins have the same genetic inheritance, we should see them sharing any ge-
netically based aspects of personality. If we compare identical twins with
fraternal twins (who are simply brothers or sisters, genetically speaking), we
4
Take a Big Five assessment at http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bigfiveminitest.html
technical report by E. C. Tuppes and R. E. Christal, who in turn had done He reasons that, while we all vary from situation to situation and
a re-evaluation of Cattell’s original 16 Personality Factors research. time to time on these three emotional dimensions, some of us are more likely
But it wasn’t until R. R. McCrae and P. T. Costa, Jr., presented to respond one way or another—i.e. we have a temperamental disposition to
their version, called The Five Factor Theory, in 1990, that the idea really certain emotional responses. He uses the same PAD initials for the temper-
took hold of the individual differences research community. When they in- aments: Trait Pleasure-Displeasure, Trait Arousability, and Trait
troduced the NEO Personality Inventory, many people felt, and continue to Dominance-Submisiveness.
feel, that we’d finally hit the mother-load! “P” means that, overall, you experience more pleasure than displeas-
ure. It relates positively to extraversion, affiliation, nurturance, empathy, and
Here are the five factors, and some defining adjectives: achievement, and negatively to neuroticism, hostility, and depression.
“A” means that you respond strongly to unusual, complex, or chang-
1. Extraversion: adventurous, assertive, frank, sociable and talkative ing situations. It relates to emotionality, neuroticism, sensitivity, introver-
vs. Introversion: quiet, reserved, shy and unsociable sion, schizophrenia, heart disease, eating disorders, and lots more.
2. Agreeableness: altruistic, gentle, kind, sympathetic and warm “D” means that you feel in control over your life. It relates positively
3. Conscientiousness: competent, dutiful, orderly, responsible and thor- to extraversion, assertiveness, competitiveness, affiliation, social skills, and
ough nurturance, and negatively to neuroticism, tension, anxiety, introversion, con-
4. Emotional Stability (Norman): calm, relaxed and stable formity, and depression.
vs. Neuroticism (Costa and McCrae): angry, anxious and depressed
5. Culture (Norman) or Openness to Experience (Costa and McCrae): Parallels
cultured, esthetic, imaginative, intellectual and open Although you may feel a bit overwhelmed with all the various theo-
ries, personality theorists in fact are more encouraged than discouraged. It is
fascinating to us that all these different theorists, often coming from very
different directions, still manage to come up with very parallel sets of tem-
perament dimensions!
First, every theorist puts Extraversion-Introversion and Neuroti-
cism/ Emotional Stability/ Anxiety into their lists. Few personologists have
any doubts about these!
Eysenck adds Psychoticism, which some of his followers are re-eval-
uating as an aggressive, impulsive, sensation-seeking factor. That to some
extent matches up with Buss and Plomin’s Impulsivity, and may be the op-
posite of Big Five’s Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.
Buss and Plomin’s theory fits best with Sheldon’s: Cerebrotonics
are Emotional (and not Sociable), Somatotonics are Active (and not Emo-
tional), and Viscerotonics are Sociable (and not Active). In other words, the
factors of these two models are “rotated” slightly from each other!
FIGURE 12. 1 The Big Five has shows genetic component via twin studies Cattell’s factors, other than Exvia and Anxiety, are a little harder to
place. Discreteness looks a little like Agreeableness, and Corteria a bit like
the opposite of Agreeableness; Good Upbringing looks like Conscientious-
The PAD Model ness; Independence, perhaps with Intelligence, looks a little bit like Cul-
Albert Mehrabian has a three-dimensional temperament model ture. Subjectivity, Corteria, and Independence together might be similar to
that has been well received. It is based on his three-dimensional model of Eysenck’s Psychoticism.
emotions. He theorizes that you can describe just about any emotion with Mehrabian’s PAD factors are a little tougher to line up with the oth-
these three dimensions: pleasure-displeasure (P), arousal-nona- ers, which makes sense considering the different theoretical roots. But we
rousal (A), and dominance-submissiveness (D). can see that Arousability is a lot like Neuroticism / Emotionality and that
Dominance is a lot like Extraversion / Sociability. Pleasure seems related to CHAPTER 13

Extraversion plus non-Neuroticism. Albert Bandura (1925)
We can also look at Jung and the Myers-Briggs test: Extraversion
and Introversion are obvious. Feeling (vs. Thinking) sounds a bit like Agree-
ableness. Judging (vs. Perceiving) sounds like Conscientiousness. And Intu-
iting (vs. Sensing) sounds a little like Openness/Culture. It helps to recall
that Jung saw these types and functions as essentially genetic—i.e. tempera-
ments!
Bibliography
I can only give you places to start investigating these various theo-
ries. For Sheldon, see The Varieties of Temperament (1942) and Kretschmer's
earlier Physique and Character (1925). For Cattell, see The Handbook for the 16 Albert Bandura was born December 4, 1925, in the small town of
Personality Factors Questionnaire (1970, with Ebert and Tatsuoka). Buss and Mundare in northern Alberta, Canada. He was educated in a small elemen-
Plomin's Work is best summarized in Buss's text book, Personality: Tempera- tary school and high school in one, with minimal resources, yet a remarkable
ment, Social Behavior, and the Self. For Norman, go to Norman’s "Toward an success rate. After high school, he worked for one summer filling holes on
adequate taxonomy of personality attributes” in The Journal of Abnormal and the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.
Social Psychology (1966, pp. 574-583). For McCrae and Costa, see Personality in He received his bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University
Adulthood (1990) as well as an entire issue of The Journal of Personality devoted of British Columbia in 1949. He went on to the University of Iowa, where
to the research (#60, 1992). he received his Ph.D. in 1952. It was there that he came under the influence
of the behaviorist tradition and learning theory.
While at Iowa, he met Virginia Varns, an instructor in the nursing
school. They married and later had two daughters. After graduating, he took
a postdoctoral position at the Wichita Guidance Center in Wichita, Kansas.
In 1953, he started teaching at Stanford University. While there, he
collaborated with his first graduate student, Richard Walters, resulting in their
first book, Adolescent Aggression, in 1959.
Bandura was president of the APA in 1973, and received the APA’s Award
for Distinguished Scientific Contributions in 1980. He continues to work at
Stanford to this day.
Theory
Behaviorism, with its emphasis on experimental methods, focuses
on variables we can observe, measure, and manipulate, and avoids whatever
is subjective, internal, and unavailable—i.e. mental. In the experimental
method, the standard procedure is to manipulate one variable, and then
measure its effects on another. All this boils down to a theory of personality
that says that one’s environment causes one’s behavior.
Bandura found this a bit too simplistic for the phenomena he was
observing—aggression in adolescents—and so decided to add a little some-
thing to the formula: He suggested that environment causes behavior, true;
but behavior causes environment as well. He labeled this concept reciprocal
determinism, where the world and a person’s behavior cause each other.
Later, he went a step further. He began to look at personality as an clown. When the children went into the other room, what should they find
interaction among three “things:” the environment, behavior, and the per- there but—the live clown! They proceeded to punch him, kick him, and hit
son’s psychological processes. These psychological processes consist of our him with little hammers, and so on.
ability to entertain images in our minds, and language. At the point where he All these variations allowed Bandura to establish that there were cer-
introduces imagery, in particular, he ceases to be a strict behaviorist, and be- tain steps involved in the modeling process:
gins to join the ranks of the cognitivists. In fact, he is often considered a
“father” of the cognitivist movement! 1. Attention. If you are going to learn anything, you have to be paying at-
Adding imagery and language to the mix allows Bandura to theorize tention. Likewise, anything that puts a damper on attention is going to de-
much more effectively than someone like, say, B. F. Skinner, about two things crease learning, including observational learning. If, for example, you are
that many people would consider the “strong suit” of the human species: ob- sleepy, groggy, drugged, sick, nervous, or “hyper,” you will learn less
servational learning (modeling) and self-regulation. well. Likewise, if you are being distracted by competing stimuli.
Observational learning, or modeling
Of the hundreds of studies Bandura was responsible for, one group Some of the things that influence attention involve characteristics of the
stands out above the others—the bobo doll studies. He made of film of model. If the model is colorful and dramatic, for example, we pay more at-
one of his students, a young woman, essentially beating up a bobo doll. In tention. If the model is attractive, or prestigious, or appears to be particularly
case you don’t know, a bobo doll is an inflatable, egg-shape balloon creature competent, you will pay more attention. And if the model seems more like
with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up when you knock him yourself, you pay more attention. These kinds of variables directed Bandura
down. Nowadays, it might have Darth Vader painted on it, but back then it towards an examination of television and its effects on kids!
was simply “Bobo” the clown.
The woman punched the clown, shouting “sockeroo!” She kicked 2. Retention. Second, you must be able to retain—remember—what you
it, sat on it, hit with a little hammer, and so on, shouting various aggressive have paid attention to. This is where imagery and language come in: we store
phrases. Bandura showed his film to groups of kindergartners who, as you what we have seen the model doing in the form of mental images or verbal
might predict, liked it a lot. They then were let out to play. In the play room, descriptions. When so stored, you can later “bring up” the image or descrip-
of course, were several observers with pens and clipboards in hand, a brand tion, so that you can reproduce it with your own behavior.
new bobo doll, and a few little hammers.
And you might predict as well what the observers recorded. A lot 3. Reproduction. At this point, you’re just sitting there daydreaming. You
of little kids beating the daylights out of the bobo doll. They punched it and have to translate the images or descriptions into actual behavior. So you have
shouted “sockeroo,” kicked it, sat on it, hit it with the little hammers, and so to have the ability to reproduce the behavior in the first place. I can watch
on. In other words, they imitated the young lady in the film, and quite pre- Olympic ice skaters all day long, yet not be able to reproduce their jumps,
cisely at that. because I can’t ice skate at all! On the other hand, if I could skate, my per-
This might seem like a real nothing of an experiment at first, but formance would in fact improve if I watch skaters who are better than I am.
consider: these children changed their behavior without first being rewarded
for approximations to that behavior! And while that may not seem extraor- Another important tidbit about reproduction is that our ability to imitate im-
dinary to the average parent, teacher, or casual observer of children, it didn’t proves with practice at the behaviors involved. And one more tidbit: Our
fit so well with standard behavioristic learning theory. He called the phe- abilities improve even when we just imagine ourselves performing! Many
nomenon observational learning or modeling, and his theory is usually called athletes, for example, imagine their performance in their mind’s eye prior to
social learning theory. actually performing.
Bandura did a large number of variations on the study. The model
was rewarded or punished in a variety of ways, the kids were rewarded for
4. Motivation. And yet, with all this, you’re still not going to do anything
their imitations, and the model was changed to be less attractive or less pres-
unless you are motivated to imitate, i.e. until you have some reason for doing
tigious, and so on. Responding to criticism that bobo dolls were supposed
it. Bandura mentions a number of motives:
to be hit, he even did a film of the young woman beating up a live
a. past reinforcement, ala traditional behaviorism. (treating yourself to a sundae or working late) to the more covert (feelings of
pride or shame).
b. promised reinforcements (incentives) that we can imagine.
A very important concept in psychology that can be understood well
c. vicarious reinforcement—seeing and recalling the model being with self-regulation is self-concept (better known as self-esteem). If, over
reinforced. the years, you find yourself meeting your standards and life loaded with self-
praise and self-reward, you will have a pleasant self-concept (high self-es-
Notice that these are, traditionally, considered to be the things that teem). If, on the other hand, you find yourself forever failing to meet your
“cause” learning. Bandura is saying that they don’t so much cause learning standards and punishing yourself, you will have a poor self-concept (low self-
as cause us to demonstrate what we have learned. That is, he sees them as esteem).
motives.
Recall that behaviorists generally view reinforcement as effective,
Of course, the negative motivations are there as well, giving you rea- and punishment as fraught with problems. The same goes for self-punish-
sons not to imitate someone: ment. Bandura sees three likely results of excessive self-punishment:
d. past punishment. a. compensation—a superiority complex, for example, and delusions

of grandeur.
e. promised punishment (threats).
b. inactivity—apathy, boredom, depression.
d. vicarious punishment.
c. escape—drugs and alcohol, television fantasies, or even the ulti-
Like most traditional behaviorists, Bandura says that punishment in mate escape, suicide.
whatever form does not work as well as reinforcement and, in fact, has a
tendency to “backfire” on us. These have some resemblance to the unhealthy personalities Adler
and Horney talk about: an aggressive type, a compliant type, and an avoidant
Self-regulation type respectively. Bandura’s recommendations to those who suffer from
poor self-concepts come straight from the three steps of self-regulation:
Self-regulation—controlling our own behavior—is the other “work-
horse” of human personality. Here Bandura suggests three steps: 1. Regarding self-observation—know thyself! Make sure you have an ac-
curate picture of your behavior.
1. Self-observation. We look at ourselves, our behavior, and keep tabs on
it. 2. Regarding standards—make sure your standards aren’t set too
high. Don’t set yourself up for failure! Standards that are too low, on the
other hand, are meaningless.
2. Judgment. We compare what we see with a standard. For example, we
can compare our performance with traditional standards, such as “rules of
etiquette.” Or we can create arbitrary ones, like “I’ll read a book a week.” Or 3. Regarding self-response—use self-rewards, not self-punishments. Cel-
ebrate your victories, don’t dwell on your failures.
we can compete with others, or with ourselves.
3. Self-response. If you did well in comparison with your standard, you Therapy
give yourself rewarding self-responses. If you did poorly, you give yourself Self-control therapy
punishing self-responses. These self-responses can range from the obvious The ideas behind self-regulation have been incorporated into a ther-
apy technique called self-control therapy. It has been quite successful with
relatively simple problems of habit, such as smoking, overeating, and study towards the snake. He may stop in the middle, retreat in panic, and start all
habits. over. Ultimately, he gets to the point where he opens the cage, removes the
snake, sits down on the chair, and drapes it over his neck, all the while giving
1. Behavioral charts. Self-observation requires that you keep close tabs on himself calming instructions.
your behavior, both before you begin changes and after. This can involve After the client has seen all this (no doubt with his mouth hanging
something as simple as counting how many cigarettes you smoke in a day to open the whole time), he is invited to try it himself. Mind you, he knows that
complex behavioral diaries. With the diary approach, you keep track of the the other person is an actor—there is no deception involved here, only mod-
details, the when and where of your habit. This lets you get a grip on what eling! And yet, many clients—lifelong phobics—can go through the entire
kinds of cues are associated with the habit: do you smoke more after meals, routine first time around, even after only one viewing of the actor! This is a
with coffee, with certain friends, in certain locations...? powerful therapy.
One drawback to the therapy is that it isn’t easy to get the rooms,
2. Environmental planning. Taking your lead from your behavioral charts the snakes, the actors, etc., together. So Bandura and his students have tested
and diaries, you can begin to alter your environment. For example, you can versions of the therapy using recordings of actors and even just imagining
remove or avoid some of those cues that lead to your bad behaviors: put the process under the therapist’s direction. These methods work nearly as
away the ashtrays, drink tea instead of coffee, divorce that smoking part- well.
ner.... You can find the time and place best suited for the good alternative
behaviors. When and where do you find you study best? And so on. Discussion
Albert Bandura has had an enormous impact on personality theory
and therapy. His straightforward, behaviorist-like style makes good sense to
3. Self-contracts. Finally, you arrange to reward yourself when you adhere most people. His action-oriented, problem-solving approach likewise ap-
to your plan, and possibly punish yourself when you do not. These contracts peals to those who want to get things done, rather than philosophize about
should be written down and witnessed (by your therapist, for example), and ids, archetypes, actualization, freedom, and all the many other mentalistic
the details should be spelled out very explicitly. “I will go out to dinner on constructs personologists tend to dwell on.
Saturday night if I smoke fewer cigarettes this week than last week. I will do Among academic psychologists, research is crucial, and behaviorism
paperwork instead if I do not.” has been the preferred approach. Since the late 1960’s, behaviorism has
given way to the “cognitive revolution,” of which Bandura is considered a
You may involve other people and have them control your rewards part. Cognitive psychology retains the experimentally-oriented flavor of be-
and punishments, if you aren’t strict enough with yourself. Beware, how- haviorism, without artificially restraining the researcher to external behaviors,
ever. This can be murder on your relationships, as you bite their heads off when the mental life of clients and subjects is so obviously important.
for trying to do what you told them to do! This is a powerful movement, and the contributors include some of
the most important people in psychology today: Julian Rotter, Walter
Modeling therapy Mischel, Michael Mahoney, and David Meichenbaum spring to my
The therapy Bandura is most famous for, however, is modeling ther- mind. Also involved are such theorists of therapy as Aaron Beck (cognitive
apy. The theory is that, if you can get someone with a psychological disorder therapy) and Albert Ellis (rational emotive therapy). The followers of George
to observe someone dealing with the same issues in a more productive fash- Kelly also find themselves in this camp. And the many people working on
ion, the first person will learn by modeling the second. personality trait research—such as Buss and Plomin (temperament theory)
Bandura’s original research on this involved herpephobics—peo- and McCrae and Costa (five factor theory)—are essentially “cognitive behav-
ple with a neurotic fear of snakes. The client would be lead to a window iorists” like Bandura.
looking in on a lab room. In that room is nothing but a chair, a table, a cage My gut feeling is that the field of competitors in personality theory
on the table with a locked latch, and a snake clearly visible in the cage. The will eventually boil down to the cognitivists on the one side and existentialists
client then watches another person—an actor—go through a slow and pain- on the other. Stay tuned!
ful approach to the snake. He acts terrified at first, but shakes himself out of
it, tells himself to relax and breathe normally and take one step at a time
Readings CHAPTER 14
The place to go for Bandura’s theory is Social Foundations of Thought Gordon Allport (1897-1967)
and Action (1986). If it’s a little too dense for you, you might want to try his
earlier Social Learning Theory (1977), or even Social Learning and Personality De-
velopment (1963), which he wrote with Walters. If aggression is what you’re
interested in, try Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis (1973).
Gordon Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana, in 1897, the

youngest of four brothers. A shy and studious boy, he was teased quite a bit
and lived a fairly isolated childhood. His father was a country doctor, which
meant that Gordon grew up with his father’s patients and nurses and all the
paraphernalia of a miniature hospital. Everyone worked hard. His early life
was otherwise fairly pleasant and uneventful.
One of Allport’s stories is always mentioned in his biographies.
When he was 22, he traveled to Vienna. He had arranged to meet with the
great Sigmund Freud! When he arrived in Freud’s office, Freud simply sat
and waited for Gordon to begin. After a little bit, Gordon could no longer
stand the silence, and he blurted out an observation he had made on his way
to meet Freud. He mentioned that he had seen a little boy on the bus who
was very upset at having to sit where a dirty old man had sat previously. Gor-
don thought this was likely something he had learned from his mother, a very
neat and apparently rather domineering type. Freud, instead of taking it as a
simple observation, took it to be an expression of some deep, unconscious
process in Gordon’s mind, and said “And was that little boy you?”
This experience made him realize that depth psychology sometimes
digs too deeply, in the same way that he had earlier realized that behaviorism
often doesn’t dig deeply enough!
Allport received his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1922 from Harvard, fol-
lowing in the footsteps of his brother Floyd, who became an important social
psychologist. His career was spent developing his theory, examining such
social issues as prejudice, and developing personality tests. He died in Cam-
bridge Massachusetts in 1967.
Theory
One thing that motivates human beings is the tendency to satisfy 4. Self-extension
biological survival needs, which Allport referred to as opportunistic func-
tioning. He noted that opportunistic functioning can be characterized as 5. Self-image
reactive, past-oriented, and, of course, biological.
But Allport felt that opportunistic functioning was relatively unim- 6. Rational coping
portant for understanding most of human behavior. Most human behavior,
he believed, is motivated by something very different—functioning in a man- 7. Propriate striving
ner expressive of the self—which he called propriate functioning. Most of
what we do in life is a matter of being who we are! Propriate functioning can Sense of body develops in the first two years of life. We have one,
be characterized as proactive, future-oriented, and psychological. we feel its closeness, its warmth. It has boundaries that pain and injury, touch
Propriate comes from the word proprium, which is Allport’s name and movement, make us aware of. Allport had a favorite demonstration of
for that essential concept, the self. He had reviewed hundreds of definitions this aspect of self: imagine spitting saliva into a cup—and then drinking it
for that concept and came to feel that, in order to more scientific, it would down! What’s the problem? It’s the same stuff you swallow all day
be necessary to dispense with the common word self and substitute some- long! But, of course, it has gone out from your bodily self and become,
thing else. For better or worse, the word proprium never caught on. thereby, foreign to you.
To get an intuitive feel for what propriate functioning means, think Self-identity also develops in the first two years. There comes a
of the last time you wanted to do something or become something because point where we recognize ourselves as continuing, as having a past, present,
you really felt that doing or becoming that something would be expressive of and future. We see ourselves as individual entities, separate and different
the things about yourself that you believe to be most important. Remember from others. We even have a name! Will you be the same person when you
the last time you did something to express yourself, the last time you told wake up tomorrow? Of course—we take that continuity for granted.
yourself, “That’s really me!” Doing things in keeping with what you really Self-esteem develops between two and four years old. There also comes a
are, that’s propriate functioning. time when we recognize that we have value, to others and to ourselves. This
is especially tied to a continuing development of our competencies. This, for
The proprium Allport, is what the “anal” stage is really all about!
Putting so much emphasis on the self or proprium, Allport wanted Self-extension develops between four and six. Certain things, peo-
to define it as carefully as possible. He came at that task from two directions, ple, and events around us also come to be thought of as central and warm,
phenomenologically and functionally. essential to my existence. “My” is very close to “me!” Some people define
First, phenomenologically, i.e. the self as experienced. He suggested themselves in terms of their parents, spouse, or children, their clan, gang,
that the self is composed of the aspects of your experiencing that you see as community, college, or nation. Some find their identity in activities. I’m a
most essential (as opposed to incidental or accidental), warm(or “pre- psychologist, a student, a bricklayer. Some find identity in a place: my house,
cious,” as opposed to emotionally cool), and central (as opposed to periph- my hometown. When my child does something wrong, why do I feel
eral). guilty? If someone scratches my car, why do I feel like they just punches me?
His functional definition became a developmental theory all by it- Self-image also develops between four and six. This is the “look-
self. The self has seven functions, which tend to arise at certain times of ing-glass self,” the “me” as others see me. This is the impression I make on
one’s life: others, my “look,” my social esteem or status, including my sexual identity. It
is the beginning of what others call conscience, ideal self, and persona.
1. Sense of body Rational coping is learned predominantly in the years from six till
twelve. The child begins to develop his or her abilities to deal with life’s
2. Self-identity problems rationally and effectively. This is analogous to Erikson’s “indus-
try.”
3. Self-esteem
Propriate striving doesn’t usually begin till after twelve years and we all know (roughly) what we mean. But another culture may not rec-
old. This is my self as goals, ideal, plans, vocations, callings, a sense of direc- ognize these. What, for example, would liberal and conservative mean in the
tion, a sense of purpose. The culmination of propriate striving, according to middle ages?
Allport, is the ability to say that I am the proprietor of my life—i.e. the owner Allport recognizes that some traits are more closely tied to the pro-
and operator! prium (one’s self) than others. Central traits are the building blocks of your
One can't help but notice the time periods Allport uses—they are personality. When you describe someone, you are likely to use words that
very close to the time periods of Freud's stages! But please understand that refer to these central traits: smart, dumb, wild, shy, sneaky, dopey,
Allport's scheme is not a stage theory—just a description of the usual way grumpy.... He noted that most people have somewhere between five and ten
people develop. of these.
There are also secondary traits, ones that aren’t quite so obvious,
Traits or dispositions or so general, or so consistent. Preferences, attitudes, situational traits are all
Now, as the proprium is developing in this way, we are also devel- secondary. For example, “he gets angry when you try to tickle him,” “she
oping personal traits, or personal dispositions. Allport originally used the has some very unusual sexual preferences,” and “you can’t take him to res-
word traits, but found that so many people assumed he meant traits as per- taurants.”
ceived by someone looking at another person or measured by personality But then there are cardinal traits. These are the traits that some
tests, rather than as unique, individual characteristics within a person, that he people have which practically define their life. Someone who spends their
changed it to dispositions. life seeking fame, or fortune, or sex is such a person. Often we use specific
A personal disposition is defined as “a generalized neuropsychic historical people to name these cardinal traits: Scrooge (greed), Joan of Arc
structure (peculiar to the individual), with the capacity to render many stimuli (heroic self-sacrifice), Mother Teresa (religious service), Marquis de Sade
functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide consistent (equivalent) (sadism), Machiavelli (political ruthlessness), and so on. Relatively few peo-
forms of adaptive and stylistic behavior.” ple develop a cardinal trait. If they do, it tends to be late in life.
A personal disposition produces equivalences in function and mean-
ing between various perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and actions that are not Psychological maturity
necessarily equivalent in the natural world, or in anyone else’s mind. A per- If you have a well-developed proprium and a rich, adaptive set of
son with the personal disposition “fear of communism” may equate Russians, dispositions, you have attained psychological maturity, Allport’s term for
liberals, professors, strikers, social activists, environmentalists, feminists, and mental health. He lists seven characteristics:
so on. He may lump them all together and respond to any of them with a set
of behaviors that express his fear: making speeches, writing letters, voting, 1. Specific, enduring extensions of self, i.e. involvement.
arming himself, getting angry, etc.
Another way to put it is to say that dispositions are concrete, easily 2. Dependable techniques for warm relating to others (e.g. trust, empathy,
recognized, consistencies in our behaviors. genuineness, tolerance...)
Allport believes that traits are essentially unique to each individ-
ual: one person’s “fear of communism” isn’t the same as another's. And you 3. Emotional security and self-acceptance.
can’t really expect that knowledge of other people is going to help you un-
derstand any one particular person. For this reason, Allport strongly pushed 4. Habits of realistic perception (as opposed to defensiveness).
what he called idiographic methods—methods that focused on studying one
person at a time, such as interviews, observation, analysis of letters or diaries, 5. Problem-centeredness, and the development of problem-solving skills.
and so on. These are nowadays generally referred to as qualitative methods.
Allport does recognize that within any particular culture, there 6. Self-objectification—insight into one’s own behavior, the ability to
are common traits or dispositions, ones that are a part of that culture, which laugh at oneself, etc.
everyone in that culture recognizes and names. In our culture, we commonly
differentiate between introverts and extraverts or liberals and conservatives, 7. A unifying philosophy of life, including a particular value orientation,
differentiated religious sentiment, and a personalized conscience.
Conclusions
Functional autonomy Allport is one of those theorists who was so right about so many
Allport didn’t believe in looking too much into a person’s past in things that his ideas have simply passed on into the spirit of the times. His
order to understand his present. This belief is most strongly evident in the theory is one of the first humanistic theories, and would influence many oth-
concept of functional autonomy: Your motives today are independent (au- ers, including Kelly, Maslow, and Rogers. One unfortunate aspect of his the-
tonomous) of their origins. It doesn’t matter, for example, why you wanted ory is his original use of the word trait, which brought down the wrath of a
to become a doctor, or why you developed a taste for olives or for kinky sex, number of situationally oriented behaviorists who would have been much
the fact is that this is the way you are now! more open to his theory if they had bothered to understand it. But that has
Functional autonomy comes in two flavors: The first is persevera- always been a weakness of psychology in general and personality in particu-
tive functional autonomy. This refers essentially to habits—behaviors that lar. Ignorance of the past and the theories and research of others.
no longer serve their original purpose, but still continue. You may have
started smoking as a symbol of adolescent rebellion, for example, but now References
you smoke because you can’t quit! Social rituals such as saying “bless you” Allport’s most significant books are Pattern and Growth in Personal-
when someone sneezes had a reason once upon a time (during the plague, a ity (1965), The Person in Psychology (1968), and The Nature of Prejudice (1954). He
sneeze was a far more serious symptom than it is today!), but now continues was a good writer, and none of these books are too technical.
because it is seen as polite.
Propriate functional autonomy is something a bit more self-di-
rected than habits. Values are the usual example. Perhaps you were punished
for being selfish when you were a child. That doesn’t in any way detract from
your well-known generosity today—it has become your value!
Perhaps you can see how the idea of functional autonomy may have derived
from Allport’s frustration with Freud (or the behaviorists). Of course, that
hardly means that it’s only a defensive belief on Allport’s part!
The idea of propriate functional autonomy—values—lead Allport and his
associates Vernon and Lindzey to develop a categorization of values (in a
book called A Study of Values5, 1960) and a test of values.
1. the theoretical—a scientist, for example, values truth.

2. the economic—a businessperson may value usefulness.
3. the aesthetic—an artist naturally values beauty.
4. the social—a nurse may have a strong love of people.
5. the political—a politician may value power.
6. the religious—a monk or nun probably values unity.
Most of us, of course, have several of these values at more moderate

levels, plus we may value one or two of these quite negatively. There are
modern tests used for helping kids find their careers that have very similar
dimensions.
5
For a “demo” of the values test, visit http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/valuest-
est.html
CHAPTER 15 Out of these insights, Kelly developed his theory and philosophy.
George Kelly (1905-1967) The theory we'll get to in a while. The philosophy he called constructive
alternativism. Constructive alternativism is the idea that, while there is only
one true reality, reality is always experienced from one or another perspective,
or alternative construction. I have a construction, you have one, a person
on the other side of the planet has one, someone living long ago had one, a
primitive person has one, a modern scientist has one, every child has one,
even someone who is seriously mentally ill has one.
Some constructions are better than others. Mine, I hope, is better
than that of someone who is seriously mentally ill. My physician's construc-
tion of my ills is better, I trust, than the construction of the local faith healer.
George Kelly was teaching physiological psychology at Fort Hays Yet no-one's construction is ever complete—the world is just too compli-
Kansas State College in 1931. It was the time of the dust bowl and the De- cated, too big, for anyone to have the perfect perspective. And no-one's per-
pression. Recognizing the pains and sorrows of the farming families of this spective is ever to be completely ignored. Each perspective is, in fact, a per-
part of west-central Kansas, he decided to do something a little more human- spective on the ultimate reality, and has some value to that person in that
itarian with his life. He decided to develop a rural clinical service. time and place.
Mind you, this was hardly a money-making operation. Many of his clients had In fact, Kelly says, there are an infinite number of alternative con-
no money. Some couldn't come to him, and so he and his students would structions one may take towards the world, and if ours is not doing a very
travel, sometimes for hours, to them. good job, we can take another!
At first, Kelly used the standard Freudian training that every psy-
chology Ph.D. received in those days. He had these folks lie down on a couch, Biography
free associate, and tell him their dreams. When he saw resistances or symbols George Kelly was born on April 28, 1905, on a farm near Perth,
of sexual and aggressive needs, he would patiently convey his impressions to Kansas. He was the only child of Theodore and Elfleda Kelly. His father was
them. It was surprising, he thought, how readily these relatively unsophisti- originally a Presbyterian minister who had taken up farming on his doctor's
cated people took to these explanations of their problems. Surely, given their advice. His mother was a former school teacher.
culture, the standard Freudian interpretations should seem terribly bizarre? George's schooling was erratic at best. His family moved, by covered
Apparently, they placed their faith in him, the professional. wagon, to Colorado when George was young, but they were forced to return
Kelly himself, however, wasn't so sure about these standard Freud- to Kansas when water became scarce. From then on, George attended mostly
ian explanations. He found them a bit far-fetched at times, not quite appro- one room schools. Fortunately, both his parents took part in his education.
priate to the lives of Kansan farm families. So, as time went by, he noticed When he was thirteen, he was finally sent off to boarding school in Wichita.
that his interpretations of dreams and such were becoming increasingly un- After high school, Kelly was a good example of someone who was
orthodox. In fact, he began "making up" explanations! His clients listened as both interested in everything and basically directionless. He received a bach-
carefully as before, believed in him as much as ever, and improved at the elor's degree in 1926 in physics and math from Park College, followed with a
same slow but steady pace. master's in sociology from the University of Kansas. Moving to Minnesota,
It began to occur to him that what truly mattered to these people he taught public speaking to labor organizers and bankers and citizenship
was that they had an explanation of their difficulties, that they had a way of classes to immigrants.
understanding them. What mattered was that the "chaos" of their lives de- He moved to Sheldon, Iowa, where he taught and coached drama at
veloped some order. And he discovered that, while just about any order and a junior college, and met his wife-to-be, Gladys Thompson. After a few short-
understanding that came from an authority was accepted gladly, order and term jobs, he received a fellowship to go to the University of Edinburgh,
understanding that came out of their own lives, their own culture, was even where he received a bachelor of education degree in psychology. In 1931, he
better. received his Ph.D. in psychology from the State University of Iowa.
Then, during the depression, he worked at Fort Hays Kansas State
College, where he developed his theory and clinical techniques. During
World War II, Kelly served as an aviation psychologist with the Navy, fol-
lowed by a stint at the University of Maryland.
In 1946, he left for Ohio State University, the year after Carl Rogers The fundamental postulate
left, and became the director of its clinical program. It was here that his the- Kelly organized his theory into a fundamental postulate and 11
ory matured, where he wrote his two-volume work, The Psychology of Per- corollaries. His fundamental postulate says this: "a person's processes are
sonal Constructs, and where he influenced a number of graduate students. psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events" (This
In 1965, he began a research position at Brandeis University, where and all subsequent quotations are from Kelly's 1955 The Psychology of Personal
Maslow was working. Sadly, he died soon afterward, on March 6, 1967. Constructs.) This is the central movement in the scientific process; from hy-
pothesis to experiment or observation, i.e. from anticipation to experience
Theory and behavior.
Kelly's theory begins with what he called his "fruitful metaphor." By processes, Kelly means your experiences, thoughts, feelings, be-
He had noticed long before that scientists, and therapists, often displayed a haviors, and whatever might be left over. All these things are determined, not
peculiar attitude towards people. While they thought quite well of themselves, just by the reality out there, but by your efforts to anticipate the world, other
they tended to look down on their subjects or clients. While they saw them- people, and yourself, from moment to moment as well as day-to-day and
selves as engaged in the fine arts of reason and empiricism, they tended to year-to-year.
see ordinary people as the victims of their sexual energies or conditioning So, when I look out of my window to find the source of some high-
histories. But Kelly, with his experience with Kansan students and farm peo- pitched noises, I don't just see exactly and completely what is out there. I see
ple, noted that these ordinary people, too, were engaged in science; they, too, that which is in keeping with my expectations. I am ready for birds, perhaps,
were trying to understand what was going on. or children laughing and playing. I am not prepared for a bulldozer that op-
So people—ordinary people—are scientists, too. The have construc- erates with a squeal rather than the usual rumbling, or for a flying saucer
tions of their reality, like scientists have theories. They have anticipations or landing in my yard. If a UFO were in fact the source of the high-pitched
expectations, like scientists have hypotheses. They engage in behaviors that noises, I would not truly perceive it at first. I'd perceive something. I'd be
test those expectations, like scientists do experiments. They improve their confused and frightened. I'd try to figure out what I'm looking at. I'd engage
understandings of reality on the bases of their experiences, like scientists ad- in all sorts of behaviors to help me figure it out, or to get me away from the
just their theories to fit the facts. From this metaphor comes Kelly's entire source of my anxiety! Only after a bit would I be able to find the right antic-
theory. ipation, the right hypothesis: "oh my God, it's a UFO!"
If, of course, UFO's were a common place occurrence in my world,
upon hearing high-pitched noises I would anticipate birds, kids, or a UFO,
an anticipation that could then be quickly refined with a glance out of the
window.
The construction corollary

"A person anticipates events by construing their replications." That
is, we construct our anticipations using our past experience. We are funda-
mentally conservative creatures; we expect things to happen as they've hap-
pened before. We look for the patterns, the consistencies, in our experiences.
If I set my alarm clock, I expect it to ring at the right time, as it has done
since time immemorial. If I behave nicely to someone, I expect them to be-
have nicely back.
This is the step from theory to hypothesis, i.e. from construction
FIGURE 15.1 Kelly’s theory system (knowledge, understanding) to anticipation.
The experience corollary not! They can be unnamed. Babies, even animals, have constructs: food-I-
"A person's construction system varies as he successively construes like vs. food-I-spit-out, danger vs. safety, Mommy vs. stranger.
the replication of events." When things don't happen the way they have in Probably, most of our constructs are non-verbal. Think of all the
the past, we have to adapt, to reconstruct. This new experience alters our habits that you have that you don't name, such as the detailed movements
future anticipations. We learn. involved in driving a car. Think about the things you recognize but don't
This is the step from experiment and observation to validation or name, such as the formation just beneath your nose? (It's called a philtrum.)
reconstruction. Based on the results of our experiment—the behaviors we Or think about all the subtleties of a feeling like "falling in love."
engage in—or our observation—the experiences we have—we either con- This is as close as Kelly comes to distinguishing a conscious and an
tinue our faith in our theory of reality, or we change the theory. unconscious mind. Constructs with names are more easily thought about.
They are certainly more easily talked about! It's as if a name is a handle by
The dichotomy corollary which you can grab onto a construct, move it around, and show it to others,
"A person's construction system is composed of a finite number of and so on. And yet a construct that has no name is still "there," and can have
dichotomous constructs." We store our experience in the form of con- every bit as great an effect on your life!
structs, which he also referred to as "useful concepts," "convenient fictions," Sometimes, although a construct has names, we pretend to ourselves
and "transparent templates." You "place" these "templates" on the world, that one pole doesn't really refer to anything or anybody. For example, a per-
and they guide your perceptions and behaviors. son might say that there aren't any truly bad people in the world. Kelly would
He often calls them personal constructs, emphasizing the fact that say that he or she has submerged this pole—something similar to repres-
they are yours and yours alone, unique to you and no-one else. A construct sion.
is not some label or pigeon-hole or dimension I, as a psychologist, lay on you, It might be, you see, that for this person to acknowledge the mean-
the "ordinary" person. It is a small bit of how you see the world. ingfulness of "bad" would require them to acknowledge a lot more. Perhaps
He also calls them bipolar constructs, to emphasize their dichoto- mom would have to be labeled bad, or dad, or me! Rather than admit some-
mous nature. They have two ends, or poles. Where there is thin, there must thing like this, he or she would rather stop using the construct. Sadly, the
be fat, where there is tall, there must be short, where there is up, and there construct is still there, and shows up in the person's behaviors and feelings.
must be down, and so on. If everyone were fat, then fat would become mean- One more differentiation Kelly makes in regards to constructs is be-
ingless, or identical in meaning to "everyone." Some people must be skinny tween peripheral and core constructs. Peripheral constructs are most con-
in order for fat to have any meaning, and vice versa! structs about the world, others, and even one's self. Core constructs, on the
This is actually a very old insight. In ancient China, for example, phi- other hand, are the constructs that are most significant to you, that to one
losophers made much of yin and yang, the opposites that together make the extent or another actually define who you are. Write down the first 10 or 20
whole. More recently, Carl Jung talks about it a great deal. Linguists and an- adjectives that occur to you about yourself—these may very well represent
thropologists accept it as a given part of language and culture. core constructs. Core constructs is the closest Kelly comes to talking about
A number of psychologists, most notably Gestalt psychologists, a self.
have pointed out that we don't so much associate separate things as differen-
tiate things out of a more-or-less whole background. First you see a lot of The organization corollary
undifferentiated "stuff" going on (a "buzzing, blooming confusion," as Wil- "Each person characteristically evolves, for his convenience in antic-
liam James called it). Then you learn to pick out of that "stuff" the things that ipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships be-
are important, that make a difference, that have meaning for you. The young tween constructs." Constructs are not just floating around unconnected. If
child doesn't care if you are fat or thin, black or white, rich or poor, Jew or they were, you wouldn't be able to use one piece of information to get to
Gentile; only when the people around him or her convey their prejudices, another—you wouldn't be able to anticipate! When you are talked into a blind
does the child begin to notice these things. date, and your friend spends a great deal of energy trying to convince you
Many constructs have names or are easily nameable: good-bad, that the person you will be going out with has a great personality, you know,
happy-sad, introvert-extravert, fluorescent-incandescent.... But they need you just know, that they will turn out to look like Quasimodo. How do you
get from "great personality" to "Quasimodo?" Organization!
Some constructs are subordinate to, or "under," other constructs. you automatically assume other things about that person as well. You "jump
There are two versions of this. First, there's a taxonomic kind of subordina- to conclusions."
tion, like the "trees" of animal or plant life you learned in high school biology. When we "do" science, we need to use tight construction. We call
There are living things vs. non-living things, for example; subordinate to liv- this "rigorous thinking," and it is a good thing. Who, after all, would want an
ing things are, say, plants vs. animals; under plants, there might be trees vs. engineer to build bridges using scientific rules that only maybe work? People
flowers; under trees, there might be conifers vs. deciduous trees; and so on. who think of themselves as realistic often prefer tight construction.
Mind you, these are personal constructs, not scientific constructs, But it is a small step from rigorous and realistic to rigid. And this
and so this is a personal taxonomy as well. It may be the same as the scientific rigidity can become pathological, so that an obsessive-compulsive person has
one in your biology textbook, or it might not be. I still tend to have a species to do things "just so" or break out in anxiety.
of conifer called Christmas trees. On the other hand, sometimes the relationship between constructs
is left loose; there is a connection, but it is not absolute, not quite necessary.
animals—plants Loose construction is a more flexible way of using constructs. When we go
| to another country, for example, with some preconceptions about the people.
flowers—trees These preconceptions would be prejudicial stereotypes, if we construed them
| tightly. But if we use them loosely, they merely help us to behave more ap-
deciduous—conifers propriately in their culture.
| We use loose construction when we fantasize and dream, when an-
Christmas trees—others ticipations are broken freely and odd combinations are permitted. However,
if we use loose construction too often and inappropriately, we appear flaky
There is also a definitional kind of subordination, called constella- rather than flexible. Taken far enough, loose construction will land you in an
tion. This involves stacks of constructs, with all their poles aligned. For ex- institution.
ample, beneath the construct conifers vs. deciduous trees, we may find soft- The creativity cycle makes use of these ideas. When we are being
wood vs. hard-wood, needle-bearing vs. leaf-bearing, cone-bearing vs. creative, we first loosen our constructions—fantasizing and brainstorming
flower-bearing, and so on. alternative constructions. When we find a novel construction that looks like
it has some potential, we focus on it and tighten it up. We use the creativity
conifers—deciduous cycle (obviously) in the arts. First we loosen up and get creative in the sim-
| | plest sense; then tighten things up and give our creations substance. We con-
soft-wood—hard-wood ceive the idea, then give it form.
| | We use the creativity cycle in therapy, too. We let go of our unsuc-
needle-bearing—leaf-bearing cessful models of reality, let our constructs drift, find a novel configuration,
| | pull it into more rigorous shape, and try it out! We'll get back to this later.
cone-bearing—flower-bearing
The range corollary
This is also the basis for stereotyping. "We" are good, clean, smart, "A construct is convenient for the anticipation of a finite range of
moral, etc., while "they" are bad, dirty, dumb, immoral, etc. events only." No construct is useful for everything. The gender construct
Many constructs, of course, are independent of each other. Plants- (male-female) is, for most of us, something of importance only with people
animals is independent of fluorescent-incandescent, to give an obvious ex- and a few higher animals such as our pets and cattle. Few of us care what sex
ample. flies are, or lizards, or even armadillos, and no one, I think, applies gender to
Sometimes, the relationship between two constructs is very tight. If geological formations or political parties. These things are beyond the range
one construct is consistently used to predict another, you have tight construc- of convenience of the gender construct.
tion. Prejudice would be an example: as soon as you have a label for someone,
Some constructs are very comprehensive, or broad in application. On the other hand, sometimes events force you to narrow the range
Good-bad is perhaps the most comprehensive construct of all, being appli- of your constructs equally dramatically. This is called constriction. An ex-
cable to nearly anything. Other constructs are very incidental, or narrow. ample might be when, after a lifetime of believing that people were moral
Fluorescent-incandescent is fairly narrow, applicable only to light bulbs. creatures, you experience the realities of war. The construct including
But notice that what is relatively narrow for you might be relatively broad for "moral" may shrink out of existence.
me. A biologist will be interested in the gender of flies, lizards, armadillos, Notice that dilation and constriction are rather emotional things.
apple trees, philodendra, and so on. Or a philosopher may restrict his or her You can easily understand depression and manic states this way. The manic
use of good-bad to specifically moral behaviors, rather than to all kinds of person has dilated a set of constructs about his or her happiness enormously,
things, people, or beliefs. and shouts "I've never imagined that life could be like this before!" Someone
who is depressed, on the other hand, has taken the constructs that relate to
The modulation corollary life and good things to do with it and constricted them down to sitting alone
"The variation in a person's construction system is limited by the in the dark.
permeability of the constructs within whose range of convenience the vari-
ants lie." Some constructs are "springy," they "modulate," they are permea- The choice corollary
ble, which means that they are open to increased range. Other constructs are "A person chooses for himself that alternative in a dichotomized
relatively impermeable. construct through which he anticipates the greater possibility for extension
For example, good-bad is generally quite permeable for most of us. and definition of his system." With all these constructs, and all these poles,
We are always adding new elements; we may never have seen a computer how do we chose our behaviors? Kelly says that we will choose to do what
before, or a CD player, or a fax machine, but as soon as we have, we want to we anticipate will most likely elaborate our construction system, that is, im-
know the best brand to buy. Likewise, a person who will look around for a prove our understanding, our ability to anticipate. Reality places limits on
rock if a hammer is not available uses the construct concerning "things to what we can experience or do, but we choose how to construe, or interpret,
hammer with" in a permeable fashion. that reality. And we choose to interpret that reality in whatever way we be-
On the other hand, fluorescent-incandescent is relatively imperme- lieve will help us the most.
able; it can be used for lighting, but little else is likely to ever be admitted. Commonly, our choices are between an adventurous alternative and
And people who won't let you sit on tables are keeping their sit-upon con- a safe one. We could try to extend our understanding of, say, human hetero-
structs quite impermeable. sexual interaction (partying) by making the adventurous choice of going to
In case this seems like another way of talking about incidental vs. more parties, getting to know more people, developing more relationships,
comprehensive constructs, note that you can have comprehensive but imper- and so on.
meable constructs, such as the one expressed by the person who says "What- On the other hand, we might prefer to define our understanding by
ever happened to the good old days? There just don't seem to be any honest making the security choice: staying home, pondering what might have gone
people around anymore." In other words, honesty, though broad, is now wrong with that last unsuccessful relationship, or getting to know one person
closed. And there are incidental constructs used permeably, such as when you better. Which one you choose will depend on which one you think you need.
say "my, but you're looking incandescent today!" Permeability is the very soul With all this choosing going on, you might expect that Kelly has had
of poetry! something to say about free will vs. determinism. He has, and what he has to
When there is no more "stretch," no more "give" in the range of the say is very interesting; he sees freedom as being a relative concept. We are
constructs you are using, you may have to resort to more drastic not "free" or "unfree;" Some of us are free-er than others; we are free-er in
measures. Dilation is when you broaden the range of your constructs. Let's some situations than in others; we are free-er from some forces than from
say you don't believe in ESP. You walk into a party and suddenly you hear a others. And we are free-er under some constructions than under others.
voice in your head and notice someone smiling knowingly at you from across
the room! You would have to rather quickly stretch the range of the con- The individuality corollary
structs involving ESP, which had been filled, up to now, with nothing but a "Persons differ from each other in their construction of events."
few hoaxes. Since everyone has different experiences, everyone's construction of reality
is different. Remember, he calls his theory the theory of personal constructs.
Kelly does not approve of classification systems, personality types, or per- are integrated at higher levels; the parent may be in each case expressing his
sonality tests. His own famous "rep test," as you will see, is not a test in the or her love and concern for the child's well-being.
traditional sense at all. Some of Kelly's followers have reintroduced an old idea to the study of per-
sonality, that each of us is a community of selves, rather than just one sim-
The commonality corollary ple self. This may be true. However, other theorists would suggest that a
"To the extent that one person employs a construction of experience more unified personality might be healthier, and a "community of selves" is
which is similar to that employed by another, his psychological processes are a little too close to multiple personalities for comfort!
similar to the other person."
Just because we are all different doesn't mean we can't be similar. If The sociality corollary
our construction system—our understanding of reality—is similar, so will be "To the extent that one person construes the construction processes
our experiences, our behaviors, and our feelings. For example, if we share the of another, he may play a role in a social process involving the other person."
same culture, we'll see things in a similar way, and the closer we are, the more Even if you are not really similar to another person, you can still
similar we'll be. relate to them. You can, in fact, "construe how another construes," "psych
In fact, Kelly says that we spend a great deal of our time seeking val- him out," "get inside her head," "see where he's coming from," and "know
idation from other people. A man sitting himself down at the local bar and what she means." In other words, I can set aside a portion of myself (made
sighing "women!" does so with the expectation that his neighbor at the bar possible through the fragmentation corollary) to "be" someone else.
will respond with the support of his world view he is at that moment desper- This is an important part of role playing, because, whenever you
ately in need of: "yeah, women! You can't live with 'em and you can't live play a role, you play it to or with someone, someone you need to understand
without 'em." The same scenario applies, with appropriate alterations, to in order to relate to. Kelly thought this was so important he almost called his
women. And similar scenarios apply as well to kindergarten children, adoles- theory role theory, except that the name had already been taken. These ideas,
cent gangs, the Klan, political parties, scientific conferences, and so on. We in fact, came from the school of thought in sociology founded by George
look for support from those who are similar to ourselves. Only they can know Herbert Mead.
how we truly feel!
Feelings
The fragmentation corollary The theory so far presented may sound very cognitive, with all its
"A person may successively employ a variety of construction subsys- emphasis on constructs and constructions, and many people have said so as
tems which are inferentially incompatible with each other." The fragmenta- their primary criticism of Kelly's theory. In fact, Kelly disliked being called a
tion corollary says that we can be inconsistent within ourselves. It is, in fact, cognitive theorist. He felt that his "professional constructs" included the
a rare person who "has it all together" and functions, at all times in all places, more traditional ideas of perception, behavior, and emotion, as well as cog-
as a unified personality. Nearly all of us, for example, have different roles that nition. So to say he doesn't talk about emotions, for example, is to miss the
we play in life: I am a man, a husband, a father, a son, a professor; I am point altogether.
someone with certain ethnic, religious, political, and philosophical identifica- What you and I would call emotions (or affect, or feelings) Kelly
tions; sometimes I'm a patient, or a guest, or a host, or a customer. And I am called constructs of transition, because they refer to the experiences we
not quite the same in these various roles. have when we move from one way of looking at the world or ourselves to
Often the roles are separated by circumstances. A man might be a another.
cop at night, and act tough, authoritarian, and efficient. But in the daytime, When you are suddenly aware that your constructs aren't functioning
he might be a father, and act gentle, tender, and affectionate. Since the cir- well, you feel anxiety. You are (as Kelly said) "caught with your constructs
cumstances are kept apart, the roles don't come into conflict. But heaven down." It can be anything from your checkbook not balancing, to forgetting
forbid the man finds himself in the situation of having to arrest his own child! someone's name during introductions, to an unexpected hallucinogenic trip,
Or a parent may be seen treating a child like an adult one minute, scolding to forgetting your own name. When anticipations fail, you feel anxiety. If
her the next, and hugging her like a baby the following minute. An observer you've taken a social psychology course, you might recognize the concept as
might frown at the inconsistency. Yet, for most people, these inconsistencies being very similar to cognitive dissonance.
When the anxiety involves anticipations of great changes coming to If a person's problem is poor construction, then the solution should
your core constructs—the ones of greatest importance to you—it becomes be reconstruction, a term Kelly was tempted to use for his style of therapy.
a threat. For example, you are not feeling well. You think it might be some- Psychotherapy involves getting the client to reconstrue, to see things in a
thing serious. You go to the doctor. He looks. He shakes his head. He looks different way, from a new perspective, one that allows the choices that lead
again. He gets solemn. He calls in a colleague.... This is "threat." We also feel to elaboration.
it when we graduate, get married, become parents for the first time, when Kellian therapists essentially ask their clients to join them in a series
roller coasters leave the track, and during therapy. of experiments concerning the clients' life styles. They may ask their clients
When you do things that are not in keeping with your core con- to loosen their constructs, to slip them around, to test them, to tighten them
structs—with your idea of who you are and how you should behave—you up again, to "try them on for size." The intent is to encourage movement,
feel guilt. This is a novel and useful definition of guilt, because it includes essential for any progress.
situations that people know to be guilt-ridden and yet don't meet the usual Kelly, with his background in drama, liked to use role-play-
criterion of being in some way immoral. If your child falls into a manhole, it ing (or enactment) to encourage movement. He might take the part of your
may not be your fault, but you will feel guilty, because it violates your belief mother and have you express your feelings. After a while, he might ask you
that it is your duty as a parent to prevent accidents like this. Similarly, children to reverse roles with him—you be your mother, and he'll be you! In this way,
often feel guilty when a parent gets sick, or when parents divorce. And when you become aware of your own construction of your relationship and your
a criminal does something out of character, something the rest of the world mother's construction. Perhaps you will begin to understand her, or see ways
might consider good, he feels guilty about it! in which you might adapt. You may come to a compromise, or discover an
We have talked a lot about adapting to the world when our con- entirely new perspective that rises above both.
structs don't match up with reality, but there is another way: You can try to Kelly's therapy often involves home-work, things he would ask you
make reality match up with your constructs. Kelly calls this aggression. It to do outside the therapy situation. His best known technique is called fixed-
includes aggression proper. If someone insults my tie, I can punch his lights role therapy. First, he asks you for a description of yourself, a couple of
out, in which case I can wear my tie in peace. But it also includes things we pages in the third person, which he calls the character sketch. Then he con-
might today prefer to call assertiveness. Sometimes things are not as they structs, perhaps with the help of a colleague, another description, called
should be, and we should change them to fit our ideals. Without assertive- the fixed-role sketch, of a pretend person.
ness, there would be no social progress! He writes this sketch by examining your original sketch carefully and
Again, when our core constructs are on the line, aggression may be- using constructs that are "at right angles" to the constructs you used. This
come hostility. Hostility is a matter of insisting that your constructs are valid, means that the new constructs are independent of the original ones, but they
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Examples might include an are used in a similar way, that is, they refer to the same range of elements.
elderly boxer still claiming to be "the greatest," a nerd who truly believes he's If, for example, I use genius-idiot as a construct in dealing with peo-
a Don Juan, or a person in therapy who desperately resists acknowledging ple, I don't give them a lot of room to be somewhere in between, and I don't
that there even is a problem. allow much for change. And, since we use the same constructs on ourselves
as we use for others, I don't give myself much slack either. On a really good
Psychopathology and Therapy day, I might call myself a genius. On most days, I'd have no choice, if I used
This brings us nicely to Kelly's definition of a psychological disor- such a dramatic construct, but to call myself an idiot. And idiots stay idiots;
der: "any personal construction which is used repeatedly in spite of con- they don't turn into geniuses. So, I'd be setting myself up for depression, not
sistent invalidation." The behaviors and thoughts of neurosis, depression, to mention for a life with very few friends.
paranoia, schizophrenia, etc., are all examples. So are patterns of violence, Kelly might write a fixed-role sketch with a construct like skilled-
bigotry, criminality, greed, addiction, and so on. The person can no longer unskilled. This is a much more "humane" construct than genius-idiot. It is
anticipate well, yet can't seem to learn new ways of relating to the world. He much less judgmental; a person can, after all, be skilled in one area, yet un-
or she is loaded with anxiety and hostility, is unhappy and is making everyone skilled in another. And it allows for change, if I find that I am unskilled in
else unhappy, too. some area of importance, I can, with a little effort, become skilled.
Anyway, Kelly would then ask his client to be the person described
in the fixed-role sketch for a week or two. Mind you, this is a full time com-
mitment. He wants you to be this person 24 hours a day, at work, at home,
even when you're alone. Kelly found that most people are quite good at this,
and even enjoy it. After all, this person is usually much healthier than they
are!
Should the client come back and say "Thank you, doc! I believe I'm
cured. All I need to do now is be "Dave" instead of "George" for the rest of
my life," Kelly would have a surprise in store. He might ask that person to
play another fixed-role for a couple of weeks, one that might not be so posi-
tive. That's because the intent of this play-acting is not that the therapist give
you a new personality. That would quickly come to nothing. The idea is to
show you that you do, in fact, have the power to change, to "choose your-
self."
Kellian therapy has, as its goal, opening people up to alternatives,
helping them to discover their freedom, allowing them to live up to their
potentials. For this reason, and many others, Kelly fits most appropriately
FIGURE 15.2 Rep grid
among the humanistic psychologists.
Assessment
You continue in this fashion, with different combinations of three,
Perhaps the thing most associated with George Kelly is his role con-
until you get about twenty contrasts listed. By eyeballing the list, or by per-
struct repertory test, which most people now call the rep grid6. Not a test
in the traditional sense at all, it is a diagnostic, self-discovery, and research forming certain statistical operations on a completed chart, the list might be
tool that has actually become more famous than the rest of his theory. narrowed down to ten or so contrasts by eliminating overlaps. Often, our
First, the client names a set of ten to twenty people, called elements, constructs, even though they have different words attached to them, are used
likely to be of some importance to the person's life. In therapy, these people in the same way. Nervous-calm, for example, may be used exactly like you
are named in response to certain suggestive categories, such as "past lover" use neurotic-healthy or jittery-passive.
In diagnosis and self-discovery uses, you are, of course, encouraged
and "someone you pity," and would naturally include yourself, your mother
to use constructs that refer to people's behaviors and personalities. But in
and father, and so on.
The therapist or researcher then picks out three of these at a time, research uses, you may be asked to give any kind of constructs at all, and you
and asks you to tell him or her which of the three are similar, and which one may be asked to give them in response to all sorts of elements. In industrial
is different. And he asks you to give him something to call the similarity and psychology, for example, people have been asked to compare and contrast
the difference. The similarity label is called the similarity pole, and the dif- various products (for marketing analyses), good and bad examples of a prod-
ference one is called the contrast pole, and together they make up one of uct (for quality control analyses), or different leadership styles. You can find
the constructs you use in social relations. If, for example, you say that you your musical style constructs this way, or your constructs about political fig-
ures, or the constructs you use to understand personality theories.
and your present lover are both nervous people, but your former lover was
In therapy, the rep grid gives the therapist and the client a picture of
very calm, then nervous is the similarity pole and calm the contrast pole of
the construct nervous-calm. the client's view of reality that can be discussed and worked with. In marriage
therapy, two people can work on the grid with the same set of elements, and
their constructs compared and discussed. It isn't sacred; the rep grid is rare
among "tests" in that the client is invited to change his or her mind about it
at any time. Neither is it assumed to be a complete picture of a person's men-
6
For more information on the Rep Grid, visit http://web-
space.ship.edu/cgboer/qualmeth.html
tal state. It is what it is: a diagnostic tool.
In research, we can take advantage of a number of computer pro- blend of the qualitative and the introspective that even critics of Kelly's over-
grams that allow for a "measurement" of the distances between constructs or all theory have a hard time finding fault with.
between elements. We get a picture, created by the people themselves, of
their world-views. We can compare the views of several people (as long as
they use the same elements). We can compare a person's world-view before
and after training, or therapy. It is an exciting tool, an unusual combination Connections
of the subjective and objective side of personality research. Much of Personal Construct Theory is phenomenological. Kelly
acknowledged his sympathies with the phenomenological theories of Carl
Discussion Rogers, Donald Snygg and Arthur Combs, and the "self-theorists" Prescott
Kelly published The Psychology of Personal Constructs in 1955. After a Lecky and Victor Raimy. But he was skeptical of phenomenology per se. Like
brief flurry of interest (and considerable criticism), he and his theory were so many people, he assumed that phenomenology was some kind of intro-
pretty much forgotten, except by a few loyal students, most of whom were spective idealism. As we shall see in later chapters, that is a mistaken assump-
involved more in their clinical practices than in the advancement of the psy- tion.
chology of personality. Curiously, his theory continued to have a modest no- But a phenomenologist would find much of Kelly's theory quite con-
toriety in England, particularly among industrial psychologists. genial. For example, Kelly believes that to understand behavior you need to
The reasons for this lack of attention are not hard to fathom. The understand how the person construes reality—i.e. how he or she understands
"science" branch of psychology was at that time still rather mired in a behav- it, perceives it—more than what that reality truly is. In fact, he points out that
iorist approach to psychology that had little patience with the subjective side everyone's view—even the hard-core scientist's—is just that: a view? And yet
of things; and the clinical side of psychology found people like Carl Rogers he also notes, emphatically, that there is no danger here of solipsism (the idea
much easier to follow. Kelly was a good 20 years ahead of his time. Only that the world is only my idea), because the view has to be of something. This
recently, with the so-called "cognitive revolution," are people really ready to is exactly the meaning of the phenomenologist's basic principle, known as
understand him. intentionality.
It is ironic that George Kelly, always true to his philosophy of con- On the other hand, there are aspects of Kelly's theory that are not
structive alternativism, felt that, if his theory were still around in ten or twenty so congenial to phenomenology. First, he was a true theory-builder, and the
years, in a form significantly like the original, there would be cause for con- technical detail of his theory shows it. Phenomenologists, on the other hand,
cern. Theories, like our individual views of reality, should change, not remain tend to avoid theory. Second, he had high hopes for a rigorous methodology
static. for psychology—even using the experimental scientist as his "fruitful meta-
There are legitimate criticisms. First, although Kelly is a very good phor." Most phenomenologists are much more skeptical about experimenta-
writer, he chose to reinvent psychology from the ground up, introducing a tion.
new set of terms and a new set of metaphors and images. And he went out The emphasis on theory-building, fine detail, and the hope for a rig-
of his way to avoid being associated with other approaches to the field. This orous methodology do make Kelly very appealing to modern cognitive psy-
inevitably alienated him from the mainstream. chologists. Time will tell whether Kelly will be remembered as a phenome-
In a more positive vein, some of the words he invented are now nologist or a cognitivist!
firmly fixed in mainstream psychology (although many still think of them as
"trendy!") Anticipation has been made popular by the famous cognitive psy- Readings
chologist Ulric Neisser; Construct, construction, construal, and all its varia- The basic reference for George Kelly is the two volume Psychology of
tions can be found in books and articles right alongside of words like percep- Personal Constructs (1955). The first three chapters are available in paperback
tion and behavior. Sadly, Kelly, just like other innovators, seldom gets any as A Theory of Personality (1963). Another paperback, written especially for the
credit for his innovations, mostly because psychologists are rarely trained to "layperson," is Bannister and Fransella's Inquiring Man: The Theory of Personal
pay much attention to where ideas come from. Constructs (1971). Kelly wrote a number of very interesting articles as well.
The "rep grid" has also become quite popular, especially since com- Most of them are collected into Clinical Psychology and Personality: Selected papers
puters have made it much easier to use. As I mentioned before, it is a nice of George Kelly, edited by Brendan Maher (1969). There are other collections
of works, by Kelly and his followers, available. Look especially for collections
edited by Don Bannister. Lastly, there is a Kellian journal, called The Journal CHAPTER 16
of Personal Construct Psychology. It includes theoretical and research articles by Donald Snygg (1904-1967) &
Kellians and psychologists with similar orientations. Arthur W. Combs (1912-1999)
Sometimes, a theory fails to gain the attention it deserves because it

is too simple, too clear, and too practical. Snygg and Combs' theory is a good
example. Although it has had a quiet impact on a number of humanists, it
didn't have the "pizzazz" other theories did. Although they say very similar
things, Carl Rogers' theory sounds more radical, George Kelly's more scien-
tific, and European phenomenology more philosophical. But Snygg and
Combs' theory is well worth a look.
The phenomenal field

First, "all behavior, without exception, is completely determined by
and pertinent to the phenomenal field of the behaving organism." The
phenomenal field is our subjective reality, the world we are aware of, includ-
ing physical objects and people, and our behaviors, thoughts, images, fanta-
sies, feelings, and ideas like justice, freedom, equality, and so on. Snygg and
Combs emphasize, above all else, that it is this phenomenal field that is the
true subject-matter for psychology.
And so, if we wish to understand and predict people's behavior, we
need to get at their phenomenal field. Since we can't observe it directly, we
need to infer it from the things we can observe. We can record behavior,
give various tests, talk to the person, and so on—Snygg and Combs are open
to a variety of methods. If we have a variety of observers as well, we will
eventually come to understand the person's phenomenal field.
And then you are set to understand and predict the person's behav- the presence of others, we maintain and enhance our sense of who we are by
ior, since, as the quote above says, all their behavior will follow as a reasona- refining and re-refining the differentiations we make.
ble, meaningful, purposeful response to the person's phenomenal field.
Applied psychology
One motive Snygg and Combs address clinical concerns by adding the concept
Which brings us to Snygg and Combs' understanding of motiva- of threat. Threat is "the awareness of menace to the phenomenal self". Ide-
tion. "The basic need of everyone is to preserve and enhance the phenom- ally, the threat is met with appropriate actions and new differentiations that
enal self, and the characteristics of all parts of the field are governed by this enhance the person's ability to deal with similar threats in the future.
need." The phenomenal self is the person's own view of him- or her- If the person doesn't have the organization to deal with the threat in
self. This view is developed over a lifetime, and is based on the person's this way, he or she may resort to stop-gap, sand-bag measures that, while they
physical characteristics (as he or she sees them), cultural upbringing (as he or may remove the threat for the moment, don't actually serve the self in the
she experiences it), and other, more personal, experiences. long-run. Defenses, neurotic and psychotic symptoms, and even criminal
Note that it is the phenomenal self we try to maintain and en- behavior is explained in this way.
hance. This is more than mere physical survival or the satisfaction of basic Therapy, then, becomes a matter of freeing clients from the dead-
needs. The body and its needs are a likely part of the self, but not an inevi- end perceptions and behaviors and cognitions and emotions they have set up
table one. A teenager who attempts suicide, a soldier seeking martyrdom, or to protect themselves from threat. "Therapy is the provision of a facilitating
a prisoner on a hunger strike are not serving their bodies well. But they are situation wherein the normal drive of the organism for maintenance or en-
maintaining, perhaps even enhancing, and their own images of who they hancement of organization is freed to operate." And, consistent with Snygg
are. Their physical existences no longer hold the same meanings to them as and Combs' flexible and pragmatic approach, this can be done by active in-
they might to us. tervention by a therapist or by enabling the client to discover his or her own
And note that we are talking not only about maintaining, but differentiations, depending on the individual's needs.
about enhancing the self. We don't just want to be what we are. We often Snygg and Combs also pay a lot of attention to education,
want to be more. Snygg and Combs' basic motivational principle contains and meaning is their favorite term here. Learning occurs when the differ-
within it Alfred Adler's ideas about compensation of inferiority and striving entiations involved have direct relevance to the individual's needs, that is,
for superiority, Abraham Maslow's self-actualization, and all sorts of related when learning is meaningful to that individual.
concepts. As long as teachers insist on forcing material that, from the stu-
We become "more," according to Snygg and Combs, by means dents' perspective, has no relevance to them or their lives, education will be
of differentiation, a process that involves pulling a figure out of a back- an arduous process. It is curious that a boy who can't remember the times
ground. Learning is not a matter of connecting a stimulus and a response or tables can remember baseball statistics back to the Stone Age, or a girl who
one stimulus with another or even one response with another. Learning is a can't write a coherent paragraph can tell stories that would make Chaucer
matter of improving the quality of one's phenomenal field by extracting some proud. If calculus or Shakespeare or any number of subjects we feel children
detail from the confusion, because that detail is important, is meaningful, to should learn seem to be so difficult for them, it is not because the children
the person. are dumb. It is because they don't see any reason for learning them. Teach-
This is, of course, the same thing as George Kelly's idea of con- ers must get to know their students, because the motivation to learn is "in-
structs. As a child, the color of someone's skin may be irrelevant; later, others side" them, in their phenomenal fields and phenomenal selves.
show the child that color is important. Color comes out of the background;
black is differentiated from white; the contrast is learned. Why? Not, in this Readings
case, because the child has been shown a connection between color and the To learn more about their theory, I suggest you read Snygg and
quality of someone's character, but because a child cannot afford to ignore Combs' Individual Behavior. Ten years later, Combs released a new edition,
the differentiations his or her "significant others" make. called Individual Behavior: A Perceptual Approach to Behavior, which replaced
The example shows how nicely the theory applies to both develop- "phenomenological" with "perceptual," presumably in an effort to make the
mental and social psychological issues. As children and as adults, alone or in approach more acceptable to a predominantly behaviorist audience. Combs,
with Donald Avila and William Purkey, also wrote Helping Relationships, which CHAPTER 17
applies the theory to education, social work, therapy, and so on. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New

York. He was the first of seven children born to his parents, who themselves
were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia. His parents, hoping for
the best for their children in the new world, pushed him hard for academic
success. Not surprisingly, he became very lonely as a boy, and found his
refuge in books.
To satisfy his parents, he first studied law at the City College of New
York (CCNY). After three semesters, he transferred to Cornell, and then
back to CCNY. He married Bertha Goodman, his first cousin, against his
parents’ wishes. Abe and Bertha went on to have two daughters.
He and Bertha moved to Wisconsin so that he could attend the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin. Here, he became interested in psychology, and his
school work began to improve dramatically. He spent time there working
with Harry Harlow, who is famous for his experiments with baby rhesus
monkeys and attachment behavior.
He received his BA in 1930, his MA in 1931, and his PhD in 1934,
all in psychology, all from the University of Wisconsin. A year after gradua-
tion, he returned to New York to work with E. L. Thorndike at Columbia,
where Maslow became interested in research on human sexuality.
He began teaching full time at Brooklyn College. During this period
of his life, he came into contact with the many European intellectuals that
were immigrating to the US, and Brooklyn in particular, at that time—people
like Adler, Fromm, Horney, as well as several Gestalt and Freudian psycholo-
gists.
Maslow served as the chair of the psychology department at Brandeis
from 1951 to 1969. While there he met Kurt Goldstein, who had originated
the idea of self-actualization in his famous book, The Organism (1934). It was
also here that he began his crusade for a humanistic psychology—something
ultimately much more important to him than his own theorizing.
He spend his final years in semi-retirement in California, until, on Maslow believed, and research supports him, that these are in fact
June 8 1970, he died of a heart attack after years of ill health. individual needs, and that a lack of, say, vitamin C, will lead to a very specific
hunger for things which have in the past provided that vitamin C—e.g. or-
Theory ange juice. I guess the cravings that some pregnant women have, and the
One of the many interesting things Maslow noticed while he worked way in which babies eat the most foul tasting baby food, support the idea
with monkeys early in his career, was that some needs take precedence over anecdotally.
others. For example, if you are hungry and thirsty, you will tend to try to 2. The safety and security needs. When the physiological needs
take care of the thirst first. After all, you can do without food for weeks, but are largely taken care of, this second layer of needs comes into play. You will
you can only do without water for a couple of days! Thirst is a “stronger” become increasingly interested in finding safe circumstances, stability, and
need than hunger. Likewise, if you are very thirsty, but someone has put a protection. You might develop a need for structure, for order, some limits.
choke hold on you and you can’t breathe, which is more important? The Looking at it negatively, you become concerned, not with needs like
need to breathe, of course. On the other hand, sex is less powerful than any hunger and thirst, but with your fears and anxieties. In the ordinary Ameri-
of these. Let’s face it, you won’t die if you don’t get it! can adult, this set of needs manifest themselves in the form of our urges to
have a home in a safe neighborhood, a little job security and a nest egg, a
good retirement plan and a bit of insurance, and so on.
3. The love and belonging needs. When physiological needs and
safety needs are, by and large, taken care of, a third layer starts to show
up. You begin to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children, affection-
ate relationships in general, even a sense of community. Looked at nega-
tively, you become increasing susceptible to loneliness and social anxieties.
In our day-to-day life, we exhibit these needs in our desires to marry,
have a family, be a part of a community, a member of a church, a brother in
the fraternity, a part of a gang or a bowling club. It is also a part of what we
look for in a career.
4. The esteem needs. Next, we begin to look for a little self-es-
teem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher
one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status,
fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even
FIGURE 17. 1Hierarchy of needs dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including
such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independ-
ence, and freedom. Note that this is the “higher” form because, unlike the
Maslow took this idea and created his now famous hierarchy of respect of others, once you have self-respect, it’s a lot harder to lose!
needs. Beyond the details of air, water, food, and sex, he laid out five broader The negative version of these needs is low self-esteem and inferiority
layers: the physiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the needs complexes. Maslow felt that Adler was really onto something when he pro-
for love and belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize the posed that these were at the roots of many, if not most, of our psychological
self, in that order. problems. In modern countries, most of us have what we need in regard to
1. The physiological needs. These include the needs we have for our physiological and safety needs. We, more often than not, have quite a
oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other minerals and vita- bit of love and belonging, too. It’s a little respect that often seems so very
mins. They also include the need to maintain a pH balance (getting too acidic hard to get!
or base will kill you) and temperature (98.6 or near to it). Also, there’s the All of the preceding four levels he calls deficit needs, or D-
needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid of wastes (CO2, sweat, urine, needs. If you don’t have enough of something—i.e. you have a deficit—you
and feces), to avoid pain, and to have sex. Quite a collection! feel the need. But if you get all you need, you feel nothing at all! In other
words, they cease to be motivating. As the old blues song goes, “you don’t Maslow suggested that we can ask people for their “philosophy of
miss your water till your well runs dry!” the future”—what would their ideal life or world be like—and get significant
information as to what needs they do or do not have covered.
If you have significant problems along your development—a period
of extreme insecurity or hunger as a child, or the loss of a family member
through death or divorce, or significant neglect or abuse—you may “fixate”
on that set of needs for the rest of your life.
FIGURE 17.2 Salient needs
He also talks about these levels in terms of homeostasis. Homeo-

stasis is the principle by which your furnace thermostat operates. When it
FIGURE 17.3 Fixation on primary needs
gets too cold, it switches the heat on; when it gets too hot, it switches the
heat off. In the same way, your body, when it lacks a certain substance, de-
velops a hunger for it; when it gets enough of it, then the hunger
stops. Maslow simply extends the homeostatic principle to needs, such as This is Maslow’s understanding of neurosis. Perhaps you went
safety, belonging, and esteem that we don’t ordinarily think of in these terms. through a war as a kid. Now you have everything your heart needs—yet you
Maslow sees all these needs as essentially survival needs. Even love still find yourself obsessing over having enough money and keeping the pan-
and esteem are needed for the maintenance of health. He says we all have try well-stocked. Or perhaps your parents divorced when you were
these needs built in to us genetically, like instincts. In fact, he calls them in- young. Now you have a wonderful spouse—yet you get insanely jealous or
stinctoid—instinct-like—needs. worry constantly that they are going to leave you because you are not “good
In terms of overall development, we move through these levels a bit enough” for them. You get the picture.
like stages. As newborns, our focus (if not our entire set of needs) is on the 5. Self-actualization. The last level is a bit different. Maslow has
physiological. Soon, we begin to recognize that we need to be safe. Soon used a variety of terms to refer to this level. He has called it growth moti-
after that, we crave attention and affection. A bit later, we look for self-es- vation (in contrast to deficit motivation), being needs (or B-needs, in con-
teem. Mind you, this is in the first couple of years! trast to D-needs), and self-actualization.
Under stressful conditions, or when survival is threatened, we can These are needs that do not involve balance or homeostasis. Once
“regress” to a lower need level. When you great career falls flat, you might engaged, they continue to be felt. In fact, they are likely to become stronger
seek out a little attention. When your family ups and leaves you, it seems that as we “feed” them! They involve the continuous desire to fulfill potentials,
love is again all you ever wanted. When you face chapter eleven after a long to “be all that you can be.” They are a matter of becoming the most com-
and happy life, you suddenly can’t think of anything except money. plete, the fullest, “you”—hence the term, self-actualization.
These things can occur on a society-wide basis as well. When society Now, in keeping with his theory up to this point, if you want to be
suddenly flounders, people start clamoring for a strong leader to take over truly self-actualizing, you need to have your lower needs taken care of, at least
and make things right. When the bombs start falling, they look for to a considerable extent. This makes sense; if you are hungry, you are scram-
safety. When the food stops coming into the stores, their needs become even bling to get food; if you are unsafe, you have to be continuously on guard; if
more basic. you are isolated and unloved, you have to satisfy that need; if you have a low
sense of self-esteem, you have to be defensive or compensate. When lower the other hand, they were often strongly motivated to change negative qual-
needs are unmet, you can’t fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials. ities in themselves that could be changed. Along with this comes spontane-
It isn’t surprising, then, the world being as difficult as it is, that only ity and simplicity, they preferred being themselves rather than being pre-
a small percentage of the world’s population is truly, predominantly, self-ac- tentious or artificial. In fact, for all their nonconformity, he found that they
tualizing. Maslow at one point suggested only about two percent! tended to be conventional on the surface, just where less self-actualizing non-
The question becomes, of course, what exactly does Maslow mean conformists tend to be the most dramatic.
by self-actualization? To answer that, we need to look at the kind of people Further, they had a sense of humility and respect towards oth-
he called self-actualizers. Fortunately, he did this for us, using a qualitative ers—something Maslow also called democratic values—meaning that they
method called biographical analysis. were open to ethnic and individual variety, even treasuring it. They had a
He began by picking out a group of people, some historical figures, quality Maslow called human kinship or Gemeinschaftsgefühl—social interest,
some people he knew, whom he felt clearly met the standard of self-actual- compassion, humanity. And this was accompanied by a strong ethics,
ization. Included in this august group were Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jef- which was spiritual but seldom conventionally religious in nature.
ferson, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Adams, William James, Al- And these people had a certain freshness of appreciation, an ability
bert Schweitzer, Benedict Spinoza, and Alduous Huxley, plus 12 unnamed to see things, even ordinary things, with wonder. Along with this comes their
people who were alive at the time Maslow did his research. He then looked ability to be creative, inventive, and original. And, finally, these people
at their biographies, writings, the acts and words of those he knew personally, tended to have more peak experiences than the average person. A peak
and so on. From these sources, he developed a list of qualities that seemed experience is one that takes you out of yourself, that makes you feel very tiny,
characteristic of these people, as opposed to the great mass of us. or very large, to some extent one with life or nature or God. It gives you a
These people were reality-centered, which means they could dif- feeling of being a part of the infinite and the eternal. These experiences tend
ferentiate what is fake and dishonest from what is real and genuine. They to leave their mark on a person, change them for the better, and many people
were problem-centered, meaning they treated life’s difficulties as problems actively seek them out. They are also called mystical experiences, and are an
demanding solutions, not as personal troubles to be railed at or surrendered important part of many religious and philosophical traditions.
to. And they had a different perception of means and ends. They felt Maslow doesn’t think that self-actualizers are perfect, of
that the ends don’t necessarily justify the means, that the means could be course. There were several flaws or imperfections he discovered along the
ends themselves, and that the means—the journey—was often more im- way as well. First, they often suffered considerable anxiety and guilt—but
portant than the ends. realistic anxiety and guilt, rather than misplaced or neurotic versions. Some
The self-actualizers also had a different way of relating to oth- of them were absentminded and overly kind. And finally, some of them had
ers. First, they enjoyed solitude, and were comfortable being alone. And unexpected moments of ruthlessness, surgical coldness, and loss of humor.
they enjoyed deeper personal relations with a few close friends and family Two other points he makes about these self-actualizers: their values
members, rather than more shallow relationships with many people. were "natural" and seemed to flow effortlessly from their personalities. And
They enjoyed autonomy, a relative independence from physical and they appeared to transcend many of the dichotomies others accept as being
social needs. And they resisted enculturation, that is, they were not sus- undeniable, such as the differences between the spiritual and the physical, the
ceptible to social pressure to be "well adjusted" or to "fit in"—they were, in selfish and the unselfish, and the masculine and the feminine.
fact, nonconformists in the best sense.
They had an unhostile sense of humor—preferring to joke at their Metaneeds and metapathologies
own expense, or at the human condition, and never directing their humor at Another way in which Maslow approach the problem of what is self-
others. They had a quality he called acceptance of self and others, by actualization is to talk about the special, driving needs (B-needs, of course)
which he meant that these people would be more likely to take you as you of the self-actualizers. They need the following in their lives in order to be
are than try to change you into what they thought you should be. This same happy:
acceptance applied to their attitudes towards themselves. If some quality of
theirs wasn’t harmful, they let it be, even enjoying it as a personal quirk. On Truth, rather than dishonesty.
Goodness, rather than evil. values, the self-actualizer develops depression, despair, disgust, alienation,
and a degree of cynicism.
Beauty, not ugliness or vulgarity. Maslow hoped that his efforts at describing the self-actualizing per-
son would eventually lead to a “periodic table” of the kinds of qualities, prob-
Unity, wholeness, and transcendence of opposites, not arbi- lems, pathologies, and even solutions characteristic of higher levels of human
trariness or forced choices. potential. Over time, he devoted increasing attention, not to his own theory,
but to humanistic psychology and the human potentials movement.
Aliveness, not deadness or the mechanization of life. Toward the end of his life, he inaugurated what he called the fourth
force in psychology: Freudian and other “depth” psychologies constituted
Uniqueness, not bland uniformity. the first force; behaviorism was the second force; his own humanism, includ-
ing the European existentialists, were the third force. The fourth force was
Perfection and necessity, not sloppiness, inconsistency, or acci- the transpersonal psychologies which, taking their cue from Eastern phi-
dent. losophies, investigated such things as meditation, higher levels of conscious-
ness, and even parapsychological phenomena. Perhaps the best known
Completion, rather than incompleteness. transpersonalist today is Ken Wilber, author of such books as The Atman Pro-
ject and The History of Everything.
Justice and order, not injustice and lawlessness.
Discussion
Simplicity, not unnecessary complexity. Maslow has been a very inspirational figure in personality theo-
ries. In the 1960’s in particular, people were tired of the reductionistic, mech-
Richness, not environmental impoverishment. anistic messages of the behaviorists and physiological psychologists. They
were looking for meaning and purpose in their lives, even a higher, more
Effortlessness, not strain. mystical meaning. Maslow was one of the pioneers in that movement to
bring the human being back into psychology, and the person back into per-
Playfulness, not grim, humorless, drudgery. sonality!
At approximately the same time, another movement was getting un-
Self-sufficiency, not dependency. derway, one inspired by some of the very things that turned Maslow
off: computers and information processing, as well as very rationalistic the-
Meaningfulness, rather than senselessness. ories such as Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Noam Chomsky’s
linguistics. This, of course, became the cognitive movement in psychol-
At first glance, you might think that everyone obviously needs ogy. As the heyday of humanism appeared to lead to little more than drug
these. But think: if you are living through an economic depression or a war, abuse, astrology, and self-indulgence, cognitivism provided the scientific
or are living in a ghetto or in rural poverty, do you worry about these issues, ground students of psychology were yearning for.
or do you worry about getting enough to eat and a roof over your head? In But the message should not be lost: psychology is, first and fore-
fact, Maslow believes that much of the what is wrong with the world comes most, about people, real people in real lives, and not about computer models,
down to the fact that very few people really are interested in these values— statistical analyses, rat behavior, test scores, and laboratories.
not because they are bad people, but because they haven’t even had their
basic needs taken care of! Some criticism
When a self-actualizer doesn’t get these needs fulfilled, they respond The “big picture” aside, there are a few criticisms we might direct at
with metapathologies—a list of problems as long as the list of meta Maslow’s theory itself. The most common criticism concerns his methodol-
needs! Let me summarize it by saying that, when forced to live without these ogy; picking a small number of people that he himself declared self-actualiz-
ing, then reading about them or talking with them, and coming to conclusions
about what self-actualization is in the first place does not sound like good are various things that interfere with the full effectiveness of that life force. If
science to many people. we are deprived of our basic physical needs, if we are living under threatening
In his defense, I should point out that he understood this, and circumstances, if we are isolated from others, or if we have no confidence in
thought of his work as simply pointing the way. He hoped that others would our abilities, we may continue to survive, but it will not be as fulfilling a live
take up the cause and complete what he had begun in a more rigorous fash- as it could be. We will not be fully actualizing our potentials! We could even
ion. It is a curiosity that Maslow, the “father” of American humanism, began understand that there might be people that actualize despite deprivation! If we
his career as a behaviorist with a strong physiological bent. He did indeed take the deficit needs as subtracting from actualization, and if we talk
believe in science, and often grounded his ideas in biology. He only meant about full self-actualization rather than self-actualization as a separate cate-
to broaden psychology to include the best in us, as well as the pathological! gory of need, Maslow's theory comes into line with other theories, and the
Another criticism, a little harder to respond to, is that Maslow placed exceptional people who succeed in the face of adversity can be seen as heroic
such constraints on self-actualization. First, Kurt Goldstein and Carl Rogers rather than freakish aberrations.
used the phrase to refer to what every living creature does. To try to grow,
to become more, and to fulfill its biological destiny. Maslow limits it to some- I received the following email from Gareth Costello of Dublin, Ire-
thing only two percent of the human species achieves. And while Rogers felt land, which balances my somewhat negative review of Maslow.
that babies were the best examples of human self-actualization, Maslow saw One mild criticism I would have is of your concluding assessment,
it as something achieved only rarely by the young. where you appeal for a broader view of self-actualization that could include
Another point is that he asks that we pretty much take care of our subjects such as van Gogh and other hard-at-heel intellectual/creative giants.
lower needs before self-actualization comes to the forefront. And yet we can This appears to be based on a view that people like van Gogh, etc. were, by
find many examples of people who exhibited at very least aspects of self- virtue of their enormous creativity, 'at least partly' self-actualized.
actualization who were far from having their lower needs taken care I favor Maslow's more narrow definition of self-actualization and
of. Many of our best artists and authors, for example, suffered from poverty, would not agree that self-actualization equates with supreme self-expression.
bad upbringing, neuroses, and depression. Some could even be called psy- I suspect that self-actualization is, often, a demotivating factor where artistic
chotic! If you think about Galileo, who prayed for ideas that would sell, or creativity is concerned, and that artists such as van Gogh thrived (artistically,
Rembrandt, who could barely keep food on the table, or Toulouse Lautrec, if not in other respects) specifically in the absence of circumstances condu-
whose body tormented him, or van Gogh, who, besides poor, wasn’t quite cive to self-actualization. Even financially successful artists (e.g. Stravinsky,
right in the head, if you know what I mean... Weren’t these people engaged who was famously good at looking after his financial affairs, as well as affairs
in some form of self-actualization? The idea of artists and poets and philos- of other kinds) do exhibit some of the non-self-actualized 'motivators' that
ophers (and psychologists!) being strange is so common because it has so you describe so well.
much truth to it! Self-actualization implies an outward and openness that contrasts
We also have the example of a number of people who were creative with the introspection that can be a pre-requisite for great artistic self-expres-
in some fashion even while in concentration camps. Trachtenberg, for ex- sion. Where scientists can look out at the world around them to find some-
ample, developed a new way of doing arithmetic in a camp. Viktor Frankl thing of profound or universal significance, great artists usually look inside
developed his approach to therapy while in a camp. There are many more themselves to find something of personal significance—the universality of
examples. their work is important but secondary. It's interesting that Maslow seems to
And there are examples of people who were creative when unknown, have concentrated on people concerned with the big-picture when defining
became successful only to stop being creative. Ernest Hemingway, if I’m not self-actualization. In Einstein, he selected a scientist who was striving for a
mistaken, is an example. Perhaps all these examples are exceptions, and the theory of the entire physical universe. The philosophers and politicians he
hierarchy of needs stands up well to the general trend. But the exceptions analyzed were concerned with issues of great relevance to humanity.
certainly do put some doubt into our minds. This is not to belittle the value or importance of the 'small-picture'—
I would like to suggest a variation on Maslow's theory that might society needs splitters as well as lumpers. But while self-actualization may be
help. If we take the idea of actualization as Goldstein and Rogers use it, i.e. synonymous with psychological balance and health, it does not necessarily
as the "life force" that drives all creatures, we can also acknowledge that there lead to professional or creative brilliance in all fields. In some instances, it
may remove the driving force that leads people to excel—art being the classic
example. So I don't agree that the scope of self-actualization should be ex- CHAPTER 18
tended to include people who may well have been brilliant, but who were also Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
quite possibly damaged, unrounded or unhappy human beings.
If I had the opportunity to choose between brilliance (alone) and
self-actualization (alone) for my children, I would go for the latter!
Gareth makes some very good points!
Bibliography
Maslow’s books are easy to read and full of interesting ideas. The
best known are Toward a Psychology of Being (1968), Motivation and Personal-
ity (first edition, 1954, and second edition, 1970), and The Further Reaches of
Human Nature (1971). Finally, there are many articles by Maslow, especially
in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, which he cofounded.
Carl Rogers was born January 8, 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb
of Chicago, the fourth of six children. His father was a successful civil engi-
neer and his mother was a housewife and devout Christian. His education
started in the second grade, because he could already read before kindergar-
ten.
When Carl was 12, his family moved to a farm about 30 miles west
of Chicago, and it was here that he was to spend his adolescence. With a
strict upbringing and many chores, Carl was to become rather isolated, inde-
pendent, and self-disciplined.
He went on to the University of Wisconsin as an agriculture ma-
jor. Later, he switched to religion to study for the ministry. During this time,
he was selected as one of ten students to go to Beijing for the “World Student
Christian Federation Conference” for six months. He tells us that his new
experiences so broadened his thinking that he began to doubt some of his
basic religious views.
After graduation, he married Helen Elliot (against his parents’
wishes), moved to New York City, and began attending the Union Theolog-
ical Seminary, a famous liberal religious institution. While there, he took a
student organized seminar called “Why am I entering the ministry?” I might
as well tell you that, unless you want to change your career, never take a class
with such a title! He tells us that most of the participants “thought their way
right out of religious work.”
Religion’s loss was, of course, psychology’s gain: Rogers switched
to the clinical psychology program of Columbia University, and received his
Ph.D. in 1931. He had already begun his clinical work at the Rochester So-
ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. At this clinic, he learned
about Otto Rank’s theory and therapy techniques, which started him on the He also applied the idea to ecosystems, saying that an ecosystem
road to developing his own approach. such as a forest, with all its complexity, has a much greater actualization po-
He was offered a full professorship at Ohio State in 1940. In 1942, tential than a simple ecosystem such as a corn field. If one bug were to be-
he wrote his first book, Counseling and Psychotherapy. Then, in 1945, he come extinct in a forest, there are likely to be other creatures that will adapt
was invited to set up a counseling center at the University of Chicago. It was to fill the gap; on the other hand, one bout of “corn blight” or some such
while working there that in 1951 he published his major work, Client-Cen- disaster, and you have a dust bowl. The same for us as individuals. If we live
tered Therapy, wherein he outlines his basic theory. as we should, we will become increasingly complex, like the forest, and
In 1957, he returned to teach at his alma mater, the University of thereby remain flexible in the face of life’s little—and big—disasters.
Wisconsin. Unfortunately, it was a time of conflict within their psychology People, however, in the course of actualizing their potentials, created
department, and Rogers became very disillusioned with higher education. In society and culture. In and of itself, that’s not a problem. We are a social
1964, he was happy to accept a research position in La Jolla, California. He creature, it is our nature. But when we created culture, it developed a life of
provided therapy, gave speeches, and wrote, until his death in 1987. its own. Rather than remaining close to other aspects of our natures, culture
can become a force in its own right. And even if, in the long run, a culture
Theory that interferes with our actualization dies out, we, in all likelihood, will die
Roger’s theory is a clinical one, based on years of experience dealing with it.
with his clients. He has this in common with Freud, for example. Also in Don’t misunderstand, culture and society are not intrinsically
common with Freud is that his is a particularly rich and mature theory—well evil! It’s more along the lines of the birds of paradise found in Papua-New
thought-out and logically tight, with broad application. Guinea. The colorful and dramatic plumage of the males apparently distract
Not in common with Freud, however, is the fact that Rogers sees predators from females and the young. Natural selection has led these birds
people as basically good or healthy—or at very least, not bad or ill. In other towards more and more elaborate tail feathers, until in some species the male
words, he sees mental health as the normal progression of life, and he sees can no longer get off the ground. At that point, being colorful doesn’t do
mental illness, criminality, and other human problems, as distortions of that the male—or the species—much good! In the same way, our elaborate soci-
natural tendency. Also not in common with Freud is the fact that Rogers’ eties, complex cultures, incredible technologies, for all that they have helped
theory is a relatively simple one. us to survive and prosper, may at the same time serve to harm us, and possi-
Also not in common with Freud is that Rogers’ theory is particularly bly even destroy us.
simple—elegant even! The entire theory is built on a single “force of life” he
calls the actualizing tendency. It can be defined as the built-in motivation Details
present in every life-form to develop its potentials to the fullest extent possi- Rogers tells us that organisms know what is good for them. Evolu-
ble. We’re not just talking about survival: Rogers believes that all creatures tion has provided us with the senses, the tastes, the discriminations we
strive to make the very best of their existence. If they fail to do so, it is not need. When we hunger, we find food—not just any food, but food that tastes
for a lack of desire. good. Food that tastes bad is likely to be spoiled, rotten, and unhealthy. That
Rogers captures with this single great need or motive all the other what good and bad tastes are—our evolutionary lessons made clear! This is
motives that other theorists talk about. He asks us, why do we want air and called organismic valuing.
water and food? Why do we seek safety, love, and a sense of compe- Among the many things that we instinctively value is positive re-
tence? Why, indeed, do we seek to discover new medicines, invent new gard, Rogers umbrella term for things like love, affection, attention, nurtur-
power sources, or create new works of art? Because, he answers, it is in our ance, and so on. It is clear that babies need love and attention. In fact, it may
nature as living things to do the very best we can! well be that they die without it. They certainly fail to thrive—i.e. become all
Keep in mind that, unlike Maslow’s use of the term, Rogers applies they can be.
it to all living creatures. Some of his earliest examples, in fact, include sea- Another thing—perhaps peculiarly human—that we value is posi-
weed and mushrooms! Think about it. Doesn’t it sometimes amaze you the tive self-regard that is, self-esteem, self-worth, a positive self-image. We
way weeds will grow through the sidewalk, or saplings crack boulders, or an- achieve this positive self-regard by experiencing the positive regard others
imals survive desert conditions or the frozen north? show us over our years of growing up. Without this self-regard, we feel small
and helpless, and again we fail to become all that we can be!
Like Maslow, Rogers believes that, if left to their own devices, ani-
mals will tend to eat and drink things that are good for them, and consume
them in balanced proportions. Babies, too, seem to want and like what they
need. Somewhere along the line, however, we have created an environment
for ourselves that is significantly different from the one in which we
evolved. In this new environment are such things as refined sugar, flour,
butter, chocolate, and so on, that our ancestors in Africa never knew. These
things have flavors that appeal to our organismic valuing—yet do not serve
our actualization well. Over millions of years, we may evolve to find broccoli
more satisfying than cheesecake—but by then, it’ll be way too late for you
and me.
Our society also leads us astray with conditions of worth. As we
grow up, our parents, teachers, peers, the media, and others, only give us
what we need when we show we are “worthy,” rather than just because we
need it. We get a drink when we finish our class, we get something sweet
when we finish our vegetables, and most importantly, we get love and affec-
tion if and only if we “behave!” FIGURE 18.1 Person centered theory
Getting positive regard on “on condition” Rogers calls conditional
positive regard. Because we do indeed need positive regard, these condi-
tions are very powerful, and we bend ourselves into a shape determined, not
by our organismic valuing or our actualizing tendency, but by a society that
may or may not truly have our best interests at heart. A “good little boy or
girl” may not be a healthy or happy boy or girl!
Over time, this “conditioning” leads us to have conditional posi-
tive self-regard as well. We begin to like ourselves only if we meet up with
the standards others have applied to us, rather than if we are truly actualizing
our potentials. And since these standards were created without keeping each
individual in mind, more often than not we find ourselves unable to meet
them, and therefore unable to maintain any sense of self-esteem.
Incongruity
The aspect of your being that is founded in the actualizing tendency,
follows organismic valuing, needs and receives positive regard and self-re-
gard, Rogers calls the real self. It is the “you” that, if all goes well, you will
FIGURE 18.2 Shattered shelf
become.
On the other hand, to the extent that our society is out of synch with
the actualizing tendency, and we are forced to live with conditions of worth
This gap between the real self and the ideal self, the “I am” and the
that are out of step with organismic valuing, and receive only conditional
“I should” is called incongruity. The greater the gap, the more incongru-
positive regard and self-regard, we develop instead an ideal self. By ideal,
ity. The more incongruity, the more suffering. In fact, incongruity is essen-
Rogers is suggesting something not real, something that is always out of our
tially what Rogers means by neurosis, being out of synch with your own
reach, the standard we can’t meet.
self. If this all sounds familiar to you, it is precisely the same point made by
Karen Horney!
little consistency to it. We see him as having "psychotic breaks"—episodes

Defenses of bizarre behavior. His words may make little sense. His emotions may be
When you are in a situation where there is an incongruity between inappropriate. He may lose the ability to differentiate self and non-self, and
your image of yourself and your immediate experience of yourself (i.e. be- become disoriented and passive.
tween the ideal and the real self), you are in a threatening situation. For
example, if you have been taught to feel unworthy if you do not get A's on The fully-functioning person
all your tests, and yet you aren't really all that great a student, then situations Rogers, like Maslow, is just as interested in describing the healthy
such as tests are going to bring that incongruity to light—tests will be very person. His term is "fully-functioning," and involves the following quali-
threatening. ties:
When you are expecting a threatening situation, you will feel anxi- 1. Openness to experience. This is the opposite of defensive-
ety. Anxiety is a signal indicating that there is trouble ahead, that you should ness. It is the accurate perception of one's experiences in the world, including
avoid the situation! One way to avoid the situation, of course, is to pick one's feelings. It also means being able to accept reality, again including one's
yourself up and run for the hills. Since that is not usually an option in life, feelings. Feelings are such an important part of openness because they con-
instead of running physically, we run psychologically, by using defenses. vey organismic valuing. If you cannot be open to your feelings, you cannot
Rogers' idea of defenses is very similar to Freud's, except that Rogers be open to actualization. The hard part, of course, is distinguishing real feel-
considers everything from a perceptual point-of-view, so that even memories ings from the anxieties brought on by conditions of worth.
and impulses are thought of as perceptions. Fortunately for us, he has only 2. Existential living. This is living in the here-and-now. Rogers,
two defenses: denial and perceptual distortion. as a part of getting in touch with reality, insists that we not live in the past or
Denial means very much what it does in Freud's system. You block the future—the one is gone, and the other isn't anything at all, yet! The pre-
out the threatening situation altogether. An example might be the person sent is the only reality we have. Mind you, that doesn't mean we shouldn't
who never picks up his test or asks about test results, so he doesn't have to remember and learn from our past. Neither does it mean we shouldn't plan
face poor grades (at least for now!). Denial for Rogers does also include what or even day-dream about the future. Just recognize these things for what
Freud called repression. If keeping a memory or an impulse out of your they are: memories and dreams, which we are experiencing here in the pre-
awareness—refuse to perceive it—you may be able to avoid (again, for now!) sent.
a threatening situation. 3. Organismic trusting. We should allow ourselves to be guided
Perceptual distortion is a matter of reinterpreting the situation so by the organismic valuing process. We should trust ourselves, do what feels
that it appears less threatening. It is very similar to Freud's rationalization. A right, what comes natural. This, as I'm sure you realize, has become a major
student that is threatened by tests and grades may, for example, blame the sticking point in Rogers' theory. People say, sure, do what comes natural—
professor for poor teaching, trick questions, bad attitude, or whatever. The if you are a sadist, hurt people; if you are a masochist, hurt yourself; if the
fact that sometimes professors are poor teachers, write trick questions, and drugs or alcohol make you happy, go for it; if you are depressed, kill your-
have bad attitudes only makes the distortion work better. If it could be true, self.... This certainly doesn't sound like great advice. In fact, many of the
then maybe it really was true! It can also be much more obviously perceptual, excesses of the sixties and seventies were blamed on this attitude. But keep
such as when the person misreads his grade as better than it is. in mind that Rogers meant trust your real self, and you can only know what
Unfortunately for the poor neurotic (and, in fact, most of us), every your real self has to say if you are open to experience and living existen-
time he or she uses a defense, they put a greater distance between the real tially! In other words, organismic trusting assumes you are in contact with
and the ideal. They become ever more incongruous, and find themselves in the actualizing tendency.
more and more threatening situations, develop greater and greater levels of 4. Experiential freedom. Rogers felt that it was irrelevant whether
anxiety, and use more and more defenses.... It becomes a vicious cycle that or not people really had free will. We feel very much as if we do. This is not
the person eventually is unable to get out of, at least on their own. to say, of course, that we are free to do anything at all. We are surrounded
Rogers also has a partial explanation for psychosis. Psychosis oc- by a deterministic universe, so that, flap my arms as much as I like, I will not
curs when a person's defense are overwhelmed, and their sense of self be- fly like Superman. It means that we feel free when choices are available to
comes "shattered" into little disconnected pieces. His behavior likewise has us. Rogers says that the fully-functioning person acknowledges that feeling
of freedom, and takes responsibility for his choices.
5. Creativity. If you feel free and responsible, you will act accord- is communicating to the client that he is indeed listening and cares enough to
ingly, and participate in the world. A fully-functioning person, in touch with understand.
actualization, will feel obliged by their nature to contribute to the actualiza- The therapist is also letting the client know what it is the client is
tion of others, even life itself. This can be through creativity in the arts or communicating. Often, people in distress say things that they don't mean
sciences, through social concern and parental love, or simply by doing one's because it feels good to say them. For example, a woman once came to me
best at one's job. Creativity as Rogers uses it is very close to Erikson's gen- and said "I hate men!" I reflected by saying "You hate all men?" Well, she
erativity. said, maybe not all—she didn't hate her father or her brother or, for that
matter, me. Even with those men she "hated," she discovered that the great
Therapy majority of them she didn't feel as strongly as the word hate implies. In fact,
Carl Rogers is best known for his contributions to therapy. His ther- ultimately, she realized that she didn't trust many men, and that she was afraid
apy has gone through a couple of name changes along the way. He originally of being hurt by them the way she had been by one particular man.
called it non-directive, because he felt that the therapist should not lead the Reflection must be used carefully, however. Many beginning thera-
client, but rather be there for the client while the client directs the progress pists use it without thinking (or feeling), and just repeat every other phrase
of the therapy. As he became more experienced, he realized that, as "non- that comes out of the client's mouth. They sound like parrots with psychol-
directive" as he was, he still influenced his client by his very "non-directive- ogy degrees! Then they think that the client doesn't notice, when in fact it
ness!" In other words, clients look to therapists for guidance, and will find it has become a stereotype of Rogerian therapy the same way as sex and mom
even when the therapist is trying not to guide. have become stereotypes of Freudian therapy. Reflection must come from
So he changed the name to client-centered. He still felt that the the heart—it must be genuine, congruent.
client was the one who should say what is wrong, find ways of improving, Which brings us to Rogers' famous requirements of the thera-
and determine the conclusion of therapy—his therapy was still very "client- pist. Rogers felt that a therapist, in order to be effective, must have three
centered" even while he acknowledged the impact of the therapist. Unfortu- very special qualities:
nately, other therapists felt that this name for his therapy was a bit of a slap
in the face for them. Aren't most therapies "client-centered?" 1. Congruence—genuineness, honesty with the client.
Nowadays, though the terms non-directive and client-centered are
still used, most people just call it Rogerian therapy. One of the phrases that 2. Empathy—the ability to feel what the client feels.
Rogers used to describe his therapy is "supportive, not reconstructive," and
he uses the analogy of learning to ride a bicycle to explain. When you help a 3. Respect—acceptance, unconditional positive regard towards the client.
child to learn to ride a bike, you can't just tell them how. They have to try it
for themselves. And you can't hold them up the whole time either. There He says these qualities are "necessary and sufficient." If the ther-
comes a point when you have to let them go. If they fall, they fall, but if you apist shows these three qualities, the client will improve, even if no other
hang on, they never learn. special "techniques" are used. If the therapist does not show these three
It's the same in therapy. If independence (autonomy, freedom with qualities, the client's improvement will be minimal, no matter how many
responsibility) is what you are helping a client to achieve, then they will not "techniques" are used. Now this is a lot to ask of a therapist! They're just
achieve it if they remain dependent on you, the therapist. They need to try human, and often enough a bit more "human" (let's say unusual) than
their insights on their own, in real life beyond the therapist's office! An au- most. Rogers does give in a little, and he adds that the therapist must show
thoritarian approach to therapy may seem to work marvelously at first, but these things in the therapy relationship. In other words, when the therapist
ultimately it only creates a dependent person. leaves the office, he can be as "human" as anybody.
There is only one technique that Rogerians are known for reflec- I happen to agree with Rogers, even though these qualities are quite
tion. Reflection is the mirroring of emotional communication. If the client demanding. Some of the research does suggest that techniques don't matter
says "I feel like shit!" the therapist may reflect this back to the client by saying nearly as much as the therapist's personality, and that, to some extent at least,
something like "So, life's getting you down, hey?" By doing this, the therapist therapists are "born" not "made."
References CHAPTER 19
Rogers was a great writer, a real pleasure to read. The most complete Ludwig Binswanger (1881-1966)
statement of his theory is in Client-centered Therapy (1951). Two collections of
essays are very interesting: On Becoming a Person (1961) and A Way of Be-
ing (1980). Finally, there's a nice collection of his work in The Carl Rogers Woe's me, woe's me!
Reader, edited by Kirschenbaum and Henderson (1989). The earth bears grain,
But I Am unfruitful,
Am discarded shell,
Cracked, unusable, Worthless husk.
Creator, Creator,
Take me back!
Create me a second time
And create me better!
Ellen West had always been a little odd. She was a picky eater, and
would put up a great resistance if anyone tried to force her to eat something
she didn't care for. It was, in fact, her stubbornness that made her stand out.
She always had to be first in favorite subjects, and couldn't bear to be home
sick. By the time she was a teenager, her motto was "either Caesar or noth-
ing!" But nothing could prepare her or her family for what was to come.
At seventeen, her poetry begins to take a curious turn. One poem,
called "Kiss Me Dead," asks the Sea-King to take her into his cold arms and
kiss her to death. She throws herself into work, and praises work in her writ-
ings as "the blessing of our life." She is fascinated and appalled at the short-
ness and futility of life.
When she is twenty, she takes a trip to Sicily. She eats heartily and
puts on some weight, which her girl-friends tease her about. She responds by
fasting and taking vigorous hikes. She becomes obsessed with the idea of
being fat, hates herself for it, and starts to view death as a release from her
misery.
For a short while, she again buries herself in work and comes out of
her depression. But always she carries with her a feeling of dread. She is ac-
tively involved in social change, but secretly believes it is all for nothing.
When her parents interfere with her engagement to a student, she
goes into a tailspin, and comes home from a resort emaciated and sick. Yet
she feels that this obsession with thinness is actually the key to her well-being!
When her physician prescribes bed-rest and she gains the weight back, she is
despondent, and works hard to get back to her emaciated state.
At twenty-eight, she marries her cousin in the hopes that marriage
will help her get rid of her "fixed idea." After a miscarriage, she struggles with
the dilemma of wanting a child yet not wanting to eat nourishing food.
She begins to use massive quantities of laxatives. By the time she is There are some people who try to ignore the "ethereal world." They
thirty-three, she is using 60 or 70 tablets of vegetable laxative a day, vomiting don't like the anxieties and responsibilities that come with freedom. Some
at night and having diarrhea in the daytime. She goes down to 92 pounds and would rather be told what to do, and so join a cult or a gang or a multinational
looks like a skeleton. corporation. But they are still frightened, because they know this isn't right.
At this point, she goes to first one, then another, psychiatrist. She They are not living their life, and so they can never be happy.
makes two unsuccessful attempts at suicide. She is finally sent to the Kreu- Others look to their bodies for direction. They begin by seeking sim-
zlingen Sanatorium, where she stays comfortably, with her husband, and ple pleasures. But they find that the pleasures grow stale. So they try a new
comes under Ludwig Binswanger's care. On a maintenance diet and seda- drug or a different perversion or a novel thrill. After a while, these don't sat-
tives, she becomes physically healthier, but continues to feel the oppressive isfy, either. They fail, not because the pleasures aren't pleasurable, but because
sense of dread. only half of who they are is there.
Because she continues to try to kill herself, she and her husband are Ellen West tried to ignore the "tomb world." She wanted to fly above
given a serious choice. She can be committed to a "closed ward," where she the material and the mundane into the ethereal, into the good and the right
could be expected to deteriorate, or she can be released. They choose release. and the pure. And, in one small domain, she came close to succeeding. She
At this point, she feels much better, because she knows what she managed to reduce her body to a skeleton. But it's never enough.
needs to do. She eats happily, even eating some chocolates, and is full for the We cannot ignore one part of what we are for the sake of another
first time in thirteen years. She talks with her husband, writes some letters to part. You cannot ignore your body or your soul, or any other aspect of who
friends—and takes a lethal dose of poison. you are. Like it or not, we are both bird and worm. Anything less is not just
The reason this sad story is one of the more famous case-studies is not "human;" it's nothing at all!
not so much the problem—anorexia is, unfortunately, not too uncommon—
or the particular course of events, but the ability that Ellen West had to ex- Biography
press her perspective on her own problem, and the fact that her psychiatrist, Ludwig Binswanger was born April 13, 1881, in Kreuzlingen, Swit-
Ludwig Binswanger, chose to truly listen to her. Listen to another one of her zerland, into a family already well established in a medical and psychiatric
poems: tradition. His grandfather, also named Ludwig, founded Bellevue Sanato-
riaum in Kreuzlingen in 1857. His father, Robert, was the director during
I'd like to die just as the birdling does the time Anna O. was hospitalized there. And his uncle, Otto, discovered an
That splits his throat in highest jubilation; Alzheimer-like disease still called Binswanger's Disease—and was one of
And not to live as the worm on earth lives on, Frederic Nietzsche's doctors!
Becoming old and ugly, dull and dumb! The Ludwig Binswanger of this chapter received his M.D. degree
No, feel for once how forces in me kindle, from the University of Zurich in 1907. He studied under Carl Jung and as-
And wildly be consumed in my own fire. sisted Jung with Freudian Society work. Like Jung, he interned under Eugen
Bleuler, who coined the term schizophrenia.
Ellen, somewhere in her childhood, has split her life into two oppos- Jung introduced Binswanger to Sigmund Freud in 1907. In 1911,
ing camps. On the one hand there is the "tomb world," which includes her Binswanger became the chief medical director at Bellevue Sanatorium. The
physical and social existence. Her body, with its low needs, distracts her from following year, he became ill and received a visit from Freud, who rarely left
her purposes. It gets older every day. Her society is bourgeois and corrupt. Vienna. Their friendship lasted until Freud's death in 1939, despite their fun-
The people around her seem oblivious to all the evil and all the suffering. In damental disagreements over theory! In the early 1920's, Binswanger culti-
the tomb world, everything is degenerate and degenerating, everything is be- vated an interest in Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber,
ing pulled down, into the grave, into a hole. and turned increasingly towards an existential rather than Freudian perspec-
On the other hand there is the "ethereal world," the world of the tive. By the early 1930's, we can honestly say that he was the first truly exis-
soul, pure and clean, a world where what needs to be done is done, where tential therapist. In 1943, he published his major work Grundformen und
acts are effortless because unencumbered by the weight of matter. In the Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins, which remains untranslated into English.
ethereal world, we can be free and fly.
In 1956, Binswanger stepped down from his position at Bellevue af- If you've been studying experimental psychology, this might seem
ter 45 years as its chief medical director. He continued to study and write like another way of talking about objectivity. In experimental psychology, as
until his death in 1966. in science generally, we try to get rid of our nasty subjectivity and see things
as they truly are. But the phenomenologist would suggest that you can't get
Theory7 rid of subjectivity, no matter how hard you try. The very attempt to be scien-
Existential psychology, like Freudian psychoanalysis, is a "school tific means approaching things from a certain viewpoint—the scientific view-
of thought," a tradition of theory, research, and practice which includes the point. You can't get rid of subjectivity because it isn't something separate
work of many men and women. Unlike psychoanalysis, however, existential from objectivity at all.
psychology doesn't have a single founder. Instead, it has its roots in the work Most of modern philosophy, including the philosophy of science, is
of a rather diverse group of philosophers of the second half of the nineteenth dualistic. This means that it separates the world into two parts, the objective
century, especially Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. part, usually conceived of as material, and the subjective part, consciousness.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were as different as night and day, so it's Our experiences are then the interaction of this objective and subjective part.
a bit hard to imagine a single school of thought deriving from both. Kierke- Modern science has added to this by emphasizing the objective, material part,
gaard was interested in restoring a depth of faith to the dry religion of Co- and de-emphasizing the subjective part. Some call consciousness an "epiphe-
penhagen of his day; Nietzsche, on the other hand, is famous for his excla- nomenon," meaning an unimportant by-product of brain chemistry and other
mation "God is dead!" Yet they were more different from the philosophers material processes, something that is, at best, a nuisance. Others, such as B.
that preceded them than they were from each other. Both approached phi- F. Skinner, see consciousness as nothing at all.
losophy from the standpoint of real people, passionately involved in the dif- Phenomenologists suggest that this is a mistake. Everything the sci-
ficulties of real life. Both believed that human existence couldn't be captured entist deals with comes "through" consciousness. Everything we experience
in complex rational systems, religious or philosophical. Both were closer to is colored by "the subjective." But a better way to put it is that there is no
being poets than logicians. experience that does not involve both something which is experienced, and
Since Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, quite a few philosophers and, something which is experiencing. This idea is called intentionality.
more recently, psychologists have tried to clarify, extend, and promote the So phenomenology asks us to let whatever we are studying—
ideas of existentialism. Many, unfortunately, weren't very good poets, so read- whether it be a thing out there, or a feeling or thought inside us, or another
ing them can be quite painful. But keep in mind that they were swimming person, or human existence itself—to reveal itself to us. We can do this by
against a stream of centuries of highly systematic, rational, logical philosophy, being open to the experience, by not denying what is there because it doesn't
and a psychology reduced to physiology and behavior. What they have to say fit our philosophy or psychological theory or religious beliefs. It especially
often seems strange, even strained, exactly because we have learned so well asks us to bracket or put aside the question of the objective reality of an
to trust traditional logic and science. experience—what it "really" is. Although what we study is always likely to be
more than what we experience, it is not something other than what we expe-
Phenomenology rience.
Phenomenology is the careful and complete study of phenomena, Phenomenology is also an interpersonal undertaking. While experi-
and is basically the invention of the philosopher Edmund Husserl. Phenom- mental psychology may use a group of subjects so that the subjectivity can
ena are the contents of consciousness, the things, qualities, relationships, be removed from their experiences statistically, phenomenology may use a
events, thoughts, images, memories, fantasies, feelings, acts, and so on, which group of co-researchers so that their perspectives can be added together to
we experience. Phenomenology is an attempt to allow these experiences to form a fuller, richer understanding of the phenomenon. This is called inter-
speak to us, to reveal themselves to us, so we might describe them in as un- subjectivity.
biased a fashion as possible. This method, and adaptations of this method, have been used to
study different emotions, psychopathologies, things like separation, loneli-
ness, and solidarity, the artistic experience, the religious experience, silence
and speech, perception and behavior, and so on. It has also been used to
7
For more information on this method, visit http://web- study human existence itself, most notably by Martin Heidegger and Jean-
space.ship.edu/cgboer/qualmeth.html Paul Sartre. And that is the basis for existentialism proper.
there," but it carries quite a few more subtle connotations. The ordinary Ger-
Existence man use of the word suggests continuing existence, persistence, survival.
Kierkegaard once compared us with God and, of course, found us Also, the emphasis is on the "da" or "there," and so has the sense of being in
lacking. God is traditionally understood as being omniscient, omnipotent, the middle of it all, in the thick of things. The "da" also carries the sense of
and eternal. We, on the other hand, are abysmally ignorant, pitifully power- being there as opposed to being here, as if we were not quite where we be-
less, and all too mortal. Our limitations are clear. longed, and were straining towards somewhere else.
We often wish we could be more like God, or at least like angels. Although no precise translation exists, many people use the
Angels, supposedly, are not as ignorant or powerless as we are, and they are word existence, or human existence. Existence derives from the Latin ex-
immortal! But, as Mark Twain pointed out, if we were angels, we wouldn't sistare, meaning to come, step, or stand out or forth. As you can see, that
recognize ourselves. Angels do nothing but God's bidding. They can't help carries some of the same subtle meanings as Dasein, being different, moving
it. They simply live out God's plan for them, and for eternity no less! beyond oneself, becoming.
Tables are more like angels than we are. Tables have a nature, a pur- There are still other names for Dasein. Heidegger referred to Dasein
pose, an essence, that we have given them. They are there to serve us in a as an openness (Lichtung), such as a meadow, an openness in the forest,
certain way, like angels are there to serve God. since it is Dasein that permits the world to reveal itself. Sartre also acknowl-
Woodchucks are like this, too. They also have a plan, a blueprint, if edges this sense of openness, by referring to human existence as nothing-
you like, in their genetics. They do what their instincts instruct them to do. ness. Like a hole can only exist in contrast to something solid, Dasein stands
They seldom require career counseling. out in sharp contrast to the "thickness" of everything else.
It may be dull to be an angel, or a table, or a woodchuck, but it sure The main quality of Dasein, according to Heidegger, is care (Sorge).
is easy! You could say that their essences come before their existences. What "Being there" is never a matter of indifference. We are involved in the world,
they are comes before what they do. in others, and in ourselves. We are committed to or engaged in life. We can
But, say existentialists, this is not true for us. "Our existences pre- do many things, but not to care is not one of them.
cede our essences," as Sartre put it. I don't know what I'm here for until
I've lived my life. My life, who I am, is not determined by God, by the laws Thrownness
of Nature, by my genetics, by my society, not even by my family. They each Thrownness refers to the fact that we are "thrown" into a universe
may provide the raw material for who I am, but it is how I choose to live that that is not of our choosing. When we begin choosing our lives, we begin with
makes me what I am. I create myself. many choices made for us—genetics, environment, society, family..., and all
If the scientist is the model of humanity for George Kelly and cog- those "raw materials." A better way of understanding this is that "I," con-
nitive psychologists, the artist is the model for existentialists. scious and free, am not really separate from "that," physical and determined.
You could say that the essence of humanity—the thing that we all Think about your body. On the one hand, you are your body, and
share, and makes us distinct from anything else in the world—is our lack of your body is you. When you want to, you walk, or talk, or look, or listen. You
essence, our "no-thing-ness," our freedom. We cannot be captured by a phil- perceive and think and feel and act "with" it, "through" it. It is difficult to
osophical system or a psychological theory; we cannot be reduced to physical conceive of life without it. But in other ways it is like any other "thing." It
and chemical processes; our futures cannot be predicted with social statistics. can resist you. It can fail you. You may lose a limb. You may become ill and
Some of us are men, some are women; some are black, some are white; some loose some function or another. Yet you remain you. Sometimes the world
come from one culture, some from another; some have one imperfection, comes into you, such as with an artificial heart or a hip replacement. Some-
some another. The "raw materials" differ dramatically, but we all share the times you extend yourself into the world, with a cane, or a telescope, or a
task of making ourselves. telephone. We are caught up in the world and the world in us, and there is
no telling where one ends and the other begins.
Dasein Thrownness also refers to the fact that we are born into an already-
Binswanger has adopted the terms and concepts introduced by the established social world. Our society precedes us, our culture precedes us,
philosopher Martin Heidegger. The first and foremost term is Dasein, which our language precedes us, our mothers and fathers precede us. In our help-
many existentialists use to refer to human existence. Literally, it means "being lessness, as infants and children, we must depend on them.
Even as adults, we depend on others. Sometimes, we "fall victim" to environment, or your genetics, or your parents, or some psychiatric disease,
"the Other," that faceless generalization we often refer to as "people" (as in or booze or drugs, or peer-pressure, or the devil.
"people are watching") or "we" (as in "we don't do those things") or "they" Heidegger used the German word Schuld to refer to our responsi-
(as in "they wouldn't like that"). We forfeit our freedom and allow ourselves bility to ourselves. Schuld means both guilt and debt. If we do not do what
to be enslaved by our society. This is called Fallenness. we know we should, we feel guilt. We have incurred a debt to Dasein. And
Binswanger, following the philosopher Martin Buber, adds a more since Dasein is always in the process of development, never quite finished,
positive note to the idea of fallenness. It also allows for "we-ness," for "I- we are always dealing with incompleteness, in the same sense that we are
thou," and for love. If Dasein is an "opening," we can be open to each other. always confronted by uncertainty.
We are not as "locked away" in ourselves as some existentialists seem to sug- Another word that fits in well here is regret. Guilt is certainly a mat-
gest. Binswanger sees this potential as an intrinsic part of Dasein, and even ter of regret over the things we have done—or left undone—that have
gives it a special place by referring to it as being-beyond-the-world. harmed others. But we also feel regret over past decisions that don't harm
anyone but ourselves. When we have chosen the easy way out, or chosen not
Anxiety to commit ourselves or not to get involved, or have chosen to do less rather
Existentialists are famous for pointing out that life is hard. The phys- than more, when we have lost our nerve, we feel regret.
ical world can give us pain as well as pleasure; the social world can lead to
heartbreak and loneliness as well as love and affection; and the personal Death
world, most especially, contains anxiety and guilt and the awareness of our Existentialists are sometimes criticized for being preoccupied with
own mortality. And these hard things are not merely possibilities in life. They death. They do, in fact, discuss it in greater depth than do most theorists, but
are inevitable. it is hardly a morbid interest. It is in facing death that we are most likely to
Being free means making choices. In fact, we are "condemned to come to an understanding of life. Sartre says, in his play The Flies, "life be-
choose," as Sartre put it, and the only thing we can't choose is not to choose. gins on the far side of despair."
We have to choose even though, as Kierkegaard pointed out, we are in fact Heidegger called us being-towards-death. We are, it appears, the
ignorant, powerless, and mortal, that is, you never have enough information only creature that is aware of its own end. When we become aware of our
to make a good decision, you often can't make it happen when you do, and mortality, we may at first shrink from it and try to forget its reality by getting
you may die before you get it done anyway! "busy" in the day-to-day activities of the social world. But this will not do.
Kierkegaard, Heidegger and other existentialists use the Avoiding death is avoiding life.
word Angst, anxiety, to refer to the apprehension we feel as we move into I once found myself holding one of my infant daughters while at the
the uncertainty of our future. It is sometimes translated as dread to empha- same time thinking about death—a strange thing perhaps, but thinking about
size the anguish and despair that may come with the need to choose, but these things is my life's work! When I glanced down at her sleeping face, I
anxiety better conveys the generality of it. Anxiety, unlike fear or dread, thought about how soon she and I would die. At that moment, I was over-
doesn't have as well-defined an object. It is more a state of being than any- whelmed by my love for her. It is the very fact that she and I have only a very
thing more specific. short time together that makes love more than just a familial arrangement.
Existentialists often talk about nothingness in association with anx- When you fully realize that you are going to die, every moment you waste is
iety. Because we are not, like tables, angels, and woodchucks, nicely deter- wasted forever.
mined, it sometimes feels as if we are about to slip off into nothingness. We Here's what Mozart said about death in a letter to his father:
would like to be rocks—solid, simple, eternal—but we find we are whirl-
winds. Anxiety is not some temporary inconvenience to be removed by your I need not tell you with what anxiety I await better news from you. Since
friendly therapist; it is a part of being human. death (take my words literally) is the true goal of our lives, I have made
myself so well acquainted with this true and best friend of man that the idea
of it no longer has terrors for me, but rather much that is tranquil and com-
Guilt forting. And I thank God that he has granted me the good fortune to obtain
So, existentialism is not an "easy" philosophy. It provides a lot fewer the opportunity of regarding death as the key to our true happiness. I never
ways of avoiding responsibility for one's acts. You can't blame it all on your lie down in bed without considering that, young as I am, perhaps on the
morrow I may be no more. Yet not one of those who know me could say difficulties more objective. An existential psychologist would say that, alt-
that I am morose or melancholy, and for this I thank my Creator daily and hough you may get rid of the symptoms with any number of techniques,
wish heartily that the same happiness may be given to my fellowmen. ultimately you need to face the reality of Dasein.
Binswanger sees inauthenticity as a matter of choosing a sin-
Authenticity gle theme for one's life, or a small number of themes, and allowing the rest
Unlike most other personality theorists, the existentialists make no of Dasein to be dominated by that one theme. A person Freudians might call
effort to avoid value judgments. Phenomenologically, good and bad are as "anal retentive," for example, might be one dominated by a theme of hoard-
"real" as solid waste and burnt toast. So they are quite clear that there are ing, or holding in, or tightness, or perfection. Someone who doesn't seem in
better and worse ways of living life. The better ways they call authentic. control of his or her life may be dominated by a theme of luck, or fate, or
To live authentically means to be aware of yourself, of your circum- waiting. A person who anxiously over-eats may be dominated by a theme of
stances (thrownness), of your social world (fallenness), of your duty to create emptiness, hollowness, and the need to fill oneself. A "workaholic" may be
yourself (understanding), of the inevitability of anxiety, of guilt and of death. dominated by a theme involving wasted time or being overtaken.
It means further to accept these things in an act of self-affirmation. It means
involvement, compassion, and commitment. Existential analysis
Notice that the ideal of mental health is not pleasure or even happi- Diagnosis
ness, although existentialists have nothing particularly against those things. Binswanger and other existential psychologists make a point of dis-
The goal is to do your best. covering their client's world view (or world design). This is not a matter of
discussing a person's religion or philosophy of life, necessarily. Binswanger
Inauthenticity wants to know about your Lebenswelt, Husserl's word for "lived world." He
Someone who is living inauthentically is no longer "becoming" but is looking for a concrete, everyday world view.
only "being." They have traded openness for closedness, the dynamic for the He will, for example, try to understand how you see your Umwelt or
static, possibilities for actualities. If authenticity is movement, they have physical world—things, buildings, trees, furniture, gravity....
stopped. He will want to understand your Mitwelt, or social world, as well. Here we
Existentialists avoid classifications. Each person is unique. First, we are talking about your relations to individuals, to community, to culture, and
begin with different "raw materials"—genetics, cultures, families, and so on. so on.
Then we take those beginnings and create ourselves through the choices we And he will want to understand your Eigenwelt or personal world.
make. And so there are as many ways to be authentic as there are people, and This includes both mind and body, whatever you feel is most central to your
just as many ways to be inauthentic. sense of who you are.
Conventionality is the most common style of inauthenticity. It in- Binswanger is equally interested in your relationship to time. He
volves ignoring one's freedom and living a life of conformity and shallow would like to know how you view your past, present, and future. Do you live
materialism. If you can manage to be like everyone else, you need not make in the past, forever trying to recapture those golden days? Or do you live in
choices. You can turn to authority, or to your peers, or to the media for the future, always preparing or hoping for a better life? Do you see your life
"guidance." You can become too "busy" to notice the moral decisions you as a long, complex adventure? Or a brief flash—here today, gone tomorrow?
need to make. You are fallen and living in what Sartre called bad faith. Also of interest is the way you treat space. Is your world open, or is
Another style of inauthenticity is existential neurosis. In some it closed? Is it cozy or is it vast? Is it warm or cold? Do you see life as move-
ways, the neurotic is a little more aware than the conventional person. They ment, as a matter of journeys and adventures, or do you see it from an im-
know they are faced with choices, and it scares the daylights out of them. It movable center? None of these things mean anything all by themselves, of
scares them so much, in fact, that they are overwhelmed. They freeze or course, but combined with everything else, learned in the intimate relation-
panic, or change their existential anxiety and guilt into neurotic anxiety and ship of therapy, they can mean a great deal.
guilt. Find something "small"—a phobic object, an obsession or compul- Binswanger also talks about different modes: some people live in
sion, a target for anger, a disease or the pretense of a disease—to make life's a singular mode, alone and self-sufficient. Others live in a dual mode, as a
"you and me" rather than an "I." Some live in a plural mode, thinking of
themselves in terms of their membership in something larger than them- we have come a long way towards a rigorous method for describing life as it
selves—a nation, a religion, an organization, a culture. Still others live in is lived. Theory, statistics, reductionism, and experiments are put aside, at
an anonymous mode, quiet, secretive, in the background of life. And most least for the moment. First, say the existentialists, we need to know what we
of us live in all these modes from time to time and place to place. are talking about!
As you can see, the language of existential analysis is metaphor. Life This makes existential psychology naturally applied. It moved effort-
is much too big, much too rich, to be captured by anything so crude as prose. lessly into the realms of diagnosis and psychotherapy; it is showing its face in
My life is certainly too rich to be captured in words that you thought up the realm of education; and it may well someday move into industrial and
before you even met me! Existential therapists allow their clients to reveal organizational psychology.
themselves, disclose themselves, in their own words, in their own time. It has had much less success gaining respect as a research method.
Existentialists may be interested in your dreams, for example. But There are two psychology journals that showcase phenomenological re-
instead of telling you what your dreams mean, they will ask you. They might search, and a few journals in education and nursing are open to it. But most
suggest that you let your dreams inspire you, let them guide you, let them of psychology rejects it, and rather strongly. It is simply considered unscien-
suggest their own meanings. They may mean nothing, and they may mean tific. Since it involves neither hypotheses nor statistics, much less independ-
everything. ent or independent variables, or control groups or random sampling, it isn't
even acceptable, at most universities, for masters or doctoral theses.
Therapy
The essence of existential therapy is the relationship between the Difficulties
therapist and the client, called an encounter. An encounter is the genuine The difficulties existentialism has had gaining respect is not entirely
presence of one Dasein to another, an "opening up" of one to the other. the fault of traditional psychology, however. It sometimes seems that exis-
Unlike more "formal" therapies, such as Freud's, or more "technical" ones, tentialists’ glory in being unacceptable to, or at least misunderstood by, main-
such as the behaviorists', an existential therapist is likely to be involved with stream English-speaking psychologists.
you. Transference and countertransference are seen as natural parts of the While it is true that new ideas are hard to express and require new
encounter, not to be abused, of course, but not to be avoided either. words and new ways of using old ones, many of existential psychology's terms
On the other hand, humanists might find the existential therapist are unnecessarily obscure. Many are drawn from philosophical traditions, fa-
more formal than they, and more directive. The existential therapist is more miliar, perhaps, to philosophers, but not to many psychologists. Others are
likely to be "natural" with you—often quietly listening, but sometimes ex- in German or French, or are poorly translated. Some seem just plain whim-
pressing their own thoughts, experiences, even emotions. "Being natural" sical, or pretentious.
also means acknowledging the differences between you. The therapist has the What is needed is a truly talented English-speaking existentialist
training and the experience, after all, and it is the client (presumably) who has writer. After all, the language of the ordinary experiences of ordinary people
the problems! Existential therapy is seen as a dialog, and not a monologue by should be ordinary language! Rollo May and Viktor Frankl have made some
the therapist, nor a monologue by the client. significant efforts in that direction, but there is much more to be done.
But existential analysis has as its goal the autonomy of the client. Existentialists also tend to be rather picky, even fighting among
Like teaching children to ride a bicycle, you may have to hold them up for a themselves about whether one or the other has the "true" understanding of
while, but eventually you have to let them go. They may well fall down, but Husserl or Heidegger or whomever. They can gain a great deal, especially in
if you never let them go, they will never learn to ride! If the "essence" of making their approach acceptable to the mainstream of psychology, by pay-
Dasein—being human—is freedom and responsibility for one's own life, ing attention to Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers and other theorists,
then you can't help people become more fully human unless you are prepared researchers, and practitioners who may not be exactly existentialists, but of-
to release them. ten express themselves a lot better.
The biggest danger I feel existentialists create for themselves is in
Discussion their tendency to place themselves in opposition to the mainstream. It is true
The most positive thing about existential psychology is its insistence that psychology has two broad "cultures," the hard-core experimentalists on
on sticking as closely as possible to "the lived world." In phenomenology,
the one hand, and the more humanistically inclined clinicians and other ap- CHAPTER 20
plied psychologists on the other. By denigrating the experimental culture, Medard Boss (1903-1990)
they antagonize half of psychology!
If I seem a bit hard on the existential psychologists, it is in part be-
cause I am one. It's a little like patriotism. The more you love your country,
the more you are likely to worry over its faults. Nevertheless, I feel that exis-
tential psychology has a great deal to offer. In particular, it offers a solid phil-
osophical base where Adlerians and Rogerians and Neo-Freudian and others
besides existentialists might gather to further develop and refine their under-
standing of human life.
Readings
Binswanger's work was first presented to the English-speaking world
as three contributions to Existence, a volume of papers edited by May, Angel,
and Ellenberger. Additional papers have been collected in Being-in-the-World.
Much of his work remains untranslated, especially Grundformen und Erkenntnis It is hard to imagine better preparation for a career in psychother-
menschlichen Daseins (The Foundations and Cognition of Human Existence)8. apy. Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, on October 4, 1903, Medard Boss grew
If you wish to find out more about existential psychology and phi- up in Zurich during a time when Zurich was a center for psychological activ-
losophy in general, you might want to read the textbook Existential-Phenome- ity. He received his medical degree from the University there in 1928, taking
nological Alternatives for Psychology, edited by Valle and King, or the classic in- time along the way to study in Paris and Vienna and to be analyzed by Sig-
troduction, Irrational Man, by William Barrett. mund Freud himself.
If you are brave indeed, you might want to try some of the original After four years at the Burgholzli hospital, as an assistant to Eugen
greats in phenomenology and existentialism, such as Edmund Husserl or Bleuler, he went on to study in Berlin and London, where his teachers in-
Martin Heidegger. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are fascinating, as is Jean-Paul cluded several people in Freud's inner circle as well as Karen Horney and
Sartre, who offers a somewhat different version of existentialism from Kurt Goldstein. Beginning in 1938, he became associated with Carl Jung,
Heidegger's. who revealed to Boss the possibility of a psychoanalysis not bound up in
If you need something a little more accessible, try Keen's A Primer in Freudian interpretations.
Phenomenological Psychology, Steiner's classic Martin Heidegger, McCall's Phenome- Over time, Boss read the works of Ludwig Binswanger and Martin
nological Psychology (which has a very helpful section on Heidegger's terminol- Heidegger. But it was his meeting, in 1946, and eventual friendship with
ogy), and Stewart and Mickunas' Exploring Phenomenology. For a history of ex- Heidegger that turned him forever to existential psychology. His impact on
istential psychology and psychiatry, read Spiegelberg's classic, Phenomenology in existential therapy has been so great that he is often mentioned together with
Psychology and Psychiatry. This last book will also lead you to other existential Ludwig Binswanger as its cofounder.
and phenomenological psychologists.
Theory
While Binswanger and Boss agree on the basics of existential psy-
chology, Boss sticks somewhat closer to Heidegger's original ideas. Boss
doesn't like, for example, Binswanger's ideas about "world-design." He feels
that the idea of people coming to the world with preformed expectations
distracts from the more basic existential point that the world is not something
we interpret, but something that reveals itself to the "light" of Dasein.
The analogy of light plays an important part in Boss's theory. The
word phenomenon, for example, literally means "to shine forth," "to come
8
To learn more, visit http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/binstoc.html
out of the darkness." And so Boss views Dasein as a lumination which brings Dreams
things "to light." Boss has studied dreams more than any other existentialist, and con-
This idea has a profound effect on how Boss understands things like siders them important in therapy. But instead of interpreting them as Freud-
psychopathology, defenses, therapeutic style and the interpretation of ians or Jungians do, he allows them to reveal their own meanings. Everything
dreams. Defensiveness, for example, is a matter of not illuminating some is not hiding behind a symbol, hiding from the always-present censor. In-
aspect of life, and psychopathology is analogous to choosing to live in the stead, dreams show us how we are illuminating our lives. If we feel trapped,
darkness. Therapy, on the other hand, involves reversing this constriction of our feet will be bound by cement; if we feel free, we will fly; if we feel guilty,
our basic openness, and we could call it "enlightenment!" we will dream about sin; if we feel anxious, we will be chased by frightening
One of his most important suggestions for the client is to "let things things.
go" (Gelassenheit). Most of us try too hard to keep a tight rein on our lives, For example, Boss discusses a man who was having sexual difficul-
to keep control. But life is too much for us. We need to trust it a little, trust ties and feeling quite depressed. During the first months of his therapy, he
to "fate" a bit, jump into life instead of forever testing the waters. Instead of dreamed only of machinery—not unusual for an engineer, but not terribly
keeping the light of Dasein tightly focused, we should let it shine more freely. exciting, either. As his therapy progressed, his dreams changed. He began
to dream of plants. Then he dreamt of insects—dangerous, perhaps, and
Existentialists threatening, but at least alive. Then he dreamt of frogs and snakes, then of
While Binswanger likes to use Heidegger's Umwelt, Mitwelt, and mice and rabbits. For some time, pigs were featured.
Eigenwelt, Boss prefers Heidegger's existentials, the things in life that we all Two years into therapy, and finally he began to dream of
have to deal with. He is interested, for example, in how people see space and women! This man was sad and lonely because he had retreated to a world
time—not the physical space and time of measured distances and clocks and made up only of machinery, and it took a long time before he could dream
calendars, but human space and time, personal space and time. Someone of anything quite as warm-blooded as a woman! The point to notice is that
from long ago, who now lives far away, may be closer to you than the person the pigs don't represent anything—not hidden wishes, or archetypes, or in-
next to you right now. feriorities—in the therapist's pet theory. They belong to the engineer; they
He is also interested in how we relate to our bodies. My openness are what his evolving illumination brought to light at that time in his life!
to the world will be expressed by my bodily openness and my extension of You can find Boss's theory spelled out in Existential Foundations of
my body out into the world, what he calls my "bodying forth." Medicine and Psychology. Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis contrasts Freudian and
Our relationship with others is as important to Boss as it is to existential therapy. His work on dream analysis can be found in The Analysis
Binswanger. We are not individuals locked up inside our bodies; we live ra- of Dreams and I Dreamt Last Night....
ther in a shared world, and we illuminate each other. Human existence is
shared existence.
A particularly "Bossian" concern is mood or attunement. Boss
suggested that, while we are always illuminating the world, we sometimes il-
luminate one thing more than another, or illuminate with different hues. It's
no different from how we try to set a certain mood by lighting a room one
way rather than another.
For example, if you are in an angry mood, you are "attuned" to angry
things, angry thoughts, angry actions; you "see red." If you are in a cheerful
mood, you are "attuned" to cheerful things, and the world seems "sunny." If
you are hungry, all you see is food; if you are anxious, all you see are threats.
CHAPTER 21
Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) That young doctor was, of course, Viktor Emil Frankl.
Biography
Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna on March 26, 1905. His father,
Gabriel Frankl, was a strong, disciplined man from Moravia who worked his
way from government stenographer to become the director of the Ministry
of Social Service. His mother, Elsa Frankl (née Lion), was more tender-
hearted, a pious woman from Prague.
The middle of three children, young Viktor was precocious and in-
tensely curious. Even at the tender age of four, he already knew that he
wanted to be a physician.
In high school, Viktor was actively involved in the local Young So-
cialist Workers organization. His interest in people turned him towards the
In September of 1942, a young doctor, his new bride, his mother, study of psychology. He finished his high school years with a psychoanalytic
father, and brother, were arrested in Vienna and taken to a concentration essay on the philosopher Schopenhauer, a publication in the International
camp in Bohemia. It was events that occurred there and at three other camps Journal of Psychoanalysis, and the beginning of a rather intense correspond-
that led the young doctor—prisoner 119,104—to realize the significance of ence with the great Sigmund Freud.
meaningfulness in life. In 1925, a year after graduating and on his way towards his medical
One of the earliest events to drive home the point was the loss of a degree, he met Freud in person. Alfred Adler’s theory was more to Frankl’s
manuscript—his life's work—during his transfer to Auschwitz. He had sewn liking, though, and that year he published an article—“Psychotherapy and
it into the lining of his coat, but was forced to discard it at the last minute. He Weltanschauung”—in Adler’s International Journal of Individual Psychol-
spent many later nights trying to reconstruct it, first in his mind, then on slips ogy. The next year, Frankl used the term Logotherapy in a public lecture for
of stolen paper. the first time, and began to refine his particular brand of Viennese psychol-
Another significant moment came while on a predawn march to ogy.
work on laying railroad tracks. Another prisoner wondered out loud about In 1928 and 1929, Frankl organized cost-free counseling centers for
the fate of their wives. The young doctor began to think about his own wife, teenagers in Vienna and six other cities, and began working at the Psychiatric
and realized that she was present within him: University Clinic. In 1930, he earned his doctorate in medicine, and was pro-
The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how moted to assistant. In the next few years, Frankl continued his training in
a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a neurology.
brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved (1963, p. 59). In 1933, He was put in charge of the ward for suicidal women at the
And throughout his ordeal, he could not help but see that, among Psychiatric Hospital, with many thousands of patients each year. In 1937,
those given a chance for survival, it was those who held on to a vision of the Frankl opened his own practice in neurology and psychiatry. One year later,
future—whether it be a significant task before them, or a return to their loved Hitler’s troops invade Austria. He obtained a visa to the U.S. in 1939, but,
ones—that were most likely to survive their suffering. concerned for his elderly parents, he let it expire.
It would be, in fact, the meaningfulness that could be found in suf- In 1940, Frankl was made head of the neurological department of
fering itself that would most impress him: Rothschild Hospital, the only hospital for Jews in Vienna during the Nazi
regime. He made many false diagnoses of his patients in order to circumvent
(T)here is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation the new policies requiring euthanasia of the mentally ill. It was during this
and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral be- period that he began his manuscript, Ärztliche Seelsorge—in English, The Doctor
havior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, and existence restricted and the Soul.
by external forces.... Without suffering and death human life cannot be
complete. (1963, p. 106)
Frankl married in 1942, but in September of that year, he, his wife, he published his final work, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, based on his
his father, mother, and brother, were all arrested and brought to the concen- doctoral dissertation. He has 32 books to his name, and they have been
tration camp at Theresienstadt in Bohemia. His father died there of starva- translated into 27 languages.
tion. His mother and brother were killed at Auschwitz in 1944. His wife Viktor Emil Frankl died on September 2, 1997, of heart failure. He
died at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Only his sister Stella would survive, having is survived by his wife Eleonore, his daughter Dr. Gabriele Frankl-Vesely, his
managed to immigrate to Australia a short while earlier. grandchildren Katharina and Alexander, and his great-granddaughter Anna
When he was moved to Auschwitz, his manuscript for The Doctor and Viktoria. His impact on psychology and psychiatry will be felt for centuries
the Soul was discovered and destroyed. His desire to complete his work, and to come.
his hopes that he would be reunited with his wife and family someday, kept
him from losing hope in what seemed otherwise a hopeless situation. Theory
After two more moves to two more camps, Frankl finally succumbed Viktor Frankl’s theory and therapy grew out of his experiences in
to typhoid fever. He kept himself awake by reconstructing his manuscript Nazi death camps. Watching who did and did not survive (given an oppor-
on stolen slips of paper. In April of 1945, Frankl’s camp was liberated, and tunity to survive!), he concluded that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
he returned to Vienna, only to discover the deaths of his loved ones. Alt- had it right. “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how”
hough nearly broken and very much alone in the world, he was given the (quoted in Nietzshe, 1963, p. 121). He saw that people who had hopes of
position of director of the Vienna Neurological Policlinic—a position he being reunited with loved ones, or who had projects they felt a need to com-
would hold for 25 years. plete, or who had great faith, tended to have better chances than those who
He finally reconstructed his book and published it, earning him a had lost all hope.
teaching appointment at the University of Vienna Medical School. In only 9 He called his form of therapy Logotherapy, from the Greek
days, he dictated another book, which would become Man’s Search for Mean- word logos, which can mean study, word, spirit, God, or meaning. It is this
ing. Before he died, it sold over nine million copies, five million in the U.S. last sense Frankl focusses on, although the other meanings are never far
alone! off. Comparing himself with those other great Viennese psychiatrists, Freud
During this period, he met a young operating room assistant named and Adler, he suggested that Freud essentially postulated a will to pleasure as
Eleonore Schwindt—“Elly”—and fell in love at first sight. Although half his the root of all human motivation, and Adler a will to power. Logotherapy
age, he credited her with giving him the courage to reestablish himself in the postulates a will to meaning.
world. They married in 1947, and had a daughter, Gabriele, in December of Frankl also uses the Greek word noös, which means mind or
that year. spirit. In traditional psychology, he suggests, we focus on “psychodynam-
In 1948, Frankl received his Ph.D. in philosophy. His dissertation— ics,” which sees people as trying to reduce psychological tension. Instead, or
The Unconscious God—was an examination of the relation of psychology and in addition, Frankl says we should pay attention to noödynamics, wherein
religion. That same year, he was made associate professor of neurology and tension is necessary for health, at least when it comes to meaning. People
psychiatry at the University of Vienna. In 1950, he founded and became desire the tension involved in striving for some worthy goal!
president of the Austrian Medical Society for Psychotherapy. Perhaps the original issue with which Frankl was concerned, early in
After being promoted to full professor, he became increasingly well his career as a physician, was the danger of reductionism. Then, as now,
known in circles outside Vienna. His guest professorships, honorary doctor- medical schools emphasized the idea that all things come down to physiol-
ates, and awards are too many to list here but include the Oskar Pfister Prize ogy. Psychology, too, promoted reductionism. Mind could be best under-
by the American Society of Psychiatry and a nomination for the Nobel Peace stood as a "side effect" of brain mechanisms. The spiritual aspect of human
Prize. life was (and is) hardly considered worth mentioning at all! Frankl believed
Frankl continued to teach at the University of Vienna until 1990, that entire generations of doctors and scientists were being indoctrinated into
when he was 85. It should be noted that he was a vigorous mountain climber what could only lead to a certain cynicism in the study of human existence.
and earned his airplane pilot’s license when he was 67! He set it as his goal to balance the physiological view with a spiritual
In 1992, friends and family members established the Viktor Frankl perspective, and saw this as a significant step towards developing more ef-
Institute in his honor. In 1995, he finished his autobiography, and in 1997, fective treatment. As he said, "...the de-neuroticization of humanity requires
a re-humanization of psychotherapy" (1975, p. 104).
Conscience The existential vacuum

One of Viktor Frankl's major concepts is conscience. He sees con- This striving after meaning can, of course, be frustrated, and this
science as a sort of unconscious spirituality, different from the instinctual frustration can lead to noögenic neurosis, what others might call spiritual
unconscious that Freud and others emphasize. The conscience is not just or existential neurosis. People today seem more than ever to be experiencing
one factor among many; it is the core of our being and the source of our their lives as empty, meaningless, purposeless, aimless, adrift, and so on, and
personal integrity. seem to be responding to these experiences with unusual behaviors that hurt
He puts it in no uncertain terms, "... being human is being responsi- themselves, others, society, or all three.
ble—existentially responsible, responsible for one's own existence" (1975, p. One of his favorite metaphors is the existential vacuum. If mean-
26). Conscience is intuitive and highly personalized. It refers to a real person ing is what we desire, then meaninglessness is a hole, an emptiness, in our
in a real situation, and cannot be reduced to simple "universal laws." It must lives. Whenever you have a vacuum, of course, things rush in to fill it. Frankl
be lived. suggests that one of the most conspicuous signs of existential vacuum in our
He refers to conscience as a "pre-reflective ontological self-under- society is boredom. He points out how often people, when they finally have
standing" or "the wisdom of the heart," "more sensitive than reason can ever the time to do what they want, don’t seem to want to do anything! People
be sensible" (1975, p. 39). It is conscience that "sniffs out" that which gives go into a tailspin when they retire; students get drunk every weekend; we
our lives meaning. submerge ourselves in passive entertainment every evening. The "Sunday
Like Erich Fromm, Frankl notes that animals have instincts to guide neurosis," he calls it.
them. In traditional societies, we have done well-enough replacing instincts So we attempt to fill our existential vacuums with “stuff” that, be-
with our social traditions. Today, we hardly even have that. Most attempt cause it provides some satisfaction, we hope will provide ultimate satisfaction
to find guidance in conformity and conventionality, but it becomes increas- as well. We might try to fill our lives with pleasure, eating beyond all neces-
ingly difficult to avoid facing the fact that we now have the freedom and the sity, having promiscuous sex, living “the high life;” or we might seek power,
responsibility to make our own choices in life, to find our own meaning. especially the power represented by monetary success; or we might fill our
But "...meaning must be found and cannot be given" (1975, p. lives with “busy-ness,” conformity, conventionality; or we might fill the vac-
112). Meaning is like laughter, he says: you cannot force someone to laugh, uum with anger and hatred and spend our days attempting to destroy what
you must tell him a joke! The same applies to faith, hope, and love—they we think is hurting us. We might also fill our lives with certain neurotic “vi-
cannot be brought forth by an act of will, our own or someone else's. cious cycles,” such as obsession with germs and cleanliness, or fear-driven
"(M) eaning is something to discover rather than to invent" (1975, obsession with a phobic object. The defining quality of these vicious cycles
p. 113). It has a reality of its own, independent of our minds. Like an em- is that, whatever we do, it is never enough.
bedded figure or a "magic eye" picture, it is there to be seen, not something These neurotic vicious cycles are founded on something Frankl re-
created by our imagination. We may not always be able to bring the image— fers to as anticipatory anxiety. Someone may be so afraid of getting certain
or the meaning—forth, but it is there. It is, he says, "...primarily a perceptual anxiety-related symptoms that getting those symptoms becomes inevita-
phenomenon” (1975, p. 115). ble. The anticipatory anxiety causes the very thing that is feared! Test anxiety
Tradition and traditional values are quickly disappearing from many is an obvious example: if you are afraid of doing poorly on tests, the anxiety
people's lives. But, while that is difficult for us, it need not lead us into des- will prevent you from doing well on the test, leading you to be afraid of tests,
pair. Meaning is not tied to society's values. Certainly, each society attempts and so on.
to summarize meaningfulness in its codes of conduct, but ultimately, mean- A similar idea is hyperintention. This is a matter of trying too hard,
ings are unique to each individual. which itself prevents you from succeeding at something. One of the most
"(M)an must be equipped with the capacity to listen to and obey the common examples is insomnia. Many people, when they can’t sleep, con-
ten thousand demands and commandments hidden in the ten thousand situ- tinue to try to fall asleep, using every method in the book. Of course, trying
ations with which life is confronting him" (1975, p. 120), and it is our job as to sleep itself prevents sleep, so the cycle continues. Another example is the
physicians, therapists, and educators to assist people in developing their in- way so many of us today feel we must be exceptional lovers. Men feel they
dividual consciences and finding and fulfilling their unique meanings. must “last” as long as possible, and women feel obliged to not only have
orgasms, but to have multiple orgasms, and so on. Too much concern in this and a lack of meaning, takes that anxiety and focuses it upon some problem-
regard, of course, leads to an inability to relax and enjoy oneself! atic detail of life. The hypochondriac, for example, focuses his anxiety on
A third variation is hyperreflection. In this case it is a matter of some horrible disease; the phobic focuses on some object that has caused
“thinking too hard.” Sometimes we expect something to happen, so it does, him concern in the past; the agoraphobic sees her anxiety as coming from
simply because its occurrence is strongly tied to one’s beliefs or attitudes— the world outside her door; the patient with stage fright or speech anxiety
the self-fulfilling prophecy. Frankl mentions a woman who had had bad sex- focuses on the stage or the podium. The anxiety neurotic thus makes sense
ual experiences in childhood but who had nevertheless developed a strong of his or her discomfort with life.
and healthy personality. When she became familiar with psychological liter- He notes, that "Sometimes, but not always, it (the neurosis) serves
ature suggesting that such experiences should leave one with an inability to to tyrannize a member of the family or is used to justify oneself to others or
enjoy sexual relations, she began having such problems! to the self..." (1973, p. 181). but warns that this is, as others have noted as
His understanding of the existential vacuum goes back to his expe- well, secondary to the deeper issues.
riences in the Nazi death camps. As the day-to-day things that offer people
a sense of meaning—work, family, and the small pleasures of life—were Obsessive-compulsive disorder works in a similar fashion. The
taken from a prisoner, his future would seem to disappear. Man, says Frankl, obsessive-compulsive person is lacking the sense of completion that most
"can only live by looking to the future…. The prisoner who had lost faith in people have. Most of us are satisfied with near certainty about, for example,
the future—his future—was doomed" (1963, p. 116-117). a simple task like locking one's door at night; the obsessive-compulsive re-
While few people seeking psychological help today are suffering the quires a perfect certainty that is, ultimately, unattainable. Because perfection
extremes of the concentration camp, Frankl feels that the problems caused in all things is, even for the obsessive-compulsive, an impossibility, he or she
by the existential vacuum are not only common, but rapidly spreading focusses attention on some domain in life that has caused difficulties in the
throughout society. He points out the ubiquitous complaint of a "feeling of past.
futility," which he also refers to as the abyss experience. The therapist should attempt to help the patient to relax and not
Even the political and economic extremes of today's world can be fight the tendencies to repeat thoughts and actions. Further, the patient
seen as the reverberations of futility. We seem to be caught between the needs to come to recognize his temperamental inclinations towards perfec-
automaton conformity of western consumer culture and totalitarianism in its tion as fate and learn to accept at least a small degree of uncertainty. But
communist, fascist, and theocratic flavors. Hiding in mass society, or hiding ultimately, the obsessive-compulsive, and the anxiety neurotic as well, must
in authoritarianism—either direction caters to the person who wishes to deny find meaning. "As soon as life's fullness of meaning is rediscovered, the neu-
the emptiness of his or her life. rotic anxiety... no longer has anything to fasten on" (1973, p. 182).
Frankl calls depression, addiction, and aggression the mass neu- Like most existential psychologists, Frankl acknowledges the im-
rotic triad. He refers to research that shows a strong relationship between portance of genetic and physiological factors on psychopathology. He
meaninglessness (as measured by "purpose in life" tests) and such behaviors sees depression, for example, as founded in a "vital low," i.e. a diminishment
as criminality and involvement with drugs. He warns us that violence, drug of physical energy. On the psychological level, he relates depression to the
use, and other negative behaviors, demonstrated daily on television, in mov- feelings of inadequacy we feel when we are confronted by tasks that are be-
ies, even in music, only convinces the meaning-hungry that their lives can yond our capacities, physical or mental.
improve by imitation of their "heroes." Even sports, he suggests, only en- On the spiritual level, Frankl views depression as "tension between
courage aggression. what the person is and what he ought to be" (1973, p. 202). The person's
goals seem unreachable to him, and he loses a sense of his own future. Over
Psychopathology time, he becomes disgusted at himself and projects that disgust onto others
Frankl gives us details as to the origin of a variety of psychopathol- or even humanity in general. The ever-present gap between what is and what
ogies. For example, various anxiety neuroses are seen as founded on exis- should be becomes a "gaping abyss" (1973, p. 202).
tential anxiety—"the sting of conscience" (1973, p. 179). The individual, not Schizophrenia is also understood by Frankl as rooted in a physio-
understanding that his anxiety is due to his sense of unfulfilled responsibility logical dysfunction, in this case one which leads to the person experiencing
himself as an object rather than a subject.
Most of us, when we have thoughts, recognize them as coming from is the same as the intuition that allows us to recognize the good. He provides
within our own minds. We "own" them, as modern jargon puts it. The schiz- us with an interesting example:
ophrenic, for reasons still not understood, is forced to take a passive perspec-
tive on those thoughts, and perceives them as voices. And he may watch We know a case in which a violinist always tried to play as consciously as
himself and distrust himself—which he experiences passively, as being possible. From putting his violin in place on his shoulder to the most tri-
fling technical detail, he wanted to do everything consciously, to perform
watched and persecuted.
in full self-reflection. This led to a complete artistic breakdown.... Treat-
Frankl believes that this passivity is rooted in an exaggerated ten- ment had to give back to the patient his trust in the unconscious, by having
dency to self-observation. It is as if there were a separation of the self as him realize how much more musical his unconscious was than his con-
viewer and the self as viewed. The viewing self, devoid of content, seems scious. (1975, p. 38)
barely real, while the viewed self seems alien.
Although Logotherapy was not designed to deal with severe psycho- The third means of finding meaning is one few people besides Frankl
ses, Frankl nevertheless feels that it can help. By teaching the schizophrenic talk about: attitudinal values. Attitudinal values include such virtues as
to ignore the voices and stop the constant self-observation, while simultane- compassion, bravery, a good sense of humor, and so on. But Frankl's most
ously leading him or her towards meaningful activity, the therapist may be famous example is achieving meaning by way of suffering.
able to short-circuit the vicious cycle. He gives an example concerning one of his clients. A doctor whose
wife had died mourned her terribly. Frankl asked him, “If you had died first,
Finding meaning what would it have been like for her?” The doctor answered that it would
So how do we find meaning? Frankl discusses three broad ap- have been incredibly difficult for her. Frankl then pointed out that, by her
proaches. The first is through experiential values, that is, by experiencing dying first, she had been spared that suffering, but that now he had to pay
something—or someone—we value. This can include Maslow’s peak expe- the price by surviving and mourning her. In other words, grief is the price
riences and esthetic experiences such as viewing great art or natural wonders. we pay for love. For the doctor, this thought gave his wife's death and his
The most important example of experiential values is the love we own pain meaning, which in turn allowed him to deal with it. His suffering
feel towards another. Through our love, we can enable our beloved to de- becomes something more. With meaning, suffering can be endured with dig-
velop meaning, and by doing so, we develop meaning ourselves! Love, he nity.
says, "is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire" (1963, Frankl also notes that seriously ill people are not often given an op-
pp. 58-59). portunity to suffer bravely, and thereby retain some dignity. Cheer up! We
Frankl points out that, in modern society, many confuse sex with say. Be optimistic! Often, they are made to feel ashamed of their pain and
love. Without love, he says, sex is nothing more than masturbation, and the unhappiness.
other is nothing more than a tool to be used, a means to an end. Sex can In Man's Search for Meaning, he says this, "...everything can be taken
only be fully enjoyed as the physical expression of love. from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's
Love is the recognition of the uniqueness of the other as an individ- attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way" (1963,
ual, with an intuitive understanding of their full potential as human be- p. 104).
ings. Frankl believes this is only possible within monogamous relation-
ships. As long as partners are interchangeable, they remain objects. Transcendence
A second means of discovering meaning is through creative values, Ultimately, however, experiential, creative, and attitudinal values are
by “doing a deed,” as he puts it. This is the traditional existential idea of merely surface manifestations of something much more fundamental, which
providing oneself with meaning by becoming involved in one’s projects, or, he calls supra-meaning or transcendence. Here we see Frankl’s religious
better, in the project of one’s own life. It includes the creativity involved in bent. Suprameaning is the idea that there is, in fact, ultimate meaning in life,
art, music, writing, invention, and so on. meaning that is not dependent on others, on our projects, or even on our
Frankl views creativity (as well as love) as a function of the spiritual dignity. It is a reference to God and spiritual meaning.
unconscious, that is, the conscience. The irrationality of artistic production
This sets Frankl’s existentialism apart from the existentialism of Therapy

someone like Jean Paul Sartre. Sartre and other atheistic existentialists sug- Viktor Frankl is nearly as well known for certain clinical details of
gest that life is ultimately meaningless, and we must find the courage to face his approach as for his overall theory. The first of these details is a technique
that meaninglessness. Sartre says we must learn to endure ultimate meaning- known as paradoxical intention, which is useful in breaking down the neu-
lessness; Frankl instead says that we need to learn to endure our inability to rotic vicious cycles brought on by anticipatory anxiety and hyperintention.
fully comprehend ultimate meaningfulness, for “Logos is deeper than logic.” Paradoxical intention is a matter of wishing the very thing you are
Again, it was his experiences in the death camps that led him to these afraid of. A young man who sweated profusely whenever he was in social
conclusions. "In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness situations was told by Frankl to wish to sweat. “I only sweated out a quart
of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to before, but now I’m going to pour at least ten quarts!” (1973, p. 223) was
deepen.... They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life among his instructions. Of course, when it came down to it, the young man
of inner riches and spiritual freedom" (1963, p. 56). This certainly does con- couldn’t do it. The absurdity of the task broke the vicious cycle.
trast with Sigmund Freud's perspective, as expressed in The Future of an Illu- The capacity human beings have of taking an objective stance to-
sion: "religion is the universal compulsive neurosis of mankind..." (quoted in wards their own life, or stepping outside themselves, is the basis, Frankl tells
1975, p. 69). us, for humor. And, as he noted in the camps, "Humor was another of the
It should be understood that Frankl's ideas about religion and spir- soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation" (1963, p. 68).
ituality are considerably broader than most. His God is not the God of the Another example concerns sleep problems. If you suffer from in-
narrow mind, not the God of one denomination or another. It is not even somnia, according to Frankl, don’t spend the night tossing and turning and
the God of institutional religion. God is very much a God of the inner hu- trying to sleep. Get up! Try to stay up as long as you can! Over time, you’ll
man being, a God of the heart. Even the atheist or the agnostic, he points find yourself gratefully crawling back into bed.
out, may accept the idea of transcendence without making use of the word A second technique is called dereflection. Frankl believes that
"God." Allow me to let Frankl speak for himself: many problems stem from an overemphasis on oneself. By shifting attention
away from oneself and onto others, problems often disappear. If, for exam-
This unconscious religiousness, revealed by our phenomenological analysis, ple, you have difficulties with sex, try to satisfy your partner without seeking
is to be understood as a latent relation to transcendence inherent in man. If your own gratification. Concerns over erections and orgasms disappear—
one prefers, he might conceive of this relation in terms of a relationship and satisfaction reappears! Or don’t try to satisfy anyone at all. Many sex
between the immanent self and a transcendent thou. However one wishes therapists suggest that a couple do nothing but “pet,” avoiding orgasms "at
to formulate it, we are confronted with what I should like to term "the all costs." These couples often find they can barely last the evening before
transcendent unconscious. This concept means no more or less than that what they had previously had difficulties with simply happens!
man has always stood in an intentional relation to transcendence, even if
Frankl insists that, in today's world, there is far too much emphasis
only on an unconscious level. If one calls the intentional referent of such
an unconscious relation "God," it is apt to speak of an "unconscious on self-reflection. Since Freud, we have been encouraged to look into our-
God." (1975, pp. 61-62) selves, to dig out our deepest motivations. Frankl even refers to this ten-
dency as our "collective obsessive neurosis" (1975, p. 95). Focusing on our-
It must also be understood that this "unconscious God" is not any- selves this way actually serves to turn us away from meaning!
thing like the archetypes Jung talks about. This God is clearly transcendent, For all the interest these techniques have aroused, Frankl insists that,
and yet profoundly personal. He is there, according to Frankl, within each ultimately, the problems these people face are a matter of their need for
of us, and it is merely a matter of our acknowledging that presence that will meaning. So, although these and other techniques are a fine beginning to
bring us to suprameaning. On the other hand, turning away from God is the therapy, they are not by any means the goal.
ultimate source of all the ills we have already discussed: "...once the angel in Perhaps the most significant task for the therapist is to assist the
us is repressed, he turns into a demon" (1975, p. 70). client in rediscovering the latent religiousness that Frankl believes exists in
each of us. This cannot be pushed, however. "Genuine religiousness must
unfold in its own time. Never can anyone be forced to it" (1975, p. 72). The
therapist must allow the patient to discover his or her own meanings.
(H)uman existence—at least as long as it has not been neurotically References

distorted—is always directed to something, or someone, other than itself— Frankl, V. E. (1963). (I. Lasch, Trans.) Man's Search for Meaning: An Intro-
be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter lovingly" duction to Logotherapy. New York: Washington Square Press. (Earlier title,
(1975, p. 78). Frankl calls this self-transcendence, and contrasts it with self- 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism. Originally published in 1946 as Ein
actualization as Maslow uses the term. Self-actualization, even pleasure and Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager)
happiness, are side-effects of self-transcendence and the discovery of mean-
ing. He quotes Albert Schweitzer who explains, "The only ones among you Frankl, V. E. (1967). Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logo-
who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to therapy. New York: Simon and Schuster.
serve" (1975, p. 85).
Frankl, V. E. (1973). (R. and C. Winston, Trans.) The Doctor and the
In conclusion Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy. New York: Vintage Books. (Origi-
Even if you (like me) are not of a religious inclination, it is difficult nally published in 1946 as Ärztliche Seelsorge.)
to ignore Frankl's message. There exists, beyond instincts and "selfish
genes," beyond classical and operant conditioning, beyond the imperatives of Frankl, V. E. (1975). The Unconscious God: Psychotherapy and Theology. New
biology and culture, a special something, uniquely human, uniquely per- York: Simon and Schuster. (Originally published in 1948 as Der unbewusste
sonal. For much of psychology's history, we have, in the name of science, Gott. Republished in 1997 as Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning.)
tried to eliminate the "soul" from our professional vocabularies. But perhaps
it is time to follow Frankl's lead and reverse the years of reductionism. Frankl, V. E. (1996). Viktor Frankl—Recollections: An Autobiography. (J. and
J. Fabray, Trans.) New York: Plenum Publishing. (Originally published in
Discussion 1995 as Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht.)
For all my admiration of Frankl and his theory, I also have some
strong reservations. Frankl attempts to re-insert religion into psychology,
and does so in a particularly subtle and seductive manner. It is difficult to
argue with someone who has been through what Frankl has been through,
and seen what he has seen. And yet, suffering is no automatic guarantee of
truth! By couching religion in the most tolerant and liberal language, he nev-
ertheless is asking us to base our understanding of human existence on faith,
on a blind acceptance of the existence of ultimate truth, without evidence
other than the "feelings" and intuitions and anecdotes of those who already
believe. This is, in fact, a dangerous precedent, and there is much "pop psy-
chology" based on these ideas. The same tendency applies to the quasi-reli-
gious theories of Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow.
Frankl, like May and others, refers to himself as an existential-
ist. Many others with religious tendencies do likewise. They have even ele-
vated Kierkegaard to the honorary position of founder of existentialism—a
word Kierkegaard had never heard. And yet faith, which asks one to surren-
der one's skepticism to a God or other universal principle, is intrinsically at
odds with the most basic concepts of existentialism. Religion—even liberal
religion—always posits essences at the root of human existence. Existential-
ism does not.
CHAPTER 22 spent the last years of his life in Tiburon, California, until he died in October
Rollo May (1909-1994) of 1994.
Theory
Rollo May is the best known American existential psycholo-
gist. Much of his thinking can be understood by reading about existentialism
in general, and the overlap between his ideas and the ideas of Ludwig
Binswanger is great. Nevertheless, he is a little off of the mainstream in that
he was more influenced by American humanism than the Europeans, and
more interested in reconciling existential psychology with other approaches,
especially Freud’s.
May uses some traditional existential terms slightly differently than
others, and invents new words for some of existentialism’s old ideas. Des-
tiny, for example, is roughly the same as thrownness combined with fallen-
ness. It is that part of our lives that is determined for us, our raw materials,
Rollo May was born April 21, 1909, in Ada, Ohio. His childhood if you like, for the project of creating our lives. Another example is the
was not particularly pleasant. His parents didn’t get along and eventually di- word courage, which he uses more often than the traditional term "authen-
vorced, and his sister had a psychotic breakdown. ticity" to mean facing one’s anxiety and rising above it.
After a brief stint at Michigan State (he was asked to leave because He is also the only existential psychologist I’m aware of who dis-
of his involvement with a radical student magazine), he attended Oberlin cusses certain “stages” (not in the strict Freudian sense, of course) of devel-
College in Ohio, where he received his bachelor’s degree. opment:
After graduation, he went to Greece, where he taught English at An- Innocence—the pre-egoic, pre-self-conscious stage of the infant.
atolia College for three years. During this period, he also spent time as an The innocent is premoral, i.e. is neither bad nor good. Like a wild animal
itinerant artist and even studied briefly with Alfred Adler. who kills to eat, the innocent is only doing what he or she must do. But an
When he returned to the US, he entered Union Theological Semi- innocent does have a degree of will in the sense of a drive to fulfil their needs!
nary and became friends with one of his teachers, Paul Tillich, the existen- Rebellion—the childhood and adolescent stage of developing one’s
tialist theologian, who would have a profound effect on his thinking. May ego or self-consciousness by means of contrast with adults, from the “no” of
received his BD in 1938. the two year old to the “no way” of the teenager. The rebellious person
May suffered from tuberculosis, and had to spend three years in a wants freedom, but has as yet no full understanding of the responsibility that
sanatorium. This was probably the turning point of his life. While he faced goes with it. The teenager may want to spend their allowance in any way they
the possibility of death, he also filled his empty hours with reading. Among choose—yet they still expect the parent to provide the money and will com-
the literature he read were the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish plain about unfairness if they don't get it!
religious writer who inspired much of the existential movement, and pro- Ordinary—the normal adult ego, conventional and a little boring,
vided the inspiration for May’s theory. perhaps. They have learned responsibility, but find it too demanding, and so
He went on to study psychoanalysis at White Institute, where he met seek refuge in conformity and traditional values.
people such as Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm. And finally, he went Creative—the authentic adult, the existential stage, beyond ego and
to Columbia University in New York, where in 1949 he received the first self-actualizing. This is the person who, accepting destiny, faces anxiety with
PhD in clinical psychology that institution ever awarded. courage!
After receiving his PhD, he went on to teach at a variety of top These are not stages in the traditional sense. A child may certainly
schools. In 1958, he edited, with Ernest Angel and Henri Ellenberger, the be innocent, ordinary or creative at times; an adult may be rebellious. The
book Existence, which introduced existential psychology to the US. He only attachments to certain ages is in terms of salience. Rebelliousness stands
out in the two year old and the teenager!
On the other hand, he is every bit as interested in anxiety as any of our daimons. Many wishes, of course, come from eros. But they require
existentialist. His first book, The Meaning of Anxiety, was based on his doctoral will to make them happen! Hence, we can see three “personality types” com-
dissertation, which in turn was based on his reading of Kierkegaard. His def- ing out of our relative supply, you might say, of our wishes for love and the
inition of anxiety is “the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value will to realize them. Note that he doesn't actually come out and name
which the individual holds essential to his existence as a self” (1967, p. them—that would be too categorical for an existentialist—and they are not
72). While not “pure” existentialism, it does obviously include fear of death either-or pigeon holes by any means. But he does use various terms to refer
or “nothingness.” Later, he quotes Kierkegaard, “anxiety is the dizziness of to them, and I have picked representative ones.
freedom." There is the type he refers to as “neo-Puritan,” who is all will, but
no love. They have amazing self-discipline, and can “make things happen”...
Love and Will but they have no wishes to act upon. So they become “anal” and perfection-
Many of May’s unique ideas can be found in the book I consider his istic, but empty and “dried-up.” The archetypal example is Ebenezer
best, Love and Will. In his efforts at reconciling Freud and the existentialists, Scrooge.
he turns his attention to motivation. His basic motivational construct is the The second type he refers to as “infantile.” They are all wishes but
daimonic. The daimonic is the entire system of motives, different for each no will. Filled with dreams and desires, they don’t have the self-discipline to
individual. It is composed of a collection of specific motives called dai- make anything of their dreams and desires, and so become dependent and
mons. conformist. They love, but their love means little. Perhaps Homer Simpson
The word daimon is from the Greek, and means little god. It comes is the clearest example!
to us as demon, with a very negative connotation. But originally, a daimon The last type is the "creative" type. May recommends, wisely, that
could be bad or good. Daimons include lower needs, such as food and sex, we should cultivate a balance of these two aspects of our personalities. He
as well as higher needs, such as love. Basically, he says, a daimon is anything said “Man’s task is to unite love and will.” This idea is, in fact, an old one
that can take over the person, a situation he refers to as daimonic posses- that we find among quite a few theorists. Otto Rank, for example, makes the
sion. It is then, when the balance among daimons is disrupted, that they same contrast with death (which includes both our need for others and our
should be considered “evil”—as the phrase implies! This idea is similar to fear of life) and life (which includes both our need for autonomy and our fear
Binswanger's idea of themes, or Horney's idea of coping strategies. of loneliness). Other theorists have talked about communion and agency,
For May, one of the most important daimons is eros. Eros is love homonymy and autonomy, nurturance and assertiveness, affiliation and
(not sex), and in Greek mythology was a minor god pictured as a young man. achievement, and so on.
Later, Eros would be transformed into that annoying little pest, Cupid. May
understood love as the need we have to “become one” with another person, Myths
and refers to an ancient Greek story by Aristophanes. People were originally May’s last book was The Cry for Myth. He pointed out that a big prob-
four-legged, four-armed, two-headed creatures. When we became a little too lem in the twentieth century was our loss of values. All the different values
prideful, the gods split us in two, male and female, and cursed us with the around us lead us to doubt all values. As Nietzsche pointed out, if God is
never-ending desire to recover our missing half! Anyway, like any daimon, dead (i.e. absolutes are gone), then anything is permitted!
eros is a good thing until it takes over the personality, until we become ob- May says we have to create our own values, each of us individu-
sessed with it. ally. This, of course, is difficult to say the least. So we need help, not forced
Another important concept for May is will. The ability to organize on us, but “offered up” for us to use as we will.
oneself in order to achieve one’s goals. This makes will roughly synonymous Enter myths, stories that help us to “make sense” out of our lives,
with ego and reality-testing, but with its own store of energy, as in ego psy- “guiding narratives.” They resemble to some extent Jung’s archetypes, but
chology. I suspect he got the notion from Otto Rank, who uses will in the they can be conscious and unconscious, collective and personal. A good ex-
same way. May hints that will, too, is a daimon that can potentially take over ample is how many people live their lives based on stories from the Bible.
the person. Other examples you may be familiar with include Horatio Alger, Oedipus
Another definition of will is “the ability to make wishes come Rex, Sisyphus, Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca, Leave it to Beaver, Star Wars,
true.” Wishes are “playful imaginings of possibilities,” and are manifestations Little House on the Prairie, The Simpsons, South Park, and the fables of
Aesop. As I intentionally suggest with this list, a lot of stories make lousy
myths. Many stories emphasize the magical granting of one's wishes (infan- CHAPTER 23
tile). Others promise success in exchange for hard work and self-sacrifice Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
(neo-Puritan). Many of our stories today say that valuelessness is itself the
best value! Instead, says May, we should be actively working to create new
myths that support people’s efforts at making the best of life, instead of un-
dermining them!
The idea sounds good—but it isn’t terribly existential! Most existen-
tialists feel that it is necessary to face reality much more directly than “myths”
imply. In fact, they sound a little too much like what the great mass of people
succumb to as a part of fallenness, conventionality, and inauthenticity! A
controversy for the future....
Readings
May writes very well and all his books are quite readable. His first
was The Meaning of Anxiety (1950). General overviews include Man’s Search for
Himself (1953), Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967), and The Discovery of
Being (1983). Strongly recommended are Love and Will (1969) and The Cry for Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on August 9,
Myth (1991). There are quite a few others! 1896. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature with
an interest in local history. His mother, Rebecca Jackson, was intelligent and
energetic, but Jean found her a bit neurotic—an impression that he said led
to his interest in psychology, but away from pathology! The oldest child, he
was quite independent and took an early interest in nature, especially the col-
lecting of shells. He published his first “paper” when he was ten—a one
page account of his sighting of an albino sparrow.
He began publishing in earnest in high school on his favorite subject,
mollusks. He was particularly pleased to get a part time job with the director
of Nuechâtel’s Museum of Natural History, Mr. Godel. His work became
well known among European students of mollusks, who assumed he was an
adult! All this early experience with science kept him away, he says, from
“the demon of philosophy.”
Later in adolescence, he faced a bit a crisis of faith. Encouraged by
his mother to attend religious instruction, he found religious argument child-
ish. Studying various philosophers and the application of logic, he dedicated
himself to finding a “biological explanation of knowledge.” Ultimately, phi-
losophy failed to assist him in his search, so he turned to psychology.
After high school, he went on to the University of Neuchâtel. Con-
stantly studying and writing, he became sickly, and had to retire to the moun-
tains for a year to recuperate. When he returned to Neuchâtel, he decided he
would write down his philosophy. A fundamental point became a center-
piece for his entire life’s work. “In all fields of life (organic, mental, social)
there exist ‘totalities’ qualitatively distinct from their parts and imposing on
them an organization.” This principle forms the basis of his structuralist phi- In 1952, he became a professor at the Sorbonne. In 1955, he created
losophy, as it would for the Gestaltists, Systems Theorists, and many others. the International Center for Genetic Epistemology, of which he served as
In 1918, Piaget received his Doctorate in Science from the Univer- director the rest of his life. And, in 1956, he created the School of Sciences
sity of Neuchâtel. He worked for a year at psychology labs in Zurich and at at the University of Geneva.
Bleuler’s famous psychiatric clinic. During this period, he was introduced to He continued working on a general theory of structures and tying
the works of Freud, Jung, and others. In 1919, he taught psychology and his psychological work to biology for many more years. Likewise, he contin-
philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. Here he met Simon (of Simon-Binet ued his public service through UNESCO as a Swiss delegate. By the end of
fame) and did research on intelligence testing. He didn’t care for the “right- his career, he had written over 60 books and many hundreds of articles. He
or-wrong” style of the intelligent tests and started interviewing his subjects at died in Geneva, September 16, 1980, one of the most significant psycholo-
a boy’s school instead, using the psychiatric interviewing techniques he had gists of the twentieth century.
learned the year before. In other words, he began asking how children rea-
soned. Theory
In 1921, his first article on the psychology of intelligence was pub- Jean Piaget began his career as a biologist—specifically, a malacolo-
lished in the Journal de Psychologie. In the same year, he accepted a position at gist! But his interest in science and the history of science soon overtook his
the Institut J. J. Rousseau in Geneva. Here he began with his students to interest in snails and clams. As he delved deeper into the thought-processes
research the reasoning of elementary school children. This research became of doing science, he became interested in the nature of thought itself, espe-
his first five books on child psychology. Although he considered this work cially in the development of thinking. Finding relatively little work done in
highly preliminary, he was surprised by the strong positive public reaction to the area, he had the opportunity to give it a label. He called it genetic epis-
his work. temology, meaning the study of the development of knowledge.
In 1923, he married one of his student coworkers, Valentine Châ- He noticed, for example, that even infants have certain skills in re-
tenay. In 1925, their first daughter was born; in 1927, their second daughter gard to objects in their environment. These skills were certainly simple ones,
was born; and in 1931, their only son was born. They immediately became sensory-motor skills, but they directed the way in which the infant explored
the focus of intense observation by Piaget and his wife. This research be- his or her environment and so how they gained more knowledge of the world
came three more books! and more sophisticated exploratory skills. These skills he called schemas.
In 1929, Piaget began work as the director of the International Bu- For example, an infant knows how to grab his favorite rattle and thrust it into
reau of Education, a post he would hold until 1967. He also began large scale his mouth. He’s got that schema down pat. When he comes across some
research with A. Szeminska, E. Meyer, and especially Bärbel Inhelder, who other object—say daddy’s expensive watch, he easily learns to transfer his
would become his major collaborator. Piaget, it should be noted, was partic- “grab and thrust” schema to the new object. This Piaget called assimilation,
ularly influential in bringing women into experimental psychology. Some of specifically assimilating a new object into an old schema.
this work, however, wouldn’t reach the world outside of Switzerland until When our infant comes across another object again—say a beach
World War II was over. ball—he will try his old schema of grab and thrust. This of course works
In 1940, He became chair of Experimental Psychology, the Director poorly with the new object. So the schema will adapt to the new object. Per-
of the psychology laboratory, and the president of the Swiss Society of Psy- haps, in this example, “squeeze and drool” would be an appropriate title for
chology. In 1942, he gave a series of lectures at the Collège de France, during the new schema. This is called accommodation, specifically accommodat-
the Nazi occupation of France. These lectures became The Psychology of ing an old schema to a new object.
Intelligence. At the end of the war, he was named President of the Swiss Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides of adaptation,
Commission of UNESCO. Piaget’s term for what most of us would call learning. Piaget saw adaptation,
Also during this period, he received a number of honorary de- however, as a good deal broader than the kind of learning that Behaviorists
grees. He received one from the Sorbonne in 1946, the University of Brus- in the US were talking about. He saw it as a fundamentally biological pro-
sels and the University of Brazil in 1949, on top of an earlier one from Har- cess. Even one’s grip has to accommodate to a stone, while clay is assimilated
vard in 1936. And, in 1949 and 1950, he published his synthesis, Introduction into our grip. All living things adapt, even without a nervous system or brain.
to Genetic Epistemology. Assimilation and accommodation work like pendulum swings at ad-
vancing our understanding of the world and our competency in it. According
to Piaget, they are directed at a balance between the structure of the mind beyond the immediate experience. For example, they can engage in deferred
and the environment, at a certain congruency between the two, that would imitation, such as throwing a tantrum after seeing one an hour ago. They
indicate that you have a good (or at least good-enough) model of the uni- can use mental combinations to solve simple problems, such as putting
verse. This ideal state he calls equilibrium. down a toy in order to open a door. And they get good at pretending. In-
As he continued his investigation of children, he noted that there stead of using dollies essentially as something to sit at, suck on, or throw,
were periods where assimilation dominated, periods where accommodation now the child will sing to it, tuck it into bed, and so on.
dominated, and periods of relative equilibrium, and that these periods were
similar among all the children he looked at in their nature and their tim- Preoperational stage
ing. And so he developed the idea of stages of cognitive develop- The preoperational stage lasts from about two to about seven years
ment. These constitute a lasting contribution to psychology. old. Now that the child has mental representations and is able to pretend, it
is a short step to the use of symbols.
The sensorimotor stage A symbol is a thing that represents something else. A drawing, a
The first stage, to which we have already referred, is the sensorimo- written word, or a spoken word comes to be understood as representing a
tor stage. It lasts from birth to about two years old. As the name implies, real dog. The use of language is, of course, the prime example, but another
the infant uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world, beginning good example of symbol use is creative play, wherein checkers are cookies,
with reflexes and ending with complex combinations of sensorimotor skills. papers are dishes, a box is the table, and so on. By manipulating symbols, we
Between one and four months, the child works on primary circular are essentially thinking, in a way the infant could not: in the absence of the
reactions—just an action of his own which serves as a stimulus to which it actual objects involved!
responds with the same action, and around and around we go. For example, Along with symbolization, there is a clear understanding of past and
the baby may suck her thumb. That feels good, so she sucks some future. For example, if a child is crying for its mother, and you say “Mommy
more... Or she may blow a bubble. That’s interesting so I’ll do it again.... will be home soon,” it will now tend to stop crying. Or if you ask him, “Re-
Between four and 12 months, the infant turns to secondary circu- member when you fell down?” he will respond by making a sad face.
lar reactions, which involve an act that extends out to the environment. She On the other hand, the child is quite egocentric during this stage,
may squeeze a rubber ducky. It goes “quack.” That’s great, so do it again, that is, he sees things pretty much from one point of view: his own! She
and again, and again. She is learning “procedures that make interesting things may hold up a picture so only she can see it and expect you to see it too. Or
last.” she may explain that grass grows so she won’t get hurt when she falls.
At this point, other things begin to show up as well. For example, Piaget did a study to investigate this phenomenon called the moun-
babies become ticklish, although they must be aware that someone else is tains study. He would put children in front of a simple plaster mountain
tickling them or it won’t work. And they begin to develop object perma- range and seat himself to the side, then ask them to pick from four pictures
nence. This is the ability to recognize that, just because you can’t see some- the view that he, Piaget, would see. Younger children would pick the picture
thing doesn’t mean it’s gone! Younger infants seem to function by an “out of the view they themselves saw; older kids picked correctly.
of sight, out of mind” schema. Older infants remember, and may even try Similarly, younger children center on one aspect of any problem or
to find things they can no longer see. communication at a time. For example, they may not understand you when
Between 12 months and 24 months, the child works on tertiary cir- you tell them “Your father is my husband.” Or they may say things like “I
cular reactions. They consist of the same “making interesting things last” don’t live in the USA; I live in Pennsylvania!” Or, if you show them five
cycle, except with constant variation. I hit the drum with the stick—rat-tat- black and three white marbles and ask them “Are there more marbles or more
tat-tat. I hit the block with the stick—thump-thump. I hit the table with the black marbles?” they will respond “More black ones!”
stick—clunk-clunk. I hit daddy with the stick—ouch-ouch. This kind of ac- Perhaps the most famous example of the preoperational child’s cen-
tive experimentation is best seen during feeding time, when discovering new trism is what Piaget refers to as their inability to conserve liquid volume. If
and interesting ways of throwing your spoon, dish, and food. I give a three year old some chocolate milk in a tall skinny glass, and I give
Around one and a half, the child is clearly developing mental rep-
resentation, that is, the ability to hold an image in their mind for a period
FIGURE 23.2 Conservation
The concrete operations child, on the other hand, will know that
there are still four marbles, and that the stick doesn’t change length even
though it now extends beyond the other. And he will know that you have to
FIGURE 23.1 Egocentric perspective
look at more than just the height of the milk in the glass. If you pour the mild
from the short, fat glass into the tall, skinny glass, he will tell you that there
myself a whole lot more in a short fat glass, she will tend to focus on only is the same amount of milk as before, despite the dramatic increase in mild-
one of the dimensions of the glass. Since the milk in the tall skinny glass goes level!
up much higher, she is likely to assume that there is more milk in that one
than in the short fat glass, even though there is far more in the latter. It is
the development of the child's ability to decenter that marks him as having
moved to the next stage.
Concrete operations stage

The concrete operations stage lasts from about seven to about
11. The word operations refers to logical operations or principles we use
when solving problems. In this stage, the child not only uses symbols repre-
sentationally, but can manipulate those symbols logically. Quite an accom- FIGURE 23.3 Conservation
plishment! But, at this point, they must still perform these operations within
the context of concrete situations.
The stage begins with progressive decentering. By six or seven, most By seven or eight years old, children develop conservation of sub-
children develop the ability to conserve number, length, and liquid vol- stance. If I take a ball of clay and roll it into a long thin rod, or even split it
ume. Conservation refers to the idea that a quantity remains the same de- into ten little pieces, the child knows that there is still the same amount of
spite changes in appearance. If you show a child four marbles in a row, then clay. And he will know that, if you rolled it all back into a single ball, it would
spread them out, the preoperational child will focus on the spread, and tend look quite the same as it did—a feature known as reversibility.
to believe that there are now more marbles than before. By nine or ten, the last of the conservation tests is mastered: con-
Or if you have two five inch sticks laid parallel to each other, then servation of area. If you take four one-inch square pieces of felt, and lay
move one of them a little, she may believe that the moved stick is now longer them on a six-by-six cloth together in the center, the child who conserves will
than the other. know that they take up just as much room as the same squares spread out in
the corners, or, for that matter, anywhere at all.
Here’s a simple example of a task that a concrete operations child

couldn’t do, but which a formal operations teenager or adult could—with a
little time and effort. Consider this rule about a set of cards that have letters
on one side and numbers on the other. “If a card has a vowel on one side,
then it has an even number on the other side.” Take a look at the cards below
and tell me, which cards do I need to turn over to tell if this rule is actually
true? You’ll find the answer at the end of this chapter.
FIGURE 23.4 Conservation
FIGURE 23.5 Example of concrete operational task9

If all this sounds too easy to be such a big deal, test your friends on
conservation of mass. Which is heavier, a million tons of lead, or a million
tons of feathers? It is the formal operations stage that allows one to investigate a prob-
In addition, a child learns classification and seriation during this lem in a careful and systematic fashion. Ask a 16 year old to tell you the rules
stage. Classification refers back to the question of whether there are more for making pendulums swing quickly or slowly, and he may proceed like this:
marbles or more black marbles. Now the child begins to get the idea that
one set can include another. Seriation is putting things in order. The younger A long string with a light weight—let’s see how fast that swings.
child may start putting things in order by, say size, but will quickly lose A long string with a heavy weight—let’s try that.
track. Now the child has no problem with such a task. Since arithmetic is Now, a short string with a light weight.
essentially nothing more than classification and seriation, the child is now
ready for some formal education! And finally, a short string with a heavy weight.
Formal operations stage His experiment—and it is an experiment—would tell him that a

But the concrete operations child has a hard time applying his new- short string leads to a fast swing, and a long string to a slow swing, and that
found logical abilities to non-concrete—i.e. abstract—events. If mom says the weight of the pendulum means nothing at all!
to junior “You shouldn’t make fun of that boy’s nose. How would you feel
if someone did that to you?” he is likely to respond “I don’t have a big The teenager has learned to group possibilities in four different ways:
nose!” Even this simple lesson may well be too abstract, too hypothetical,
for his kind of thinking. By conjunction: “Both A and B make a difference” (e.g. both the string’s
Don’t judge the concrete operations child too harshly, though. Even length and the pendulum’s weight).
adults are often taken-aback when we present them with something hypo-
thetical. “If Edith has a lighter complexion than Susan, and Edith is darker
than Lily, who is the darkest?” Most people need a moment or two. 9
Answer to the card question: The E and the 7. The E must have an even
From around 12 on, we enter the formal operations stage. Here we number on the back—that much is obvious. The 7 is odd, so it cannot have a vowel
become increasingly competent at adult-style thinking. This involves using on the other side—that would be against the rule! But the rule says nothing about
logical operations, and using them in the abstract, rather than the con- what has to be on the back of a consonant such as the K, nor does it say that the
crete. We often call this hypothetical thinking. 4 must have a vowel on the other side!
of his own children), The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adoles-
By disjunction: “It’s either this or that” (e.g. it’s either the length or the cence (with Inhelder, 1958), The Psychology of the Child (with Inhelder, 1966, in
weight). English 1969), Insights and Illusions of Philosophy (1965, 1971 in English)
By implication: “If it’s this, then that will happen” (the formation of a hy-
pothesis).
By incompatibility: “When this happens, that doesn’t” (the elimination of

a hypothesis).
On top of that, he can operate on the operations—a higher level of group-

ing. If you have a proposition, such as “it could be the string or the weight,”
you can do four things with it:
Identity: Leave it alone. “It could be the string or the weight.”
Negation: Negate the components and replace or’s with and’s (and vice
versa). “It might not be the string and not the weight, either.”
Reciprocity: Negate the components but keep the and’s and or’s as they
are. “Either it is not the weight or it is not the string.”
Correlativity: Keep the components as they are, but replace or’s with and’s,
etc. “It’s the weight and the string.”
Someone who has developed his or her formal operations will un-
derstand that the correlate of a reciprocal is a negation, that a reciprocal of a
negation is a correlate, that the negation of a correlate is a reciprocal, and that
the negation of a reciprocal of a correlate is an identity (phew!!!).
Maybe it has already occurred to you: it doesn’t seem that the formal
operations stage is something everyone actually gets to. Even those of us
who do don’t operate in it at all times. Even some cultures, it seems, don’t
develop it or value it like ours does. Abstract reasoning is simply not univer-
sal.
References
It is hard to say, of Piaget's many works, which are most significant
or interesting, but here goes: The Moral Judgement of the Child (1932—one of
the first five books), The Psychology of Intelligence (1947, in English 1950), The
Construction of Reality in the Child (1937, in English 1954, based on observation
CHAPTER 24 zigzag pattern. She will respond by swimming towards him with her head
Sociobiology held high. He responds by dashing towards his nest and indicating its en-
trance. She enters the nest, her head sticking out one end, her tail the
other. He prods at the base of her tail with rhythmic thrusts. She releases
Ever since Darwin came out with his theory of evolution, people— her eggs and leaves the nest. He enters and fertilizes the eggs, and then, a
including Darwin himself—have been speculating on how our social behav- thorough chauvinist, chases her away and waits for a new partner.
iors (and feelings, attitudes, and so on) might also be affected by evolu- What you see working here is a series of sign stimuli and fixed ac-
tion. After all, if the way our bodies look and work as biological creatures tions. His zigzag dance is a response to her appearance and becomes a stim-
can be better understood through evolution, why not the things we do with ulus for her to follow, and so on. Perhaps I'm being perverse, but doesn't
those bodies? the stickleback's instinctive courtship remind you of some of our human
The entomologist E. O Wilson was the first to formalize the idea courtship rituals? I'm not trying to say we are quite as mindless about it as
that social behavior could be explained evolutionarily, and he called his the- the stickleback seems to be—just that some similar patterns may form a part
ory sociobiology. At first, it gained attention only in biological circles—even of or basis for our more complex, learned behaviors.
there it had strong critics. When sociologists and psychologists caught wind Ethologists—people who study animal behavior in natural set-
of it, the controversy really got started. At that time, sociology was predom- tings—have been studying behaviors such as the sticklebacks' for over a cen-
inantly structural-functionalist, with a smattering of Marxists and femi- tury. One, Konrad Lorenz, has developed a hydraulic model of how an in-
nists. Psychology was still dominated by behaviorist learning theory, with stinct works. We have a certain amount of energy available for any specific
humanism starting to make some headway. Not one of these theories has instinctual system, as illustrated by a reservoir of water. There is a presuma-
much room for the idea that we, as human beings, could be so strongly de- bly neurological mechanism that allows the release of some or all of that en-
termined by evolutionary biology! ergy in the presence of the appropriate sign stimulus: a faucet. There are
Over time, Wilson's sociobiology found more and more supporters further mechanisms—neurological, motor, and hormonal—that translate the
among biologists, psychologists, and even anthropologists. Only sociology energy into specific fixed actions. Today, we might suggest that hydraulic
has remained relatively unaffected. energy is a poor metaphor and translate the whole system into an information
processing one—each era has its favorite metaphors. But the description still
Instinct seems sound.
Let's begin with an example of instinctual behavior in ani- Does any of this apply to human courtship and sexual behavior? I
mals. The three-spined stickleback is a one-inch long fish that one can leave it up to you. But what about other examples? Two possibilities stand
find in the rivers and lakes of Europe. Springtime is, as you might expect, out:
the mating season for the mighty stickleback and the perfect time to see in-
stincts in action. 1. There are certain patterns of behavior found in most, if not all, animals,
Certain changes occur in their appearances. The male, normally dull, involving the promotion of oneself, the search for status or raw power, epit-
becomes red above the midline. He stakes out a territory for himself, from omized in aggression. Let's call this the assertive instinct.
which he will chase any similarly colored male, and builds a nest by depositing
weeds in a small hollow and running through them repeatedly to make a tun- 2. There are other patterns of behavior found in, it seems, somewhat fewer
nel. This is all quite built-in. Males raised all alone will do the same. We species, involving care for someone other than oneself, epitomized in a moth-
find, in fact, that the male stickleback will, in the mating season, attempt to er's care for her babies. Let's call this the nurturing instinct.
chase anything red from his territory (including the reflection of a red truck
on the aquarium's glass). Evolution
But that's not the instinct of the moment. The female undergoes a The basics of evolution are quite simple. First, all animals tend to
transformation as well. She, normally dull like the male, becomes bloated by over-reproduce, some having literally thousands of offspring in a life-
her many eggs and takes on a certain silvery glow that apparently no male time. Yet populations of animals tend to remain quite stable over the gener-
stickleback can resist. When he sees a female, he will swim towards her in a ations. Obviously, some of these offspring aren't making it!
Second, there is quite a bit of variation within any species. Much of behavioral—characteristics. Women prefer men who are taller, with broad
the variety is genetically based and passed on from one generation to an- shoulders, a square jaw.... Men prefer women who are shorter than them-
other. Included in that variety are traits that help some individuals to survive selves, softer, rounder....
and reproduce, and other traits that hinder them. These differences between the sexes is known as sexual dimor-
Put the two ideas together, and you have natural selection. Nature phism, and the process that leads to these differences is called sexual selec-
encourages the propagation of the positive traits and discourages the negative tion. Small functional differences between the sexes can become large non-
ones. As long as variety continues to be created by sexual recombination and functional ones over many generations. If female birds are instinctively in-
mutation, and the resources for life remain limited, evolution will continue. clined to prefer colorful males—perhaps because colorful males have served
One sociobiologist, David Barash, suggests a guiding question for to distract predators from ancestral females and their chicks—then a male
understanding possible evolutionary roots of any behavior. "Why is sugar that is more colorful will have a better chance, and the female with a more
sweet”, that is, why do we find it attractive? One hypothesis is that our an- intense attraction to color a better chance, and their offspring will inherit
cestors ate fruit to meet their nutritional needs. Fruit is most nutritious when their colors and intense attraction to colors and so on and so on... until you
it is ripe. When fruit is ripe, it is loaded with sugars. Any ancestor who had reach a point where the colors and the attraction are no longer a plus, but
a taste for sugar would be a little more likely to eat ripe fruit. His or her become a minus, such as in the birds of paradise. Some males cannot even
resulting good health would make him or her stronger and more attractive to fly under the weight of all their plumage.
potential mates. He or she might leave more offspring who, inheriting this Human beings are only modestly dimorphic. But boy are we aware
taste for ripe fruit, would be more likely to survive to reproductive age, of the dimorphisms!
etc. A more general form of the guiding question is to ask of any motivated The dimorphism is also found in our behaviors. David Barash puts
behavior "How might that behavior have aided ancestral survival and/or re- it so. "Males tend to be selected for salesmanship; females for sales re-
production?" sistance." Females have a great deal invested in any act of copulation, the
A curious point to make about the example used is that today we limited number of offspring she can carry, the dangers of pregnancy and
have refined sugar—something which was not available to our ancestors, but childbirth, the increased nutritional requirements, the danger from preda-
which we discovered and passed on to our descendants through learned cul- tors...all serve to make the choice of a mate an important considera-
ture. It is clear that today a great attraction to sugar no longer serves our tion. Males, on the other hand, can and do walk away from the consequences
survival and reproduction. But culture moves much more quickly than evo- of copulation. Note, for example, the tendency of male frogs to try to mate
lution. It took millions of years to evolve our healthy taste for sugar; it took with wading boots. As long as some sperm gets to where it should, the male
only thousands of years to undermine it. is doing alright.
So females tend to more fussy about who they have relations
Attraction with. They are more sensitive to indications that a particular male will con-
Let's start by looking at mate selection. It is obvious that we are tribute to their genetic survival. One of the most obvious examples is the
attracted some people more than others. Sociobiologists have the same ex- attention many female animals pay to the size and strength of males, and the
planation for this as for everything else, based on the archetypal question development of specialized contests, such as those of antlered and horned
"why is sugar sweet?" We should be sexually attracted to others whose char- animals, to demonstrate that strength.
acteristics would maximize our genetic success, that is, would give us many There are less obvious things as well. In some animals, males have
healthy, long-lived, fertile children. to show, not just strength, but the ability to provide. This is especially true
We should find healthiness attractive and, conversely, illness unat- in any species which has the male providing for the female during her preg-
tractive. We should find "perfect" features attractive, and deformities unat- nancy and lactation—like humans! Sociobiologists suggest that, while men
tractive. We should find vitality, strength, vigor attractive. We should find find youth and physical form most attractive, women tend to look for indi-
"averageness" attractive—not too short, not too tall, not too fat, not too cations of success, solvency, and savoir-faire. It might not just be a cultural
thin.... Quasimodo, for all his decency, had a hard time getting dates. fluke that men bring flowers and candies, pay for dinner, and so forth.
We are also attracted to certain people for less "logical" reasons, such Further, they suggest, women may find themselves more interested
as the degree to which they have strong masculine or feminine physical—and in the "mature" man, as he is more likely to have proven himself, and less
interested in the "immature" man, who presents a certain risk. And women
should be more likely to put up with polygyny (i.e. other wives) than men course, are incapable of following, so they resort to subterfuge. the broad,
with polyandry (other husbands). Sharing a clearly successful man is better full bodied, toothless smile which parents find overwhelmingly attractive.
in some cases than having a failure all to yourself. And, lo and behold, po- Sociobiologists go on to predict that mothers will care for their chil-
lygyny is even more common than monogamy, while polyandry is found in dren more than fathers (they have more invested in them, and are more cer-
perhaps two cultures (one in Tibet and the other in Africa), and in both it tain of their maternity); that older mothers will care more than younger moth-
involves brothers "sharing" a wife in order not to break-up tiny inherited ers (they have fewer chances of further procreation); that we will be more
properties.. solicitous of our children when we have few (or only one!) than when we
Taking it from the other direction, males will tolerate less infidelity have many; that we will increase our concern for our children as they get
than females. Females "know" their children are theirs; males never know older (they have demonstrated their survival potential); and that we will tend
for sure. Genetically, it matters less if males "sow wild oats" or have many to push our children into marriage and children of their own.
mates or are unfaithful. And, sure enough, most cultures are harder on
women than men when it comes to adultery. In most cultures, in fact, it is Helping
the woman who moves into the husband's family (virilocality)—as if to keep Care—helping behavior—is likely when it involves our children,
track of her comings and goings. parents, spouses, or other close relations. It is less and less likely when it
From our culture's romantic view of love and marriage, it is interest- involves cousins or unrelated neighbors. It is so unusual when it involves
ing to note that in most cultures a failure to consummate a marriage is strangers or distant people of other cultures and races that we recall one
grounds for divorce or annulment. In our own culture, infertility and impo- story—the Good Samaritan—nearly 2000 years after the fact.
tence are frequent causes of divorce. It seems reproduction is more im- Sociobiologists predict that helping decreases with kinship dis-
portant than we like to admit. tance. In fact, it should occur only when the sacrifice you make is outweighed
Of course, there is a limit to the extent to which we generalize from by the advantage that sacrifice provides the genes you share with those rela-
animals to humans (or from any species to any other), and this is especially tions. The geneticist J. B. S. Haldane supposedly once put it this way, "I'd
true regarding sex. We are very sexy animals. Most animals restrict their sex- gladly give my life for three of my brothers, five of my nephews, nine of my
ual activity to narrowly defined periods of time, while we have sex all month cousins...." This is called kin selection. Altruism based on genetic selfish-
and all year round. We can only guess how we got to be this way. Perhaps ness!
it has to do with the long-term helplessness of our infants. What better way One kind of "altruistic" behavior is herd behavior. Some animals
to keep a family together than to make it so very reinforcing! just seem to want to be close, and in dangerous times closer still. It makes
sense. By collecting in a herd, you are less likely to be attacked by a preda-
Children tor. Mind you, sometimes you may find yourself on the outside of the herd—
That brings us to children, our attraction to them, and their attrac- but the odds are good that the next time you'll be snugly inside.
tion to us. Adults of many species, including ours, seem to find small repre- Another kind is called reciprocal altruism. A prairie dog who sees
sentatives of their species, with short arms and legs, large heads, flat faces, a predator will begin to yelp loudly, for example. This warns the rest of his
and big, round eyes... "cute" somehow—"sweet," the sociobiologist might community, although it draws the predator’s attention to the one doing the
point out. It does make considerable evolutionary sense that, in animals with yelping!
relatively helpless young, the adults should be attracted to their infants. Herd behavior and reciprocal altruism work for the same reason that
The infants, in turn, seem to be attracted to certain things as kin selection works. It caters to inclusive fitness: a slight reduction of my
well. Goslings, as everyone knows, become attached to the first large moving own survival probabilities is more than balanced by the survival of relatively
object they come across in the first two days of life—usually mother goose close relations. Some animals even help any member of their own species,
(occasionally Konrad Lorenz or other ethologists). This is called imprint- with the instinctual "understanding" that they may be the beneficiaries the
ing. Human infants respond to pairs of eyes, female voices, and touch. next time they need help themselves.
The goslings respond to their sign-stimulus with the following re- Robert Trivers has suggested that people engage in a more sophisti-
sponse, literally following that large moving object. Human infants, of cated form of reciprocal altruism, shared only with a few of the more ad-
vanced creatures of the world. Here you would be willing to sacrifice for
someone else if it is understood that that specific other will do the same for
you, or reciprocate in some other way, "tit for tat." Clearly, this requires the It is the last item—mates—that accounts for most aggression in
ability to recognize individuals and to recall debts! mammals. And it is males that are most noted for this aggression. As we
Other geneticists have pointed out that, if there is a genetic basis for mentioned earlier, females have so much at stake in any act of copulation—
reciprocal altruism, there will also be some individuals that cheat by allowing so many months gestation, the increased energy requirement, susceptibility
others to do for them without ever meeting their own obligations. In fact, to attack, the dangers of birth, the responsibility of lactation—that it serves
depending on the advantages that reciprocal altruism provides and the ten- their fitness to be "picky" when looking for a partner. If females are picky,
dency of altruists to get back at cheaters, cheaters will be found in any popu- males must be show-offs. The male must demonstrate that he has the qual-
lation. Other studies have shown that "sociopathy," guiltless ignoring of so- ities that serve the female's fitness, in order to serve his own fitness. Deer
cial norms, is found in a sizable portion of the human population. are a good example. Mind you, this need not be conscious or learned; in all
There is, of course, no need for a human being to be 100% altruist likelihood, it is all quite instinctual in most mammals. It may possibly have
or 100% cheat. Most of us (or is it all of us?), although we get angry at cheats, some instinctual bases in us as well.
are quite capable of cheating when the occasion arises. We feel guilt, of Some of his aggressiveness may in fact be mediated by testos-
course, be we can cheat. A large portion of the human psyche seems to be terone, the "male" hormone. Inject testosterone into female mice and their
devoted to calculating our chances of success or failure at such shady maneu- threshold for aggressive behavior goes down. Remove testosterone from
vers. More on this later. male mice (by castrating the poor things) and their thresholds go up. But I
must add that testosterone does not cause aggression, it just lowers the
Aggression threshold for it.
Like many concepts in social psychology, aggression has many defi- But females in many species can be quite aggressive (such as female
nitions, even many evaluations. Some think of aggression as a great virtue guinea pigs), and females in any species can be extremely aggressive in certain
(e.g. "the aggressive businessperson"), while others see aggression as symp- circumstances (such as when facing a threat to her infants). In human soci-
tomatic of mental illness. eties, the sociological statistics are clear. Most violent crime is committed by
The fact they we do keep the same word anyway suggests that there men. But we have already noticed that, as women assert their rights to full
is a commonality. Both positive and negative aggression serve to enhance participation in the social and economic world, those statistics are chang-
the self. The positive version, which we could call assertiveness, is acting in ing. Time will tell the degree to which testosterone is responsible for aggres-
a way that enhances the self, without the implication that we are hurting sion in people.
someone else. The negative version, which we might call violence, focuses Nevertheless, males engage in a great deal of head-butting. But one
more on the "disenhancement" of others as a means to the same end. can't help but notice that these contests "over" females seldom end in death
Although the life of animals often seems rather bloody, we must take or even serious injury in most species. That is because these contests are just
care not to confuse predation—the hunting and killing of other animals for that: contests. They are a matter of displays of virtues, and they usually in-
food—with aggression. Predation in carnivorous species has more in com- clude actions that serve as sign stimuli to the opponent that the contest has
mon with grazing in vegetarian species than with aggression between mem- ended in his favor: surrender signals. Continued aggression is of little ad-
bers of the same species. Take a good look at your neighborhood cat hunting vantage to either the loser or the winner. Even male rattlesnakes don't bite
a mouse: He is cool, composed, not hot and crazed. In human terms, there each other!
is not the usual emotional correlate of aggression: anger. He is simply taking Territoriality and dominance hierarchies—once thought to be
care of business. major focuses of aggressive behavior—seem to be relatively less signifi-
That taken care of, there remains remarkably little aggression in the cant. Animals tend to respect territorial and status claims more than dispute
animal world, but it does remain. We find it most often in circumstances them. It is only when circumstances, whether natural or humanly created,
of competition over a resource. This resource must be important for "fit- are out of the ordinary that we see much aggression. And low food supplies
ness," that is, relevant to one's individual or reproductive success. Further, it likely have little to do with aggression. Southwick, studying Rhesus monkeys
must be restricted in abundance. Animals do not, for example, compete for in the London Zoo, found that reducing the food supplies by 25% had no
air, but may for water, food, nesting areas, and mates. effect on the amount of aggression found, and reducing the food supplies by
50% actually decreased aggression! We find the same thing among primitive
people.
Aggression in Human Beings Sociobiology "versus" Culture

So why so much aggression in people? One possibility is our lack of Many psychologists, sociologist, anthropologists, and others are
biological restraints. Sociobiologists predict that animals that are poorly wary of the explanations—convincing though they sometimes are—of the
equip for aggression are unlikely to have developed surrender signals. Man, sociobiologists. For every sociobiological explanation, we can find a cultural
they say, is one of these creatures. But we developed technology, including explanation as well. After all, culture operates by the same principles as evo-
a technology of destruction, and this technology "evolved" much too quickly lution.
for our biological evolution to provide us with compensating restraints on There are many different ways to do any one task, but in the context
aggression. Experience tells us that guns are more dangerous than knives, of a certain physical environment and a certain culture, some ways of doing
though both are efficient killing machines, because a gun is faster and pro- things work better than others. These are more likely to be "passed on" from
vides us with less time to consider our act rationally—the only restraint left one generation to the next, this time by learning.
us. Now, cultures need to accomplish certain things if they are to survive
Another problem is that we humans live not just in the "real" world, at all. They must assure effective use of natural resources, for example, which
but in a symbolic world as well. A lion gets aggressive about something might involve the learning of all sorts of territorial and aggressive behaviors,
here-and-now. People get aggressive about things that happened long ago, just like in sociobiological explanations. And they must assure a degree of
things that they think will happen some day in the future, or things that cooperation, which might involve learning altruistic behaviors, rules for shar-
they've been told is happening. Likewise, a lion gets angry about pretty phys- ing resources and for other social relationships, just like the ones in sociobi-
ical things. Calling him a name won't bother him a bit. ological explanations. And they must assure a continuation of the popula-
A lion gets angry about something that happens to him person- tion, which might involve certain courtship and marital arrangements, nur-
ally. We get angry about things that happen to our cars, our houses, our turing behaviors, and so on, just like in sociobiological explanations.
communities, our nations, our religious establishments, and so on. We have If a society is to survive—and any existing society has at least sur-
extended our "ego's" way beyond ourselves and our loved ones to all sorts of vived until now—it must take care of the very same issues that genetics must
symbolic things. The response to flag burning is only the latest example. take care of. And, because learning is considerably more flexible than evolu-
If aggression has an instinctual basis in human beings, we would tionary adaptation, we would expect culture to tend to replace genetics. That
expect there to be a sign stimulus. It would certainly not be something as is, after all, only evolutionary good sense!
simple as bright red males during mating season, as in stickleback fish. If we So do we have instincts? If instincts are defined as automatic reflex-
go back to the idea of competition as a fertile ground for aggression, we no- like connections—no, probably not. But define instincts as "strong innate
tice that frustration is a likely candidate. There are two of you who want the tendencies toward certain behaviors in certain situations"—yes, we probably
same thing; if one grabs it, the other doesn't get it and is unhappy; so he takes do. The important point is that we (unlike animals) can always say no to our
it, and now the other is unhappy; and so on. Goal-directed behavior has been instinctual behaviors, just like we can say no to our learned ones!
blocked, and that is frustration.
Variations on that theme abound. We can be frustrated when an on-
going behavior is interrupted (trying tripping someone); we can be frustrated
by a delay of goal achievement (cut in front of someone on line at the super-
market); or we can be frustrated by the disruption of ordinary behavior pat-
terns (cause me to forego my morning coffee). We are flexible creatures.
But we must beware here. Other things can lead to aggression be-
sides frustration (or aren't highly paid boxers engaged in aggression?) and
frustration can lead to other things besides aggression (or doesn't social im-
potence lead to depression?). Further, as Fromm points out, frustration (and
aggression) is in the eyes of the beholder. He feels that the frustration must
be experienced as unjust or as a sign of rejection for it to lead to aggression.
CHAPTER 25 When ignorant people see someone who is dead, they are disgusted and horrified, even
Siddhartha Gautama Buddha though they too will die someday. I thought to myself: I don’t want to be like the igno-
rant people. After that, I couldn’t feel the usual intoxication with life anymore.
There was a small country in what is now southern Nepal that was At the age of 29, Siddhartha came to realize that he could not be
ruled by a clan called the Shakyas. The head of this clan, and the king of this happy living as he had been. He wanted more than anything to discover how
country, was named Shuddodana Gautama. one might overcome suffering. After kissing his sleeping wife and newborn
His wife, Mahamaya, was expecting her first born. In the small town son Rahula goodbye, he snuck out of the palace and into the forests of north-
of Lumbini, she asked her handmaidens to assist her to a nearby grove of ern India.
trees for privacy, where she gave birth to a son. She named him Siddhartha, He then began to practice the austerities and self-mortifications
which means "he who has attained his goals." Sadly, Mahamaya died only practiced by a group of five ascetics. For six years, he practiced. The sincerity
seven days after the birth. After that Siddhartha was raised by his mother’s and intensity of his practice were so astounding that, before long, the five
kind sister, Mahaprajapati. ascetics became followers of Siddhartha. But the answers to his questions
When it came time for him to marry, he won the hand of Yasho- were not forthcoming. He redoubled his efforts, refusing food and water,
dhara, and they married when both were 16 years old. until he was in a state of near death.
Siddhartha was kept in one or another of their three palaces, and was For six years, he practiced the ascetic life, eating only what he found
prevented from experiencing much of what ordinary folk might consider on the ground, drinking only rain water, wearing nothing but a loin
quite commonplace. He was not permitted to see the elderly, the sickly, the cloth. When the answers he was seeking wouldn't come to him, he tried even
dead, or anyone who had dedicated themselves to spiritual practices. Siddhar- harder. But Siddhartha realized that these extreme practices were leading him
tha grew increasing restless and curious about the world beyond the palace nowhere, that in fact it might be better to find some middle way between the
walls and he finally demanded that he be permitted to see his people and his extremes of the life of luxury and the life of self-mortification.
lands. Outside of the town of Bodh Gaya, Siddhartha decided that he
The king carefully arranged that Siddhartha should not see the kind would sit under a certain fig tree as long as it would take for the answers to
of suffering that he feared would lead him to a religious life. But, inevitably, the problem of suffering to come. He sat there for many days, first in deep
he saw old people, sick people, and even death. He asked his friend and concentration to clear his mind of all distractions, then in mindfulness med-
squire Chandaka the meaning of all these things, and Chandaka informed him itation, opening himself up to the truth. On the full moon of May, with the
of the simple truths that Siddhartha should have known all along. That all of rising of the morning star, Siddhartha finally understood the answer to the
us get old, sick, and eventually die. question of suffering and became the Buddha, which means “he who is
Siddhartha also saw an ascetic, a monk who had renounced all the awake.”
pleasures of the flesh. The peaceful look on the monks face would stay with At the deer park in Sarnath near Benares, about one hundred miles
Siddhartha for a long time to come. Later, he would say this about that time: from Bodh Gaya, he preached his first sermon, which is called “setting the
wheel of the teaching in motion.” In it, he explained to the Four Noble
When ignorant people see someone who is old, they are disgusted and horrified, even Truths and the Eightfold Path. The king of Magadha, having heard Buddha’s
though they too will be old someday. I thought to myself: I don’t want to be like the ig- words, granted him a monastery for use during the rainy season. This and
norant people. After that, I couldn’t feel the usual intoxication with youth anymore. other generous donations permitted the community of converts to continue
their practice throughout the years, and gave many more people an oppor-
When ignorant people see someone who is sick, they are disgusted and horrified, even tunity to hear the teachings of the Buddha.
though they too will be sick someday. I thought to myself: I don’t want to be like the ig- His aunt and wife asked to be permitted into the Sangha, or monas-
norant people. After that, I couldn’t feel the usual intoxication with health anymore. tic community, which was originally composed only of men. The culture of
the time ranked women far below men in importance, and at first it seemed
that permitting women to enter the community would weaken it. But the
Buddha relented, and his aunt and wife became the first Buddhist nuns.
The Buddha said that it didn’t matter what a person’s status in the What do you think...? Does greed appear in a man for his benefit or harm?
world was, or what their background or wealth or nationality might be. All Does hate appear in a man for his benefit or harm? Does delusion appear in a man
were capable of enlightenment, and all were welcome into the Sangha. The for his benefit or harm?... being given to greed, hate, and delusion, and being overwhelmed
first ordained Buddhist monk, Upali, had been a barber, yet he was ranked and vanquished mentally by greed, hate, and delusion, this man takes life, steals, commits
higher than monks who had been kings, only because he had taken his vows adultery, and tells lies; he prompts another too, to do likewise. Will that be long for his
earlier than they! harm and ill?" ...
Buddha had achieved his enlightenment at the age of 35. He would
teach the Dharma (the way) throughout northeast India for another 45 ...when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blamable; these
years. When the Buddha was 80 years old, he ate some spoiled food and things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and
became very ill. He went into a deep meditation under a grove of sala trees ill,' abandon them.
and died. His last words were... Buddhism is also a philosophy that is detached from theological con-
siderations. Buddha, in fact, refused to answer questions concerning eternity
Impermanent are all created things; and the afterlife. In the Kalama Sutra again, he notes how his philosophy
Strive on with awareness. helps whatever your beliefs about the afterlife may be:
Soon after Buddha's death, five hundred monks met at the first
council at Rajagrha, under the leadership of Kashyapa. Upali recited the mo- The disciple... who has a hate-free mind, a malice-free mind, an undefiled mind, and a
nastic code (Vinaya) as he remembered it. Ananda, Buddha's cousin, friend, purified mind, is one by whom four solaces are found here and now.
and favorite disciple—and a man of prodigious memory!—Recited Buddha's
lessons (the Sutras). The monks debated details and voted on final ver- Suppose there is a hereafter and there is a fruit, result, of deeds done well or ill. Then it is
sions. These were then committed to memory by other monks, to be trans- possible that at the dissolution of the body after death, I shall arise in the heavenly world,
lated into the many languages of the Indian plains. It should be noted that which is possessed of the state of bliss. This is the first solace...
Buddhism remained an oral tradition for over 200 years.
In the next few centuries, the original unity of Buddhism began to Suppose there is no hereafter and there is no fruit, no result, of deeds done well or ill. Yet
fragment. The most significant split occurred after the second council, held in this world, here and now, free from hatred, free from malice, safe and sound, and
at Vaishali 100 years after the first. After debates between a more liberal happy, I keep myself. This is the second solace...
group and traditionalists, the liberal group left and labeled themselves the
Mahasangha—"the great sangha." They would eventually evolve into Suppose evil results befall an evil-doer. I, however, think of doing evil to no one. Then,
the Mahayana tradition of northern Asia. The traditionalists would become how can ill results affect me who do no evil deed? This is the third solace...
known as Theravada or "way of the elders," and be the tradition of Sri
Lanka and most of southeast Asia.
Suppose evil results do not befall an evil-doer. Then I see myself purified in any case. This
is the fourth solace...
Theory
Buddhism is an empirical philosophy. Buddha was very clear that The structure of the mind
we should judge the truth of any philosophy by its consequences. In the Buddhists describe the person as composed of five skandhas ("ag-
Kalama Sutra, he makes this particularly clear: gregates"):
It is proper for you... to doubt, to be uncertain.... Do not go upon what has been acquired 1. The body (rupa), including the sense organs.
by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture;
nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias to- 2. Sensations and feelings (vedana), coming out of contact between sense
wards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon organs and objects.
the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher....'
3. Perceptions and ideas (samjña), especially manifest in our ability to 2. Suffering is due to attachment. We might say that at least much
recognize things and ideas. of the suffering we experience comes out of ourselves, out of our desire to
make pleasure, happiness, and love last forever and to make pain, distress,
4. Mental acts (samskara), especially will power and attention. and grief disappear from life altogether.
We are not therefore to avoid all pleasure, happiness, and love. Nor
5. Basic consciousness (vijñana). are we to believe that all suffering comes only from ourselves. It's just not
necessary, being shot once with an arrow, to shoot ourselves again, as the
Buddha put it.
The last four are called naman, name, meaning the psyche. Nam- Attachment is one translation of the word trishna, which can also
arupa (name-form) is therefore the Buddhist term for the person, mental be translated as thirst, desire, lust, craving, or clinging. When we fail to rec-
and physical, which is nevertheless anatman, without soul or essence. ognize that all things are imperfect, impermanent and insubstantial; we cling
Buddhism also differentiates among six "fields" (ayatana) for the to them in the delusion that they are indeed perfect, permanent, and substan-
five skandhas: sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and mind, as well tial, and that by clinging to them, we, too, will be perfect, permanent and
as the objects of these six senses. substantial.
Mahayana Buddhism adds alaya-vijñana, “storehouse” conscious- Our lack of "essence" or preordained structure, our "nothingness,"
ness, to the skandhas. This is similar to Jung’s idea of the collective uncon- leads us to crave solidity. We are, you could say, whirlwinds who wish they
scious. What is stored there are called bijas or seeds, which are inborn were rocks. We cling to things in the hopes that they will provide us with a
tendencies to perceive the world in a certain way and result from our karmic certain "weight." We try to turn our loved ones into things by demanding
history. They combine with manas or ego to form the illusion that is ordi- that they not change, or we try to change them into perfect partners, not
nary existence. By quieting this ego and becoming less self-centered, your realizing that a statue, though it may live forever, has no love to give us. We
mind realizes the "emptiness" (sunyata) of all things. Then you have peace. try to become immortal, whether by anxiety-driven belief in fairy-tales, or by
making our children and grand-children into clones of ourselves, or by get-
The Four Noble Truths ting into the history books or onto the talk shows. We even cling to unhappy
The Four Noble Truths sound like the basics of any theory with lives because change is too frightening.
therapeutic roots: Another aspect of attachment is dvesha, which means avoidance or
1. Life is suffering. Life is at very least full of suffering, and it can hatred. To Buddha, hatred was every bit as much an attachment as clinging.
easily be argued that suffering is an inevitable aspect of life. If I have senses, Only by giving those things which cause us pain permanence and substance
I can feel pain; if I have feelings, I can feel distress; if I have a capacity for do we give them the power to hurt us more. We wind up fearing, not that
love, I will have the capacity for grief. Such is life. which can harm us, but our fears themselves.
Duhkha, the Sanskrit word for suffering, is also translated as stress, The most frightening things we've seen in this century are the mass
anguish, and imperfection. Buddha wanted us to understand suffering as a movements—the Nazis, the Red Guard, the Ku Klux Klan, terrorist groups,
foundation for improvement. and on and on. The thought seems to be that, if I'm just a little puff of wind,
One key to understanding suffering is understanding anitya, which maybe by joining others of my kind, I can be a part of a hurricane! Beyond
means that all things, including living things, our loved ones and ourselves, these are all the petty movements—political ones, revolutionary ones, reli-
are impermanent. Our peculiar position of being mortal and being aware of gious ones, antireligious ones, ones involving nothing more than a style or
it is a major source of anxiety, but is also what makes our lives, and the fashion. And hatred is the glue that holds them together.
choices we make, meaningful. Time becomes important only when there is A third aspect of attachment is avidya, meaning ignorance. At one
only so much of it. Doing the right thing and loving someone only have level, it refers to the ignorance of these Four Noble Truths—not understand-
meaning when you don't have an eternity to work with. ing the truth of imperfection and so on. At a deeper level, it also means "not
Another key concept is anatman, which means that all things— seeing," i.e. not directly experiencing reality, but instead seeing our personal
even we—have no "soul" or eternal substance. With no substance, nothing interpretation of it. More than that, we take our interpretation of reality as
stands alone, and no one has a separate existence. We are all interconnected, more real than reality itself!
not just with our human world, but with the universe.
In some sutras, Buddha adds one more aspect of attachment: anxi- Right speech—abstaining from lying, gossiping, and hurtful speech
ety. Fear, like hatred, ties us to the very things that hurt us. generally. Speech is often our ignorance made manifest, and is the most com-
3. Suffering can be extinguished. At least that suffering we add to mon way in which we harm others. Modern psychologists emphasize that
the inevitable suffering of life can be extinguished. Or, if we want to be even one should above all stop lying to oneself. But Buddhism adds that by prac-
more modest in our claims, suffering can at least be diminished. ticing being true to others, and one will find it increasingly difficult to be false
With decades of practice, some monks are able to transcend even to oneself.
simple, direct, physical pain. I don't think, however, that we ordinary folk in Right action—behaving oneself, abstaining from actions that hurt
our ordinary lives have the option of devoting those decades to such an ex- others such as killing, stealing, and irresponsible sex. Traditionally, Buddhists
treme of practice. For most of us, therapy is a matter of specifically dimin- speak of the five moral precepts, which are...
ishing mental anguish rather than eliminating all pain.
Nirvana is the traditional name for the state of being (or non-being, x Avoid harming others;
if you prefer) wherein all clinging, and so all suffering, has been eliminated. x Avoid taking what is not yours;
It is often translated as "blowing out," with the idea that we eliminate self like x Avoid harmful speech;
we blow out a candle. Another interpretation is that nirvana is the blowing x Avoid irresponsible sex;
out a fire that threatens to overwhelm us, or even taking away the oxygen x Avoid drugs and alcohol.
that keeps the fires burning. By "blowing out" clinging, hate, and ignorance,
we "blow out" unnecessary suffering. Perhaps an even more useful transla- A serious Buddhist may add five more:
tion for nirvana is freedom!
4. And there is a way to extinguish suffering. This is what all
x One simple meal a day, before noon;
therapists believe—each in his or her own way. Buddha called it the Eightfold
x Avoid frivolous entertainments;
Path.
x Avoid self-adornment;
The Eightfold Path x Use a simple bed and seat;
The Eightfold Path is the equivalent of a therapy program, but one x Avoid the use of money.
so general that it can apply to anyone. The first two segments of the path are
referred to as prajña, meaning wisdom: Monks and nuns living in monastic communities add over 100 more rules!
Right view—understanding the Four Noble Truths, especially the Right livelihood—making one's living in an honest, non-hurtful
nature of all things as imperfect, impermanent, and insubstantial and our self- way. Here's one we don't talk about much in our society today. One can only
inflicted suffering as founded in clinging, hate and ignorance. wonder how much suffering comes out of the greedy, cut-throat, dishonest
Right aspiration—having the true desire, the dedication, to free careers we often participate in. This by no means we must all be monks: Im-
oneself from attachment, hatefulness, and ignorance. The idea that improve- agine the good one can do as an honest, compassionate, hard-working busi-
ment comes only when the sufferer takes the first step of aspiring to im- ness person, lawyer, or politician!
provement is apparently 2500 years old. This is a good place to introduce another term associated with Bud-
Therapy is something neither the therapist nor the client takes lying dhism: karma. Basically, karma refers to good and bad deeds and the conse-
down—if you will pardon the pun. The therapist must take an assertive role quences they bring. In some branches of Buddhism, karma has to do with
in helping the client become aware of the reality of his or her suffering and what kind of reincarnation to expect. But other branches see it more simply
its roots. Likewise, the client must take an assertive role in working towards as the negative (or positive) effects one's actions have on one's integrity. Be-
improvement—even though it means facing the fears they've been working yond the effects of your selfish acts have on others, for example, each selfish
so hard to avoid, and especially facing the fear that they will "lose" themselves act "darkens your soul," and makes happiness that much harder to find. On
in the process. the other hand, each act of kindness, as the gypsies say, "comes back to you
The next three segments of the path provide more detailed guidance three times over." To put it simply, virtue is its own reward, and vice its own
in the form of moral precepts, called sila: hell.
The last three segments of the path are the ones Buddhism is most is, in fact, important to mindfulness, effort, all moral practice, and even the
famous for, and concern samadhi or meditation10. maintaining of view and aspiration. I believe that this simple form of medi-
Right effort—taking control of your mind and the contents thereof. tation is the best place for those who are suffering to begin—though once
Simple, direct practice is what it takes, the developing of good mental habits. again, the rest of the eightfold path is essential for long-term improvement.
When bad thoughts and impulses arise, they should be abandoned. This is Most therapists know, anxiety is the most common manifestation of
done by watching the thought without attachment, recognizing it for what it psychological suffering. And when it's not anxiety, it's unresolved anger. And
is (no denial or repression!), and letting it dissipate. Good thoughts and im- when it's not anger, it's pervasive sadness. All three of these can be toned
pulses, on the other hand, should be nurtured and enacted. Make virtue a done to a manageable level by simple meditation. Meditation will not elimi-
habit, as the stoics used to say. nate these things—that requires wisdom and morality and the entire pro-
Right mindfulness—mindfulness refers to a kind of meditation in- gram—but it will give the sufferer a chance to acquire the wisdom, morality,
volving an acceptance of thoughts and perceptions, a "bare attention" to etc.!
these events without attachment. This mindfulness is also extended to daily
life. It becomes a way of developing a fuller, richer awareness of life, and a Bodhisattvas
deterrent to our tendency to sleepwalk our way through life. A Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have chosen not to leave
One of the most important moral precepts in Buddhism is the avoid- the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, but rather to remain in samsara (this
ance of consciousness-diminishing or altering substances—i.e. alcohol or existence) until they can bring all of life into nirvana with them. Think of
drugs. This is because anything that makes you less than fully aware sends them as the Buddhist version of saints. In northern Buddhism, they believe
you in the opposite direction of improvement into deeper ignorance. we all should strive to become Bodhisattvas.
But there are other things besides drugs that diminish consciousness. How can you tell a bodhisattva from ordinary beings? They will
Some people try to avoid life by disappearing into food or sexuality. Others have four outstanding qualities, called the Brahma Vihara:
disappear into work, mindless routine, or rigid, self-created rituals. Others
still drown themselves in television and other entertainment. Loving kindness to all creatures;
We can also drown awareness in material things—fast cars, extrava- Compassion for all who suffer;
Sympathetic joy for all who are happy;
gant clothes, and so on. Shopping has itself become a way of avoiding life.
And equanimity, a pervading calm.
Worst of all is the blending of materiality with entertainment. While monks
and nuns avoid frivolous diversions and luxurious possessions, we surround In northern Buddhism, the Bodhisattva has achieved "empti-
ourselves with commercials, infomercials, and entire shopping networks, as ness," sunyata. What this means is that they have gone beyond the usual
if they were effective forms of "pain control! dualistic mind. You and I think in terms of "this and that," "you versus me,"
Right concentration—meditating in such a way as to empty our "us and them," "either-or" and so on. The enlightened person sees that all
natures of attachments, avoidances, and ignorance, so that we may accept the things blend into each other, we are all human, everything is one. We are
imperfection, impermanence, and insubstantiality of life. This is usually "empty."
thought of as the highest form of Buddhist meditation, and full practice of it In one form of Zen Buddhism, there is a tradition that involves ask-
is pretty much restricted to monks and nuns who have progressed considering young monks’ and nuns’ unusual questions called koans. The monk or
ably along the path. nun meditates on the Kona in the hopes of achieving a breakthrough into
But just like the earlier paths provide a foundation for later paths, nondualistic mind. These questions are designed to frustrate our usual way
later ones often support earlier ones. For example, a degree of "calm abiding" of thinking and perceiving the universe. The most famous of them is "what
(shamatha), a version of concentration, is essential for developing mindful- is the sound of one hand clapping?"
ness, and is taught to all beginning meditators. This is the counting of breaths The question has no answer in the ordinary sense. Any sound
or chanting of mantras most people have heard of. This quieting of the mind would, of course, be incorrect, but then silence isn't really the answer either,
because one hand clapping is not just silent, it is a Silent beyond silence. The
dimension from silence to sound doesn't apply to something that cannot have
10
For some simple instructions on meditation, visit http://web- either. It is like asking for the taste of blue or the smell of an E minor
space.ship.edu/cgboer/meditation.html chord. If you like, you could say that the answer is emptiness.
The "answer" that the master is looking for from his students is CHAPTER 26
some clear indication that they understand this emptiness. In Zen tradition, The Ultimate Theory on Personality
there are stories about how monks and nuns responded correctly (or incor-
rectly) to these questions, which stories then become new koans them-
selves. Some of these students respond by knocking over their master, by After a semester of Personality theories—Freud and Jung and Rog-
walking away, by putting their shoes on top of their heads, quoting Buddhist ers and Frankl and Bandura and Eysenck, etc., etc., etc.—students often ask,
sayings, or remaining quiet. For all the apparent nonsense, their responses once again, isn’t there one theory we can trust and use with confi-
indicate their understanding. dence? Can’t we narrow it down a bit? Tell us, what is right and what is not!
Another Kona is "if you speak, I will hit you; if you don't speak I will Well, unfortunately, Personality is not yet a science, at least not in
hit you." Perhaps you can see that there is no answer to this dilemma, no the sense that Biology or Chemistry are sciences. In those fields, although
way out. But that means it is not a dilemma at all! There is no either-or. You there is disagreement about details and the latest findings, there is a common
will get hit. It is inevitable. And so it is nothing at all. You are totally free body of knowledge that few people in the field argue about. Not so, obvi-
to do whatever it is you would do if you had never been confronted by the ously, in Personality.
koan at all. The trick, of course, is to show that freedom. That's not so easy! However, there are slowly emerging ideas that seem to pop up again
Buddhists have an expression: "nirvana is samsara." It means that and again in different theories, often with different names, but there none-
the perfected life is this life. While there is much talk about great insights and the-less. Sometimes they occur in theories that are otherwise quite different,
amazing enlightenments and even paranormal events, what Buddhism is re- or that come from a different perspective, such as clinical versus experimental
ally all about is returning to this life, your very own little life, with a "new versus factor analysis versus phenomenological. Perhaps the field will indeed
attitude." By being more calm, more aware, a nicer person morally, someone become a science, perhaps not too far in the future!
who has given up envy and greed and hatred and such, who understands that I know I’m excited!
nothing is forever, that grief is the price we willingly pay for love.... this life So, I have taken the bull by the cojones, so to speak, and have com-
becomes at very least bearable. We stop torturing ourselves and allow our- piled this little list of things I see as being, if not universal, at least more likely
selves to enjoy what there is to enjoy. And there is a good deal to enjoy! features of the future ultimate theory of personality. Here goes...
Buddhists often use the term "practice" for what they do. They en-
courage each other to "keep on practicing." Nobody is too terribly concerned Consciousness and the unconscious
if they aren't perfect—they don't expect that. As long as you pick yourself up This, of course, is one of Freud’s greatest contribution. Even if he
and practice a little more. A good basis for therapy. didn’t invent the terms, he certainly was responsible for popularizing
them! Many theories postulate some sort of unconscious, not necessarily as
a place where our worst fears bubble and boil, but as a way of accounting for
the many things that influence us without our full awareness.
We can pick out three aspects of the unconscious.
The first is biological. We come into this life with something like
Freud's id or Jung's collective unconscious in place. It is likely composed
of whatever instincts remain a part of our human nature, plus our temper-
ament or inborn personality, and perhaps the preprogramming for stages of
life. This biological unconscious overlaps in part with the existentialist con-
cept of thrownness.
As for possible instincts, I would nominate three “complexes” of
them. A mating complex, an assertive complex and a nurturant (or social)
complex.
Second, there is the social unconscious (as Fromm calls it), which
actually resembles Freud’s superego more than Freud's id. It might include
our language, social taboos, cultural habits, and so on. It includes all the cul- learned by classical conditioning, it seems that all things going into or out of
tural things we were surrounded with in our childhood and have learned so our psyches pass through awareness.
well that they have become "second nature" to us! The negative aspects of What consciousness is will be a question for a good while longer. It’s
the social unconscious overlaps with the existential idea of fallenness and not terribly available to traditional research methods! But for now, we can
with Rogers’ idea of conditions of worth. see it as the ability to experience reality (outer and inner) together with its
And third, there is the personal unconscious (to borrow Jung’s meaning or relevance to ourselves (as biological, social, and even individual
term), perhaps understood as the unconscious aspect of the ego. It is com- organisms). Or the ability to be open to the world while maintaining a degree
posed of our idiosyncratic habits, the more personal things we have learned of separation in the form of an integrated self. I would add that it may be
so well we no longer need to be conscious of them in order to enact them— consciousness that also provides us with the freedom to choose among the
like knowing how to drive so well that we can comb our hair, talk on a cell choices available to us—i.e. self-determination (if not full-blown free will).
phone, light a cigarette, and notice the attractive person in the rear view mir- Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind about conscious-
ror all at the same time (at least until you run off the road into a tree). ness is that it is personal. It is yours and yours alone. And it is within this
Included among those well-learned things might be the defense personal consciousness that all of your "psychology" takes place. Everything
mechanisms. With these we ignore, with habitual efficiency, uncomfortable you feel, perceive, think, and do is phenomenological, i.e. experience that
realities in order to save our sense of self-worth. More a little later.... is not just based on a reality that stands outside of you, but on your subjec-
tive view of reality as well, a view which may be significantly different from
mine! Therefore, in order to understand people, we need to understand them
from the inside. This little fact is what makes psychology so much more
difficult than the physical sciences!
Self-determination
Free will doesn't fit very well with science. It seems to require "su-
pernatural" involvement in the natural world. But we really don't have to be
"above" the natural world in order to have a degree of freedom within that
world.
The baby begins life nearly as intimately connected with his or her
world as in the womb. As we develop from babies into adults, we gradually
separate ourselves from the world. Our interior causal processes—especially
mental processes—become increasingly independent of the causal processes
outside of us. A gap develops that allows us to be influenced by outside
situations, but not necessarily determined by them.
This gap is like a large river. The man on the opposite bank can
FIGURE 26.1
wave and jump and yell all he wants—he cannot directly affect us. But we
can listen to him or interpret his semaphore signals. We can treat his antics
as information to add to all the information we have gathered over our lives,
But let's not get overly enthusiastic about the unconscious! Few psycholo-
and use that information to influence our decisions—influence, but not
gists today view it as the location of our true selves, the answer to all our
cause.
problems, or some deep psychic well that connects us with the universe or
By the end of life, some of us are nearly impervious to what others
God! It is where the more-or-less automatic processes of instinct and the
think about us, can rise above nearly any threat or seductive promise, and can
well-learned do their thing.
ignore nearly any kind of urge or pain. We are still determined—but little in
All this is in contrast to (in fact defined in contrast to) conscious-
our immediate situation is more than information we utilize in making our
ness or awareness. Other than instincts and perhaps a few associations
decisions. This may not be free will in the absolute sense, but it is certainly
self-determination.
development is as yet incomplete. As we learn, we actually create certain neu-

ral paths, rather than just tightening synapses as we do later in life. It’s as if
we were actually learning instincts!
Adolescence also qualifies, I believe, as a stage. The transition from
child to adult involves rather massive hormonal changes accompanied by a
growth spurt like you hadn’t seen since you were two! It is hard for me to
conceive of these changes not having some effect on us psychologically.
Senescence is, strictly speaking, the last year or so of a full life, dur-
ing which time the organs begin to deteriorate and shut down. We don't
usually see this as a stage, and in fact most people never reach it (accidents
and diseases usually beat senescence to the punch). But socially speaking, in
our culture we certainly prepare ourselves for this inevitability, and that might
constitute a social stage, if not a biological one.
As this last point suggests, there are certainly cultural additions we
FIGURE 26.2 The world’s causal processes can make. In our culture, there is a sharp transition from preschool child to
school child, and another sharp transition from single adult to married adult.
For all the power of biology, these social stages can be every bit as powerful.
As a middle-aged man, I have dozens of years of experiences—my

childhood, my cultural inheritance, the books I've read, conversations with
friends, my own thoughts—that have made me who I am today. All this is
on top of my unique genetics and other physical realities of who I am. The
things that happen to me now are experienced through this mass of unique-
ness, and my responses depend, not only on my present situation, but on all
that I am.
Stages
Stages are something most personality theorists shy away
from. Freud and Erikson are the obvious exceptions, as is the developmen-
talist Piaget. And yet there is a very biological basis for the idea. We can, on
pure biology, separate out at least three stages: the fetus, the child and
the adult. This is, in fact, completely parallel to the egg, caterpillar, butterfly
example we learned in high school biology!
In addition, we can see three transitional stages: infancy, adoles-
cence, and senescence.
Infancy is not, actually, found in more primitive animals, and is
greatly exaggerated in humans. We are, in a sense, all born prematurely. Per-
haps this was the result of an evolutionary dilemma. How can an upright
creature give birth to a baby with a large head without killing the
mom? That’s right; give birth before it gets too big! FIGURE 26.3
What that does for us is more than just let us live long enough to
give birth again. It lets the infant soak up information much earlier, and in a
different way. It would seem that for the first 6 to 12 months, our neural
To venture a guess as to the psychological side of these biological

stages: The fetus focuses on biological development, which is transformed And there are three other contenders that are a little harder to place:
by the presence of others in the infant into ego development in the x psychoticism (Eysenck)—perhaps a combination of dis-agreeable-
child. In turn, the ego development of the child is transformed by the advent ness and non-conscientiousness
of sexuality in adolescence into the “trans-ego” or social development of x impulsivity (Buss and Plomin)—perhaps an aspect of non-consci-
the adult. entiousness
Another way to look at it goes like this, in the fetal and infancy x activity (Buss and Plomin)—perhaps an aspect of extraversion
stages, we lay the groundwork and develop our temperaments (founded in
hormones and neurotransmitters). In the child stage, we develop a person- Still, we need to beware: these results of factor analysis may be as much
ality (founded in habits). In adolescence, continuing into adulthood, we de- a reflection of language as of true genetic foundations of personality. As we
velop character (based on conscious decision-making). continue to develop our understanding of genetics and the precise relation-
ships of protein synthesis to brain function, we may find that there are hun-
Temperament dreds of "temperaments," or find instead that the concept doesn't hold up at
Temperament is what we call that part of our personalities or char- all.
acters that is built-in to us genetically. Consequentially, although there is al-
ways a degree of flexibility allowed, to a large extent we "are" our tempera- Learning
ments for our whole lives. Temperament is very in right now, and justifiably With the exception of Skinner, Bandura, Kelly, and a few others,
so. Jung led the way, Eysenck made it more scientifically acceptable, and the learning is rather taken for granted by most personality theorists. But I sus-
Big Five made it official. pect it shouldn’t be. We can postulate at least three kinds of learn-
Nearly everyone I know of accepts two dimensions of personality as es- ing: basic, social and verbal.
tablished before birth, probably genetically: Basic learning includes the behaviorist Pavlovian and Skinner-
x emotional stability (AKA neuroticism...) and ian conditioning, of course—getting feedback from your environment. It
x extraversion-introversion (AKA sociability, surgency...). also includes the latent learning that E. C. Tolman talked about: we learn
about our environment just by being in it!
George Kelly’s way of looking at basic learning derives from the
work of Snygg and Combs, which in turn derives from the Gestalt psycholo-
gists: we learn to differentiate one thing from another on the basis of the
consequences. Either way, behaviorist or gestalt, this kind of learning re-
quires little in the way of consciousness.
There is also environmental learning that involves other peo-
ple. When junior does something that mom or dad does not approve of—
he may be punished in some fashion. Likewise, he may be rewarded when
he does something right for a change. This is also usually called conditioning,
but the fact that it involves others means it is also social learning, and so
fraught with extra difficulties.
FIGURE 26.4 For example, if every time you run into a tree your head hurts, you
will stop running into the tree. On the other hand, if every time you say
"shit!" your dad hits you upside the head, you may stop... or you may avoid
Three more seem to have popular approval: dad, say shit under your breath, begin to hate your father and authority in
x conscientiousness (AKA anality, judging-perceiving...) general, start beating up little kids after school, and so on, until prison effec-
x agreeableness (AKA warmth, feeling-thinking...) tively stops the behavior. These kind of things seldom happen with trees.
x openness (AKA culture, intellect, intuiting-sensing...)—possibly an Social learning includes vicarious learning (noticing and recalling
aspect of intelligence the kinds of environmental feedback and social conditioning other people
get) and imitation (Bandura’s modeling). This kind of learning is probably Anger is similar to sadness. The world is not as it should be. But now,
the most significant for the development of personality. It can be either con- there's the added notion that we must energize ourselves to change the situ-
scious, as when we are watching an artist to learn their technique, or uncon- ation. When we act on our anger, it becomes aggression. Anger and ag-
scious, as when we grow up to be disconcertingly like our parents. gression are not necessarily bad. It is our anger at social injustices, for exam-
Also, there’s verbal learning—learning not from the environment ple, and aggressive action to correct them, that makes for positive social
or the behavior of others, but from words. Culturally, this is, of course, a change! Unrealistic anger, the kind we hang on to despite the suffering it
highly significant form of learning. Most of the learning we do in our many causes us and the people around us, could be labelled hostility.
years of schooling is verbal. And yet we don’t know that much about it at There are, of course, many other emotions and emotional shadings
all! we could try to define, but that's for another time and place. Just one more
One thing is certain: the old models of the rat with his conditioned thing should be noted. It appears that, where there is consciousness, there is
and shaped behavior, and of the computer with its programming, are not very emotion—at very least an emotional tone or mood. As the existentialists
good ones. If you really need a simple metaphor for human learning, you are point out, we just cannot not care.
better off thinking of people—especially children—as sponges!
Emotions Motivation
Emotions or feelings have always been a key point of interest in per- Now here’s a more difficult one. Motivation is central to most the-
sonality theories. At the lowest level, we have pain and pleasure, which are ories of personality, and the variety seems unending! But perhaps a little or-
really more like sensations than feelings. There is also psychological pain and ganization will help.
pleasure—call them distress and delight—which may be the root of all
other emotions. Distress is what we feel when the events of the world are
more than we can handle. Delight is what we feel when we discover that we
can handle them after all!
Anxiety is a favorite topic in personality theories. Although many
definitions have been proposed for anxiety, they tend to revolve around un-
necessary or inappropriate fear. Kelly notes that it is actually the anticipation
of a fearful situation, accurately or not. Fear, in turn, is usually understood
as involving the perception of imminent harm, physical or psychologi-
cal. These definitions serve well for most circumstances.
Guilt is another key emotion. Related to shame, it is usually under-
stood as the feelings aroused when one contravenes internalized social
rules. Kelly provides a useful elaboration. He defines it as the feeling we get
when we contravene our own self-definition (which may or may not involve FIGURE 26.5
those standard social rules!). Existentialists add another detail by suggesting
that guilt is closely related to the sense of regret about opportunities not
taken. First, there are the biological motivations, mostly instinctual (alt-
Sadness is the experience of the world not being as it should be, hough addictions are acquired). There is our need for air, water, food. There
with the added notion that we have no power to alter the situation. Instead, is the need for pain-avoidance. There is the need for pleasure. pleasant
there is a need to alter ourselves—something we are innately reluctant to touch, comforting, sex. We may want to add the instinct complexes men-
do! Grief would be the obvious extreme example, and depression could be tioned earlier: mating, assertiveness, and nurturance. All theories accept the
defined as unrealistic sadness that continues long after the original situation. idea of biological motivation, although they differ wildly about their im-
portance relative to each other as well as to other kinds of motivation.
Second, there are the social motivations. They may build on the result of a balanced upbringing would be a balanced personality—not too
biological motivations, especially the instinct complexes, but they vary enor- retentive, not too expulsive, for example.
mously depending upon culture and even individual social situations and Even when talking about positive experiences, such as learning to
learning. Because they are learned so well and early, we could borrow act on our imaginations, we need to recognize that those positive experiences
Maslow’s term and call them instinctoid. Social motivation may include our need to be tempered with at least a small amount of negative experi-
need for acceptance, attention, and approval (Rogers’ positive regard), as ences. For example, without a little shame and self-doubt, Erikson tells us,
well as those forms of self-esteem that are based on such approval. Shame acting on our imaginations becomes ruthlessness.
and guilt are clearly factors in social motivation, as is pride. Carl Jung's entire theory revolves around balance, especially be-
Parallel to the idea of a personal unconscious, we might also postulate per- tween anima and animus and between the ego and the shadow. The for-
sonal motivations. These would be learned from our unique and idiosyn- mer in particular has received a great deal of attention and empirical sup-
cratic experiences. port. Androgenous people (those who combine qualities of both the "fem-
Last, but not least, there are higher motivations. These are con- inine" and the "masculine") appear to be mentally healthier. The latter also
scious and we perceive them as providing our lives with meaning. There has support. People who are able to think in "shades of gray" are much
appear to be two broad kinds: more mature than those who see everything as black and white, good vs. evil,
The first, self-enhancement. Here we find those motivations that us vs. them. Ego vs shadow might also be understood as a need to balance
lead us to extend ourselves beyond mere survival and comfort, that lead us rationality with emotion.
to be "all that we can be." It includes such motives as desire to learn more
than is needed, attain mastery beyond mere competence and creativity. Adler
might call it striving for superiority or perfection.
The second, self-transcendence, most clearly defined by Viktor
Frankl, it is an outgrowth of our natural tendencies to care about our children,
families, friends, and lovers, and our innate capacity for empathy. It includes
altruism, love, compassion, and Adler’s social concern. Perhaps it also in-
cludes other experiences that take us out of ourselves, such as music, art,
literature, dance, and the beauty of nature.
Erikson in particular talks about these two motives, especially in the
adult stages. Whether they are simply derivatives of the lower needs or are
indeed something more, will remain a point of discussion for many years into FIGURE 26.6
the future!
It seems to me that all of the preceding, and probably a few I’ve
missed, qualify as motivations. Disagreements as to which are most signifi-
cant are perhaps misguided—perhaps that differs from individual to individ- The balancing act that has gotten the most attention from personal-
ual! And the possibility that higher motivations derive from lower ones in ity psychologists is the balancing of our desires for individuality and com-
no way diminishes their significance. Rollo May's idea of a large number munity. This idea originated with Otto Rank's contrast between a desire for
of daimons, unique to each individual, may be the best approach. both "life" (our drive towards individuality) and "death" (our drive towards
union with others), as well as the corresponding fears (isolation vs. engulf-
Balance ment). Rollo May uses the words will and love, others use words such
Another common theme in personality theories is the idea of bal- as autonomy and homonymy, agency and communion, egoism and al-
ance. Freud, for example, felt that all of life's "crises" were best resolved at truism, and so on. Founded in our instincts for assertiveness and nurtur-
some midpoint between two extremes – Potty-training was to be accom- ance, in their highest forms they are self-enhancement and self-transcend-
plished not too early, not too late, not too harshly, and not too leniently. The ence, respectively.
Whatever the words, the balance to be achieved is between the im-
pulse to serve oneself (becoming all one can be as an individual) and the
impulse to serve others (become one with the universe of others). But serve a sense of inferiority in some domains and not in others. Acknowledging the
only yourself, and you end up alone; serve only others, and you lose your specificity of inferiority allows us to focus in on possible remedies, while just
identity. Instead, one must serve oneself in order to serve others well, and saying someone suffers from low self-esteem leaves us with little sense of
serve others in order to best serve oneself. At some point the two aren't so where to start!
much balanced as working synergistically. Here's a nice quote from good old Confronted with the difficulties of life, lacking in the support of oth-
Einstein that sums it up nicely: ers, and not even enjoying confidence in ourselves, we find we must defend
ourselves however we can. We can list a large number of defense mecha-
Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary nisms, as Anna Freud did, or we might be able to simplify a little, like Carl
being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, Rogers. We defend our sensitive egos by denial and rationalization.
to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he Denial (perhaps including repression) is the attempt to block the offending
seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their experiences directly, at the cost of emotional exhaustion.
pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only Rationalization (including, perhaps, perceptual distortion) is a
the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting strivings accounts for the special char- more sophisticated and less exhausting way of dealing with the offending in-
acter of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual
formation by working around it.
can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. (Ein-
stein, "Why Socialism?" in Monthly Review, NY, May 1949) Either way, they are lies we tell ourselves and others in order to min-
imize the impact of that incongruence between our need for love and security
Neurosis and what is afforded to us. We use these lies because they help, actually. But
Life is filled with stress. Many people's difficulties begin with child- they only help in the short run. Over time, they lead us into a possibly serious
hood experiences of abuse, neglect, poverty, sickness, parent's sicknesses or misunderstanding of how the world (especially other people) works, and of
death, parental psychological problems, divorce, immigration, accidents, de- who, in fact, we are.
formities, etc. Sometimes, we are strong enough, or have enough support,
to weather these storms. More often, we find that these experiences leave us
with an on-going apprehension about life. We end up suffering from anxi-
ety, guilt, sadness, anger... not just as a direct result of the specific experience,
but because we no longer trust life.
A child with loving parents and compassionate relations, peers, and
teachers may well be able to cope with these problems. On the other hand,
a lack of support, a lack of what Rogers calls positive regard, can leave even
a child blessed with a comfortable environment troubled with self-doubt and
insecurity.
Many of our theories were developed in order to help those who can-
not cope, and looking at Adler, Horney, Rogers, Bandura, and others, we find
FIGURE 26.7
a great deal of agreement as to the details. As I said a moment ago, in order
to cope with life's difficulties, we need positive regard—a little love, approval,
respect, attention.... But others often make that love and approval condi-
tional upon meeting certain standards, not all of which we can meet. Over For those people who are, perhaps, a bit stronger than those who
time, we learn to judge ourselves by those standards. It is this incongru- succumb to neuroses, we still find suffering in the form of alienation. There
ence (Rogers’ term) between what we need and what we allow ourselves that develops a split between the deeper, "truer" core self within, and the per-
leaves us with low self-esteem, or what others call a poor self-concept or sona (to borrow Jung's term) that we present to the outside world to attempt
an inferiority complex. to meet with those conditions of worth that Rogers talks about. We feel in-
There is a real advantage to the idea of inferiority over self-esteem. It authentic, false, phony, dishonest on the one hand, and misunderstood or
is rare to have an overall sense of low self-esteem. Instead, most people have unappreciated on the other. Over the long haul, this is likely to lead to de-
pression and withdrawal from social life. But sometimes, alienation can lead
to new perspectives on life and some remarkably creative insights. Perhaps herself from most if not all social interaction. They tend to be somber, psy-
we owe a good portion of our art, music, and literature to these same people. chologically detached, sometimes angry at the whole world, and potentially
At the other end of the spectrum are those people whose psycho- violent.
logical suffering is founded on physiological problems. Schizophrenia, alt- And a last, fifth candidate is the infantile style, AKA, the phal-
hough it certainly has some sizable social and psychological causes, seems to lic or marketing style. These people avoid responsibility by essentially ex-
have a considerable physiological component. Other disorders, such as bi- tending their childhoods into adulthood. They are obsessed with youth, fun,
polar, major depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorders, improve with adventure, and even high risk activities. They tend to be shallow and hedon-
the use of medications that enhance the effects of our own neurotransmit- istic.
ters. The borderline between psychology and physiology is becoming in- One could argue that the most common coping strategy of all—
creasingly blurry! most common because it works so well—is conventionality, "busy-ness,"
getting lost in the day-to-day. It will be up to future personality researchers
Coping strategies to determine which of these are true styles, if the idea of a few styles holds
People troubled by neuroses will be also find themselves attracted to up, or if we should stick to a more individualistic way of describing people's
certain patterns of living that to one degree or another keep the psychological coping.
pain at bay. They may become alcoholics, or work-aholics, or sex addicts, or
they may become obsessed with cleanliness or physical health, etc. These Therapy
patterns can involve unusual behaviors, emotional attachments, obsessive It is somewhat surprising that, for all the variation in theories, there
thoughts, etc. Binswanger calls these patterns themes and they are similar is considerable agreement regarding therapy.
to Horney's neurotic needs, Ellis's irrational beliefs, and the behavior- First, there is an emphasis on self-awareness or, as Freud put it,
ists' maladaptive habits. making the unconscious conscious. We encourage our clients to understand
Many theorists see a certain order among these themes, and classify their biological, social, and personal unconscious and related motivations, to
them into four or five categories, which Horney calls coping strate- examine the conflicts between their needs and the standards society and they
gies. Fromm calls them orientations, Freud uses character types.... They themselves impose, and to look behind their defensive posturing.
are, perhaps, the result of an interaction between a person's temperament and We are also taught to encourage our clients to discover more con-
the specific stressors they must deal with. scious, higher motivations—meaning the development of competence,
There are two coping strategies we can readily agree on: creativity, and compassion, becoming valuable to oneself and to others....
The dependent style is characterized by a sense of inferiority and weakness, And the means of therapy? We are taught to use genuinely caring dialog,
but also involves a strong—perhaps desperate—use of manipulation of oth- and to provide support (not management or control) with a goal of even-
ers. It is also referred to as oral passive, getting, leaning, compliant or re- tual autonomy for the client.
ceptive. Now, each theory has its own set of preferred techniques. Some,
The aggressive style is characterized by aggressive posturing that such as the radical behaviorist approach, insist that techniques are all you
serves to temporarily diminish a sense of inferiority—i.e. the superiority com- need. Others, such as Rogers’ approach, suggest that you don’t need tech-
plex! When you feel bad about yourself, beat or humiliate someone else. This niques at all, just an empathic, respectful, and honest personal pres-
is also known as oral aggressive, ruling, dominant, or exploitative. ence. Probably the majority of therapists, however, follow the middle path
From there, things get more uncertain. and use a few techniques that they have found useful and that fit their clients’
A third candidate is the perfectionist style. This type of person at- and their own personalities.
tempts to actually reach the excessively difficult standards they have accepted In addition, we now have a fairly reliable set of drugs that appear to
for themselves—or at least pretend to reach them. They tend to be emotion- help. Our understanding of the physiological bases for psychological prob-
ally detached from others, and to dislike depending on them. It is also known lems has been growing rapidly, and, while that understanding is far from
as the anal retentive or hoarding type. complete, it has allowed us to help people more effectively. Most therapists
A fourth candidate is the schizoid style, AKA, the avoid- are still hesitant to rely entirely on medications, perhaps rightly so. But these
ing or withdrawing type. This kind of person attempts to remove him- or medications certainly seem to help in emergency situations and for those
whose suffering just doesn't respond to our talk therapies.
that happens in our environment is part of some great historical or evolu-

tionary movement! Sometimes, stuff just happens. You can be in the wrong
Conclusions place at the wrong time, or the right place at the right time. Hear some great
Even among our list of consistencies, we can find some "metaconsist- speaker that changes the direction of your life away from the traditional path,
encies." Being a visual sort, I like to put things into graphic form. So here or have a cell hit by stray radiation in just the wrong way.
goes: Last, but not least, there's (d), which represents our own
choices. Even if free will ultimately does not stand up to philosophical or
psychological analysis, we can at least talk about the idea of self-determina-
tion, i.e. the idea that, beyond society and biology and accident, sometimes
my behavior and experience is caused by... me!
Perhaps there is more agreement than I originally thought! This
bodes well for our field. Perhaps we can get through the next so many years
intact, and arrive, somewhere in the twenty-first century, at full scientific sta-
tus. I do hope so, although I also hope that Personality continues to be a bit
of an art as well. I choose to believe that people will always be a bit harder
to predict and control than your average green goo in a test tube!
FIGURE 26.8
What you see here is "poor me" (or "poor you"), at the center of
enormous forces. At top, we have history, society, and culture, which in-
fluence us primarily through our learning as mediated by our families, peers,
the media, and so on. At the bottom, we have evolution, genetics, and
biology, which influence us by means of our physiology (including neuro-
transmitters, hormones, etc.) Some of the specifics most relevant to psychol-
ogy are instincts, temperaments, and health. As the nice, thick arrows indi-
cate, these two mighty forces influence us strongly and continuously, from
conception to death, and sometimes threaten to tear us apart.
There is, of course, nothing simple about these influences. If you
will notice the thin arrows (a) and (b). These illustrate some of the more
roundabout ways in which biology influences our learning, or society influ-
ences our physiology. The arrow labeled (a) might represent an aggressive
temperament leading to a violent response to certain media messages that
leads to a misunderstanding of those messages. Or (b) might represent being
raised with a certain set of nutritional habits that lead to a physiological defi-
ciency in later life. There are endless complexities.
I also put in a number of little arrows, marked (c). These repre-
sent accidental influences, physiological or experiential. Not everything
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fictional finalism, 74 intimacy, 36, 41, 42

fictions, 74 introjection, 16
INDEX fidelity, 36, 41 introspects, 4
five factor theory, 130 introversion, 58, 122, 123, 124, 125, 131,
fixation, 20 266
Frankl, V., 180, 205, 210, 211, 212, 213, intuiting, 59
actualizing tendency, 184 complex, 23, 28, 33, 34, 35, 47, 55, 56, 214, 221, 223, 270 isolation, 41
adaptation, 231 59, 63, 76, 77, 79, 81, 102, 116, 124, free association, 22 isolation, 14
adapted type, 67 131, 137, 138, 185, 196, 203, 232, 241, Freud, A., 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 27, 28, 29, jivatman, 57
Adler, A., 39, 64, 69, 70, 71, 83, 168, 205, 261, 272, 274 32, 33, 45, 273, 280 Jung, C., 25, 47, 66, 152, 195, 207, 222,
211, 224, 278, 279 conditions of worth, 186 Freud, S., 5, 6, 7, 8, 26, 48, 66, 114, 141, 271
adolescence, 40 conscience, 10, 101, 143, 145, 214, 216, 195, 207, 211, 220, 280, 281 karma, 257
aggression drive, 71 218 Fromm, E., 85, 99, 109, 205, 214, 224 Kelly, G., 139, 148, 149, 162, 164, 165,
aggression instinct, 71 conscious mind, 9, 49, 55 functions, 58 167, 168, 198, 267, 281
Allport, G., 92, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, constriction, 157 fundamental postulate, 151 late adulthood, 43
146, 147, 278 constructive alternativism, 149 generalize, 3 latency stage, 39
altruistic surrender, 15 correlation, 2, 3 genetic epistemology, 231 latent stage, 18
anal retentive personality, 21 creativity cycle, 155 genital stage, 19 leaning type, 78
anal stage, 18 crises, 34 genital-locomotor stage, 37 libido, 10, 11, 55
anal-muscular stage, 36 death instinct, 10, 11, 24, 67, 72, 102 guilt, 37 life instincts, 10, 11
anima, 52 defense mechanisms, 12, 119, 125, 262, hame and doubt, 36 logotherapy, 211, 213, 218, 223, 280
animus, 52, 53, 54, 271 273 Hamstead Child Therapy Clinic, 28 maladaptive tendency, 35
archetypes, 50 denial, 12, 188, 273 having mode, 107 malignant tendency, 35
asceticism, 13 denial in fantasy, 12 hermaphrodite, 54 mana, 51
assimilation, 231 despair, 36, 44, 76, 179, 200, 201, 214 hero, 66 mandala, 54
atman, 57, 179 despised self, 89 herpephobics, 138 marketing orientation, 106
automaton conformity, 102 dilation, 156 heuristic, 78 masculine protest, 72
autonomy, 36 displacement, 14 hierarchy of needs, 172, 180 Maslow, A., 168, 171, 222
avoiding type, 78 dogmatism, 5 hoarding orientation, 105 masochism, 101
Bandura, A., 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, dream analysis, 22 holism, 73 May, R., 64, 68, 205, 224, 225, 270, 271
138, 139, 140, 261, 267, 268, 272, 278 ego, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 19, 25, 27, 33, Horney, K., 71, 84, 90, 91, 93, 100, 187, maya, 57
basic hostility, 88 36, 40, 44, 46, 48, 49, 52, 53, 56, 58, 207 melancholy, 78, 87, 120, 121, 202
Beck, A., 98, 139 67, 73, 97, 119, 225, 226, 248, 254, humanistic communitarian socialism, 106 metapathologies, 178
behavior modification, 118 262, 266, 271, 280 humors, 78, 120, 121 middle adulthood, 42
being mode, 107 ego psychology, 27 hysteria, 7, 78, 99 mistrust, 35
Bernays, M., 8 egocentrism, 5 id, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 22, 25, 27, 73, 261 moral anxiety, 11
Binswanger, L, 193, 194, 195, 207, 225 Ellis, A., 92, 94, 96, 98, 139, 279, 281 ideal self, 89 mother archetype, 51
biophilous, 108 epigenetic principle, 33 identification with the aggressor, 16 mutuality, 34
birth order, 79 equilibrium, 232, 272 impulsiveness, 37 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 60
birth trauma, 68 Erikson, E., 27, 30, 32, 33, 45 individual psychology, 70 narrow virtuosity, 39
Boss, M., 207 erogenous zones, 18 industry, 39 necessary and sufficient, 191
Breuer, J., 6, 8 ethnocentrism, 4 inertia, 39 necrophilous, 108
Buss, A., 128 excitation, 124 inferiority, 39 neurosis, 3, 25, 77, 85, 88, 89, 91, 95,
cardinal traits, 145 exclusion, 42 inhibition, 38 109, 160, 175, 187, 202, 215, 217, 220,
castration anxiety, 19, 20, 23, 24 existential psychology, 196 inhibition, 124 221, 278
catharsis, 7, 23 existential vacuum, 215 initiative, 37 neurotic anxiety, 12
collective unconscious, 48 experimentation, 2, 29, 165, 232 insight, 23 neurotic needs, 86
Combs, A., 167 exploitative orientation, 105 instinctoid, 174 neurotic type, 67
compensation, 42, 70, 72, 76, 77, 83, 90, extroversion, 58 instincts, 9, 10, 11, 33, 50, 51, 52, 100, nirvana principle, 11
137, 168 Eysenck, H., 58, 120, 121, 125 102, 174, 198, 214, 222, 240, 249, 261, observational learning, 134
competency, 40 fanaticism., 41 262, 265, 271, 276 oedipal crisis, 19
feeling, 59 interview, 4 operant, 114, 115, 118, 222
optimal time, 34 reinforcing stimulus, 114, 117 thrownness, 199 64, 67, 100, 104, 105, 119, 141, 153,
oral stage, 18 rejectivity, 36, 43 token economy, 118 214, 218, 219, 220, 227, 254, 261, 262,
oral-aggressive personality, 20 repression, 13 transference, 23, 204 268, 270, 275, 280
oral-passive character, 20 repudiation, 36, 41 trickster, 54 undoing, 16
oral-sensory stage, 35 research methods, 1 turning against the self, 14 virtue, 34
organ inferiorities, 70 resistance., 22 unconditional self-acceptance, 97 willpower, 37
overextension, 36, 43 reversibility, 235 unconscious, 9, 11, 22, 23, 25, 27, 33, 47, Wilson, O. E., 240
PAD Model, 130 rites of passage, 40 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, withdrawing families, 103
pampering, 79 Rogers, C., 68, 71, 82, 90, 98, 150, 164,
panic attack, 123 165, 167, 180, 183, 190, 192, 205, 273,
Pappenheim, B., 8 283
parapraxes, 22 role confusion, 40
penis envy, 19, 23, 24, 90 role construct repertory test,, 162
perseverative functional autonomy, 146 Roosevelt, T., 70
persona, 52, 56, 58, 143, 273 ruling type, 77
personality tests, 2 ruthlessness, 38
personology, 1 sadism, 101, 145
phallic personalities, 21 samples, 3
phallic stage, 18 sanguine, 78
phenomenal field, 167 schedules of reinforcement, 115
phenomenology, 196, 197, 206, 283 schemas, 231
phlegmatic temperament, 120 secondary process, 10
Piaget, J., 45, 229, 231 self-concept, 137
pleasure principle, 9, 11 self-effacing solution, 87
Plomin, R., 128 self-extension, 143
preconscious, 9 self-image, 143
presumption, 44 self-regard, 185
principle of entropy, 56 self-regulation, 136
principle of equivalence, 55 sense of body, 143
principle of opposites, 55 shaping, 116
productive orientation, 106 Skinner, B. F., 113, 114, 126, 134, 197
productive type, 67 Snygg, D., 165, 167
projection, 15 social interest, 64, 71, 74, 75, 77, 78, 82,
projective tests, 22 83, 177, 279
promiscuity,, 42 socially useful type, 78
proprium, 142 sociobiology, 240, 249, 284
prototype, 78 Star Wars, 53
psychological inferiorities, 76 striving for perfection, 71, 72, 74, 76, 83,
psychosocial moratorium, 40 90
punishment, 117 style of life, 73
qualitative methodology, 1, 4, 126, 144, sublimation, 18
165, 176 superego, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 25, 27, 73,
quantitative methodology, 1, 4 261
Rank, O., 64, 66, 68, 184, 226, 227, 271 symbiotic families, 103
rational emotive behavioral therapy sympathetic nervous system, 123
(REBT), 94 synchronicity, 57, 58
rationalization, 17 systematic desensitization, 116
reaction formation, 15 syzygy, 53
realistic anxiety, 11, 177 tasks, 34
receptive orientation, 105 teleology, 57, 73, 83
reciprocal determinism, 133 the shadow, 52
regression, 17 thinking, 59

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PERSONALITY THEORIES

From Freud to Frankl

Open Knowledge Books

Let there be free words!

1. Personality Theories: An Introduction…1

Personality psychology, also known as personology, is the study of

The stages The Oedipal Crisis

Introversion and extroversion

us to be part of a family, community, or humanity. We also feel a certain fear CHAPTER 7

nature of the need. Affection, to continue the example, has to be shown

CHPATER 9 turned exclusively to nonfiction, to promoting what he called the "sex-family

to do so, encourage self-management through behavior modification tech-

by stumbling into an operating theater, cutting open someone's head, suc-

very similar to our common-sense understanding of them: shy, quiet people

Dominance is a lot like Extraversion / Sociability. Pleasure seems related to CHAPTER 13

d. past punishment. a. compensation—a superiority complex, for example, and delusions

Gordon Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana, in 1897, the

1. the theoretical—a scientist, for example, values truth.

Most of us, of course, have several of these values at more moderate

The construction corollary

Sometimes, a theory fails to gain the attention it deserves because it

The phenomenal field

Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New

FIGURE 17.2 Salient needs

He also talks about these levels in terms of homeostasis. Homeo-

little consistency to it. We see him as having "psychotic breaks"—episodes

Conscience The existential vacuum

This sets Frankl’s existentialism apart from the existentialism of Therapy

(H)uman existence—at least as long as it has not been neurotically References

FIGURE 23.2 Conservation

Concrete operations stage

Here’s a simple example of a task that a concrete operations child

FIGURE 23.4 Conservation

FIGURE 23.5 Example of concrete operational task9

Formal operations stage His experiment—and it is an experiment—would tell him that a

By incompatibility: “When this happens, that doesn’t” (the elimination of

On top of that, he can operate on the operations—a higher level of group-

Identity: Leave it alone. “It could be the string or the weight.”

Aggression in Human Beings Sociobiology "versus" Culture

development is as yet incomplete. As we learn, we actually create certain neu-

As a middle-aged man, I have dozens of years of experiences—my

To venture a guess as to the psychological side of these biological

that happens in our environment is part of some great historical or evolu-

Erikson, E. (1962). Young man Luther. New York: W. W. Norton.

fictional finalism, 74 intimacy, 36, 41, 42

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